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Our
Mission
The
unique mission of Furtah Preparatory School is to educate
the whole student by encouraging high standards of academic
achievement, while developing sound moral values and responsible
citizenship. Honor, leadership, self-discipline, and integrity
are practiced each day at FPS. The cornerstone of all
schooling is possessing the ability to read with facility.
It is our mission to build strong reading skills through
intensive phonics training and teaching effective decoding
skills. Furtah Preparatory School integrates strong reading
skills into all subject areas.
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The traditional school setting
is the appropriate place to be educated for most students. For
some students, however, mostly those who have some kind of learning
challenge that impedes their academic success, school becomes
a place to be dreaded and avoided. Sometimes labeled within
their school based on the kinds of classes they attend, self-esteem
suffers. Students with low self-esteem are more likely to participate
in self defeating behaviors, which, of course, lead to even
lower self esteem. A nontraditional school, such as Furtah Preparatory
School, can provide the educational setting for some students
to break the cycle of defeat by providing a place where they
can succeed.
Furtah Preparatory School grew
from the vision of founder Fred Furtah. A life-long student
of education, especially the teaching of reading, Mr. Furtah
began to see many students who were negatively impacted across
the curriculum due to their inability to read with fluency and/or
comprehension. He became a disciple of Mrs. Charlotte Lockhart,
the renowned inventor of a phonics based reading program. Furtah
Preparatory was founded on the principle that learning is power,
and that learning is based on being able to read competently.
Since many of our students do
have learning issues that may interfere with their academic
potential in a typical school, we have few boring days here
at Furtah Prep. Our ages range from the youngest Montessori
two and a half year old to high school seniors. The curriculum
offers all standard Quality Core Curriculum subjects. In addition
students may choose as their electives Latin, German and Spanish,
as well as Drama, Music, Art, Film and even Military Tactics.
At Furtah, we believe in educating
the whole student, therefore opportunities abound for students
to succeed even in those non-academic areas of sports or the
performing arts. The school has seen many students whose first
success was in the non-academic areas transfer that success
into subsequent academic success. Students are celebrated for
their contributions in non-academic venues such as arts or sports,
and supported and encouraged in their academic areas.
On a visit to Furtah Prep, you
will see several students in traditional classrooms studying
anything from calculus to consumer math. You might also see
a group of students practicing for a drama competition with
musical interludes they themselves wrote. You might see students
studying German, while others are painting their papier mache
creations. You might see students in the middle of preparing
to take their SAT's, while others are perfecting their jump
shot in the gym. In other words, there is no "one size
fits all" mentality. The goal is to help each child reach
his or her greatest potential by celebrating all the things
a given student already does well, and scaffolding around the
students' areas of need until independent learning is achieved.
Our graduates are making their
way in the world, whether this may be in college majoring in
pre-med, landscape design, pre-law, engineering, film-making;
or in the field of business or industry, sometimes even owning
their own business. The well-earned success they experienced
here at Furtah Prep by and large transferred to the world at
large. It has been said that an adult's role in a student's
life should be, "To prepare the child for the path, not
to try to prepare the path for the child." Our hope, and
mission, is to prepare our students for their path in life,
wherever it may lead them.
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