I love this school! When my daughter was in second grade, she was enrolled in public school. On her days off, she would come to Orchard School with her enrolled friend and would participate in one of the many festive activities celebrated here or to help out in her friend's class. She absolutely loved it! In fourth grade, we enrolled her at Orchard! The staff treat the students with respect instead of treating them in a "one down" manner. They see the children as people who just haven't been on the planet as long and need help understanding what appropriate behavior and rules need to be followed.
As far as academics are concerned, I was thrilled with the "hands on" and critical thinking approach methods employed here. My daughter kept telling me "how meaningful school is now." In Math, the children learned several ways to solve problems and did many activities that showed how to use math in everyday life. In Science, the children are required to learn how to present a science project as if it were going to be presented at the science fair. They had to have a hypothesis, an experiment, do some research, keep a lab book, and present the results of their project. Science homework was fun for me too. Finally, the Social Studies and Language Arts class was what really sold me on how wonderful this school is educationally. My daughter always hated social studies and reading and grammar. However, here at Orchard her teacher, Rob Owens, made the writing and reading assignments interesting. He also had the kids outside recreating the living conditions of early Jamestown in small groups. The kids had to find the materials on the school property and follow careful directions about what needed to be included. He had the children learn about the different points of view in history, including the points of view not represented in the text books. The 5 and 6th graders absolutely loved this! I worked in the classroom and would often hear the kids during recess or after school still talking about what they now knew or understood about history. One boy stated, "Boy, they really got that Disney Pocahontas movie wrong!" My daughter stayed up late reading books that she would never have read if they weren't assigned. She also learned how to write. In fact, her oral book report presentation turned into a mini essay.
She graduated this last June and is now going to Middle School. She misses Orchard daily! She feels prepared for Middle School because "of everything I learned when going to Orchard!" On her first holiday off of Middle School, she and her friend, a fellow Orchard graduate, came back to Orchard to work in the classroom with the little kids because they miss the school so much! My husband and I are still sad to have left the wonderful Orchard community, but are so grateful to have found them and to have participated when we did. read more
