About Us

Our History

The Ashton School was founded in 1998 inspired by the ideals, methods and techniques of Sylvia Ashton. It was created as a family project, with just a house as a facility, less than ten teachers and thirty-five students from kindergarten to third grade. With a noticeable growing tendency , each year a new grade was added, until the initial pre-kindergarten level, was opened on the year 2003. The School operation has been so effective that both the number of students and teachers has increased considerably: today we have fifty-five teachers, in addition to thirty-five administrative clerks.

At the present time we have three hundred and seventy-three students, an increase of approximately 966% compared to the beginning, and with the expectation of further development, therefore for the school year 2007-2008 the planning of opening grades from ninth to twelfth is on project, adding a new grade each year.

Keeping the harmony with the growing population of students and staff we have also been adding physical space: after the third year of operations we added a second building for classrooms and administrative offices, a basketball court and a swimming pool, three years later we acquired another adjacent property and build a new basketball court and gained space to relocate the offices, as well as create new access from other routes to the school improving and organizing the flow of people to the institution.

Our slogan, printed on the school logo, "Roots to grow and wings to achieve goals," transmits meaningful values to all members of the Ashton's educational family and clearly illustrates our goal: to educate and create valuables men and women through a quality education.

Biography of Sylvia Ashton

The school name was given in honor of the great educator from New Zealand, Sylvia Ashton, who dedicated part of her life to the education of girls and boys, teaching English as a second language, while respecting and maintaining their cultural identities.

Sylvia Ashton Warner was born in 1908 in Stratford, New Zealand, into a family of nine children; her childhood was marked by extreme poverty and interrupted schooling.

Ashton was a teacher in Wellington on 1926 (18 years) and on 1928 entered the "Auckland Teacher's College. She married in 1931 and had 3 children. She worked with her husband in several schools, focusing all her life to the education and to teach English to students whose native language was different, reason why Sylvia Ashton is considered a pioneer in bilingual education.

Within her greatest virtues is the fact of recognizing that each person has a special meaning and value and from this virtue she obtained her enjoyment and sense of responsibility towards the education of girls and boys.

After her husband's death in 1969, she accepted the invitation to be part as an advisor of a school in Colorado. She taught at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. She wrote many books on education, being "Teacher" (1963), the one among her best.