““Our task is to help children communicate with the world using all their potential strengths and languages, and to overcome any obstacle presented by our culture.”
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Our mission and vision
Pando’s mission is to nurture and strengthen children’s innate capacity for joy. Our vision is for every child to grow up rooted in joy, resilience, and a deep sense of belonging.
Our values
Pando is a values-lead school. Everything we do - from our curriculum to our classroom environment to our relationships with one another - is informed by what we hold dear. Be centering our values, we are able to achieve our mission of fortifying children’s capacity for joy. We’ve distilled our values down to five:
Belonging
Humility
Balance
Curiosity
Joy
Belonging
“A generous heart is always open, always ready to receive our going and coming. In the midst of such love we need never fear abandonment. This is the most precious gift true love offers - the experience of knowing we always belong.”
— bell hooks
We value creating and nurturing spaces where every individual feels seen, accepted, and connected—where differences are embraced and everyone knows they matter. Pando is a place where children can show up as themselves, feel empowered to take appropriate risks, and are surrounded by caring adults who create a safe container in which children can explore.We listen to children, treat them with respect, and reciprocating their joy. Through authentic relationships, teachers, children, and parents develop a nuanced understanding of one another, enabling teachers to create a welcoming and inclusive experience for every child.
Humility
"All streams flow to the ocean because it is lower than they are. Humility gives it its power."
- Lao Tzu
We value embracing a mindset of openness, self-awareness, and respect—recognizing our own limitations, appreciating others' strengths, and always staying willing to learn and grow.
Humaning is complex and humbling work - ask any parent, teacher, or young child. Just when you think you’ve got it all figure out, life inevitably throws you a curveball. Humility is the mindset that helps you transform those curveballs into wisdom, and extend grace to others when they encounter their own challenges. Teachers at Pando model and encourage humility through perspective taking, personal reflection, and empathy.
Balance
“The rule is to carry as little as possible.”
- Henry David Thoreau
We value prioritizing harmony between competing needs, ideas, and responsibilities—honoring both ambition and rest, self and others, structure and flexibility—in order to foster sustainable growth and well-being.
Our world can move pretty quick. In order to care for ourselves and model a humane path through life for our children, Pando champions balance. Balance, or harmony, is a fundamental human need: We’re wired to seek an ideal level of stimulation, feel the itch of cognitive dissonance when our actions and our beliefs are misaligned. Nothing brings about more bliss than a moment where we feel balanced.
Curiosity
“The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.”
- Henry Miller
We value encouraging a mindset of wonder, exploration, and a desire to understand—seeing questions as powerful tools for growth and learning.
Teachers listen and observe keenly to determine children's interests, and use those interests as a jumping-off point for our classroom's dynamic curriculum. Parents and teachers are invited to wonder alongside children, often coming to our own discoveries about the human experience.
Joy
“Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually.”
- Richard Louv
We value recognizing and prioritizing the importance of delight, playfulness, and emotional well-being—seeing joy not as a luxury, but as a vital part of a full and healthy life.
The gift children give to us is their capacity to model a deep, intuitive attunement to joy. And the gift we adults give to them in return, is holding space for children as they practice this most important human emotion.
