Dickson County High School Mission Statement
Dickson County High School seeks to teach our students in a safe, supportive environment the knowledge, skills, values, and behaviors necessary to become responsible and productive members of a diverse society. Instruction focuses on enabling students to demonstrate the literacy skills of reading, writing, speaking, and reasoning while preparing them to participate actively as citizens in a technologically advanced society.
Each Dickson County High School student will demonstrate:
- Literacy in reading: for content (both literal and inferential); to apply re-reading, during-reading, and post-reading strategies to all reading assignments; to research a topic; to gather information; to comprehend an argument; to determine the main idea of a passage; to understand a concept and construct meaning
- Literacy in writing: to take notes; to convey one’s thinking in complete sentences; to compare and contrast; to write and open response; to describe an experiment, to report one’s findings and conclusions; to generate a response to what one has read, viewed, or heard; to develop an expository essay with a formal structure
- Literacy in speaking: to convey one’s thinking in complete sentences; to interpret a passage orally; to debate an issue; to participate in class discussion or a public forum; to make an oral presentation to an audience; to respond to what one has read, viewed, or heard; to communicate in a manner that allows one to be both heard and understood
- Literacy in reasoning: to create, interpret and explain a table, chart, or graph; to compute, interpret and explain numbers; to analyze and solve a word problem; to interpret and present statistics that support an argument or hypothesis; to identify, explain and make a prediction based on a pattern; to detect and explain the logic or fallacy in an argument or a solution; to use analogies and evidence to support one’s thinking
- Self-expression by creatively synthesizing or combining concepts, data, information, or elements to form a new and coherent whole
- Productive use and understanding of technology to obtain, exchange, evaluate, and organize information
- Responsibility for one’s own behaviors and actions
- Personal growth through self-assessment, decision making, and goal setting
- Appreciation, respect, and understanding of the similarities and differences among people
- The ability to work cooperatively with others
- The knowledge and skills necessary to participate responsibly in society and in the democratic process.
Dickson County High School will:
- Provide curriculum and instruction designed to develop students’ literacy skills in reading, writing, speaking, and reasoning within all levels, grades, and disciplines
- Promote the development and use of “best practices” for effective instruction
- Provide access to the technology that supports teaching and learning
- Establish high academic standards and measure student attainment using a variety of assessments
- Provide for on-going evaluation and revision of existing courses and programs
- Provide an educational program that reflects local, state, and national standards
- Provide opportunities and resources to promote student success on local, state, and national assessment
- Provide a variety of enrichment programs and extracurricular activities designed to develop students’ talents, creativity, and self-esteem
- Strive to meet the individual needs of our students by promoting greater personalization within the learning communities of the school
- Provide a safe, respectful, responsive, and inclusive learning environment that promotes physical, emotional, social, and mental wellness
- Create a learning environment that models and reflects understanding and appreciation of all cultural identities
- Foster effective communication among staff, students, parents, families, and community.