Teach at Manglares Discovery School in Panama

Our Philosophy

We believe that every child wants to and can learn.

When children find meaning in learning, they are motivated and challenged, and take ownership of their learning.

We value every child as an individual. Our children have diverse learning needs and bring with them a wide range of experiences, beliefs, knowledge, and skills. We adapt our teaching pace, approaches, and assessment practices to be effective and appropriate for where the child is in development.

We believe that learning takes place in caring and safe environments. We cultivate positive teacher-student and peer relationships so that there is a culture of care and mutual respect in our classrooms, where children learn to appreciate diversity. They are encouraged to take risks, learn from their mistakes and one another, and be confident in expressing their views.

Learning takes place individually and collaboratively, as children construct and co-construct meaning from knowledge and experiences. We guide learners to activate prior knowledge and assimilate and accommodate new knowledge through exploration and interaction with others. This allows them to build a strong foundation of knowledge by connecting new ideas and experiences with what they already know, thus facilitating the understanding of concepts and the application of what they have learned to different contexts.

We believe in developing thinking skills and dispositions in our learners. To do this, we guide them to construct, interpret, and evaluate knowledge from different perspectives. We help learners understand that by thinking about their thinking, they can monitor, assess, and improve their learning.

Assessment is integral to the learning process and helps children become self-directed learners. As such, we design assessments with clarity of purpose, to provide our learners and us with feedback to address learning gaps and improve teaching practices.