The Magic of Our Community

Student Buddies

We engage in community, foster relationship, and nurture the integral value of shared and varied perspective, through our pairing of students, old and young, to create school-wide Buddies.

Older buddies, 4th-12th grade students, and younger buddies, pre-K through 3rd grade, come together to play, laugh, and celebrate. During these times, the whole school is together for a shared experience across age barriers, developing a recognition of the value of intergenerational friendship and mentorship.

Campus Celebrations

During each of multiple celebrations, Odyssey students across the grades join for activities, games, and playing together.  This relationship provides a safe way for our younger students to explore each festival while inspiring older students to step into a role of responsibility and leadership.  Buddy relationships can be lifelong and inspire heart and smiles for all our students!

Celebrations include: First Day of School, Autumn Faire, Day of the Heart, May Day and Honoring Ceremonies. 

Student Impact

Preschool

Our preschool is very present in the school’s community. Students are leaders in their everyday routine with classroom jobs and leaders in the school community through a garden program, as they tend the soil, seed, and water plant starts that later become the seedlings. Pre-k students provide songs and skits in our campus festivals and celebrations.

Elementary

The elementary students are leaders in weekly centering practices, to include singing, freeze dances, silent walks and the sharing of their music and connection with the self, the sacred, and their learning family.

The 3rd and 4th grade classrooms create special spaces in the daily schedule for goal setting. Developmentally at this age, the students begin an awareness of their engagement with the six learning strands and they are encouraged to set goals that involve the community and citizenship.  Students work toward heroic achievements  that are exemplary acts of leadership, for themselves and for their community.

Middle School

As students enter middle school, leadership steps into the forefront of our education of the whole child. Social justice is a central theme in our middle journey and students engage in active citizenship, including leading school-wide debates, celebrations of independent research projects, developing a large-scale, inclusive projects for students to explore.

High School

In our students’ mature years at Odyssey School, they take their developing leadership to the next level: Odyssey School’s tradition of independent research projects, transform into sincere portfolios of example work.  In these projects, students approach their passions through a lens of entrepreneurship and sustainability.  They have the opportunity to volunteer and “way find” in the community, working through apprenticeships and internships, on their way to post-secondary education and adult life.  Students then lead in the field of their passions through public presentation,  and authorship.

See the Alumni Testimonial page to hear about the magic from the perspective of the students.

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