Discovery
“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” - Albert Einstein
At Mulberry School, children experience an environment where their natural mode of learning is nurtured. Children are encouraged to try new skills, make guesses, and use their senses, and as such are constantly being taught that their natural curiosity opens fascinating doors into the world.
Discovery is an ongoing process that continues every day, and because they practice this way of learning throughout their years at Mulberry, our students emerge as confident, curious learners. The world is there for them to explore.
Engagement
At Mulberry, our students are not passive receptacles of information, but drivers of their own learning. Assignments require that they reach for personal excellence and meaning. With aspects of emotional intelligence built into the curriculum, students not only study math, science, language arts and social studies, but are also encouraged to understand their own personal growth as learners.
Our children learn by doing, through experience and active problem solving. They participate in the education and development of others in many ways, as well: through our “buddy” system, with older students helping younger peers read or learn science; via social problem solving during class meetings; in learning and growing during group project work. In addition to our students, parents are actively engaged through participation on committees, in the classroom as teacher’s aides, or lending their special talents to help enrich the children’s experiences.
Collaboration
Collaboration is present in every facet of our children’s experience, whether in the classroom or on the playground, and in interaction with children and adults alike. Children’s skills in working together are constantly taught, modeled and practiced in getting tasks completed and problems solved. Students learn mastery of conflict resolution and the democratic process in near regular examination of how to positively and productively work together.
Integrity
A true indicator of personal integrity is the manner in which one handles him/herself when mistakes or errors in judgment are made. Children at Mulberry School integrate the idea that meaningful, deep learning cannot occur without such errors, and understand that through the challenge of mistakes, one must hold onto honest, humble attitudes and behaviors. Our students are young people of high character who display personal integrity in word and deed.
Self-Knowledge
Our faculty understands the importance of developing in our students the skills associated with intelligent behavior, of which meta-cognition (knowledge about your own thoughts and the factors that influence your thinking) is a key quality. Children come to understand how they learn best, as well as how they know what they know.
Furthermore, with Positive Discipline integrated into the very fiber of our school’s culture, our children are daily provided opportunities to resolve conflict in meaningful ways, as well as to question and reflect upon their responses to people and situations. From this critical set of experiences, students learn how their actions impact others, as well as how to positively act in the face of their own emotional response to another.
“The greatest economic competition going forward is going to be between you and your own imagination.
Your ability to act on your imagination is going to be so decisive in driving your future and the standard of living in your country…the school, the state, the country that empowers, nurtures, enables imagination among its students and citizens, that’s who’s going to be the winner.”
- Thomas L Friedman – Pulitzer Prize winner & New York Times Bestseller,
author of “The World Is Flat”; quoted in “The School Administrator”, Feb 2008
Traditional schools focus on how many answers a student knows. At Mulberry School, we don’t just want children to know the answers; we want children to imagine new possibilities and become insightful problem solvers and confident decision makers. Mulberry School teaches children to ask questions…
- How do we know when we know?
- How are things, events, and people connected to each other?
- What is the cause and effect?
- Why does it matter?
- What does it mean?
…and discover their own answers. This process of inquiry creates effective thinkers and research reveals that effective thinkers have identifiable traits, present in successful people from all walks of life – scientists, mechanics, teachers, doctors, artists. Mulberry School fosters the development of effective thinkers with exactly these traits:
- Gathers data through all senses
- Thinks about thinking – metacognition
- Thinks and communicates with clarity and precision
- Applies past knowledge to new situations
- Collaborates and cooperates
- Responds with understanding and empathy
- Learns from mistakes and takes reasonable risks
- Creates, imagines, innovates, persists and finds humor
“Creativity is as important in education as literacy and we should treat it with the same status.”
- Sir Ken Robinson, International Creativity Expert, 2006
Teaching the Way Children Learn
Science has demonstrated that the human brain is a pattern detector, working best when processing meaningful material. Learning at Mulberry, therefore, emphasizes learning by doing through active, creative and integrated projects – that include seeing, reading, hearing, making, writing, painting, cooking and tasting, sewing, singing, building, growing, telling – and that are relevant to their lives.
The development of intelligence is …
“a matter of having wonderful ideas and feeling confident enough to try them out.”
- Elizabeth Duckworth, Educator
Children at Mulberry develop strong social skills and are constantly commended for their extraordinarily strong character. Using positive discipline, we encourage the development of perception and emotional intelligence. The Significant Seven, which includes three empowering perceptions and four essential skills, are modeled and practiced every day at Mulberry:
- I am capable.
- I contribute in meaningful ways.
- I am genuinely needed.
- I use my personal power to make choices that influence
what happens to me and my community. - I can work respectfully with others.
- I understand how my behavior affects others.
- My judgment, skills and wisdom are improving through daily practice.
“It is clear that the learning at Mulberry School comes through the children’s engagement.
The children are so engaged, the learning and discovery comes through in their inner desire not from outside pressure.”
- Jane Nelsen, Ed. D; author of “Positive Discipline” series of books