| As a residential community endowed with the
responsibility of educating the leaders of tomorrow, we focus
on the following values to guide and direct our efforts.
As a community whose primary purpose is education, we strive to provide an environment where students may study and excel. By respecting hard work, setting high standards, and learning for the sake of knowledge, students realize this goal. At the same time, we must value failure as well as success. Only through renewed efforts can achievement be measured.
In any community each member must share common goals. We hope that by caring for oneself and others, the facilities, the campus, and the equipment, and caring for the world beyond OES, each member of our program will be able to find a shared vision of a successful high school career. We hope that over time individuals will understand their roles at OES and take pride in this sense of responsibility and the progress they have attained.
Life is full of inconsistencies, roadblocks, failures, and successes. Struggling for trust, honesty, and integrity is very much a part of education. Teaching students to accept this challenge is not always easy, and perhaps it is our most difficult job. Through constant communication, support, and understanding students will realize the value of living with so many individuals. Living in a community with students from around the world is not always easy. It takes compassion and acceptance to learn that all people are unique, each seeing the world through different lenses. Our students will share a great part of their adolescence here. As friendships are established and the community grows, an appreciation of individual rights and freedoms, as well as respect for others, becomes the program’s greatest asset.
We want students to live in a caring, nurturing environment, where everyone can reach for the highest attainable goal. One of the most compelling factors of living in a boarding community is the “Fish Bowl” environment where everyone seems to know everything about everybody. In these close quarters, students and staff must remember to look beyond what we see, and respect the uniqueness of each circumstance and each individual. For a community to thrive and prosper all members need to realize that without understanding, acceptance, responsibility, and a commitment to excellence we will constantly move in a direction opposite to our intended goal.
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