Lower School

“Students are not a vessel to be filled but a lamp to be lighted” are words read by all who enter The Lamplighter School.

The School’s teaching philosophy is encapsulated in this simple but powerful metaphor. Lamplighter does not merely fill students’ heads with facts but teaches students how to question, find information, and think critically. Students are confident and respect differences of opinion.  Lamplighter values integrated thinking. The school’s program helps students make connections between ideas, connect their ideas with the real world, and understand those connections through personal experiences.

The Lamplighter School educational program in Lower School promotes academic excellence through an innovative curriculum that nurtures and cultivates the potential of each child. It provides opportunities for children to explore their world in a safe, nurturing, and engaging environment, where they can touch, examine, feel, manipulate, pick up, and poke everything around them. Children construct an understanding of their world by formulating hypotheses, generating plans, and shaping their own conclusions.

Lamplighter teachers work in partnerships and teams to deliver a curriculum that is creative in experience, comprehensive in affect, and flexible in response to the unique needs of their students. Each area of study integrates content and know-how from the entirety of the curriculum to create real-world products and lasting, powerful shared experiences. 

The fourth-grade year at Lamplighter (our “seniors”) is the capstone of the Lamplighter program, encouraging students to apply skills, strategies, and enthusiasm built and sharpened over the seven years of the program. The senior year offers time to solidify skills in leadership, responsibility, entrepreneurships and problem-solving. The student-written Senior Opera provides experience in composition, cooperation, drama, and music skills. The overnight trip to Austin is a lesson in social studies, cooperation, Spanish, composition, and reading.  Civics, responsibility, and empathy skills are fostered in the student-run corporation, Lamplighter Layers.  And students learn time management, public speaking, creativity, and problem-solving as interviewers and broadcasters in our Flash news broadcasts.  These and many other programs like them help all our students become confident, compassionate citizens of their community.