Teacher and Partner Focus Groups on Beliefs

We believe that to teach and learn from an interdisciplinary approach educators should be encouraged:

• to make the world relevant by interconnecting and interrelating a variety of disciplines and learning.
• to offer multiple lenses from which to view the world of knowledge.
• to construct a meaningful complex system (theme) that accommodates diverse view points. (to deal with life's problems and issues?)
• to preserve the integrity of the disciplines.

We believe that to teach and learn from a Constructivist Framework means...

• through inquiry, exploration and discovery, students will acquire basic skills and higher-order thinking skills, construct meaning, and open corridors to new fields of inquiry and knowledge.
• this process requires an active partnership between teachers and students which is dedicated to learning. The process will involve collaborations in and beyond the classroom.

We believe that to teach and learn through the visual performing arts...

• promotes greater understanding of the human experience
• integrates and transcends subjects and disciplines
• is an essential part of the core education program for all students
• fosters creative and critical thinking, self-discipline, and lifelong learning.
• helps people understand and celebrate themselves and others in a community without boundaries.
• provides a powerful means for self-expression and communication among individuals, generations and cultures.
• includes dance, music, theater, and the visual arts.
• encompasses process, performance/production, criticism, and aesthetics, including historically culturally diverse perspectives

We believe that to teach and learn through the integration of the technological vehicle ...

• adds a new dimension to learning and its own unique skill set
• empowers teachers and students to move forward creatively
• provides equality / freedom of discovery
• fosters the responsibility to stay on course
• engages wide-ranging, inquiry-based educational travels
• promotes global interactive relationships for research, sharing, creating, and assessing
• requires continuing maintenance, fine-tuning, and investment
• transports us to our destination of educational reform.