Mission

The purpose of the SJEDS global, interdisciplinary curriculum is to enhance SJEDS’ current curriculum with a program that will assist in making our students global citizens as defined by the Committee for Economic Development, National Association of Independent School (NAIS), the United Nations and the National Security Language Initiative as well as to teach and develop students critical thinking skills by realizing the potential of the human brain to make connections between all of the core and resource subjects.

GOALS:

  1. To weave the study of world cultures (including their language) into our curriculum in hopes that our students will embrace the diversity of our world and country. To expose students to the “interconnectedness” of the world’s countries, their cultures, and their issues.
  2. To foster an interest in the celebration and study of culture and language.
  3. To assist in making our students critical thinkers who have the ability to communicate across cultures.

INSTRUCTIONAL APPROACH AND GROWTH:

  1. Program will utilize all resources available at the school including but not limited to all core subjects, Media Center, Technology, Drama, Music, Art, Physical Education, Language, and possibly after school programs.
  2. Curriculum will be modified to meet the needs of the students at the various grade levels.
  3. Curriculum will grow each year as a new country is added to the program until grades 1-6 each have an interdisciplinary unit on a selected global country. These units will be taught each year providing students who attended from grades 1-6 with a solid foundation of seven “global” cultures.
  4. Interdisciplinary, parallel and content inclusion will be used throughout the school. The fourth grade initiated the program by implementing the first interdisciplinary unit on China in 2006-2007. The current plan is to write interdisciplinary units for the sixth, fifth, third, second and first respectively completing all units by 2012.