Buffalo Prep Pedagogy

Buffalo Prep’s academic programming aligns with the organization’s strategic plan, utilizing researched-based best practices that include a culturally relevant-sustaining teaching and learning model that celebrates every student’s inherent gifts and experiences.   This model nurtures innovative teaching methods, motivating teachers to affirm students’ cultural, racial, and ethnic literacies, evaluating their own cultural positions and knowledge to determine how they can best impact student achievement.  Culturally relevant and sustaining curricula seek to encourage and incorporate a breadth of heritages, languages, practices, and literacies in the classroom so that students see themselves in the material and are empowered.

This asset-based pedagogy intentionally bridges the knowledge students bring with them into the classroom with the professional expertise teachers have acquired to structure learning opportunities that afford students the chance to demonstrate their (emerging) expertise while displaying a developing knowledge of content.

Our Culturally-Relevant Sustaining Philosophy

Buffalo Prep’s culturally relevant-sustaining philosophy have four pillars at its core: academic excellence, cultural competence, critical consciousness and pursuit of joy.

Mediocrity is unacceptable. (Academic Excellence)

We believe in the inherent excellence of all members of our community.  It is our job to collectively challenge each other to always strive to be our best and most authentic selves.

Our students have superpowers. (Cultural Competence)

We believe that our students have incredible resilience, resourcefulness, and come to us with vast amounts of community cultural wealth, and given access, they have the power to do anything they put their minds to.

We can make a positive impact in our community and in our world. (Critical Consciousness)

We believe that each one of us has the capability to be a leader for positive growth and change in our community.  As an organization, all of our members pride ourselves in sustainable civic action.

We have the right to choose joy and gratitude.  (Pursuit of Joy)

The authentic pursuit of joy is a fundamental human right of all members of our community. We believe that intentionally nurturing spaces that uplift beauty, aesthetics, truth, ease, wonder, and personal fulfillment is vital for all members of our community to thrive, allowing each of us to have our brilliance illuminated in positive and happy relationships with others.

Core 5 Values

Integrity – Uncompromising adherence to honesty and a code of values.

Excellence – Possessing great qualities in high degree; always going above and beyond; being the very best you can be.

Responsibility – Reliability or dependability; possessing moral and mental accountability.

Leadership – Exhibiting INTEGRITY, RESPONSIBILITY, and EXCELLENCE, and inspiring others to be the best they can be.

Kindness – the quality of treating others with generosity, compassion, and empathy in both words and actions without expecting any reward or recognition in return, in keeping with the Ubuntu concept of “I am because you are.”

Family Handbook 2023-24