Who We Are & What We Value

By Roxanne Stansbury, Head of School

“If we want to do what matters in any domain – any context in life – we have to be able to give attention to the right things…. If we can’t do that, it’s really hard to do anything.”

–Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again

Our lives are not the same as they were ten, five, or even one year ago. From how we communicate and acquire information to the products we purchase and the way we prioritize health and wellbeing, things continue to grow and evolve. To successfully navigate a fast-paced landscape where adaptation is the only option to thriving in a world with advancing automation and artificial intelligence, we all need something to keep us grounded in what matters. And at a time when uncertainty has become the norm, core values can serve as a foundational guidepost for how to behave, connect, and find meaning within the Dawson community.

A Shared Purpose

Core values are the cultural touchstones that guide The Alexander Dawson School. They are our foundational principles and the mile markers we refer to throughout every journey upon which we embark to ensure our community always acts with integrity. If the School’s Mission is the “why”, our Core Values are the “how”; they anchor us to the work we do each and every day with our students and confirm what we stand for as a community. Twenty-three years ago, I gathered with Dawson’s founding teachers and administrators for the unique opportunity of writing the values that would become the bedrock of the Dawson experience. We discussed our shared thinking over how students learn and the type of education that would build competencies for future success. We committed to creating a school that used a well-rounded approach to fostering growth in mind, body, and character. We expressed common beliefs that every student deserves a joyful, caring, and creative experience shaped by meaningful connections with nurturing adults. We planned for a human-centered school where students found the safety and acceptance to celebrate their identities and listen to understand the lived experiences of others. The result of these conversations was 16 belief statements classified under three umbrellas: Teaching and Learning, Dawson Community, and the World. These statements served us well for 23 years, and we embedded this language in our employee interview questions during the hiring process, our prospective parent Admissions materials, and our student learner profiles and project rubrics. The length of our core beliefs proved to be the only limitation to the achievement of rooting these guiding tenets in the hearts and minds of our students. Last year, we decided it was time to streamline our Dawson Core Beliefs into values with succinct value statements that all community members – from the youngest student to the oldest alumni and everyone in between –can recognize and explain.

What We Value

The journey to our revised Core Values was long and comprehensive. It began with whole-staff activities during multiple Teacher Academy professional development sessions in which we first introduced the concept through the power of images. Using inspiring photos of our students during Dawson events both within and outside of the classroom, our faculty and staff broke into small groups to create statements that spoke to who our students are as learners, what modern learning means to us, and what we value as a community. Once we had several different iterations, the next step was forming a small task force of Dawson faculty, staff, parents, and Board members. Specific individuals who find joy in understanding the meaning of language and the changing nuance of language over time were selected. Yet still, we wrestled and grappled with the exact words that would capture everything that matters at Dawson. In January of 2023, Tim Fish, chief innovation officer for the National Association of Independent Schools, joined us for a day-long retreat dedicated to writing our values. He spent time with us learning about and understanding our community – from our personalized needs to our differentiators – to determine how we could best communicate who we are and what’s important to us. We discovered so much about what distinctions define us and what it means to belong to the Dawson community.

Next, we revealed the values and statements at a Dawson Parent Association meeting through an interactive lesson that asked parents to share an example of how connected they or their child might feel to the words. That feedback led us to craft four very specific values – Belonging, Engagement, Advocacy, and Resilience – to create the acronym BEAR, something everyone on campus can recite and understand.

It was important to those who had a hand in this redesign that our value statements align with the vision and character of our founder, Girard B. Henderson. Mr. Henderson’s innovative mindset and the way he saw solutions in every challenge is the inspiration for the Dawson experience. After years of successful entrepreneurship, Mr. Henderson incorporated the most significant details of his life into this school. His two mottos “Nothing Without Labor” and “Love of the Land” – the second of which we sought to honor with the student photography illustrated on the cover of this very magazine – to be the driving force behind Dawson’s Core Values. This is how we, as The Alexander Dawson School of today, give respect to Mr. Henderson’s lasting legacy.

Taking Root

Too often, core values can become hollow sentiments that live beautifully as mere words on websites but never take root in the behaviors and interactions of an organization. We plan to ingrain our values into the fabric of our culture. From the first communication our students receive from their new teachers to culminating performances, projects, and exhibitions of learning, we will all understand what it means to be rooted in values. The 2023-2024 school year will be dedicated to identifying what our values look like in practice, allowing them to breathe new, invigorating life into everything we do. From the School’s Strategic Direction action plans at the leadership level to the classroom lessons that demonstrate an inclusive, realworld educational experience that is reflective of our global society, Dawson’s Core Values serve to keep us tethered to one another and focused on shaping the lives of our students.