About Us
The Lotus Difference
STRONG ROOTS, A STRONG BELIEF SYSTEM, AND A STRONG NETWORK OF PEERS
Focusing solely on academics while skipping socialization and neglecting ethics creates a ‘lopsided’ student without the proper toolkit or social skills to navigate difficult times. Peer influence is a huge factor in students. Bad friends can easily take a child into destructive paths.
Often the problem can go undetected as the child withdraws, unable to communicate.
Without a safe environment and without the chance to practice and confirm and learn habits that will ensure them emotional growth and healthy boundaries we may create a child who is not grounded in a firm sense of identity or know what is right.
We also realize that student behavior is also heavily influenced by the behavior of those in authority.
That’s why our faculty has been chosen for and trained to focus on displaying and teaching the effectiveness of our core values of social awareness and conscientiousness.
At Lotus Academy, the faculty is dedicated to creating a communicative child. Every child is in an environment of peers whose parents are committed to the same vision.
Learning the ability to bridge the gap between two cultures, being able to see any problem from different viewpoints creates an individual with a flexible and anti-fragile attitude towards the world. This confidence will support and help them achieve their goals and survive difficulties that they may face.
Our Three-Fold Mission
We believe that the ultimate goal of education is to cultivate people with integrity, high moral character and wisdom. Our focus is on returning to traditional values, and our hope is that our students will leave Lotus Academy embodying all the positive attributes of our school name and symbol, the lotus flower: The Lotus flower grows out of mud, but it is not tainted; it is washed in water, but it maintains its beauty and innocence.
Our Story
We came from China in our 20’s. Over the next three decades, we learned to appreciate the tenets of our adopted country: a deep appreciation of nature, a commitment to honesty and a compassion for all.
Life will always shake us. But understanding the past and how we’ve arrived to this juncture can provide roots that will allow the child to withstand and overcome life’s challenges.
Our belief in building this bedrock of a resilient and ethical identity is what made us tackle the enormous task of building a new school that taught these values at every turn.
How do we make our students empathic to others?
It is a daily reiteration of activities that require collaboration, sharing, consultations and discussion.
How do we make them feel secure enough that they are not swayed unnecessarily by fears or other people? By creating a sense of self based on self-history and a strong set of beliefs that they can put into action with their peers.
How can a child learn how to pursue something that may be challenging at first but will bring them long term happiness?
Our faculty is living proof of the achievements one can reap from hard effort. The rapid results of several of our programs spur the child onwards as they discover their own hidden talents.
Empathy, Perseverance, Creativity: these are necessary tenets that form the core of our teachings.
Inspired by Timeless Values
Seeking Wisdom and Happiness
Growing in Virtue and Truth
Our Educational Philosophy
Lotus Academy believes that the education of children is the fundamental right and responsibility of the parents. We also believe that an education with the goal of cultivating virtue and wisdom in students is necessary for a just and free society. Our motto, Virtus et Sapientia (Virtue and Wisdom), encapsulates our belief that by training students in the theological, moral, intellectual, and civic duties we are equipping them to live well-balanced lives as human beings and as global citizens.
To meet these goals, we seek to partner with parents to provide their children with an academically excellent and traditional education that nurtures students’ spirits, minds, and bodies. Our curriculum includes Western and Chinese traditions that have been developed, refined, and handed down to us by countless generations.
Through a robust study of the liberal arts and sciences, students develop the habits and skills that will enable them to live healthy well-balanced lives and to become life-long learners.
Our faculty reflects these values, and serves as active role models to our students. Our teachers embody family values, are people of high moral character and are masters of the craft of teaching.
Our Classroom Model
Our approach is about three aspects:
ACADEMICS, SOCIAL and ETHICS.
ACADEMICS
Our Academic track record is superior with an international faculty that has been handpicked for their passion for knowledge, their deep empathy for all learning types and a dedication to our goals of a wise and virtuous life. Please get to know our wonderful faculty here:
SOCIAL
Our social curriculum is based loosely on the Responsive Classroom model.
Designed purposefully to foster classroom community, the goal of the program is to enable optimal student learning by establishing a safe and predictable learning environment. As part of this, we start the school year by teaching the children about classroom rules and create a contract. Through this, they learn what it is to set their own boundaries and agree to respect the boundaries of others for a common happiness.
After this, we proceed to tailoring a social toolkit for every student.
What is a Social Toolkit?
A social toolkit allows a child the ability to navigate social difficulties and differences with empathy and a positive spirit of learning.
Without a social toolkit, even gifted children may sometimes never reach their full potential because all environments are—whether it is high school, college or a first job—at their heart, social contracts. Not understanding the terms of this unsaid contract means you will run afoul.
But this is something that can only be learned out of daily practice. It is full of nuances.
For example, Morning Meeting teaches children crucial social skills such as how to work with a partner or how to negotiate a problem with a friend. Until now, they may have looked to their peers or siblings for examples of how to negotiate.
Unlike other schools where there is no discussion, only disciplinary repercussions, these types of issues are openly discussed as a group:
Where do misunderstandings happen? How can we resolve differences? How do we argue? Can we change our minds? How do we discover new ideas? How do we share what we discover?
An early awareness of these shifts in power changes the child fundamentally both in terms of their self awareness and their awareness of others whether they are peers or adults.
While it is never too late to acquire such skills, those who have early access to a safe environment in which to practice and discuss the possibilities of the cause and effect of various actions will invariably have the advantages of emotional intelligence. Those who do not, may stumble even if they are well prepared academically.
What is the impact of being able to create long lasting and fruitful friendships and connections throughout one’s life?
It is immeasurable.
Additionally, we use Gamification to instill a deeper understanding of how cooperation deepens into collaboration.
During Morning Meeting we take time from our schedule to burn off physical energy, to laugh, and to let loose.
Play is how we learn to engage with others more profoundly. These early lessons stay with us throughout our lives, coloring our interactions and expectations of others.
FOSTERING STRONG ETHICS
The environment of the Lotus Academy is one that fosters questioning what is known, appreciating what history has taught us, and continuously trying to understand our own motivations and execution. Knowledge is something that is shared, upgraded, examined and then finally put into practice.
We believe that belief is good but action is even better.
Ethics come to play between people, not in a vacuum. That requires engagement in which problem solving comes to the fore.
All our games are handpicked to promote higher level thinking and problem solving skills. But they also serve a two fold purpose: each game has been chosen, modeled, and monitored to help us reinforce the positive qualities of cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy as well as self-control.
The strengthening of these four qualities of conscientiousness lay the common groundwork for later successes and long term emotional stability.
In short, we believe playing games is an important part of a child’s social and emotional development into a happy and caring adult.
If you look into our classroom, you also will find a wide variety of carefully selected board games and other interesting materials that can be turned into a game with the help of our faculty. Any of them can be modified to be multi-player so a group can successfully engage and absorb all the positives that these social interactions promote.