Cary Academy is an independent, non-profit school for girls and boys in grades six through twelve. It was founded by James and Ann Goodnight and John and Ginger Sall in 1995. Their goal was to build a school which serves the educational needs of children of promise in the Triangle area by providing faculty and facilities which merge the most recent technologies with rigorous classical education. Their vision extended to collaboration by the school’s faculty with other educational professionals through developing and demonstrating instructional innovation based on the latest technologies. The school opened its doors in the fall of 1997 to students in grades six through ten. It graduates its first class of forty students in Spring, 2000.

As part of the development of the school, the founders and the founding headmaster and division heads spent time and effort to develop a set of guiding beliefs to help faculty, staff, students, and parents understand the nature of the school. What follows is a summary of the notes of those meetings.

· Students succeed when their teachers and parents believe they can succeed. Belief in our students’ abilities, however varied they may be, is a critical element of their success in and out of class.

· Students learn best when they have the ability to make choices in the content of their courses and are able to explore their own interests. Therefore, student-driven research should be a significant component of all courses.

 · The use of technology in teaching creates student interest. It enables students to pursue diverse interests within a single class under the direction of one teacher and facilitates effective communication among students, parents, and teachers. Therefore, all teachers are expected to use, and to seek new ways to use, technology in their teaching.

· Students learn a great deal from interacting with classmates and teachers. Students who learn to work well in groups develop skills well-suited to the world of work in the next century and to being effective citizens in an increasingly inter-related world. Therefore, teachers should make group and collaborative work an integral component of their classes.

· Students who master content and research skills develop self-confidence in their own abilities to learn and to do research independently. Therefore, teachers will be expected to emphasize depth of exploration as they develop course curricula.

· Students benefit from interaction with teachers who collaborate with other professionals, both in and out of their own fields of expertise, thereby bringing breadth of experience and new ideas to their classrooms and model research and learning behaviors for their students. Therefore, teachers should seek ways to collaborate with colleagues in research, curriculum materials development, and instructional technologies and methodologies.

· Students will succeed in the diverse and interdependent world of the future only if they are equipped with the habits of mind and of the heart which enable them to do so. Therefore, the core values of the school community should be taught, modeled, and emphasized in and out of the classroom.*

B. Development of the Mission Statement

The school’s founders and founding staff spent much time in the two years prior to the school’s opening working from the guiding beliefs to a Mission Statement which embodies them. During that time, a self-perpetuating Board of Directors was empanelled as the governing body of the school. The Board of Directors adopted a draft Mission Statement in 1997.

Although the Mission Statement was developed prior to the school’s opening, much time and care has been expended to disseminate it widely to help all of the school’s stakeholders understand how if affects them and how they affect it and to develop a school which embodies it. The Mission Statement serves as a major element of the process of identifying, hiring, and orienting faculty and staff. The Head of School reviews the Mission Statement will all new and returning faculty during the annual pre-school faculty training and development session. It is reprinted and referred to in admissions literature and presentations. It has been incorporated into the Bylaws of the Cary Academy Alliance, the parents’ association of the school, which was established by action of the Board of Trustees. It has been published on the school’s web site in a manner which melds it with our beliefs and which presents it in a manner accessible to those in and out of the school community.

During the 1998-99 academic year, the school undertook a formal Long Range Planning process. One of the key elements and the first order of business of that process was to review the Mission Statement to be sure that it was understood and agreed upon before attempting to complete a Long Range Plan for the school. Doing so assured that the Mission Statement is both fundamental to the school’s future and subject to regular review and assessment by the school’s Board of Directors, administration, staff, faculty, students, and parents, all of whom are represented in the Long Range Planning Process.

__________

* During the 1998-99 school year, students in the Upper School developed the final statement of the

core values of the school to include: Collaboration, Respect, Responsibility, Empowerment, Safety,

and Trust.

Learning Community: Cary Academy is a college preparatory school enrolling girls and boys with academic promise in grades six through twelve. Cary Academy fosters a community of relationships between students and teachers, a commitment by all to continued learning, mutual respect and support, and shared interests and goals.

Discovery: Cary Academy encourages opportunities to explore, uncover, and pursue interest while building on existing knowledge to ignite creative thinking and sustaining an ongoing exchange of ideas between students and faculty.

Innovation: Cary Academy’s rigorous academic program blends the best of classical education with new technologies. Teachers seek to use technology to empower themselves and their students to embody the highest standards of educational achievement.

Collaboration: Cary Academy promotes a team approach to learning, emphasizing interactions among students, teachers, and parents while building educational partnerships with professionals, community groups, foundations, and corporations.

Excellence: Cary Academy helps students identify and reach their highest potential for academic accomplishment, extracurricular achievement, and citizenship. Faculty are committed to life-long learning and to sharing the results of that learning with students and other professionals.