Values Education
Students at RIS come from a variety of religious backgrounds. The school respects this diversity and believes that students can continue to develop and apply values in their everyday lives. At each grade level, Catholic students engage in religion classes, while students of other faiths participate in Values classes. Respectful of the uniqueness and diversity of the individual, Values lessons enable each student to participate in experiential learning and the evolution of their personal values system.
Experiential learning awakens our students to the realities of social and economic hardship in society. As the Values curriculum is crafted from the mission of RIS and its Redemptorist founders, the program seeks to promote essential change through the cultivation of fair-minded critical thinking and community service learning. Values is also the umbrella under which RIS encourages thinking that is predisposed toward intellectual empathy, perseverance, integrity, compassion, humility, generosity, forgiveness, and responsibility.
In this world of accelerating change and increasing complexity, it is critical that the attributes we teach in Values entail self-reflection, open-mindedness, and the importance of living an ethical life. These lead our students to build an intellectual framework that is essential to answering questions, solving problems, and resolving social issues. Values classes in elementary school focus on active and cooperative learning. In middle school, the emphasis is on the relationship between critical and creative thinking, and high school students explore the mechanics of Socratic dialogue and the importance of questioning and enlightening the disciplined mind.