It is our policy that children and adolescents may not wear clothing or backpacks and lunchboxes that display large logos, brand-name, or images from for-profit entities such as commercial cartoon characters. Character and logo-free clothing help support our children’s concentration and focus.

Our goal is to create a non-commercialized environment for our children. We are fostering an environment where we minimize outside distractions and pull for their attention, allowing the child’s imagination and creativity to take root without having to compete with the powerful call of the modeling of these commercial images and stories.

Our commitment is to creating prepared environments for optimal learning, exploration, creativity, and discovery. A child’s concentration is initially fragile, needing care and protection to develop and strengthen. Concentration, when cultured and grown, is what allows the child to focus on big work, think through problems, find creative solutions, and build both knowledge and understanding.

We must remember that for some children, concentration and focus are a tiny little seed that is just starting to take root. Any distraction – any excuse to think of Pokemon, Frozen, SpongeBob or some other commercially created character – will pull them away from building the neurological connections they are forging each time they concentrate deeply. While the imaginative or creative play connected to such characters may seem like a positive, it is actually a significant interruption that can profoundly interfere with children’s focus and learning at school.

Parents, grandparents, and caregivers can help us build and preserve the children’s focus. Please send children to school with character-free clothing, shoes, backpacks, lunch boxes, thermoses, water bottles, bedding (for nappers), etc. We also ask that shoes not have lights on them, as these are very distracting: many of our students are working on the floor, so every time the light-up shoes walk by, their attention is pulled from their work.

Please help us cherish and nurture concentration to help it propagate and flourish!