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Imparting

Knowledge & Virtue

fter years of providing quality education and character
development through weekly Tzu Chi Academies and
Aprograms in conjunction with other schools, Tzu Chi’s
Mission of Education reached a major milestone in 2006: the first
Great Love Preschool & Kindergarten.
On September 12, 2006, this first school opened in Monrovia,
California. It was followed two years later by Dallas Tzu Chi Great
Love Preschool & Kindergarten in Richardson, Texas. In 2013, the
third location opened in Walnut, California, with another following
in Houston, Texas, one year later. The first Tzu Chi Great Love
Elementary School opened just a few blocks from the Monrovia
preschool in 2010.
Each of these preschool, kindergarten, and elementary schools
offers bilingual education in English and Mandarin Chinese while
enriching young students’ knowledge through a multicultural
education. The goal is to educate the whole person by teaching
character and morals. Parents joyfully witness their children
become more polite, more empathetic, and consistently willing to
help the environment by recycling.
One mother of a Dallas preschool student noted that even
within a month her son was reminding her not to waste water.
Another student asked his mother to carry a reusable bag with
her to the supermarket to save plastic bags. These children truly
internalize Tzu Chi’s humanistic education.

Throughout the country, Tzu Chi Academies also seize every
opportunity to impart these kinds of lessons. For instance, before
Halloween, Tzu Chi Academy teachers in New Jersey, New York,
Seattle, San Francisco, Southern California, and other locations
have encouraged students and parents to utilize recycled materials
or secondhand clothing to make their costumes as a creative
method of actualizing the philosophy of cherishing resources and
protecting our environment.
During the 2009 Send Love to South Africa book donation
drive, Tzu Chi Academy students nationwide collected three
times as many new and used books, stationery items, and toys as
they had during the same project several years earlier. Packaged
together with cards handwritten by the students, the goods

1 0 6 Tzu Chi uSA WiNTER 2014