Archived from February 11, 2020
Dear DVIS Parents,
At Da Vinci International School we made the decision since our inception, to stand for developing children's competitive results through the love of learning and the eagerness to take on new risks and challenges with confidence, trust, passion, and enthusiasm. Our curriculum reflects every aspect of this goal, most of all, the active creativity and flexibility to adapt to the individual needs of our learners.
Standardized testing of our learners starts in third grade. We evaluate them regularly from 18 months old and up to monitor their development and adapt our teaching to align with our goal of raising thinkers. However, standardized tests have never been a statement about a learner's value. It is only an indication of the learning journey and path we need to lay for every specific child to take him/her to their highest potential. Our teachers and staff members are specifically chosen for this sole purpose. Their tenures in our school are closely tied to this mission and goal. Our teachers encompass the traits of passion, caring, attention to detail, adaptability, collaboration, and creativity. By their leadership, they transmit and develop these traits with their students to enhance emotional intelligence.
Enrollment: Great news! We have had a high number of new enrollment students so far this school year in both Spanish/English and French/English programs. The new families are very excited about the feedback they have been receiving from both former and current families. The reputation of our school academically and in the way, the children flourish emotionally is exceptional. Thank you for your support in spreading the word about our amazing school, and please continue to tell your friends and family about us.
Trilingual Program is attracting many new families in the French and the Spanish tracks. Strong native Spanish speakers applied to our school this year because they wanted their children to learn French in addition to maintaining and developing their native Spanish and English language in an academic and emotional balanced environment. The trilingual program has been a tremendous success with our students this year. As the children are already bilingual, their capacity and pace of learning a third language is going beyond our predictions and expectations. The introduction of the third language has not affected their academic or language outcomes in their first two languages. On the contrary, their ability to learn the third language so fast is allowing us to integrate it into our curriculum (social studies, art, math, science, grammar, conjugation, maker...) much quicker than we anticipated. This confirms that our Trilingual program vision for DVIS is on the right path for developing multilingual and multicultural children for a brighter future.
STEAM Program: is developing tremendously with an integrated robotics and coding program in the elementary school. Our thinkers are learning to be responsible digital citizens. The maker room is developing with ongoing deconstruction projects, helping our students develop skills like attention to details, problem-solving, resourcefulness, process documentation, collaboration, creative critical thinking, asking big questions triggering more research and more projects in 3 languages!!!
Augmented Reality Sandbox: As of last week, our new 3-D interactive dynamic and powerful educational tool was added to our maker space thanks to the collaboration of our administrative team, Andrew English and Tom Zaller. We will use this hands-on sandbox as an open resource for all 3k and up classes on different platforms including the teaching of geography and topography. This sensory technology allows the user to simply mold the sand by hand and the landscape comes to life. The sand is augmented in real-time with an elevation color map, topographic contour lines, and simulated water. We are so excited and proud to have this privilege, that is not available in other surrounding schools, of having this one-of-a-kind interactive sandbox available for our thinkers. The spirit of collaboration has been in the center of our program development this year as a team of educators with a series of training. This is a trait that we model with our students within our curriculum, and it is heartwarming to see our families collaborate with the realization of meaningful projects for our students! The passion and time these two dads have put in this project are invaluable!!!
Mathematics Program: We are confident with our process of teaching the foundations of mathematics and problem-solving skills. DVIS' educational approach is to go deeper into the concepts in order to build the foundation needed for a thinker, problem-solver, and creative reasoner. In mathematics, those skills are essential to lay the base structure that we continue to build on a daily basis. A strong math foundation starts now in preschool and elementary school. Higher reasoning skills, logic, and problem-solving skills are more useful to allow for a better understanding of higher-level math subjects. Memorization is short-lived, poorly organized and does not support the ability to transfer knowledge, make inferences or solve new problems. At DVIS it is our mission to teach our learners to set up the strongest foundations by teaching them to be problem solvers and explorers to find the answers rather than memorizing the information to enable a competitive outcome later in middle and high school.
Former Family Feedback: Our former families are appreciating to see the academic strength of their own children in their new schools. They attribute this transition to the unique approach and system they were prepared at Da Vinci International School. Historically every student from our school was able to apply and be accepted to the school of their choices, including prominent English only private schools. The families who applied to public schools stated that their children adapted to their new settings quickly. DVIS' intentional smaller student setting environment has given their children the self-confidence to express and soar themselves as a growing open-minded thinker, where many other school settings are not fully capable of. Our former families have expressed their satisfaction in seeing their children thrive in their new schools because of the strong foundations they built at DVIS. Our careful selection of our well-trained passionate, dedicated teachers and staff and our detail-oriented quality education in life skills, and native-level multilingual education sets us apart as a school.
Here at DVIS, we are focused on preparing our thinkers with the needed real-life skills and foundation. Our approach is always to raise our learners to be emotionally empathetic, ethical, compassionate, mindful, creative, intelligent and problem-solver individuals to get ready and shine in the unknown world of the future with academic and people skills.
Thank you for your trust in us and for your continuous support. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me should you have any questions.
Warmest regards,
Soraya Rouchdi Ben-Taleb
Founder & Director
Da Vinci International School
678-510-1214
dvischool.com
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