The Bailey Declaration
This is the founding statement of intent for the program. This declaration has remained and will continue to serve as the grounding point for the work we perform in the program. It states:
“The Bailey Scholars Program seeks to be a community of scholars dedicated to lifelong learning. All members of the community work toward providing a respectful, trusting environment where we acknowledge our interdependence and encourage personal growth.”
The Bailey Scholars Principles
Each program and culture holds true to certain guiding principles, whether they are implicit or explicit. These principles for the Bailey Scholars Program came about through a community dialogue at a community retreat in the Fall of 2005. Thereafter, a committee of dedicated community members refined them, and the community adopted these as explicit representations of our implicit principles we have operated on for many years. These principles are:
Space
We seek to create and nurture space-physical, emotional, mental, and time-for diverse people and ideas, creativity, and for joyful and stretch learning. We strive to leave and respect space for individual and collective emergence to promote possibilities, discovery, engagement, and whole-person development.
Community
We expect, embrace, and create spaces for the change that is integral to our community. Bailey is an organic, evolving, and inclusive community. Bailey community members contribute their various strengths to support, nurture, and benefit each other and the community.
Respect and Appreciate
We show the respect and appreciation we hold for others and ourselves that arise from our desire for understanding, our interest in, and our compassion for all learners, learning journeys, and learning spaces we share.
Learning
We acknowledge that we can learn from others. Learning in Bailey is self-directed, co-created, scholarly, self-paced, peer-driven, and internally motivated through individual and collective experiences. We appreciate and practice multiple ways of learning, knowing, and expression, and embrace others’ gifts, worldviews, knowledge, experience, and wisdom.
Scholarship
We advocate for the serious, open, and regular exercise of scholarship. Participating in Bailey is both a privilege and an opportunity that requires individual and collective responsibility to uphold scholarship in all the dimensions outlined in these principles.
Co-Creativity and Collaboration
We co-create our learning with, through, and from one another through dialogue and reflection. Simultaneously, we respect each individual’s freedom of voice, choice, and expression in our collaborative approach to learning.
Transparency
We foster and practice openness in our dialogue, decision-making and shared spaces. We believe that learning, wise choices, and rich creativity emerge through dialogue, clear communication, openness, and inclusiveness. We accept and embrace the challenges, vulnerability, surprises, and joys that come with transparency.
Peer-Leadership
We believe each community member has the responsibility and opportunity to participate in peer-leadership by engaging in the process of shared decision-making in class, in the community, and at the Bailey Community Council (BCC).
Mindfulness
We strive to be considerate and mindful of these principles. At the same time, we seek to remain present, respectful, open-minded, and forgiving as we learn and practice these principles.
The Bailey 5 Questions
Whereas the declaration focuses on the work we perform in community, the Bailey 5 Questions aim at centering the work of the individual in the community. These questions provide an opportunity for an individual to critically and intentionally examine their personal perspective and chart their future direction. These five questions are:
- Who am I?
- What do I value?
- What is my worldview?
- How do I learn?
- How do these connect?
Bailey Values
The Bailey Scholars Program's value system below aims to provide the program with a sense of identity for our work. By developing these values, we are indicating this is what our organization believes in and works toward.
Integrity
We are a community that follows our values and constantly reevaluates them to make sure that we are functioning with integrity; that is, we seek to minimize the gap of what we believe and say, to what we actually do in our lives. Our community of learners shares a mutual respect for the values that we each hold and use to make moral decisions. Each of us endeavors to be honest about what we can give to the community and about what we can do within Bailey in order to grow and learn.
Community
Our community is the inter-connection of all our relationships. We strive to be a healthy community learning with each other through discourse and challenging each other to reach greater heights. We seek to provide honest feedback in order to promote growth in an open and comfortable environment. By establishing mutual trust, we fully utilize all aspects of our relationships.
Scholarship and Learning
The primary purpose of being a part of Bailey is scholarship and learning. We achieve this objective by broadening our horizons, stretching the boundaries and pushing ourselves to grow in the ways that we would like to grow. We can connect across boundaries to learn. We approach ideas and go above and beyond ordinary efforts in order to succeed. We understand the responsibility to share publicly our learning so that we may enhance scholarship and learning on a broader level.
