Our Mission & Values

Our mission is to prepare children to embrace life, learning, and community with hope, skill, understanding, and creativity. We are committed to the Quaker values of peace, justice, simplicity, and integrity. A mission means nothing if you don’t see it in action. At Friends School of Minnesota, our mission lives through our students and our community and our work together. When we fall short, and we do fall short, we examine why. We reflect on how we can do better, be better.

Students attending the Climate Strike Student Walkout
  • Our mission is alive when our middle school students tell us they are participating in the Climate Strike Student Walkout and some teachers and the head of school attend the strike with them.
  • Our mission is alive when we observe insects and then paint what we see using watercolors. What do artists and scientists have in common?
  • Our mission is alive when we are stewards of our community and environment by planting trees in Horton Park
  • Our mission is alive when we join the One Voice Mixed Chorus (OVMC), Minnesota’s LGBTQ chorus, and perform in a mass choir with OVMC and other local middle school students. The performance explores the history of music of the LGBTQ civil rights movement.
  • Our mission is alive when we learn from our children and see the scientist and artist and explorer in them.
  • Our mission is alive when we see each child holistically when we nurture the physical, intellectual, spiritual, aesthetic, and social development of children. It is alive when we feel like we belong.

“At Friends School there was, and still is, a shared understanding that we are all worthy in our own way, no matter what. ”

– Mashal ‘09

Our Values

Quakers are committed to a set of values:

Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, and Equality (a.k.a S.P.I.C.E. values).

We are always examining what commitment to those values means. How are peace and justice related? What does peace mean in the face of inequity, privilege, and oppression?

“{FSMN} Thank you so much for giving me a fantastic education. You helped me grow as a person and made me more aware of injustice and privilege in this world.”

– Maya ‘15

As part of our most recent strategic plan (2019-2020), we hired a consultant to do an equity and inclusion audit. Over the next few years, we are committed to reviewing the results of this audit and putting processes and practices in place to address bias and racist practices.

The Current Equity and Inclusion Vision in our Strategic Plan

“We envision a school community that embodies strength in diversity through the sharing of rich cultural and socio-economic backgrounds and experiences, and the celebration of varied personal expressions and identities while recognizing the challenges posed by societal structures of oppression. We envision a student body that is able to work towards and is committed to social justice and equitable change-making in the world. We commit to the long-term, collective work of examining school culture, practices, and policies, changing conditions to promote equity, defining diversity and inclusion needs within our school community, and approaching this work with humility and urgency.”

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Our Mission

Our mission is to prepare children to embrace life, learning, and community with hope, skill, understanding and creativity. We are committed to the Quaker values of peace, justice, simplicity and integrity.

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651-917-0636
info@fsmn.org
Friends School of Minnesota
1365 Englewood Avenue, Saint Paul, MN 55104

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