At Marianapolis, academic curriculum fosters the development of critical and disciplined thinking, precise communication, scientific analysis, creative problem solving, and an understanding of global perspectives. At all grade levels, the curriculum encourages students to think creatively and to articulate ideas effectively.
Students successfully navigate challenges they encounter in classes by utilizing a series of behaviors called the Habits of Mind. Cultivating these patterns of behavior leads to a set of valued dispositions that students develop so they are more capable of successfully working at a higher level. The six habits of mind are:
Preparation. Participation. Curiosity. Organization. Self-advocacy. Perseverance.
Enduring Understandings of the Academic Program
KNOWLEDGE: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the fundamental content knowledge, enduring understandings, essential questions, and intellectual processes of the academic disciplines. Students will demonstrate sufficient content mastery to provide a foundation for active lifelong learning and for educated and effective global citizenship.
COMMUNICATION: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the importance of effective written and oral communication skills related to the transmission of knowledge and information, the support of human relationships, the practices of community building, and the facilitation of human creativity and innovation.
CRITICAL THINKING: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the importance of the processes of critical thinking, including planning, decision making, comparing and contrasting, summarizing, judging, analyzing, evaluating, synthesizing, and predicting outcomes.
CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING: Students will demonstrate an understanding of creativity in perception, thought, and expression as essential for higher-level learning and develop the skills of creative problem solving through their perception, thinking, and creative expression.
COMMUNITY: Students will demonstrate an understanding that individual actions occur in the context of local as well as global communities and will develop the skills needed to engage in, to build, and to support community, through the active practice of habits of teamwork, sportsmanship, citizenship, tolerance, empathy, respect, and civility.
CHARACTER: Students will demonstrate an understanding of intrapersonal and interpersonal attributes such as honesty, integrity, self-knowledge, and respect in relationships, as well as the skills of self-advocacy, curiosity towards learning, ethical and moral decision making, self-confidence, persistence, and resilience as the foundation for lifelong learning, personal success, and service.
CONNECTION: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the interrelatedness of skills and knowledge transferable among disciplines as essential for higher-level learning. Students will be encouraged to reach for connections that have immediate relevance to their lives, and will be expected to embrace and explore connections to the wider community and the world.
