Our preschool classrooms at BCCS are learning environments which are designed to be spaces where children can develop positive habits of learning. Students are practicing habits of learning such as gracious communicating, joy-filled collaborating, curious thinking, and courageous designing as they grow in all academic areas. We are laying the foundation of faith and lifelong learning
Our classrooms are designed to convey six positive messages that our littlest learners are able to embrace as they enter their first learning environments. As teachers, through our interactions, classroom structure, curriculum, and arrangement of the learning spaces, we are intentional to ensure that every learner receives these messages:
Reassurance: “This is a good place to be”
Every student needs to feel safe in their environment. Learning is exciting! Our materials are age appropriate, interesting, engaging, and stimulate engagement in higher order thinking. We ensure that students are able to make choices and decisions about when they will engage in activities and have plenty of time to become deeply involved in sustained learning through play. We want our learners to want to come to school each day and to want to learn more!
Acceptance: “You belong here”
Every student is a child of the King and has an important role to fulfill in our classroom community. We need every member in our learning community, and we value every member’s contributions to our learning. Each learner comes from a family and is adopted into our classroom family. We celebrate each person’s unique story as part of our story and part of God’s story
Reliability: “This is a place you can trust”
Our learning environment will be predictable. The way teachers interact will be kind, helpful, and encouraging. We will expect all students to be learning and interacting in kind, helpful, and encouraging ways to be joy-filled collaborators. We will follow a consistent schedule and have clear expectations. If you take a risk in your learning to try something that is new or difficult, it is all right if it doesn’t work out perfectly the first time. Mistakes are learning opportunities. We will always support your growth!
Respect: “There are places you can be by yourself”
Just as we are part of a community and we respect each other, each of us is also a unique individual. There are places to be learning by yourself in our classroom even as we are learning to work together.
Independence: “You can do many things on your own here”
We strive for a balance between teacher-led and child-initiated learning opportunities. Low-risk decision making builds risk-tolerance resilience as a learner. We provide many opportunities for children to safely work out their thoughts, ideas, emotions, and developmental needs through unstructured, imaginative play.
Confidence: “This is a safe place to explore”
We all have many feelings and emotions. It is acceptable to feel the way we are feeling. There are safe ways to process our feelings and the teachers here can help you to sort through emotions in positive ways. At this age, students are just becoming aware of others and that they have feelings and responses too. As we work through learning more about ourselves, we also learn how to treat others as children of the King.