Our school is helping all students develop the World Class Skills of the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate by providing interdisciplinary learning experiences that incorporate Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM). Through STEAM, we focus on 21st century learning skills enabling students to routinely solve real world problems through collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and communication. By adopting and adhering to a balanced literacy approach to language arts instruction, and a hands-on workshop and manipulatives based approach to mathematics, we are able to deliver instruction that is engaging, motivating, and promotes personal academic independence and initiative.

As a school, we will continue our vision to “Take AIM at Greatness”. We are committed to aligning all our systems and processes to reflect our core values of positivity, leadership, lifelong learning, collaboration, consistency and STEAM. Students are exposed to daily morning announcements and classroom-based target times that focus on our “Greatness Targets”. We believe all students possess the ability to lead and influence others. We are able to embrace these leadership skills and take it to the next level with our character education that extends beyond the classroom and provides so many of our students with the opportunity to serve others within our school and in the community at large.

At Van Wyck Elementary School, we encourage teachers and students to adopt a growth mindset and to see failure as the first step to success. Our goal is for our instructional experiences to allow students the opportunity to explore individually and collaboratively. Teachers pose questions to students and provide academic feedback that activates higher order thinking skills. We value teamwork at VWES and truly believe that together we can accomplish more. Teachers regularly plan and implement instruction together, partner with other classrooms to complete projects, and allow students to engage in academic dialogue with one another on a daily basis. Continually emphasizing the importance of being a team player naturally provides the setting to value diversity and to respect the ideas and opinions of others.

We recognize the need in our society to teach and train students how to responsibly use technology to be productive digital citizens. At VWES, technology is viewed as a tool utilized by students and staff to further extend learning and assess a deeper knowledge and comprehension of academic standards.

The vision for Lancaster County School District is ‘Putting Our Children First’. This motto has been the driving force in establishing the standard operating procedures for our school. We have purposely oriented all our stakeholders to our school culture and beliefs. We firmly believe we have established a true sense of community that will allow us to “Take AIM at Greatness” for years to come.

Jason Ramey, Principal