Mission, Vision, Competencies, Standards, and Benchmarks

Competency: Citizenship
Description: Students will work to…
‣ Build an understanding of the foundations of political thought and the development of
various structures of power, authority, and government.
Essential Questions:
‣ What are "rights?" Where do rights come from?
‣ What is power? Where does power come from?
‣ What does it mean to be part of a group? What do I gain by being in a group? What
do I lose?
‣ How do we balance my individual needs with the needs of the group?
‣ Where am I a "citizen?"
‣ How do I balance my role as an heir in the Kingdom of God with my citizenship
rights/responsibilities on Earth?
Core Understandings:
Students will understand that…
‣ One person's rights often come at the expense of the rights of others.
‣ We depend on objective standards of right and wrong to balance the rights and needs
of people in civil society.
‣ We are "citizens" in multiple contexts—locally, national, digitally, globally—all of which
carry different benefits as well as responsibilities.
‣ The ultimate citizenship for Christ-followers is in the Kingdom of God, though we may
be active and live out our lives as members of communities in this world. At times,
those roles may be symbiotic or in conflict.
Competency: Economic Awareness and Financial Literacy
Description: Students will work to…
‣ Wrestle with the concepts of scarcity, want, and surplus in order to understand the
imbalances of resource distribution, and that human desires often exceed the limits of
resources available to them.
Essential Questions:
‣ What makes something valuable? Why is everyone fighting over THAT thing? What's
the connection between scarcity and value?
‣ What are we making? How are we making it? Who's benefitting from it?
‣ Where does inequality come from? Why do some people have more than others?
‣ What responsibilities come with the resources I have?
‣ What is "success" from a Christ-centered point-of-view?
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