“Learning to be Extraordinary” is our school motto and was inspired by the film and the novel, Dead Poets Society. The most famous line, both from the Dead Poets Society film and Kleinbaum’s novelization, is “Seize the day, lads. Make your lives extraordinary.” The lead teacher in the film encourages his students to be ambitious, live every day to the fullest with passion, hope and courage. Our character values are reflective of that. The plethora of opportunities that we have through the Extraordinary Me programme, our learning journeys, co-curricular activities, international links are supported by the foundation of “Learning to be Extraordinary.”
Throughout the school community students respect and follow the guidelines laid out in ‘Learning to be Extraordinary’. This outlines the expectations that both staff and students have for one another. As a result character is not only explicitly taught in lessons and tutorials, but also builds positive ethos in the school. Quality relationships are core to our value-driven community where everyone is a role model to one another.
Learning to be Extraordinary is part of what we do, we:
- Have tutorials where we talk about character values and praise students’ values such as integrity and ambition.
- Uphold uniform standards, basic manners and courtesy.
- Celebrate students achievements in their learning and their actions.
- Hold regular kindness days and tutor groups run regular random acts of kindness
- Students engage in co-curricular activities that support the development of values and strong relationships.
- Taking opportunities to praise students’ values, particularly the intellectual and performance ones which encourage greater independent learning.
- Deliver explicit character tutorials which has the focussed value incorporated into the tutorial, both implicitly and explicitly.
- Take other opportunities to highlight the different values which naturally link with subject lessons and where possible take time to discuss and debate them within the subject context.
