School-wide Theme

Each school year since 2000-2001, our faculty and students come together across grade levels to explore a school-wide theme with our extended community. Launched each fall, the annual theme serves as a way to re-imagine and re-interpret longstanding curricular units. The theme is incorporated into curriculum through classroom projects, the arts, and athletics.

Our 2026-2027 school wide theme is a simple but bold word: INNOVATE. In our classrooms, this brings a fresh energy to the way we discover, collaborate, and learn. The Willows Center of Arts and Innovation will be creating spaces where curiosity is celebrated, unique ideas are shared, and every child feels empowered to create and lead.

Picture of IMPACT display at the front desk at The Willows, a private school in Los Angeles

Past Themes

2025-2026

Our 2025-2026 school wide theme was STRUGGLE. To struggle is to face challenges to achieve growth, progress, and true learning. We will encourage our students to embrace struggles with optimism and the expectancy of growth accentuating that struggle is not always a negative experience but a steppingstone to growth. Struggle develops problem-solving, deep learning skills, and a growth mindset. Our school-wide theme will be incorporated into our curriculum as our teaches share the positive effects of struggle and perseverance. Poet Robert Frost stated, “The best way out is always through.” Hard work, accepting challenges, and resilience can lead to amazing accomplishments.

2024-2025

Our 2024-2025 school wide theme was HOPE, which has been a call to action for our school as we celebrated our 30-year anniversary. Our community today echoes the strength and “can-do” spirit of our first community of founders that banded together to achieve the impossible and opened The Willows in record time. Hope is the driving force behind everything we do. Our school credo: all things are possible places emphasis on hope and optimism. Our students and community embraced the optimistic nature of hope deeply knowing that with diligence and conviction they will reach their dreams. By providing teacher guidance and fostering a sense of ownership, we cultivated learning experiences that empowered our students to envision a brighter future and inspire resilience and positivity in the face of challenges. Together, we believe that with hope as our guide, every student can make a positive impact on the world.

2023-2024

Our 2023-2024 school-wide theme was STRENGTH! The many definitions of strength, both mental and physical–firmness, durability, power–was integrated into curriculum across disciplines. Together we investigated mental, physical, and scientific strength and the aspects of struggle that lead to strength, as well as how to create and develop strength. We encouraged our students to believe in themselves and their personal strength as we examined strength of character, the strength to be yourself, the strength to take appropriate risks, the strength to say “no,” and the strength it takes to be upstanders.

2022-2023

Our 2022-2023 school-wide theme was IMPACT! Defined as having “a marked effect or influence,” impact was integrated into curriculum as together we investigated how we might embrace “impact” and explored the impact on the environment, the social emotional nature of impact, and impact on all disciplines. We encouraged our students to believe in themselves, their ideas, and their voices, and recognize the impact they have in their daily lives at The Willows and in the future of our nation and global society.

2021-2022

Our 2021-2022 school-wide theme was DREAM, which was selected by our students during our 2020 study of the election process to parallel the 2020 elections in our nation and bring voting, elections, and the democratic process to life for our students. We explored how to use our imagination and dream while also focusing on the work that must be done to achieve our dreams. Dream related directly to our school credo: all things are possible.

2020-2021

Our 2020-2021 school-wide theme was ILLUMINATE which lit up our year with optimism and a bright outlook. We spotlighted our students, cast a light on topics to gain new perspectives, and dug deep to enlighten ourselves, and brighten the world around us. “Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness,” wrote Anne Frank whose words speak directly to our world today.

2019-2020

In honor of our 25th Anniversary and in honor of our founders, we brought back the inaugural 2000-2001 school-wide theme "The Ties that Bind Us" as our 2019-2020 school-wide theme. Since 1994, our ties have been strong, uniting all of us through the years. We celebrated our ties to each other, to our unique educational program, to our traditions, innovations, and our phenomenal progress. Our students explored their individuality as well as their ties to our community, family, city, state, and the world around us. As a school, we closely looked at our cross-disciplinary, integrated learning and the ties that bind all subjects.

2018-2019

The 2018-2019 school-wide theme was "Story." The theme of story was incorporated into curriculum in numerous ways as we investigated how each of us has our own personal narrative, how stories enhance empathy and understanding, and how stories passed down create history. Story has a natural relationship to language arts, reading, and the library but also to each discipline including word problems in math, the story of a science experiment, an athletic team's story each season, and the story of a work of art or a piece of music.