John Muir Elementary School

The vision of John Muir Elementary School (home of the Bobcat Scholars) is to create an environment where our students become independent learners and are empowered to excel academically and socially so they are prepared to make their mark on the world. We want our students to be excited to come to school and engage daily in rich, rigorous and relevant learning experiences and ask lots of questions. Every day at John Muir, we support culturally diverse, relevant learning experiences.

Our teachers and support staff are an amazingly talented, dedicated group of professionals who meet weekly to plan and reflect on their teaching practices. Common Core standards are used to create learning spirals that integrate literacy, math, history, science, technology and social justice topics. We have a full time librarian, a garden program with Community Grows, a PE teacher and partnerships with community organizations for dance and science.

To keep our promises to students and families, we maintain a safe and welcoming school environment that is accepting of differences and diversity. We adopted the PAX: Good Behavior Game model to encourage our children to make choices that encourage peace, productivity, health and happiness. We have also begun a mindfulness program in order to help relieve and manage stress that occurs in our children and staffs’ daily lives. A Restorative Practices model is used to build community and repair harm if it occurs.

We also have a wonderful mentor program where teachers and community members meet regularly with mentees. Our Parent Leadership Group (PLG) meets regularly to empower our families to be advocates for their children. We partner very closely with our onsite after school program Western Addition Beacon Center to ensure that children have relevant after school enrichment experiences.

We consider families to be the first teachers of their children and our motto at John Muir is: “teamwork makes the dream work.”