At Bonnie Cone Leadership Academy, education is about more than academic achievement. We seek to educate the whole child, helping students grow in knowledge and intellectual ability while developing the habits of character that allow them to live thoughtful, responsible, and fulfilling lives.
Classical education has long understood these habits of excellence as virtues. Virtues such as wisdom, courage, honesty, friendship, humility, perseverance, responsibility, integrity, and citizenship help students learn not simply what they should know, but how they should live.
We want our students to learn to recognize what is true, choose what is good, appreciate what is beautiful, and increasingly put those things into practice.
Virtue Is Woven Into the School Day
At Bonnie Cone, virtue is not confined to a separate character lesson or program. It is woven through the curriculum and the daily life of the school.
Students encounter questions of courage, justice, friendship, honesty, loyalty, responsibility, and wisdom in the stories they read and the history they study. Teachers invite students to think carefully about the choices of literary and historical figures and about what those choices reveal about human beings and the good life.
Those same conversations continue beyond academic lessons. Students practice virtue in the way they speak to classmates, respond to difficulty, care for their school, play and compete, accept correction, fulfill their responsibilities, and contribute to their community.
Our approach: Virtue is learned through study, conversation, example, practice, and habit.
Our Core Virtues
Citizenship
Acting for the good of the community.
Courage
Showing strength in the face of fear, difficulty, or uncertainty.
Friendship
Seeking what is good for others and treating them with kindness and respect.
Honesty
Speaking and acting truthfully.
Humility
Recognizing that we still have much to learn and putting others before ourselves.
Integrity
Doing what is right because it is right, not simply because of the consequences.
Perseverance
Continuing in a worthy task even when it is difficult.
Responsibility
Faithfully fulfilling our obligations to ourselves and others.
Wisdom
Learning to recognize what is true and choose what is good.
Learning to Live Well
The classical tradition understands education as a process of formation. Children develop through repeated practice: learning to listen carefully, speak truthfully, persist when work is difficult, treat others justly, take responsibility for mistakes, and make increasingly wise choices.
As students mature, these habits are joined by greater intellectual understanding. They begin not simply to practice good habits, but to consider deeper questions:
- What does justice require?
- What makes an action courageous?
- What do I owe my friends and my community?
- What does it mean to live well?
- How can I know what is true?
- What makes something good or beautiful?
In this way, intellectual development and character formation reinforce one another.
Teachers as Models
Character formation cannot happen through books and lessons alone. Teachers help establish a culture in which students experience intellectual honesty, fairness, courage, responsibility, friendship, humility, and a genuine love of learning. Through instruction, expectations, encouragement, correction, and example, teachers help students practice these habits for themselves.
A Partnership With Families
Families are a child’s first and most important teachers. The school therefore approaches the formation of character as a partnership with parents.
We invite families to continue conversations about virtue at home, talk about the books and historical figures students encounter at school, celebrate examples of good character, and help children learn from moments when they fall short.
Our aim is not perfection. It is growth: helping children gradually develop the habits, judgment, self-knowledge, and love of what is good that prepare them to flourish as adults.