1 Mission statement
We, Senja videregående skole, find it important to give a varied educational offer. A diverse body of students gives the opportunity for an exciting and developing learning environment for both students and teachers. We will, through good dialogue and a respectful positive attitude, create a good working environment.
We want to facilitate our students in obtaining the best results possible. We will continuously work in developing and practicing a range of teaching and learning methods that contribute to each student receiving an education that is suited to his or her aspirations, abilities and needs. Our students are important contributors in our planning and are given responsibilities and duties.
Dialogue and cooperation are important features of our teaching and learning environment. We place our students in the core of our thinking. Our students are active contributors, and our teachers are inspiring, monitoring, knowledgeable pedagogues who are well-respected.
Senja videregående skole’s pedagogical platform is based on our slogan “MMS”:
M
Mangfold
(Diversity)
M
Mestring
(Excellence)
S
Samhold
(Unity)
Diversity through an international school environment by respecting other people’s values and traditions. Diversity also means that each and every one of us is unique and that people with their differences are also valued.
Excellence through strong academic tradition; by maintaining high standards (highly qualified teaching staff as well as high academic achievement standards); by helping and aiding students to achieve their academic goals through focusing on approaches to teaching and approaches to learning.
Unity: Senja videregående skole wants to be a school with good relations between all groups in our organization. We interact with each other in a positive manner. We focus on bringing people together and creating good learning environments with emphasis on student democracy.
As a learning community, we develop individuals and groups in the school environment as inquirers, knowledgeable, thinkers, communicators, principled, open-minded, caring, risk-takers, balanced, and reflected.
Focusing on academic progress and success within the educational programme of the IB, is a part of promoting excellence and thus maintaining a high standard in the teaching and learning. Language and communication are essential in the learning and assessment process. Language development therefore plays a vital role in our work with teaching and learning.
Our school has students with different social and cultural backgrounds and hence different linguistic backgrounds. Therefore, we believe that the promotion and learning of languages go hand in hand with the learning and the acceptance of different cultures and consequently improving knowledge and awareness of one’s own language and culture. We believe that welcoming students and teachers with different cultural background is enriching for both our school community as well as for the local community.
We also believe that we need to cooperate and develop relations with people from other countries which includes communication with people of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. This is of vital importance in order to solve the challenges that we as a world community face e.g. environmental changes, resource management, sustainable development, cross -cultural understanding and respect. We need to be able to communicate without misunderstandings and be able to function in a globalized world. We want to give our students these skills. These attributes, alongside with linguistic competence, cultural understanding and respect are best learnt when students with different languages and cultural backgrounds cooperate on a daily basis working and studying together. We emphasize that interaction is the key for this learning and not just mere observation. Interactions mean that you go beyond the surface whereas observations of language and cultures contribute more to strengthening stereotypes and regress individual cross-cultural development. This way, we want to make sure that both we and our students have the awareness that “all people with their differences are also valued”.
Everyone can learn languages. Language is the key for all communication between people, and that interaction is the foundation and the aim for language learning and intercultural communication. Competency in the language of instruction is paramount in order to communicate one’s knowledge which is essential for assessment.