History/Vision

We envision a school program distinguished by:

• Ethics Education: Our ethics education program is designed to produce thoughtful citizens and caring community members.  It is a core element in promoting positive social development and increasing positive behaviors in children.  Ethics is taught as a subject in its own right and ethical considerations are infused throughout the curriculum.  Teachers are sensitive to everyday occasions to engage students in the contemplation of ethical issues. 
  
  
• Inquiry Approach / Active Learning: Classroom experiences are designed so that students are active participants in the learning experience.  They are encouraged to question, to make inferences, and to formulate opinions based on sound reasoning.  As much as possible students construct understanding based on their own experience and their engagement with the new material.  Learning is viewed as investigation, where students have first-hand experience with real life phenomena that they can observe and act on directly.   The aim in inquiry-based education is the understanding of important concepts that are explored in the context of meaningful content.
  
  
• Interdisciplinary Curriculum: Research indicates that student participation in interdisciplinary investigations leads to increased achievement for all students, but particularly for at-risk students.  When students are engaged in investigations they have to think about what they want to know and how they are going to find out.  Then, as a class or in small groups, they proceed to gather data and to formulate conclusions about the important questions raised by the topic.  Our interdisciplinary approach will organize the curriculum around common themes and skills across disciplines, particularly key elements of literacy, such as decoding, vocabulary, reading comprehension, inference and writing.  English language learners will be supported in the regular classroom. 
  
  
• Integration of the Arts: Music, art, drama, movement, technology and the practical arts are important parts of the curriculum.  They are integrated with other subjects during the normal course of the school day and they are given special attention as subjects in their own right with a specialist teacher.  Through creative expression in the arts students gain confidence and a sense of identity; they grow to appreciate our cultural heritages – their own and others; and their capacity for critical and creative thinking is enhanced as it applies to any other subject they may tackle.
  
  
• Differentiated Instruction: TECCS teachers use varied instructional strategies in order to ensure that each student receives instruction at the appropriate level of challenge.  Every student enrolled at TECCS will have an Individual Learning Goals Plan that is periodically modified to meet his or her learning needs.  Questions are open-ended, as much as possible, to encourage diverse responses from students with different learning styles, different cultural backgrounds and different degrees of experience with the topic.
  
  
• Community Connections: TECCS is a hub, knitting together inventive, enduring relationships among educators, families, community volunteers and community partners – businesses, family support groups, youth development organizations, community organizations and other organizations committed to children.  These relationships support our students’ growth and development in and outside of school. 
  
  
• Parents as Partners: TECCS welcomes and supports parent involvement and open communication through parent volunteer opportunities, home visits, frequent communications between home and school and an “open door” policy for parents.