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Welcome

Welcome to the Wild Oak community, opening Fall 2021 on the campus of the Kellogg Center in Henderson County, NC. 

Our mission is simple yet ambitious: to bring joy to learning and learning to life.

Wild Oak School will engage students in a relationship with learning that will help them grow for a lifetime. We will do this by intentionally building a community of trust and belonging, a culture of joy and curiosity, bridging connections to the wider world, and offering opportunities to develop character.

Vision for our Families

Our vision is to send a community of lifelong learners from Henderson County out into the world who will share their unique combinations of skills, aptitudes, and interests to lead authentic, fulfilling, and productive lives, and to engage with society in an authentic and meaningful way.

Our Founding Beliefs

We believe that the Wild Oak school model will improve the school experience for many children by being:

  1. Attuned to the “whole child” in both theory and practice
  2. Small enough to allow for deeper relationships between teachers and students, and to provide students with consistent personal attention
  3. Housed within a nimble organizational structure that can be responsive to both emergent situations and good ideas
  4. Reflective of the most current research and expertise in child development and educational pedagogy
  5. Cognizant and celebratory of diversity of all kinds, with efforts to: 
    • Recognize and grow in appreciation of diversity all kinds; from racial, ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic; to the neuro-diverse; to children with atypical backgrounds or traumatic life experiences
    • Use trauma-sensitive practices, positive discipline, non-violent communication, and restorative models to build transparency, trust, and accountability within the classroom and larger Wild Oak community
    • Differentiate pedagogical approaches, lesson plans, and individual assignments to reflect students’ myriad types of intelligence, learning styles, interests, and individual goals
  6. Focused on academic, social, emotional, and other developmental goals set by the student in concert with their teachers and families through portfolios and alternate assessments, rather than standardized testing
  7. A collective effort embracing all the important people in a child’s life: parents or guardians, teachers, and outside healthcare and wellness professionals
  8. Based in play—particularly at the younger ages
  9. Inclusive of significant amounts of both structured and unstructured time in the outdoors
  10. Interdisciplinary and reflective of “core competencies” and literacies crucial in the modern world
  11. Oriented around hands-on, experiential, and project-based learning 
  12. Welcoming of hard questions about societal issues that our children will face in their lifetimes, such as climate change and global warming, social and economic justice, and globalization.