Learning Elevated | Ten Bold Initiatives for a Decade
Our Guiding Statements
VISION
Educating and elevating humans for good.
MISSION
We inspire tomorrow’s ethical leaders by developing character, seeking knowledge, and building a community of lifelong learners from the heart of the Colorado mountains to the world beyond.
VALUES
Character | We practice kindness, develop moral courage, cultivate self-discipline, and seek individual purpose that connects us to the greater good. We speak with honesty, express respect for self and others, act with humility, and embrace differing perspectives to engage with the world and lead with integrity.
Knowledge | We challenge with high expectations and nurture with support, meeting learners where they are and taking them further than they think possible. We foster joy and intellectual curiosity in acquiring knowledge, stimulating creativity and creating a lifetime love of learning. We pursue meaningful questions and instill concrete competencies, habits, and knowledge that learners transfer to the real world.
Community | We are an inclusive community of students, teachers, parents, alumni, and local partners rooted in a culture of trust and a deep sense of belonging. We grow through collaboration, cross-age interactions, and a commitment to service and experiences that encourage us to see the world through a lens of empathy, respect, and appreciation of others.
Leadership | We feel authentic responsibility to ourselves and our community. We understand our role as citizens to act for the greater good and seek solutions for a complex world through learning, reflecting, and ethical decision making.
Environment | We venture into our mountains and valleys to discover a sense of place in the natural world. We learn to love our environment and reflect on our role within it so we can be responsible stewards for future generations.
EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY
At Vail Mountain School, the guiding philosophy for providing a dynamic, academically challenging education is experiential learning. We implement experiential learning alongside a variety of pedagogical approaches in a college preparatory environment in order to clarify values and develop students' knowledge, skills, and capacity to contribute to their communities. We enable transformative learning opportunities by engaging students in a cycle of experience, reflection, analysis, and experimentation.
We utilize direct and individualized academic instruction, collaborative seminar-style discussion, project-based and service learning, and place-based outdoor and expeditionary education to express our mission. In each of these methods, teachers are subject-area experts and students actively participate in collaborative, real-world projects that allow them to apply their theoretical knowledge in practical contexts. We maximize individual academic outcomes in order to prepare students to flourish in college and in life.
Our approach incubates leaders, the kind who make a lasting impact on the world. We cultivate integrity, empathy, purpose, and a profound appreciation for our natural environment. Our students and teachers use these tools to apply their knowledge to their own endeavors and connect them to the needs of the community. The intentional approach at Vail Mountain School creates a comprehensive and enriching educational experience that prepares students for a lifetime of learning, leading, and acting as responsible global citizens.