James Caldwell High School is a place of possibilities. This is a public high school that understands that preparing our students for this unfolding century will require footing in the traditional values of the American educational dream, while exploring previously uncharted academic territories.  JCHS is a place that encourages individual growth and the pursuit of personal dreams.  We recognize that our students enter as young adolescents, and depart as more mature young adults.  While the transformations experienced by our students are immediately apparent to the observers in our communities, those changes are less apparent to the students who experience that evolution.  As a school with heart-felt traditions, we share a deep desire to promote each student’s social, emotional and academic growth. 

The successful framework of a James Caldwell High School education is built on our long-standing academic reputation, on our student-focused emphasis, and on the quality of the people associated with this academic community. We believe that distinctive teaching and learning serve as the foundation for each student’s goals.

The high school curriculum is broad and rich in its offerings. The faculty encourages and responds to student initiatives in study and research. The opportunities to gain an external perspective and to develop the intellectual skills necessary for active learning, to train for leadership, and to internalize the values of a moral person are evident and numerous.  Customary management of the school curriculum has held us in good stead to this time, but conventional wisdom has already proven insufficient as global developments impact on our understanding of the world.  The basics of cultural literacy must be developed and understood at an earlier age, as educators concurrently encourage multi-dimensional thinking skills in each of our children.  While educational professionals challenge each student, we must never lose light of the fact that school must be fun.  Even at the high school level, every day must be exciting, and thrilling, and new.

            An understanding of a basic core curriculum will serve as the foundation to more challenging intellectual pursuits.  We are obliged to teach our teachers to teach our children to make decisions.  Someone once said, “We must teach our students not how to do, but how to be.”  There are positive and negative consequences for every decision made in school, as there are in life.  We must encourage our students to take academic risks, giving them the tools to do so in a safe environment, so that they learn that practiced skill.  Within the confines of each class, intellectual growth and personal development can be enhanced by stable, learning communities, where students are given time to develop their interests, and pursue concerns.  It is through the flourishing of these concepts that we can successfully prepare our children for the years, and the decades, to come.  We must rely on our past successes, with a willingness to take chances, and teach the abilities necessary for calculated risk, if we are to adequately prepare our students for what lies ahead. 

Kevin M. Barnes, Ed. D.
JCHS Principal