The Barstow School

In the Lower School’s safe, stimulating, and nurturing environment, each child grows intellectually, emotionally, physically, creatively, and socially. The challenging student-centered curriculum focuses on process skills and discovery learning stimulated by each

child’s curiosity. This approach provides an atmosphere that cultivates cooperation, problem-solving, critical thinking, and active participation.

The preschool through fifth grade learning environment integrates a student’s innate abilities and acquired skills with life experiences. Enthusiastic, self-reliant learners grow daily in their appreciation and love of learning. The Lower School fosters a community of learners that values responsibility, respect for oneself, and the rights of others.

Barstow appreciates that children learn in many different ways. Each child brings unique talents, strengths, thinking processes, and learning styles to all interactions. Every effort is made to create a flexible environment characterized by a personalized approach and

emphasizing experiential learning. The development of each child’s positive self-esteem and enthusiasm for learning is our first priority.

2010-2011 Lower School Handbook 

In the Middle School, our main focus is to build a warm, caring and supportive relationship with your child. It is our hope that your child will remember the teachers they had in Middle School and that each teacher played an important role in their ability to believe in themselves

and to raise them to new academic heights.

When student/teacher relationships are strong, academic rigor falls into place. Our academic programs emphasize in-depth understanding, connect new ideas to prior knowledge,encourage exploration, and help students to construct meaning from course content. Lessons, activities and instructional strategies are designed to support how the adolescent brain learns. Classroom settings are structured so that all children are active learners.

We are committed to academic excellence, developmental responsiveness, and social equity.

Barstow’s mission “to promote sound scholarship and to give symmetrical development to mind, body and character” has withstood the test of time and continues to guide the school as we seek to create a culture which fosters a holistic development of the young people in our care. The importance of what we accomplish in the Upper School through our academic offerings cannot be devalued.

Certainly everyone is well aware of our challenging curriculum and the pride we have in our “promotion of sound mind.” Yet our calling clearly extends beyond the classroom. In meeting our mission to nearly 200 young people in the Upper School, we rely on philosophically sound policies and procedures. As you read the following pages we hope our philosophy, procedures, policies and methods are evident to you. We invite those who serve in supporting roles for our students to partner with us as we develop resilient young men and women strong in character and ready for the challenges of life beyond Barstow.