Academic Mission— Spanish Mandarin Academy is a private day school that offers all the benefits of a FULL Montessori education for Pre-school through first grade (ages 2-6) in our Beverly Hills campus, and the highest quality college-preparatory education for grades two and up in our West Los Angeles campus. We offer this superb education in a rich, multicultural environment. The faculty at SMA believe that children flourish when offered the opportunity to approach education from diverse and challenging angles. We are here to provide that opportunity.


Philosophy—The philosophy of the Spanish Mandarin Academy is to provide a rich, nurturing environment conducive to fostering the growth of children and to smoothing the transition into competent and responsible adulthood. We believe in instilling in the child a fascination for learning and an ability to reason clearly. The Academy’s program encourages students to develop character, self-confidence, creativity and imagination as well as skills in critical thinking, citizenship and decision-making. In addition, we hold as a major goal to expand the child’s awareness of cultures different from his own. We achieve this goal not only through immersion in the languages they are taught, but also through their exposure and involvement in the richly varied ethnicities of our students.


History— Spanish Mandarin Academy was founded by Vilma Montalvo with the help of a small group of parents who recognized the need for a higher quality education for their children as well as the need to expose them to a higher variety of cultures than their small ethnically homogenous neighborhood offered. Fueled by the desire to offer what no other school does, high-quality education and full immersion in the three most widely spoken languages in the world, Spanish Mandarin Academy opened its doors and has continued to grow at an exponential rate ever since.


Multi-culturalism— The Academy not only offers education in three languages, but also a richly multi-cultural environment. Our diversity policy allows our students an opportunity to appreciate all the cultures of their classmates. Students of the Academy thus become citizens of the world.


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