Our Philosophy
Our educational philosophy is based on the premise that every child is uniquely wired, and that each child deserves a teaching and learning environment that at its core is centered around what is best for each child. We place a strong emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion, creating a connected and supportive environment where all students are valued and respected.
Through child-centered teaching, we place emphasis on the different gifts and challenges that each child has, highlighting the importance of “growth” mindsets as opposed to “fixed” mindsets. We believe in fostering creativity, critical thinking, and a lifelong love of learning in our students. We teach students that failure is not definitive, and can serve as a conduit for greater success. With effort, even the smallest interest can be kindled into a life-sustaining passion.
Our school is designed to be hands-on, interdisciplinary, and relevant to the real world. Our dynamic learning approach allows students to explore a variety of topics in depth, not quickly breezing over topics on a surface level simply to prepare for a meaningless standardized test. Our multi-age classes, where students of different ability levels and ages work together, foster a culture where students can learn from one another and develop leadership, communication, and collaboration skills.
As we aim to prepare students to be responsible global citizens, we focus on incorporating our core values of environmental conservation and innovation into all of our classes. We believe it is important for our students to become environmentalists by experiencing the nature around them on a daily basis. For this reason, our school, which is placed in the middle of a botanic garden and indigenous Kenyan forest, annually donates a portion of tuition fees (more than $15,000 annually) to the Centre for Ecosystem Restoration – Kenya, to promote conservation and to ensure our campus remains a green and thriving habitat for our learners and many species of flora and fauna.
Finally, we want our students to realize that identity, individuality, and intelligence cannot be confined to static, singular labels. As a “best-practice” school, Woodland Star continually strives to foster student-led, inquiry-based, curiosity-driven and globally-minded learning.
