With a resolute commitment to the words on our Seal - Knowledge,
Vision, and Integrity - we, The Montclair Kimberley Academy community,
declare and confirm OUR COMMON PURPOSE of intellectual and personal
fulfillment for our students, faculty, parents, alumni, Trustees, and
for all others we serve at our three campuses.
We strive to be an affirming community of learners that encourages
students to take themselves seriously as persons and to recognize and
take responsibility for their education. To understand this point, one
must read the exhortation to students by William Avery Barras, who
taught English for thirty years at Montclair Academy. He said to his
students, "If what I am saying goes over your head, raise your head."
In a similar fashion, we will encourage our community to raise its head
to meet the standards set forth. These are convictions and attitudes of
which great schools are made.
We are an independent, co-educational day school located on three
campuses, each with its own character. We are linked to strong
traditions dating from 1887: vision; persistence; dedication among
students, parents, faculty, and administrators; and the formation of
trustworthy habits. Our co-educational, college-preparatory program
must provide a challenging and coherent liberal arts education from
pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade. Such an education aspires to
prepare students for full active citizenship: young men and women who
understand the philosophical underpinnings of their government and who
are capable of independent ideas, artistic appreciation, and social
responsibility. We will not allow the rights and privileges accorded to
citizens of this nation to slip away because our students are
ill-equipped for citizenship and for thoughtful participation in the
family and community.
Our primary goal is to graduate young men and women who love learning,
who acquire knowledge of fundamental subject matter and the power of
learning, and who are well-prepared to select and meet successfully the
demands of a sound university curriculum. We aspire to the ideals that
our students will understand the difference between ornamental
knowledge and knowledge that is felt with conviction and used well, and
that they will acquire the necessary academic and work habits. We
aspire to the goal that our students make intelligent life choices with
a warranted self-confidence and intellectual humility and prize such
ethical principles as integrity, wholesome friendship, and individual
and community responsibilities.
We prepare students of The Montclair Kimberley Academy for an expected
range of educational opportunities, life experiences, and
responsibility. We embrace the classical ideal of the educated
individual who cultivates and acquires a thorough grounding in the arts
and sciences. In addition we strive to advance our students through a
wide variety of distinctive classroom and non-classroom experiences. We
dedicate ourselves to enhancing the students' learning by helping them
to understand how integration of the disciplines deepens their
understanding and knowledge.
We are entrusted with the responsibility to guarantee that our students
acquire basic study skills and the ability to grasp content so that
they become active learners with the ability to identify problems and
to work creatively toward solutions. The essential activities of the
life of the mind, such as judgment and problem solving, reading,
writing, speaking, observing, and listening, remembering, and critical
appraisal, must receive scrupulous attention from the faculty in the
classroom and articulated throughout the three campuses.
We believe that effective education encourages students to recognize
and use their particular abilities, to show flexibility in changing
circumstances, and to display the courage and ability to recognize
their very human weaknesses and to see these as opportunities to seek
the help of others - and not to give up. We appreciate the value of the
study of and exposure to multiple perspectives and the importance of
our students' abilities to form reasoned opinions and the capacity for
empathy.
We recognize that students learn in a variety of ways, and we encourage
the use of diverse and appropriate teaching styles including lecture,
cooperative learning, dialogue, and independent study. We strive to
foster a lively and productive ethos in which teachers and students
develop a relationship of trust as their best efforts are drawn out
both intellectually and personally, engage in stimulating dialogue, and
are encouraged to take intellectual and creative risks.
We are convinced that our school community must challenge the total
person, and therefore we provide a broad range of opportunities beyond
the classroom. The rich resources of the Greater New York metropolitan
area and other educational opportunities off-campus and overseas offer
our students and faculty special advantages in the study of primary
documents, art, and historical cultural settings. We encourage students
to participate in co-curricular and community-service programs that
provide opportunities to develop a variety of talents, to inculcate a
sensitivity to the needs of others, to pursue their interests, and to
broaden personal horizons. Participation in drama productions and in
lifetime and competitive sports is encouraged. We believe that all
these activities contribute significantly to our students' physical
well-being, to their ability to work effectively in groups to their
ability to manage time well, and to their ability to develop team
spirit, while fostering a healthy desire to excel.
We obligate ourselves always to review, strengthen, and expand our
personal guidance system that helps each student on an almost - daily
basis to recognize strengths, realize potential, choice options for the
future, develop an increasing personal independence, and use the
school's resources to maximum advantage. Under the guidance of faculty
advisors, student-to-student programs help to develop responsibility
for the school community. Our basic expectation is to share work with
parents who are the first and most important educators of their
children.
We commit ourselves to achieving and sustaining our high academic
standards by appointing and retaining exceptionally talented faculty
who capitalize on the benefits of small class size and provide a
challenging and supportive learning environment. These faculty members
dedicate themselves to the advancement of their own learning and to the
cultivation of their own character, for they bear witness to the ideals
they have dedicated themselves to promote in others. We are committed
to providing our faculty with powerful technology to use as a learning
supplement in their classrooms and to assist their students to retrieve
and use information effectively.
We cherish persons in their individuality. We believe that in the
richness of our differences, there is strength and opportunity. We know
that by recognizing differences, we are bound to have a richer, more
joyful, and stimulating school. We value the contributions of each
individual. In spirit and activity, policy and program, each person
bears the responsibility to work towards a harmonious environment where
individual strength of character develops. At the same time, we
celebrate the common humanity and heritage that unite us.
We accept the challenges of those who urge us to remember the words of
our Seal - Knowledge, Vision, Integrity - that echo prominently in our
school song. Knowledge can be acquired by our students by working very
hard over long periods of time. In acquiring knowledge, we remember
that it is often true that many important things to be learned are
neither exciting nor entertaining. Without vison, we are adrift. OUR
COMMON PURPOSE is our compass. We remember that for us and for our
students to have integrity, we must make life in the classroom and life
in the rest of our school whole, informed by high principles that apply
throughout. For our students to have integrity, it takes the
companionship of adults in whom integrity is an obvious fact of daily
life in both their public and private lives. Combined, our knowledge
and vision allow us to develop and maintain our integrity, the
cornerstone of OUR COMMON PURPOSE.
We, The Montclair Kimberley Academy community, understand that the
fulfillment of OUR COMMON PURPOSE will require us to forge an
institutional coherence and to be open to meaningful change. We hold
that responsibility for keeping OUR COMMON PURPOSE fresh and alive
falls upon each member of the community. We pledge our commitment to
this COMMON PURPOSE because in it lies our best hope for the future of
our children and our school.
