The Athey Creek Mission: Character, Community, and Excellence
Our mission at Athey Creek Middle School is to promote positive character, a caring community, and personal excellence. We believe that positive character is foundational to the kind of respectful community needed to support personal excellence. When people in the school feel respected, valued, and supported, they are able to devote their intellectual, creative, and emotional energy to the work of excellence.

Our overriding goal at Athey Creek is to provide students with opportunities to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to be successful learners for their lifetimes. We support a safe, caring environment that promotes personal responsibility and ensures success for every student. We are extremely proud of our tradition of academic excellence, our commitment to personalizing learning, and of our dedication to bring out the best in every student.

We believe we have a responsibility at Athey Creek to help each student develop his or her capacity for thought and action in the world. We feel it is important for students to develop a sense of personal efficacy—to understand his ability to direct his own destiny and to make a difference in the world. To accomplish this, we teach students to use the tools of language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, world language, wellness, and the arts and also help them develop their capacities to act upon personal values such as respect, responsibility, integrity, courage, and compassion.

We focus on three guiding principles at Athey Creek. First, we emphasize the crucial importance of treating each other well. When students and teachers demonstrate respect for themselves and others, the foundation is put in place for a compassionate school community in which excellence can flourish.

Secondly, we ask students to do their best to learn and to help others learn. We want learning at Athey Creek to go beyond striving for high grades. We want students to demonstrate curiosity and to engage in authentic inquiry. We want each student to contribute to their own learning and the learning of others by asking critical questions and working closely with fellow students to develop skills, master essential concepts and content and to construct knowledge. This means participating in learning activities with respect and a sense of connection to other students and adults in the school.

We also want our students to understand the importance of taking stewardship for the place they live. This involves respecting the property of other students and adults in the school, as well as the school facilities and grounds. It requires each of us to act as a steward for the school we attend, the community we live in, and the world around us. We believe that a sense of this kind of stewardship is vital to positive citizenship in the world.

Athey Creek is a thriving learning community because its mission looks beyond today and into tomorrow. We are growing caring people who are connected to their community, and connected to being the best that they can be. We have incredible students, incredible staff, and incredible families that value character, community, and excellence.