Mission & History
Located in the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles, Our Lady of the Angels Academy provides a traditional Catholic education to children within a seventy-mile radius. These students, many of whom sacrifice tremendously in order to continue receiving the invaluable private formation that the academy offers, would otherwise be left without local equivalent options. The school's founder, Father Charles J. Ward, envisioned an elementary school untouched by the godless ideas and distractions of modern society. What other elementary school in California focuses on the greatest possible good for the children who attend it, religious instruction? With a firm basis in the Catholic Faith as taught by the Church Fathers and Spanish missionaries who baptized the region, the school gives its members a holy joy greater than what any other elementary school in the state can provide. One only has to look at the numerous plaques earned by the eighth grade classes year after year for victory in the National Religion Exam to realize the ardor with which the truth is given by teachers and cherished by students. Your support means more than sponsoring a graduate; it promotes the growth of young souls and furthers the noble cause for saints. Certainly, your generosity is an investment in the spiritual wealth of the Church and assurance of prayers of gratitude from the hearts closest to God. By performing this immense act of charity, you share in the spirit fostered at Our Lady of the Angels, continuing the Catholic lineage of our shared California history. This is your part of engaging in today's struggle against evil by enabling a priceless education for Our Lady's favorites.
Mission and Philosophy
Our Lady of the Angels Academy provides children with a thorough Catholic education founded upon traditional principles. The school strives ultimately to form good Catholic citizens, men and women willing and able to work for the restoration of all things in Christ, freely submitting to the reign of Our Lord in the spiritual, moral, intellectual, and physical realms.
The Catholic school exists to cultivate a soil in which the Faith and the love of God might grow. The teachers at Our Lady of the Angels Academy serve this end by helping form in the child lasting qualities of the mind and heart through exposure to the true, the good, and the beautiful across the entire curriculum. In the study of literature and the humanities, they reveal to the child the nobility of the human soul, which is ever thirsting for the absolute, and all their effort as teachers is to awaken this same thirst in the child's own soul. Throughout the various disciplines, they draw the child to rectify and strengthen his natural faculties in harmony with his created good so that he might have the desire and the strength to embrace, freely and with confidence, the supreme Good, God Himself.
Learning is a profoundly human process, one best accomplished through patient, qualitative drawing out, rather than a mechanistic, quantitative filling up. Although, the school will strive continuoulsy to provide teachers and students with the best possible tools and resources in terms of texts and an integrated curriculum, it will be the obvious love which the teacher has for the subject matter, his mastery of it, and his talent in communicating that knowledge and love, which will spark a fire in the children, fostering in them a lifelong love of learning.
History
The school's founder, Father Charles J. Ward, was the academy's first principal.
As had always been the vision of Monsignor Charles P. Donahue, who was responsible for acquiring the church property, the prior of Our Lady of the Angels Church, Father Charles J. Ward, deemed it a fitting time to open a school for the education of children. After devoting extensive thought and research to the logistical, legal, financial, and material requirements for the establishment of a school, Father Ward gathered a group of capable and willing teachers from the parish. It was because of his tremendous leadership, organization, and patience that the school changed from a dream to reality in September of 1997, with twenty-one students. His example of dedication to further the glory of God enabled the school to grow every year, developing the curriculum and admitting new pupils as time went on. The legacy of the school and the formative tradition from which our children benefit today originate from the Marian-inspired selflessness of Father Ward. Our Lady of the Angels Academy has since won first place in the Society of Saint Pius X Eight Grade National Religion Exam a total of ten years, an accomplishment that would have never been possible were it not for the academy's founder.