About Us
Academe of the Oaks is a Waldorf high school founded in 2003 in Decatur, Georgia. As part of the Waldorf educational tradition, our school cultivates academic excellence throughout the curriculum, encouraging adolescents to become imaginative and compassionate thinkers who have the confidence to make a positive difference in the world.
At Academe, students learn from experienced teachers who hold advanced degrees in their subject areas. Our teachers are enthusiastic about what they teach and are personally committed to the development of each student. Due in part to our small teacher/student ratio, the faculty knows each student quite well and can encourage him or her to work at the highest possible standard. In addition, each student has a faculty advisor who meets regularly with the student and his or her parents to discuss the student’s academic progress.
Classes at Academe tend to be experiential in format. Instead of using textbooks, students often read and discuss primary sources and/or conduct laboratory experiments to discover basic principles. For example, 11th grade students conduct the same experiments that Oersted and Faraday used to discover electromagnetism. From their observations of the experiment, the students arrive at general principles—not the other way around. Alongside discussions, class projects, and group work, students have intensive assignments that range from solving math problems to writing essays.
One of the hallmarks of Waldorf education is its developmental approach to teaching and learning. The curriculum supports the developing student’s capacities as they unfold and mature. For example, a 10th grade student is especially responsive to learning opportunities that emphasize comparison and understanding how processes work. An English assignment might focus on the ways in which the elements of language combine and function in a variety of short stories. By the senior year, the students have developed the capacity to begin synthesizing many themes and ideas across time and disciplines. A 12th grade English assignment might focus on the detailed interpretation of a novel and its philosophical implications for the culture/time period that produced it.
