Vision

Our school community is committed to pursuing our collaboratively-created vision:

"All McDowell students are actively engaged learners and communicators. Our school community supports bi-literacy, compassion, critical thinking, academic achievement, and contribution to our global society." 

ACTIVE ENGAGEMENT

• Staff focus on Academic Conversations (Zweirs and Crawford, 2011) so students speak and listen throughout and across content areas
• Empowering students to be active learners with hands-on interactive engagement

COMMUNICATORS

• Speaking, listening, reading, and writing in all content areas
• Utilizing technology through District 1-to-1 iPad program to communicate with teacher, peers, families, and our interconnected world

BI-LITERACY

• Spanish teacher delivering high-quality instruction to every student at least once per week to reap the benefits of multilingualism and value other languages and cultures
• Opportunities for upper-grade students to have advanced Spanish instruction, supporting their first steps toward the Seal of Biliteracy

COMPASSION

• One of our four McDowell values; a main focus of our Social-Emotional Learning throughout settings and activities.
• Developing skill of perspective-taking and demonstrating empathy in our school and local community through cross-grade buddies, projects, mindfulness practices, and more!

CRITICAL THINKING

• Scientific critical thinking through our Native Habitat Garden, steelhead in the classroom, STRAW, Mystery Science projects, and more!
• Open-ended questioning and Academic Conversations to encourage students to think deeper and grapple with their learning

ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

• Rigorous common-core aligned curriculum adoptions
• Robust support services to meet students' needs

CONTRIBUTION TO COMMUNITY AND SOCIETY

• Community stewardship through adoption of East Washington Creek, STRAW, environmental education field trips and projects, caroling for local living communities, and more!

Visit our Facebook Page to see our McDowell Monarchs living our vision statement every day.

Values

Our student-led assemblies help our community keep focusing our values. See a gallery of our students' wonderful accomplishments in values education below!

Respect

• A seasonal movie by 4th grade presented in December 2018: Santa's Mixed Up Christmas - Respect
• A movie by 3rd grade presented in December 2017: Respect
• A video presentation by 1st graders presented in April 2019: 1st graders respect

Responsibility

• A movie by 4th/5th grade presented in September 2017: Responsibility
• A song presented by 4th/5th grade on September 2017: Responsibility Song

Compassion

• A slide show created by 4th grade in October 2017: Compassion
• A movie by 2nd grade presented in February 2018: Compassion!
• A song sung by 2nd grade in February 2018: "Put a little love in your heart"
• A talk show presented by 3rd grade in March 2019: "Good Morning McDowell!"

Perseverance

• A movie by 1st grade presented in March 2018: "The Class that Never Gives Up!"