On Thursday, March 13 Miss South Carolina 2012, Ali Rogers will be a guest speaker for FOA’s monthly Parent Lecture Series. Her presentation will be about the impact Montessori education has had on her life. Ali attended Laurens 55 Public Montessori school from Primary through Middle School.

Ali Rogers spent a year serving the great state of South Carolina. Her personal platform was Making a Difference for Children with Disabilities, and she worked with various organizations, centers, and groups across the state as an advocate and a voice for children with special needs. Ali traveled more than 60,000 miles as Miss South Carolina speaking to schools, civic organizations, and church groups. Ali was crowned Miss South Carolina in July of 2012 . She was the first runner-up at the Miss America Competition in January of 2013 and won the Miracle Maker Award for raising the most money for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals.

Ali is a communication studies major at Clemson University. In addition to her full scholarship, she has earned $63,000 in scholarship assistance from the Miss America Organization. She currently works in media production for the Clemson Football program, hosting the Death Valley Live show and the All In Highlight Reel. Ali plans to obtain a masters degree in the communication field.

Happy Montessori Education Week! Governor Haley continued the tradition of acknowledging the contributions of Montessori Education by signing the Governor’s Proclamation declaring February 23- March 1 2014 to be Montessori Education Week. By doing this, Haley recognizes the child-centered education method that Dr. Montessori developed using the scientific method over 100 years ago as a method that “continues to influence learning across our state and nation”.

Please join us for a presentation to learn about the vision and implementation of the new Next High School (NHS) during our monthly Parent Lecture Series on February 20 at 6:00pm. NHS will be a free public charter high school and is scheduled to open fall 2015.

The mission of this new school is “to prepare people for life after school”.  The focus will be on providing an individualized education using project-based learning that embraces entrepreneurship, innovation, and design thinking. We look forward to hearing more about this innovative new high school.

Five Oaks Academy will host an Open House on Tuesday, January 28 and Tuesday, February25 from 9am- 11am. If you are interested or know someone interested in touring our campus, please call to schedule a tour. We are currently enrolling students for the 2014-2015 school year.

Apparel Magazine’s publisher, Susan Nichols, attended Five Oaks Academy’s ten year anniversary event Synergy with  Dr. Yong Zhao in September at the Hyatt downtown. Dr. Zhao is an internationally known scholar, author and speaker whose work focuses on the implications of globalization and technology on education.  Dr. Zhao’s quick wit and amazing insight enthralled hundreds on his recent visit to the upstate and his message resonated with many parents, educators and leaders in our business community. Susan shares what she took away from the evening from an industry standpoint in Apparel Magazine’s November publisher’s note. She writes, “One of the most compelling issues our industry faces today is education —how do we attract, prepare, train, motivate and inspire incoming talent to do great things in our companies.”  To read Susan’s article in it’s entirety go to http://apparel.edgl.com/magazine/November-2013/Don%E2%80%99t-Be-A-Wiener89236.

While Dr. Zhao is not a proclaimed Montessorian, his beliefs of cultivating the talents of each individual child and his focus on creativity, innovation, collaboration and entrepreneurship fit well with the Montessori philosophy. With the advancement of technology, many of the jobs that will be available in the 21st Century will require students to have a much higher level of skills than rote memorization, regurgitating facts for tests and following directions.  It is up to the educators of today to cultivate these higher level skills within our students.

On Thursday, October 16, Five Oaks Academy was proud to welcome Jerry DeCaire to Five Oaks as a guest artist for the Upper Elementary and Middle School students. Jerry has served as an artist for Wolverine, Thor, X-Men, Conan and many other famous comic book and film characters. His presentation showed how mathematics, science and art can merge to create superheros! Jerry had all of the students on the edge of their seats with excitement as they watched him create a superhero while explaining the math and geometry he was using to create his art. They were thrilled to be given copies of the drawings he made that day. It was a great opportunity for them to see how the subjects they are  learning in the classroom are applied in the “real world”.

