What is Project Based Learning?Our world needs more women capable of questioning the status quo to tackle the biggest, most pressing challenges of our time. While school should be joyful, engaging, preparatory for work and life, we at Mercy believe the education we give young women must include preparing each to serve a public and moral purpose. The good news is we know how to achieve this, but a wide gap still exists between what the research says schools should do and what most schools are doing.
Mercy is filling that gap by applying Project Based Learning to our curriculum, preparing students to both succeed in the new innovation age and dare to improve their world. Mercy's Project Based Learning actively addresses the Critical Concerns of the Sisters of Mercy and their activist spirit to create social advocates in service of the common good. School as we know is change as the world changes. So don’t just go to school; go to Mercy.
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PEDAGOGY
The world needs more women to question the status quo and tackle the biggest, most pressing challenges of our time. At Mercy, we solve problems, we don’t just answer questions. We practice working collaboratively on diverse teams, applying our creativity to answer complex questions, and communicating effectively because that is what the new innovation age demands. Fostering these skills along with a growth mindset is built into the fabric of curriculum and life at Mercy.
PRINCIPLES
At Mercy, we are passionate about leading lives of daring action to improve the world. To do that, our curriculum employs the best research-based and data-driven practices of teaching and learning in the rich heritage of the Catholic Tradition and the charism of the Sisters of Mercy. The principles of Catholic Social Teaching foster careful moral reflection and the Critical Concerns offer clear moral direction.
PRACTICE
Project Based Learning that addresses the Critical Concerns of the Sisters of Mercy requires we find our passions and direct them toward the common good. So we practice leadership everyday to learn that it is not about individual power or heroism, but shared goals and successes. We work daily to develop our capacity to improve the world and dare to act as poets, prophets, ponderers, and practitioners.
The world needs more women to question the status quo and tackle the biggest, most pressing challenges of our time. At Mercy, we solve problems, we don’t just answer questions. We practice working collaboratively on diverse teams, applying our creativity to answer complex questions, and communicating effectively because that is what the new innovation age demands. Fostering these skills along with a growth mindset is built into the fabric of curriculum and life at Mercy.
PRINCIPLES
At Mercy, we are passionate about leading lives of daring action to improve the world. To do that, our curriculum employs the best research-based and data-driven practices of teaching and learning in the rich heritage of the Catholic Tradition and the charism of the Sisters of Mercy. The principles of Catholic Social Teaching foster careful moral reflection and the Critical Concerns offer clear moral direction.
PRACTICE
Project Based Learning that addresses the Critical Concerns of the Sisters of Mercy requires we find our passions and direct them toward the common good. So we practice leadership everyday to learn that it is not about individual power or heroism, but shared goals and successes. We work daily to develop our capacity to improve the world and dare to act as poets, prophets, ponderers, and practitioners.
CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING (CST)
CST uses scripture, the intellectual tradition of the Church, and the lived experience of human beings to express “the principles for reflection, the criteria for judgment and the directives for action which are the starting point for the promotion of an integral and solidary humanism.” There are many ways of organizing and listing the themes of CST, but we officially recognize these 5 as a starting point:
THE CRITICAL CONCERNS
The Sisters of Mercy were founded out of a deep concern for persons who are poor. Today, that commitment is focused in five enduring and “critical concerns” that we address through prayer, attention to personal, communal and institutional choices, education, and advocacy. Though there are many social injustices in our world, at Mercy High School, San Francisco, we commit to focusing our efforts both in and out of the classroom directly to these concerns:
THE 4 STYLES OF SOCIAL DISCIPLESHIP
As a Catholic, Mercy school, we endeavor to foster disciples. Discipleship is the complex personal and communal “living out” of the choice to respond positively to Jesus’ call to follow him. Biblically, discipleship expresses itself in two fundamental ways: worship (i.e. “right relationship” with God) and justice (i.e. “right relationship” with ourselves, others, all of creation). We welcome those in our community who are not Catholic, as but we call everyone to live justly because we recognize that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Not everyone will be drawn to working for justice in the same way due to skill, interest, and circumstance. So we teach and promote 4 cooperative and complementary “styles of social discipleship”:
LEADERSHIP
The requirements for leading today are different from what they once were and since 1970, the Center for Creative Leadership has engaged in continuous, worldwide, research and refinement of leadership approaches. The result is an understanding of leadership liberated from the myth of the lone charismatic hero. Rather, well-lead organizations possess 3 fundamental characteristics: Direction, Alignment, Commitment (DAC). There isn’t “a” leader making leadership happen. The actions, interactions, reactions, and exchanges of every member of the school produce the DAC.
SERVICE
Service is a fundamental practice of every Mercy school and reflects our commitment to practice the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. But as Pope Francis Reminds us “True mercy, the mercy God gives to us and teaches us, demands justice” (Audience on 9/10/2013). So we strive as a community to always work for mercy and justice and to fully integrate the practice of service into every aspect of the life of the school. We do so always guided by the notions of simplicity, community, humility, and reflection. |
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