The
educational program at Graham and Parks is highly individualized, with
an emphasis on teaching the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks in
creative ways. The curriculum is carefully crafted by teams of teachers
and centers around core “Learning Expeditions.” Learning Expeditions
involve in-depth studies of compelling interdisciplinary topics or
themes. During the course of learning expeditions, we engage in many
types of learning: hands-on investigations, content-area research,
fieldwork, and meetings with local experts in relevant fields. We also
demonstrate what we’ve learned through final projects or products that
we share with the larger community. Our learning is hands-on,
project-based, integrated, and responsive to diverse family cultures and
groupings. We emphasize cooperative learning since we believe that
learning is primarily a social activity.
We
are guided by the belief that success comes from hard work, and that
all children have the ability to succeed academically. We share a
“growth mindset:” we believe that our talents and abilities can be
developed through perseverance. We know that intelligence is not a fixed
trait; rather, our brains are constantly evolving as we experience new
challenges. At Graham and Parks, we share a commitment to teaching this
mindset to our children and to modeling it through our own actions as
teachers. We strive to create an academic culture that honors
risk-taking and mistake-making as a natural part of the learning
process, a culture in which misconceptions are an inevitable stepping
stone to deeper understanding. Our teaching practices are also designed
to help students develop habits of mind such as grit, curiosity, and
commitment. We nurture these habits of mind through universally high
expectations for what students can achieve, through rich curriculum that
motivates and engages students, through insistence on multiple drafts
of student work, and through frequent celebrations of quality.
In
addition to our general education program, Graham and Parks is proud to
house the district’s K-5 SEI program for students who are new to the
United States. The program instructs students to speak, read, and write
fluently in English and prepares English Language Learners (ELL) to
enter mainstream programs as soon as they are ready. SEI students engage
in many of the same learning experiences as their general education
peers, but specific curriculum units vary.
For
students with special education needs, we have a team of learning
specialists who collaborate with classroom teachers to provide
individualized support to students. We are also home to two
language-based Learning Disabilities classrooms, which serve children
who need additional, specialized instruction to access reading and
writing across the content areas. We are proud to be a school that
supports the learning of students with a wide range of learning needs.
These classrooms, along with our mainstream classrooms, strive to use a
“universal design” approach to planning and implementing curriculum in
order to engage the full range of learning needs in our classrooms.