On Friday, October 18,  Five Oaks Academy Annual Fund held their annual Fall Fete. The Fete is an evening devoted to creating community among our parents and faculty as well as a time for our Annual Fund committee to give a short report on the Annual Fund.  Tara Ann Garrett, Director of the Annual Fund, talked briefly about the purpose of the annual fund and what it provides for our school. The Annual Fund is an integral part of providing funds for program excellence, faculty excellence, and student excellence. The combination of perfect fall weather with dinner, drinks, dancing, and laughter created a magical evening as we celebrated the milestone of  our tenth anniversary.

On October 4, Five Oaks Academy held our annual Fall Festival.  As parents watched, FOA students performed songs about fall in both English and Spanish and performed songs practiced in their World Music class. Our talented and poised Middle School students, Ari Flanagan and Sydney Pinochet, were the masters of ceremony. As part of our cultural program, the students and parents enjoyed a special presentation of songs played on a  didgeridoo, a wind instrument developed by Indigenous Australians of northern Australia around 1,500 years ago. After the performance, the students enjoyed pony rides, petting goats, arts and crafts, and snow cones. This festival is a favorite of the students, parents and faculty. It is a wonderful way to welcome fall while creating a sense of community.

Dr. Zhao is pictured with FOA’s Director, Kathleen Trewhella Grant and Executive Coordinator, Jessica Greer, at a reception at the Hyatt prior to his speech.

The Greenville News recently gave Five Oaks Academy recognition of our 10th Anniversary by saying, “One Upstate school is trying to change education, and not just in the way it teaches kids inside its own walls.” One of Five Oaks Academy’s missions is to improve education for all children and for this reason we invited Dr. Yong Zhao to the Upstate to speak to the Greenville community. Our goal was to open a community-wide dialogue on “how” we are educating our countries children.

Dr. Zhao, an internationally known scholar, writer, and speaker, has studied education globally and presents a unique cross-cultural perspective on education.  Dr. Zhao’s examination of educational systems worldwide has given him insight into China’s educational struggles. On his recent visit to Greenville, he pointed out that by looking at the international test scores alone you would think that American children are significantly behind their Chinese counterparts and by these reports should not be as successful as the Chinese students. However, if you look at that data and compare it to the amount of patent applications the Chinese have applied for versus the American’s patent application for the same time period, then you can start to look at the significance of testing a little differently. Americans actually applied for significantly more patents than the Chinese.  Dr. Zhao has examined why China has failed to produce the creative and entrepreneurial talents that have been found in the United States and if the Chinese students being spoon fed material has prohibited them from learning how to learn.

Dr. Yong Zhao held a book signing at FOA during is recent visit to the Upstate.

Dr. Zhao cautions educators against putting so much emphasis on standardized testing because of the narrow focus of these tests. He believes that the standardized tests are not an accurate indication of a child’s success. Because of their narrow focus, they lack the ability to gauge the child’s creativity and own personal strengths. With the introduction of technology, the jobs and the skill sets needed to be successful have become very different for the 21st century work force. Technology has replaced many of the jobs that have traditionally employed our middle class workers. Dr. Zhao believes that “To succeed in this ever-changing world, students need to be able to think like entrepreneurs: resourcefully, flexibly, creatively, and globally.” To read more on what Dr Yong Zhao has to say, you can pick up his latest books World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students and Catching Up or Leading the Way.

Dr. Maria Montessori was far ahead of her time when she developed the Montessori method of learning. Her astute understanding of  how children learn aided her scientific approach to designing the materials the children use. She developed a method that allows children to authentically learn how to problem solve, use critical thinking skills and to think flexibly and creatively.  The Montessori method also has the ability to address the needs of each individual child and can propel a child forward in areas in which they excel while giving additional support in areas in which they are weak. For more information on the Montessori method, please contact us for a tour of Five Oaks Academy.

To read the article in the Greenville News go to http://www.greenvilleonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013309190006&nclick_check=1

On September 27, Five Oaks Academy held an International Tea to welcome our new international families and celebrate the unique diversity of our community. We appreciate all who attended and made this event a success. It was so exciting to find out where each person was from and see how many countries are represented by the FOA community. New connections and friendships were made by parents from different classrooms. A special thank you to the PTO and parent volunteers that made this event possible.