Winter Garden educator leads with purpose in new microschool

Winter Garden’s Lea Thompson recalled sitting in class during a math lesson in seventh grade at a new school.

She remembered seeing the problems the teacher was going over and thinking, “Is this a practice session? What is happening here?”

She already learned the material when she was in third grade. 

The teacher questioned her on how she already knew the lesson as she thought it was impossible for Thompson to have learned it in third grade. 

She said the teacher told her math builds on previous years’ lessons and skills and what she was teaching was more advanced. 

But Thompson was certain she already knew it. 

“She said to me, ‘Well, since you think you’re so smart, why don’t you just come into the front of the classroom so you can do the problem, and you can see that you had not done this before,’” Thompson said. “I went to the front of the class, and I indeed did the problems.”

In disbelief, the teacher gave Thompson a more difficult problem to solve.

Thompson solved it.

The teacher went across the hall to an eighth-grade class and grabbed a problem from a textbook in that class thinking Thompson couldn’t know the answer, because the current eighth-graders hadn’t covered the material.

Thompson solved it. 

The teacher sent Thompson to the principal’s office for being disrespectful. Thompson felt she was being punished for being smart because the school didn’t have the programs or resources to handle a gifted student. 

She never wanted a student to feel as she did as a gifted student in a school that wasn’t equipped to handle accelerated students, and she wanted to provide every student an individualized path to education so she created Purpose Prep Academy. 

Purpose Prep Academy is a K-8 student-centered STEAM- and project-based learning center that offers personalized curriculum. 

The academy, which meets at Waterleigh Phase I’s clubhouse three times per week, has 10 students with hopes of expanding to at least 25 students for the 2026-27 school year. Enrollment is open for the 2026 spring semester. 

Photo by Liz Ramos

Punished for being smart

Throughout her primary education, Thompson attended magnet schools in Chicago and had to be bused to other facilities to participate in programs that would challenge her academically. 

She was tested in kindergarten, and her parents were told she was gifted. 

She was given first-grade material. It was easy. 

She was given second-grade material. Again, it was easy. 

She was given third-grade material. Again, it was easy. 

But her mother did not want her skipping any other grades and missing out on the socialization of being with children her own age. 

So she stayed in a third-grade classroom, but she would be sent to a different school for reading and math through fourth grade. She remained at a school for fifth and sixth grades but once again had to change schools when her family moved in seventh grade. 

“That is when my life took a deep turn,” Thompson said. 

The incident with her seventh-grade math teacher frustrated and confused her. She couldn’t understand why her teacher didn’t believe she knew the material already. 

“I just remember crying, and I was telling my mom I hate that school, and I didn’t want to go back there,” Thompson said. 

She was 11 years old in seventh grade, but her school wanted to put her in high school. Her mother objected. 

Thompson had to continue to leave school every day to go to Chicago Urban League or Chicago State University to take classes as a middle-schooler. She spent her summers as a middle school student attending college classes. 

“I don’t think I ever found a fit for me, and I more or less felt punished for being smart, because the schools weren’t prepared to handle my education,” Thompson said. “I loved learning; I just hated school, which turned into the premise of what I built for the kids that I have now (at Purpose Prep Academy). I don’t want them ever coming to where we are and saying, ‘Oh my God, I hate it here. Oh my God, what time is it? Oh my God, when can we go home?’”

A new path

Thompson didn’t always have her eyes set on being a teacher. 

In fact, she dreamed of attending Michigan State or Iowa State and becoming an electrical engineer, but her high school counselor dashed her dreams. The counselor told her because she was a girl and Black, she never would be able to become an electrical engineer.

“I don’t think (the counselor) knew how much that shattered me,” Thompson said. “At that moment, I didn’t know what else to do in my life, because that was the only thing I had ever wanted to do.”

Thompson was determined to be the first in her family to attend and graduate college. Despite people in her life telling her to graduate high school, learn a trade and get a job, she knew there was more life could offer.

Thompson whipped out a phone book and looked up the closest college to her home. She marched into the counselor’s office at Chicago State University and asked for guidance on how to enroll. 

“I remember the day I walked out of there, and I was walking across back to the bus stop dancing and flipping in the park,” she said.

She went on to earn a degree in communications and work for CDW. 

While working for CDW and volunteering with Girl Scouts in 2005, Thompson was reminded of the challenges she faced as a student. She wanted the Girl Scouts to be exposed to various career paths that she wasn’t shown in her youth. 

That sparked an idea.

She wanted to start a STEM school, but it wasn’t the time.

Photo by Liz Ramos

Leading with purpose

In March 2024, Thompson registered Purpose Prep Academy as a business and started looking for a location for the school in Winter Garden. 

The name of the school stems from Thompson’s belief that everyone’s life has purpose, and children should be able to think about what they like or don’t like, discover passions and think about what career they want to pursue at an early age. 

She wanted to help students avoid getting to college where they are spending thousands of dollars without knowing what they want to do in life. 

The idea of being purposeful is tied weekly into her students’ curriculum at Purpose Prep Academy. They spend an elective hour each week doing separate electives that are meaningful to them rather than in traditional schools where students typically go to art, gym and music. 

“They’re all doing separate electives based on what lights them up, what fills their soul,” she said. “The vision and the mission of the school is to nurture themselves, helping them be independent and bring out whatever qualities they have to be leaders and change makers in this world.”

Purpose Prep Academy is a hybrid program until Thompson can find a more permanent location for the school. It also offers an online program and tutoring. 

The school provides a STEAM-rich curriculum, using Imagine Learning for reading and math to provide personalized curriculum. The assessments will determine where a student is academically and help students either progress to where they should be to fill educational gaps or provide curriculum if they are accelerated. 

The science curriculum is a mixture of what Thompson has created as well as Mystery Science or Generation Genius. 

The school also has project-based learning culminating all of the subjects students have learned. 

Students also learn whatever language they desire, whether it’s Dutch, French, Creole or another language. 

To ensure students are supported, Thompson will do mini lessons where she pulls students into small groups for lessons. She and her co-teacher, Nadine Paul, also will provide one-on-one assistance. 

“I took the best parts of school and I mixed them with the best parts of independent learning,” Thompson said.