Passionately Committed

With humility and curiosity, we seek to know more about our core purpose and to embody it in our own lives, our work, and our community.

Servant’s Heart

The inspiration of having a servant’s heart is seeing the inherent dignity of every colleague, parent, and student.

Team Player

We believe our mission can be accomplished only through collaboration, with each of us bringing our unique expertise and gifts to the work of the whole team.

Reality is ordered and knowable

We believe that the world is ordered and knowable and that the human intellect, while imperfect, can attain knowledge of reality through reason, hard work, and a coherent program of study.

Truth exists and must be sought

We believe that truth exists, and we must seek it relentlessly through disciplined study and good-willed conversation. Truth is never merely “my truth” or “your truth.” Although individuals and cultures are shaped by historical and personal circumstances, truth itself is not.

Education proceeds through shared inquiry

We take seriously Socrates’ assertion that “the unexamined life is not worth living” and believe education should proceed through shared inquiry, honest discussion, and the careful examination of ideas.

While aspects of our curriculum respond to developments in science, discoveries about the universe, and the unfolding of history, our emphasis remains upon the enduring, the changeless, and the permanent.

The classics illuminate the human condition

We give particular emphasis to the literary and philosophical classics of the West because of the way they speak across time about the universal human condition, human nature, and the laws of nature.

Beauty forms judgment

We believe that beauty is not merely in the eye of the beholder and that the classic forms and works of Western music, drama, and visual art should play a central role in forming aesthetic judgment.

Language holds a privileged place

Although we teach through a variety of learning modes, we believe the written and spoken word hold a privileged position in human expression, reasoning, and knowledge.

Education aims at the formation of the whole person

We do not dispute the usefulness of a liberal arts education, and we gladly prepare students for college study. Our main purpose, however, is the formation of the soul, heart, and mind.

Liberal education consists of cognitive, emotional, and moral education: thinking deeply, loving noble things, and living well together. We believe, with Plato, that the highest goal of education is to become good, intellectually and morally.

Pillar One

The world is ordered and knowable

The human intellect, while imperfect, can attain knowledge of reality through reason, hard work, and a coherent program of study.

Pillar Two

Truth must be sought relentlessly

We believe that truth exists and that we must seek it through disciplined study and good-willed conversation.

Pillar Three

Education forms the heart and mind

We gladly prepare students for college studies and practical success, but our main purpose is the formation of the heart and mind.

Pillar Four

Liberal education forms the whole person

Liberal education consists of cognitive, emotional, and moral education: thinking deeply, loving noble things, and living well together. We believe, with Plato, that the highest goal of education is to become good, intellectually and morally.

Pillar Five

High expectations are an expression of love

The greatest number of students benefit when the intellectual and moral bar is set high in the classroom. Lowering expectations is an act of misguided sympathy, not of love and mercy.

Pillar Six

Character is formed through culture and choice

Great Hearts academies do not deploy a separate “character curriculum.” Students are formed by the culture of the school, both implicit and explicit, and by each student’s choices to lead within it.

Pillar Seven

Teachers lead through love and friendship

Teachers lead students through intelligence, charisma, humor, integrity, and example—in short, through love and friendship, as modeled by Socrates.