Statement on Pluralism
At PS1 Pluralistic School pluralism means recognizing, valuing and respecting each person, while embracing our differences. We believe that social, ethnic and economic diversity enriches everyone’s experience and that many voices build a better world. Different perspectives spark higher-level thinking, enabling our learners to have the necessary skills to contribute confidently to their communities. Throughout our school’s history, pluralism has been lived and described through our values.
Learn with joy.
We celebrate curiosity and empathy in our work and play. Our program supports students' lifelong learning by engaging with their personal experiences and interests, helping them connect in meaningful ways with our curriculum. This intentional approach nurtures cultural competency, critical thinking, collaboration with kindness and consensus building. Students use these skills to navigate challenges and successes in their personal and academic lives at PS1 to prepare them for middle school and beyond. We find joy in continuously learning about and from one another, and we take pride in providing educational opportunities for all members of our community.
Discover your full self.
Self-awareness and understanding are at the heart of social and emotional learning at PS1, building confident and receptive students who have a sense of shared responsibility. Our cultural competency work begins with students learning about themselves and expressing their truths to others. This interpersonal work prepares them to bring the same critical understanding to academic explorations and to recognize how perspectives, experiences, and values are layered into every learning investigation. Students are scaffolded through the curriculum to compare and contrast cultures and other backgrounds with their own to explore, understand, and responsibly engage in the world around them. Unconsciously, individuals carry their own cultural frame of interpretation, and awareness of this predisposition strengthens students’ critical thinking skills, amplifying their academic learning. In this safe environment, our social and emotional learning program bolsters our anti-bias work.
Honor our lived experiences.
At PS1 our individual identities unite and enrich us, so we strive to attract and retain a diverse faculty, leadership, staff, and student body, with specific attention to people from historically marginalized communities. In all of our interactions we expect everyone to seek understanding with civility. We encourage respectful, productive, open dialogue and take advantage of opportunities to learn from failure and mistakes. Equity is an essential value to us, so we endeavor to examine our practices in all areas (curriculum, professional development, recruiting, hiring, admissions, tuition assistance, community outreach, student life, and other board or administrative decisions) to identify and remediate areas in which barriers need to be removed to foster belonging and not just inclusivity. It is important to recognize inequalities of opportunity and to provide support for the exploration and pursuit of fair outcomes through our curriculum and conflict resolution practices in developmentally appropriate ways. Our vision is for all individuals to access and contribute to our community confidently.
Be part of something bigger.
Within PS1 we cultivate community connection through ample opportunities for staff, faculty, students and families to connect and build trusting relationships. We value exploration and leverage the richness of our diverse city as an expanded classroom. Our cultural competency work enables our students to navigate, understand, communicate and effectively connect across different contexts, broadening their access to communities outside their own. Throughout their education, our students have ample opportunities to lead with empathy and to leverage teamwork to overcome challenges. We endeavor to give our community members the tools to be upstanders and changemakers to build a better world.