Learning for Ages 13-18

What if secondary schooling invited learners to experience themselves more deeply, to recognize their native gifts and safely explore their challenges?

What if middle and high school academic studies were enlivened with relevancy, discovery, and wonder?

Smaller class sizes encourage the development of authentic, life-long friendships, & offer a sense of belonging that provides a safe space for personal development

Liberal Arts

LORE presents classical liberal arts & academics through a cycle of 4 week thematic blocks that create a holistic, contextualized understanding of each theme, while challenging students to expand and deepen their capacities for critical thinking, analysis, observation of phenomena & research. Natural Sciences, Geometry & Math, Literature, History, Humanities are offered via multi-modal learning methods that celebrate the strengths & engage the growing edges of each learner’s capacities. Oral presentations, the creation of a hand written & illustrated ‘text book’ for the topic, field work, demonstrations, labs & active learning, are important components of each thematic academic topic. Interdisciplinary connections emerge naturally as each theme unfolds.

Living Arts

LORE offers an experience of fine, traditional, performing, & farm arts through its cycle of 4 week, Living Arts themes. Theater, music, 2 dimensional & 3 dimensional fine art, ceramics, printmaking, basketry, bookmaking, woodcarving, carpentry, boat building, biodynamic agriculture, permaculture, sacred/ceremonial arts & more are part of the curricular cycle. Living Arts is intended to inspire a refined sense of beauty & aesthetics, encourage an appreciation & ability to participate in performing arts & storytelling, & to develop a comprehensive, applied knowledge of traditional craft, food, folk & farm-ways

Open Source Learning

LORE provides an ‘open source’, free-choice framework to engage group and individual special interests or curiosities. Content themes are student-determined & using sociocratic processes, are selected from a variety of topics offered by LORE or SOLA faculty, or from a student-generated list of new topics proposed by students. Each theme is engaged in a 4-8 week cycle, or potentially longer with a transition to an internship. Each cycle also includes individual ‘each one, teach one’ sessions, wherein students themselves are given an opportunity to showcase or teach their own well-honed skills, knowledge or talents with their peers & community. Past open source themes have included: blacksmithing, construction, parkour, studio arts, dance, cooking, yoga, veterinary care, boat building, kayaking, game creation lab, media studies, sewing, hiking & orienteering & more.

Relational Arts

LORE is committed to the creation, preservation & nurturance of authentic relationships with oneself, others & the wider world. Relational Arts engages contemplative, active, individual & group activities that bring adolescents into deeper understanding of how our relationships create a sense of meaning, purpose & belonging. These qualities merge to create a resilience & courage that are essential in our ever-evolving, ever-changing Earth & Cosmos. Relational Arts themes include: developing a personal contemplative practice, communication & Sociocratic skills, identity/ancestral/gender mysteries, interpersonal relationships, & the cultivation of reverence & wonder for the whole of Earth’s living community. Relational Arts learning cycles culminate with domestic or international adventure trips, where the studnet’s skills are put into practice through an encounter with the wider world.

Ecological Service & Stewardship

LORE- learners engage service and stewardship as a form of ‘ecological participation’ - in other words, as the actions of the self reciprocating what is given or provided by ‘the whole’. This realm of LORE learning includes service & stewardship of the natural world, our campus, caring for or serving one’s human community, caring for the animals, & more. Group service projects & stewardship, as well as individual internships & apprenticeships with change-makers in our own and the greater community offer students an imagination of how an individual or an organization can willfully co-create a more just, sustainable, humane, & beautiful world. Service & stewardship at LORE can also reveal new passions oriented around serving something greater than oneself, & provides students with an experience of vocations or organizations that are oriented around creating a more positive, humane, & conscious transformation of our world.

Click to view a sample Schedule

LORE’-learning takes place in a Nature Sanctuary where water, soil, plants, animals, & human beings are given an opportunity to thrive & evolve. LORE's biologically compassionate start-time (9:00am) provides space for the rest and nourishment that is so needed during adolescent development.

LORE School offers Living, Ontological, Relational, Experiential learning for adolescents ages 13-18 years.

Through an extended morning & afternoon Thematic Lesson period, LORE students are invited to dive deeply into Liberal & Living Arts themes, including Sciences, Math, History, and Humanities, 2d & 3d fine art, theater & music, handicrafts,, wildcrafts, and farm, food & folkways. Open Source learning sessions invite students to select and design content, explore curiosities - and even step into the role of teacher to showcase or teach a skill or talent to others! Through Relational Arts, students cultivate meaningful and abiding relationships with self, others & the wider world, including group adventures to domestic and international venues. Ecological stewardship and service are essential in LORE’s learning culture, providing a sense of fulfillment that can only derive from serving something greater than oneself.