Educational Approach
This is what we believe:
The most worthwhile journey of life is the one from ignorance to awareness, or understanding, or wisdom.
The journey from ignorance to knowledge is also a worthwhile journey, but a wasted one if the knowledge is of no significance.
A school should reinvent itself every day. A school should have a sense of humor. A school should be full of surprises.
Relationships are at the heart of any meaningful learning experience.
A school should be open to the world, with daily traffic between the two. A school should seek to enrich the world, and to be enriched by it.
A school should be a community where adults and adolescents and children coexist in an affectionate atmosphere of mutual respect. One in which mature, thoughtful and creative adults set high standards and model appropriate behavior.
Schools should nurture the spiritual, emotional, mental and physical health of students. Students should feel safe in school, but at the same time schools should be adventurous. “Take care, take risks” expresses the idea of adventure without recklessness, looking after oneself and others without timidity.
We honor learning. We promote rigor in the classroom, high levels of academic and intellectual work and discussion, and the development of self-disciplined study. At the same time we recognize that everyone has different abilities and that few things are more degrading to the human spirit than constant failure. We are committed to the success of our students.
We value the desire of every young person to become a successful adult, and the drive for growth that is in all young people. We accept our responsibility to nurture them and to support and encourage that drive. We value the experiences, attitudes, thoughts and feelings that are unique to children, and we accept our responsibility to provide space, both in a literal and metaphorical sense, for these to flourish.
All the members of a school are responsible for it. This responsibility includes the health of all who pass through the school gates, as well as the physical fabric of the school.
Contact with the earth is of itself good.
Food is important. Good food is better than bad food. The preparation and serving of food is important, and it’s appropriate to have rituals for these parts of our lives.
We are responsible for conducting the school and caring for students in such a way that they can move from this school into or back into, other schools, with skills that will enable them to succeed socially and academically; indeed we expect that the strength of character, academic standards, generosity of spirit, and self-discipline of our students will enable them to be more-than-usually successful in their further studies and their lives. We teach the standard curriculum.
We try to do everything well. Competitive sport is part of the school’s program.
We are not a school without rules. We expect students to be on time for lessons, with the right equipment, and ready to learn.
TIS has a stimulating learning environment in a multicultural community of students and teachers.
The multicultural community at TIS offers an excellent learning environment both inside and outside the classroom, in which students can gain from each other’s diverse experience. As a student at TIS, you will be a part of a very special international community.
At Tehran International School, we strive to create opportunities for all students to be successful. We recognize that a “one size fits all” approach to education is not in the best interest of students and families, and that curriculum decisions should ultimately be made at the school level. Therefore, we make every effort to design each school’s educational program to match the needs and interests of the individual students and communities we serve.
