Walking Down Progress Avenue
As children walk through the school entrance doors and step into St Peter’s PS Farnworth, they are asked to imagine themselves taking daily steps down Progress Avenue. Each corridor is labelled to reinforce a value or an ambition and emphasises the aspirational ethos which pervades the school. Pupils regularly walk-up Progress Avenue, Cooperation Alley or Achievement Road.
The vision continually reinforced is that Progress Avenue is endless, it does not seek to limit someone to a predetermined potential and it does not assume a natural talent or predisposition.
Hard Work and Effort
Progress Avenue recognises that hard work and effort will lead to greater outcomes and achievement. It starts with each individual and takes them as far as they want to go. This philosophy has helped staff at St Peter’s PS Farnworth to open their minds to the meaning of inclusion and avoid limiting beliefs, both for themselves and the pupils. By building a belief that anything is possible, individuals just have to take the first step towards achieving it, the children have been given the power to determine their own destiny.
The beliefs and values everyone holds become manifest through their behavioural interactions with the world around them. Those who believe intelligence is fixed and success is determined simply by how much intelligence people were born with will approach life, learning and challenges in a very different way to those who believe that intelligence is expandable and they have a limitless capacity for growing their understanding and knowledge of different domains. Children arrive at St Peter’s with some of those views already formed. They may have been told many times that they are clever or conversely, they may have been told many times that they are not.
Intelligence is Malleable
St Peter’s PS Farnworth aims to provide its children with the belief that intelligence is malleable, that learning is limitless, that school is a place where learning is offered and by engaging in that learning process then knowledge has no end.
Physically labelling the school’s corridors with street signs offers a reminder to pupils that upon walking through the school’s doors they are entering an environment where learning will be promoted and excuses that aim to detract from the child’s ability to make progress will be argued against. This poster displayed on doors and windows indicates the type of environment they are entering – one where everyone is accepted, one where everyone can progress and one where you will be encouraged to flourish regardless of your starting point