Mission, Vision and Values

Our drive to instill bold curiosity and diligent effort is the hallmark of Dunecrest American School. Our coursework, from Pre-Kindergarten through Grade 12, provides meaningful and challenging opportunities for both individual and collective achievement. We strive to promote our students’ desire to pursue their highest potential, and to empower them with the means to achieve it. We want students to take a question that’s really compelling in the world or in their lives and have many tools with which to help them answer it.

Learning is embraced when it is personalized, when the learner’s interests, preferences, strengths, contributions, and prior knowledge are sufficiently honored. Dunecrest American School fosters curiosity about the world by creating learning situations that provide something important to think about, time to experiment, and time to make sense of what is observed. Learning is both a personal process of discovery and a social activity. Everyone learns both individually and as part of a group.

Students and teachers need time alone to explore their own thoughts, make their own connections, and create their own ideas. They also need to exchange their reflections with other students and with adults. We must ask our students what they believe in so they can know themselves in the world. We must give our students the tools of rigorous and passionate intellectual inquiry and self-expression so they can grow. Every aspect of Dunecrest American School encourages both children and adults to become increasingly more responsible for directing their own personal and collective learning.

The interaction between student and teacher is the heart of our school. All that we do must stem from enhancing that relationship. Our mission is to challenge the minds, excite the imaginations, and train the bodies of the students in our care and to foster their desire for humankind’s common good, and to increase their capacity for mutual and self-respect. We prepare our students to learn confidently for the rest of their lives, and to give generously and joyfully to others. We guide our students to make healthy choices and to have respect for their own minds and bodies. We lead them to distinguish right from wrong, and to choose to do what is right so they can develop into responsible and courageous citizens. At Dunecrest American School, exacting inquiry and thoughtful conversations foster the life of the mind, instruction and activity promote fitness and health, and the daily interactions of faculty and students nurture integrity, empathy, and kindness.

In our commitment to diversity, we show our students how to be colleagues and friends so they act with respect and love. As a school community with these purposes and responsibilities, we will engage the larger communities of city, nation, and world of which we are a part. Both diversity and inclusion increase the richness of ideas, creative power, problem-solving ability, and respect for others. At Dunecrest American School, students investigate and value their different histories and talents as well as those of other communities and cultures. Because learning and growth at Dunecrest American School arise from each individual's engagement with others, students and faculty value the differences they bring to the community they share.

In life and at school we are crew, not passengers. Students and teachers are strengthened by acts of service. One of Dunecrest American School’s primary functions is to prepare students with the attitudes and skills to learn from and be of service to others. Our school is committed to uniting knowledge, service and good moral values. We seek to develop students who combine proven academic ability, intellectual curiosity, and tenacity with decency, good character and service.

Learners are most engaged when the learning community challenges them with interesting and achievable objectives. Learning happens best with passion, challenge and the essential support to experience success. People discover their abilities, values, passions, and responsibilities in situations that offer adventure and the unexpected. At Dunecrest American School, students undertake tasks that require perseverance, fitness, craftsmanship, imagination, self-discipline, and significant achievement. A teacher’s primary task is to help students overcome their fears and discover their innate ability to innovate and solve real world problems. Individual and group development are integrated so that the value of friendship, trust, and group action is clear. The school culture is grounded in principles of trust, respect and responsibility. Faculty and staff continually teach students how to use their access to technology to enhance knowledge and learning. Students are encouraged to compete, not against each other, but with their own personal best and with rigorous standards of excellence.

Learners require regular, timely, and user-friendly feedback in order to understand goals, to produce quality work, and to meet high standards. Learning and innovation are fostered best in communities where student and teacher ideas are respected and where there is mutual trust provided by a caring adult monitoring the progress of each child and advocating for their best interest. Older students mentor younger ones, and students feel physically and emotionally safe. This is the Dunecrest American School’s focus on “Raising Student Achievement Every Day, Every Way.”

All students need to be successful if they are to build the confidence and capacity to take risks and meet increasingly difficult challenges. However, it is also important for students to learn from their failures, to persevere when things are hard, and to learn to turn challenges into opportunities. The challenges that students meet at Dunecrest American School and the support they receive have a common purpose: to stimulate their development as individuals and as members of their local and global communities.