Lotus Preparatory: a Thai-curriculum partnership

Why this partnership was different

Lotus Preparatory runs a Thai-curriculum primary program. Most SEL materials arrive in English. The question we had to answer together was not “does this translate?” — it was “what parts should we not translate?”

What we kept

• The feelings vocabulary structure, rebuilt with Thai-native picture-book anchors.
• The regulation practices, adapted so they don’t require sitting apart from the group.
• The teacher coaching model.

What we rebuilt

The repair scripts. Direct apologies land differently in Thai classrooms. We co-designed softer-first-move scripts with Lotus teachers — more face-saving, more collective, still precise.

Outcomes

After one year, teacher-confidence scores rose from 54% to 86%. Regulation incidents dropped modestly (18%) — a smaller but real shift. The bigger change was cultural: staff meetings and parent conferences now draw on the same vocabulary.