Achievers and Dreamers: Our Credo

Here is our Credo at Achievers and Dreamers:

We believe that learning should be engaging, interesting, challenging, and, where it can be, fun. We believe people learn better when they are enjoying themselves, when learning is a "flow" experience, not a chore.

We believe that learning should tap into students' interests, but also expand them. We believe that educational experiences should tap into what's in the student, and open the students eyes to things they've never experienced before.

We believe that education, as Yeats said, is "not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire."

We believe that the human mind does not consist of rows of buckets, each a different subject waiting passively to be filled, but an interconnected web: the more connections you can make, the stronger the web, and the more likely you are to catch and retain new knowledge.

We believe that teaching can result in very tangible results, but that its long lasting echoes are even more important.

We believe that the goal of education is not to create scores but shape the human mind.

We believe that education should not be a standardized "fast-food" experience, but a unique experience, like one of those places where there's a griddle in the middle of the table, and they bring pancake batter, chocolate chips, bananas, blueberries, strawberries, syrup, molasses, honey, and jelly to the table, and from those ingredients you cook up something unique.

We believe that teaching without zest is a sin.

We believe that that real learning is best observed rather than measured, and that success will look different for each student.

We believe that learning should never be reduced to going through the motions, jumping through hoops, filling in worksheets, and earning grades and credits: the best learning happens for its own sake and is not forgotten as soon as you've passed the test.

We believe that you can't give away what you don't have: if you want your students to be curious, questioning, enthusiastic, avidly interested seekers of knowledge-- you need to be all those things too, no matter what your age.

We believe, like Einstein, that not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted, and that imagination is more important than knowledge.

We believe that learning should be a life-long adventure, that education is not just to help you make a living but to help you make a life.