9am: Settling In and morning meeting
Quakers believe that when we are silent, we can better hear the inner wisdom that we each possess. Because of this, we begin our days and end our days in silence at Buckeye. Living in this noisy world and the barrage of distractions vying for our students' attention, these quiet moments together as a community foster a deep sense of love and belonging for our students. In the silence we create meaning and intention for our school day.
9:15am - 10am: Self-Directed-Learning Time aka SDL
SDL is the time when our students focus on their academic work; math, reading, writing, social studies, science and chemistry.
10am - 10:15am: Morning Break
10:15am - 11am: Second Part of Self-Directed-Learning Time aka SDL
11am - Noon: Flex Time
Flex time is an ever changing exploration of the arts, physical exploration and a time for our students to develop their social emotional intelligence. Everything from PE to how to converse intelligently and respectfully with someone you vehemently disagree with are learned during Flex Time.
Noon - 12:45pm: Lunch and outside Exploration
12:45pm - 1:15pm: Silent Reading Time
It is during silent reading that students often have the opportunity to read to a younger seed. This not only develops the readers reading and comprehension skills, it develops their confidence and leadership skills as well. The child being read to becomes more motivated to push their reading ability so that they can be like one of the ‘big’ kids.
1:15pm - 2:45pm: Project Based Learning aka PBL
This is the time when our students begin the expression phase of their arc in addition to working on passion projects. Kids might be building a boat or stage during PBL. They could be writing a play or painting a mural, we never know how our students will choose to express what they learned from their explorations.
2:45pm - 3pm: Clean-Up
Every child is assigned a clean-up job at the end of the day which they are responsible for completing before we settle out.
3pm: Settling Out
Before we settle out, our seeds have an opportunity to express what inspired them that day and to share highlights of their learning. We have an end of day recap and set expectations for the following day. Younger kids are usually sitting in the laps of older kids and our mascot Star does rounds saying goodbye for the day. We close the day with a moment of silence which helps seal in the day's experiences while bringing our community closer together. Silence allows us time to focus on the joy and love that surround us and to appreciate the ways in which we are all connected.