Our School

Light of the World Academy opened in 2002 and operated as a private Montessori school for kindergarten through seventh grade students for 13 years. Parents who have toured our school have often referred to it as “the happy school,” as they have observed the students’ smiling faces as they go about their daily routines. Dr. Maria Montessori believed that all children are really “joyful scholars” provided adults can properly support their natural desire to learn. The joy our students embody during their time with us, along with the academic and social growth they exhibit, tells us we’re running a successful Montessori program.

In 2015, LOTWA established the current public charter school program that exists today, serving kindergarten through eighth graders. As a charter school, we are able to provide Livingston County students a unique option: a free Montessori-based education. 

Our Mission

Light of the World Academy will provide a Montessori-based education that follows the child’s individual growth intellectually, socially, emotionally, and physically by creating multi-age grouped classrooms that celebrate the learning process through independence, discovery, and exploration and provide a safe, peaceful, and respectful community that is grounded in service both locally and globally.

Our VISION

Our Vision is guided by these principles:

• Our educators and faculty are driven by personal relationships with students and their parents or caregivers. The teachers and administration will use a developmental lens to view every child's personality, confidence level, family circumstance, and learning style in order to best serve the individual learner. These relationships also help us to know when we as a community can come alongside the families that need or want our support.
  
• We provide a safe, positive, academic learning environment by validating every child’s personal learning style. As a result, each child will have his or her own learning plan to develop academic skills, self-esteem, and confidence levels.
• We equip children to maximize their academic potential through our instructional design and well-prepared classrooms. We believe the internal reward structures that result from a series of successes build self-motivated learners. By instilling in children the means and desire to learn independently, LOTWA creates a strong foundation for success at the high school and university level.
  
• We are committed to bringing to fruition the full potential of the whole child, and because of that, we maintain high moral standards in character education. We believe the core values of love, peace, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control develop a mindset of compassion and an active awareness of responsibility to one’s community. When students are fulfilled and teach one another, their social interactions become positive interactions.
  
• Our Montessori teaching methods are firmly rooted in individualized formative assessments and differentiation, so we maintain small class sizes and student-to-teacher ratios. We will therefore grow based on our ability to serve each child and family fully, and not seek growth for its own sake.
  
• We recognize and celebrate our role in the local and global community, seeing in both many opportunities to live out our values by serving others. Students, teachers and staff participate in local and international service projects that are integrated into classroom activities. We offer our physical building to the community as a safe and welcoming environment for social and civic activities, extracurricular clubs, fitness classes, educational outreach, and more. We will continue to be a warm home not only to our children, but also to their parents, grandparents, caregivers, and neighbors.
  

To learn more about the educational methods we employ, please visit our Montessori Philosophy page.