Vision, Mission, and Goal

VISION

Our vision is of an educational community that  honors and empowers people to engage their whole selves as active learners and citizens.

MISSION

Our mission at the The Children’s Community School is to create a learning community that honors and empowers children to engage their whole selves in education. Utilizing progressive education, we build a  better society by fostering creativity, problem solving skills, communication skills, a sense of initiative, and a capacity to listen. We encourage students to engage their bodies, minds, and emotions, to make meaning, form relationships, and to develop an understanding of themselves as active members of community.

Values

To accomplish our mission, members of  the CCS work with integrity and professionalism to  support families and lay foundations for people who will care for and innovate in our world. We believe that:

  • Practicing democratic values teaches children to participate in the life of the community.
  • Empathy leads to compassion, and these values create caring, helpful individuals who can be activists and stewards in our school communities and in the world.
  • Children not only need to learn about living, working, and playing together, they learn by living, working, and playing together.
  • Lifelong learners construct knowledge, seek out answers, take risks, and reflect on their own experiences. They are flexible thinkers who approach learning with action and commitment.
  • Active and receptive practices are of equal value in learning and in building relationships.
  • Exploration of the body, mind and emotions in the educational experience creates a more grounded individual, able to relate to others more compassionately.

We are a project of a 501C3 Nonprofit; all donations are tax deductible.

The Children’s Community School is an equal opportunity child care provider.  The Children’s Community School is an equal opportunity employer.

Our Philosophy

The Children’s Community School is a learning community in West Philadelphia that is rooted in a progressive approach to education, in which children and adults are valued as learners and teachers. The emphasis at our preschool, is on utilizing practices that educate the whole child, the emotional, social, physical, and intellectual being.  At the CCS, we encourage students to use all of their learning resources, visual, kinesthetic, auditory, emotional and inter personal to explore, develop an awareness, strengthen connections and express understanding. We honor childhood and nourish students’ strong sense of connectedness and engagement.

The Children’s Community School is an equal opportunity child care provider. 

Our Story

Coming Soon

Mindfulness at CCS

At the Children’s Community School we integrate mindfulness into our curriculum, into the ongoing professional development of our teachers and staff, and seek to share these practices with our larger community as well. At the core, mindfulness practices are practices that enable us to become more present in the moment, more discerning of our motivations, and more able to fully experience our relationships to ourselves and to one another.

In the Classroom:

In the classroom, we weave age appropriate mindfulness practices into our curriculum. These include the use of bells, quiet times, yoga centered movements, and awareness of breath. Mindfulness practices for young children enable them to begin to recognize and to understand their emotions, build tools for social development, and learn to honor their innate capacity to connect to the world through their bodies, breath, and emotions.

For Teachers:

Mindfulness and contemplative practices offer our teachers tools to become active listeners, attuned companions, and compassionate guides in the classroom. We  send our teachers to workshops, conferences, and other events in which cutting edge practices in this field are explored. We utilize our own customized program of staff development and support to actively support our teachers’ personal work with principles of mindfulness and to support them in their essential work as teachers.

For Parents:

We also offer workshops for parents on Mindful Parenting.

If you are interested in learning more about how we use mindfulness, please contact Traci at TraciChildress@childrenscommunityschool.org.