Our Beliefs

• We believe that academic excellence is the foundation of education.
• We encourage the development of creative, self-reliant students who can solve problems, make informed critical choices, and function as productive members of society.
• We believe that small class size, teacher autonomy and collaboration in curriculum development, and non-competitive methods of assessment enable individualized recognition of each child’s unique strengths and needs.
• We believe that the diversity of social, cultural, and economic backgrounds represented in the school community contributes to understanding the rights and responsibilities of each member of the larger community.
• We believe in maintaining an environment where emotional, physical, and intellectual safety is the standard, and students are taught effective conflict resolution through peaceful problem solving.
• We believe the involvement of parents in many aspects of the school, including cooperative democratic governance, fundraising, and assistance in the classrooms, is integral to their children’s understanding of community.
• We believe in furthering the development of an environmental ethic in all students by means of our educational program.
• We witness the positive results of these principles in our graduates, who make a successful transition into secondary education.

The mission of Kazoo School is achieved by means of an educational program that fosters individual academic excellence, a positive self-image, a life-long love of learning, and respect and concern for others. The keystone of this program is a progressive, developmental, interdisciplinary, and integrated curriculum.

Academic Excellence

Academic excellence is the ability to demonstrate success in mathematics, language arts, social studies, and science, and use these disciplines in critical thinking and problem solving.

Progressive Education

Progressive education is an approach that focuses on child-centered, natural, and developmentally appropriate principles of learning. Kazoo School takes advantage of the instinct of children to converse, inquire, and construct knowledge from personal, social, and academic experience.

Developmental Education

Every child develops individually and is influenced by his/her own background and life experiences. At Kazoo School, every student’s style of learning, rate of learning, and capacity to learn is respected as they are guided to achieve personal academic excellence.

Interdisciplinary Education

An interdisciplinary education combines the study of two or more disciplines, ie. mathematics, language arts, social studies, or science to find relationships among them. The intention of interdisciplinary study is to: develop concepts and skills, to draw on student’s strengths in one area to help in another area, and to apply what is learned to new and different situations that simulate the “real world”.

Integrated Education

An integrated education combines thinking, feeling or emotion, sensing, insight and creativity using a variety of teaching methods and learning strategies. An integrated education builds upon prior knowledge to introduce new information. In addition, integration combines academic subject areas to equally stimulate habits and disciplines of each subject.