Basic Principles

1. At The Harbour School, we believe that kindness, caring and respect are essential characteristics in the continuing creation of a better world. These attributes are reflected in the attitudes and behaviors of teachers towards students, students towards teachers, the school towards the community, and peers towards each other.
    
2. At The Harbour School, we believe that every person has individual strengths and weaknesses in cognitive, academic, social, behavioral, physical and artistic functioning. We make every attempt to recognize, value, build and celebrate our strengths while strongly addressing our areas of weakness.
    
3. At The Harbour School, we believe that the fundamental skills of civilized cultures, including most importantly reading, written expression, and mathematics, are the building blocks of further knowledge. These skills are taught through systematic, intensive, and measurable curricula.
    
4. At The Harbour School, we also believe in the importance of an international cultural literacy reflecting the acquisition of a body of knowledge in the areas of history, geography, science, the arts and technology that are or should be common to all educated persons. We work with a well-developed framework that encompasses these areas of cultural literacy so that knowledge builds on past learning and prepares students to emerge with a comprehensive sense of their own identities as global citizens with historical perspectives.
    
5. At The Harbour School, we believe that social skills and social development are essential to both a healthy lifestyle and professional success. Social, ethical and psychological skills and understanding are explicitly taught so that students develop the confidence and skills necessary to creating a strong social support network, developing and maintaining friendships, resolving conflicts, negotiating business and personal interactions, and operating as part of a team.
    
6. At The Harbour School, we believe that children learn many things best by being actively engaged. Hands-on activities, in which students actively participate in the acquisition of knowledge, are a basic part of our curriculum. Field trips are considered to be fundamental, not to be “extra” to the process of learning.
    
7. At The Harbour School, we believe that education should be customized as much as possible to fit the individual abilities, skills, interests, personalities and goals of the students. We attempt to do this by maintaining very small class sizes, a balance of abilities within classrooms, a high teacher:student ratio, individual and small group pull-out programs, online programming, or other programs appropriate for the students.
    
8. At The Harbour School, we believe that every individual has an evolving set of circumstances that may result in different requirements in order to best facilitate learning. We make every attempt to approach situations and individuals with flexibility, respect and kindness, basing our decisions upon the values of our school and the individual circumstances at hand.