Odyssey Communtiy School

Odyssey is just that — a community. The culture of the school is based on respectful interaction in an emotionally safe space. The community provides the opportunity to gain the skills and understanding for self-knowledge through the process of learning and in service to one another. Odyssey embraces a wide array of educational philosophies, traditions, and best practices. The experience of learning about the worlds of science, language, mathematics, history and the arts is interwoven with the experience of learning about the self. Critical thinking goes along with creative problem-solving, interpersonal communication, and awareness of self. Odyssey’s curriculum, at its core, is based on Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Theory, which recognizes that the kind of intelligence measured in standardized tests and addressed in traditional classroom methodologies is just one of several important human intelligences. Each subject is approached from the different intelligences as identified by Gardner: Linguistic, Musical, Logical/Mathematical, Spatial, Bodily/Kinesthetic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Naturalist, and Existential. Odyssey teaches Essential Learning Skills in kindergarten through high school, emphasizing collaborative and independent learning, creative thinking, self-organization, creating options, making choices, risk taking, time management, and research skills as an important basis for success in the academic world and beyond. At Odyssey, knowing the nature of one’s own strengths, challenges, feelings and needs — and how to effectively communicate about them — is fundamental to the classroom experience from preschool through high school. Every teacher is trained in Compassionate Communication, and it is not uncommon to hear young children stating their feelings and needs to one another in the style taught by Marshall Rosenberg.