Vertex Partnership Academies is organized around the four cardinal virtues of Courage, Justice, Temperance, and Wisdom, both as an expectation for each student and faculty member in our community to personally adopt, and as a conceptual framework that shapes every aspect of school culture, policies, canon and curriculum.
The cardinal virtues - Courage, Justice, Temperance and Wisdom - are human virtues, acquired by education and good actions. Cardinal comes from cardo, the Latin word for hinge, meaning “that on which other things depend.” In other words, the cardinal virtues are the root virtues upon which all other standards of moral excellence rely. Character-based strengths like gratitude, optimism, resiliency, determination and perseverance are all outgrowths of a student’s embrace of the cardinal virtues.
Each cardinal virtue is an intrinsic life habit Vertex seeks to cultivate within each student scholar. When normed and practiced regularly, these individual behaviors then form the collective basis of a good society, a community that is self-governed by public virtue.
For each cardinal virtue, there is an “I” statement. Requiring students to memorize these "I Statements" is part of the process for how we want young people to develop their personal agency.
