GOALS

THE GOALS

• Define, deepen and reaffirm our identity as a creative, connected and caring community dedicated to developing educated global citizens with the capacity, skills, ethical compass and commitment to make a positive contribution to the world. Our goal is to become a self-evolving organization of self-evolving learners (students and teachers).
• Be a welcoming, inclusive, culturally attuned/ competent, self-evolving organization of self-evolving learners and to communicate that effectively.

Creativity and connection; Creative and critical thinking and expression; Learning by Doing.

• Advance our program to ensure alignment with student outcomes
• Affirm and promote the DNA of the PDS Way:  a focus on Mission and Core Values and our deep understanding that we learn through activity and interactivity, by doing and reflecting on doing. This means a renewed school-wide program commitment to activities that engage students as problem seekers and solution finders in authentic and meaningful learning.

Key elements and evolving specifics may include:

Learning by Doing, Active Engagement, Growth Mind-Set, STEAM, Project-Based Learning (PBL), Design Thinking, Learning to Make/Making to Learn, Transdisciplinary and experiential work, Arts at the Core, Service Learning, Wellness, Active partnerships and strategic alliances with colleges and other institutions and organizations.

Teachers as the difference makers in children’s lives and key to change in schools.

• Align teaching and learning commitments with Student Outcomes
• Establish PDS as a magnet for creative teachers who grow, learn, contribute and live well. Recognize and support teachers as expert practitioners
• Attract, retain, develop, compensate and inspire outstanding faculty.
• Clarify what it means to be a teacher at PDS: Teachers as curious creative, collaborative co-learners who are globally-aware, personally networked and who connect ideas with practice and seek appropriate tools and technologies in new ways.
• Establish a portfolio based evaluation professional growth structure.
• Align professional development resources with mission, values and to advance professional practice aligned with student outcomes.
• Support self-directed growth. Invest in teacher leadership, expertise and “teacherpreneurship.” Further CFG, PLN and EdCamp models of self-directed growth.
• Ensure teachers have the support and structures they need including time.
• Teachers as learners who – with students – create, co-create and re-create knowledge through their ability to access, assimilate, synthesise, distill and question new knowledge and use it to make connections, build alliances, form partnerships, take risks and share what they learn and create.

• Ensure appropriate learning spaces aligned with student outcomes and current and future program needs.
• Continue to re-imagine and re-purpose space.
• Develop a campus master plan to ensure that our buildings and grounds support the long-term mission and program. (E.g. dormitories, pool.)
• Identify short-term needs and long-term goals and create flexible facilities that support on-site, distant and blended learning and allow for change and growth.
• Use the facilities as a springboard for generating non-tuition sources of revenue
• Use facilities to imagine, design and invent the future

Strengthen and diversify resources to achieve our mission and goalsThis goal undergirds all the others and recognizes financial sustainability as the number one priority for the school.Strengthen and diversify resources to achieve our mission and goals and aspirations. The main components are:

• Affordability: Manage the rising curve of tuition.
• Complete and enact the Strategic Financial Plan that enables us to model out five years and re-adjust as needed as well as align the budget with school priorities and program
• Complete and enact the fund development plan
• Invest in personnel and planning to identify and generate alternative sources of revenue and student financial assistance
• Full enrollment
• Align the financial and personnel resources of the school with the student outcomes and the other four goals of the plan.