Martin Luther King said, “character plus intelligence equals true education.” Glendale Academy believes in the holistic development of its students by Cultivating both Character and Competence. With the belief in creating intrinsic self-discipline & self-regulation, Glendale has a sound pedagogy to support this conscious discipline with a culture of RRC-Respect, Responsibility and Cooperation, Leader in Me and integrating the UN SDGs into its curriculum.

Leader in Me helps students to develop self-disciplined practices that will help them throughout all aspects of life. Based on Stephen Covey’s bestselling book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, it teaches students to gain self-mastery and to effectively manage relationships for mutual benefit.

The students of Glendale reached out to a nearby government school and shared the 7 Habits in their vernacular language and volunteered to aesthetically facelift their premises with the underlying intention to help empower less-fortunate students. Glendale students also wanted to build a playground another govt. school and a letter of undertaking for the project was handed over to the representatives by Mr. Sean Covey, President of Franklin Covey Education, on behalf of Glendale.  Sean said that he had visited hundreds of schools worldwide and he found that Glendale was at par with the best schools in the world! Glendale is in the process of becoming certified as the first accredited Lighthouse School in India by Franklin Covey. Covey impressed with the initiatives Glendale, claimed it as a ‘model Lighthouse school.’

During the pandemic, Glendale had started a SEL wellness formula called Whole Person Approach designed by Director, Anjum Babukhan wherein students had to keep track of how the implemented daily acts of kindness as a means of cultivating the Heart Domain for exceeded periods so that it becomes habitual. The tagline of Glendale inspired by the law of harvest goes thus, “Sow an Action, Reap a Habit, Sow a Character, Reap a Destiny.”

Glendale was also the first school in the country to incorporate the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in its curriculum. As a part of the UNSDGs, the students at Glendale have conducted various socially useful initiatives such as a lake cleaning drive, an e-waste collection drive, sapling planting drive, among others. Glendale also has a policy of assigning students to track food wastage in the cafeteria and make a note of how many hungry mouths the wasted amount could have fed encouraging students to be more empathetic and proactive towards uplifting the impoverished. Glendale also has an initiative of a Fistful of Rice wherein students donated this food staple to feed the poor as part of UN SDG “Zero Hunger.”

Every year on Thanksgiving, students voluntarily donate to benefit the support staff and this year they initiated a fundraiser event called Glen Spirit. Such initiatives instill kindness, and every act of kindness creates an endless ripple in the world to make it a better place. Character counts indeed!

Also read: Glendale Academy: Learning for life, not just school