The curriculum at Pacific Buddhist Academy fuses Buddhist values with a standards-based course of studies designed to equip youth to succeed in college and their adult careers. Grounded in the principles of compassion, understanding, and interdependence, the curriculum is designed to ensure that students acquire the values, skills, knowledge, dispositions, and behaviors needed to achieve their full human potential. PBA welcomes students of all faiths; conversion to Buddhism is not part of the school’s mission. Teachers combine group project work and active learning experiences with academically challenging coursework, to create a context for engaged exploration, collaborative work, and critical thinking. Students are taught to reach outside their familiar worlds to gain new awareness, make reasoned decisions and act on those decisions. Small classes enable teachers to provide students with individualized instruction. Teachers enhance the classroom learning environments by utilizing current information technology such as PLATO, a computer based instructional support system. Peace Education is a signature program at PBA. Students acquire the knowledge and practice the skills necessary to reduce conflicts and prevent violence from the interpersonal to the international level.
PBA teachers use a combination of tests and authentic assessment methods to document, measure, and judge the progress students make over time. In addition to assessing students’ ability to recall, recognize, and recite information, teachers also measure higher order thinking, such as understanding, analyzing, solving, relating, and evaluating. |