Space
The community space provides the positive environment which is necessary for growth and achievement of goals. It is a warm, comfortable space, physically, virtually, and socially. We are capable of defining and shaping the environment to meet our needs, be it the physical area or the context of our interactions. The flexibility of the space reflects the potential for change in our own lives. And, we have the ability to both be heard and to be listened to in the space.
Relationships
Bailey scholars are a collage of people who collaborate with each other in order to learn. We strive to make our community an open area of understanding between faculty, students and other community members. In these relationships we see each other as equal learners where the traditional student teacher relationship is blurred into one of co learners. We seek to provide a space which is conducive to the development of both old and new friendships and relationships. We believe that relationships should be honest and open in order to build trust within the community.
Engagement
We feel that active participation in the program results in growth that is proportional to our involvement. We are dedicated to lifelong learning and are always seeking ways to be involved with each others’ educational experiences; we are a part of each others’ learning journey. Also, we encourage scholars to be more engaged with the community by modifying and updating the space so that it may facilitate all the needs of the community. Furthermore, we seek to be involved in and contribute to the greater community, locally and globally.
Voice
Voice is the willingness to share our identities; we each have the capacity to assert our voices to express our perspectives. Our space provides a medium through which we can share our progress on our learning journeys with the community. Each of us has equal standing which allows us to speak our minds without fear of discrimination. We maintain an environment in which all opinions can be voiced and all voices will be heard.
Diversity
Each part of our community has worth, and together we create a stronger whole. The space and community are amenable to all styles and purposes of learning. No ideas, beliefs, or viewpoints will go unconsidered or unheard. All are welcome and celebrated within our space. We welcome uncommon or unpopular ideas into our environment allowing scholars to grow and learn in a place free of intellectual (or any other) threats.
Responsibility
Within the community, there is both personal and collective responsibility. No one can learn in a vacuum, because everything is related to the outside world where our values are not just words but actions. When we realize that we are all interconnected to form a whole, we recognize that our actions affect everyone. We are responsible for not just our actions, but also the effects that they have on the world around us. Being a part of Bailey involves being a global citizen as well as a local citizen.
Respect
Scholars honor fellow scholars, their ideas, and their space. By doing so, we maintain our community’s integrity and provide an environment where scholarship and learning prosper. All ideas, beliefs, and viewpoints will be considered equal, treated with respect, and discussed with high esteem. Scholars understand that our resources are shared and are used to fulfill diverse needs. Further, transparency in decision making and open communication build trust and reinforce our commitment to respect one another.
Joy
The Bailey experience has been built around a community that brings enjoyment to learning and scholarship. Learning should not be something that is dreaded, but something that brings pleasure. We find joy in life and share that happiness with each other, which helps us to facilitate learning. We recognize that we are a part of each others support system.
Dialogue
Our community values a safe environment, where respectful, honest, and open exchanges of different ideas, beliefs, and perspectives aid our quest for further learning and growth. The critical process for creating that environment is dialogue. Dialogue allows scholars to exchange information and learn from each other without judgments or winners.
Reflection
To value learning and to make the most of all of our experiences, we engage in continual introspection. Reflection is a key component, through which we can review our own personal learning journeys. We can reflect on our own or share our process of learning and the knowledge we have obtained with the greater community. By reviewing our experiences, we can help others grow and apply what we have gained to serve our community of learners.
Inclusion
We desire true inclusion where everyone craves and retains the contributions from everyone in our global community. In order to generate this outcome we practice open communication and equality through collaboration. We welcome new members with open arms and encourage anyone who would like to participate in the program to do so in any way they can. We believe in giving everyone an opportunity to voice their opinion in creating, leading, and managing every aspect of the program.
Creativity
We are a group of people who value discovering new methods of attaining our dreams and goals. We do this through the emergence of new questions, new insights, and new understandings. An aspect of this is in the way that we express ourselves. We encourage creative ways of learning, collaboration, and creation through any medium.
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