Community Engagement

Community Engagement at MCDS creates opportunities for students, faculty, staff and families to gain and nurture a deeper sense of curiosity, empathy and action so that they are challenged and inspired to work towards a better, more sustainable world.

The school community is actively engaged in experiences both on and off campus that foster growth and deepen understanding of all kinds – academic, social and emotional. This is at the heart of the school’s Community Engagement program, one of the primary tools used to integrate the school’s mission and core values into the life of MCDS.

Students engage in activities that help them to see their place and role in the greater community through both community service projects that address short-term needs and a robust curriculum with deeper and more thoughtful preparation and reflection. Students learn how a healthy community benefits them and how this mutual connection is integral to the development of equity and social justice.

All MCDS students engage in the immediate school community through classroom jobs, helping with lunch cleanup (Lunch Bunch), collecting compost, working in the school gardens or supporting parents and staff at special events. Throughout students' K-8 experience, the academic curriculum is deepened by community engagement opportunities in collaboration with over 50 different community partners who focus on education, the elderly and people with special needs, environmental sustainability, food justice, healthcare, homelessness and poverty.

By the eighth grade, students are fully engaged in Community Internships, with six full days spent off campus working with community partners and practicing Design Thinking strategies to gain empathy, identify a need or an opportunity, prototype solutions and share their ideas with agency staff.

We believe that well-informed, responsible and self-aware global citizens are those who most effectively envision and work towards a better world. To accomplish this, we ask students to practice and reflect on the following cultural competency skills, habits of mind and core attitudes:

• cooperation
• flexibility
• mindfulness
• perseverance and resiliency
• integrity
• empowerment
• humility
• empathy
• patience

Adults in our community model these skills, habits of mind and our core values through our active parent volunteer program, regular family outreach experiences in the greater community and opportunities for faculty and staff to engage in the broader community both alongside students and individually.