**This post has been sponsored and guest written by Lakehill Prep. All opinions are their own.**
I’m not the first to say this, nor will I be the last, “Lakehill Preparatory School just feels like family.” This is especially true in Lower School at Lakehill Prep. It’s such a warm, inviting environment and my son feels so at home there.
I think the family feeling really starts with their rules. They just have three: The Safety Rule, the Respect Rule, and the Welcome Rule. Every year, the children design posters in a contest to promote them. The rules, and the way teachers and students talk about them when problem solving, really help kids learn to think before they act, to put themselves into another’s shoes, and to reach out to make everyone feel included. My favorite is the Welcome Rule, because instead of telling children what not to do, it encourages them to go the extra mile to make sure everyone around them feels included. No secret clubs, no exclusive games, nobody left out.
Lakehill teachers have a special way of setting high expectations that extend into their classrooms, too. Teachers never accept the bare minimum. They look for quality and volume in written answers (something I value highly), curious exploration in hands-on science labs, and real-world problem solving and applications for math concepts. Even when the job at hand is literally memorization, like the poems students memorize every six weeks for the Memory Work, the expectation is that students as young as kindergarten will stand in front of the class to recite it–focusing on poise and posture, volume and expressiveness, and something more than just one memorized word after another. It’s no wonder that so many Lakehill Middle and Upper School students end up loving choir and drama! I wish I had had such consistent practice with public speaking when I was that age.
My son has grown up so much during his years at Lakehill, and he is comfortable just being himself. He is a confident learner who is not afraid to try new things and not afraid of the mini failures and stumbles that are part of learning new skills. I love it when he says, “It’s OK, dad, mistakes are how we learn!” How long did it take me to learn that lesson? And he just shrugs and tries again. For him, it is as natural as breathing.
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