FAQs

Our 26 acre farm is an integral part of our curriculum and is one of the things that sets us apart from other independent schools in the area. It is bordered on the north by a Boy Scout property that our students also use, and has a variety of different ecosystems within it. There are large fields left in their natural state, a man-made pond, a river that floods in the winter, natural forest with trails throughout, planted vegetable beds, and animal enclosures.

On any given day students might:

• Harvest vegetables, clean and chop them, and prepare a salad or a soup to go with their lunch

• Care for the animals by building a mountain for the goats to climb or hauling water to the troughs around the farm

• Go on a nature walk, then write and sketch their observations into a journal 

• Study the different plant structures in pond versus woodland vegetation

• Build a life-size trebuchet to study the physics of converting potential to kinetic energy

In the fall and spring our students go out to the farm once per week, but classes take different days of the week as their “farm day”. This allows them to experience the openness and natural state of the farm without a crowd of other students being there at the same time. 

We don’t have a cafeteria at school. Children eat in the classroom with their class. Some portion of lunch each day is quiet eating time, to allow the children to focus on getting enough to eat without distraction. The other portion of lunch might feature a teacher reading a chapter book out loud, telling a story, or guiding thoughtful sharing and listening to help develop conversation skills.

In preschool and kindergarten, the children prepare and eat snack together each day with vegetables from the farm and simple grains. All snacks are vegetarian and have a gluten free and vegan option. Parents pack a hearty lunch and the class eats lunch together right before pick-up time. In the grades program, both the snack and the lunch are brought from home each day.

We know how important movement is to a child’s healthy development so we make sure there are plenty of extended play breaks throughout the day. Classes go outside for recess regardless of the weather. Our Early Childhood program spends at least 1 hour out of each 4-hour school day outside. They are often outside even longer than that, and will sometimes spend the entire day outside.

Our grades students all have two recesses each day, totaling 40 minutes. In addition, our younger grades often have a third afternoon recess - whenever the class needs extra movement or has had a heavy curriculum day, or there’s a beautiful rainbow or it’s snowing unexpectedly - basically whenever the teacher thinks it’s needed!

In Waldorf schools, teachers spend multiple years with the same students in their classes. In the grades, teachers are with their class for many years, sometimes taking the class all the way through 8th grade. With this approach, classes form a close, supportive group that resembles a family unit in many ways. In other schools, if there is a difficult relationship with a teacher one year, it is common for both families and teachers to think, “I just have to make it through to June”. At our school, families and teachers know they will be together for many years, so they work together to meet the needs of the children, staying in close contact and forming deep bonds along the way.

Our more experienced teachers who have graduated several 8th grade classes often attend the college graduations, weddings, and baby showers of their former students. It’s not uncommon for them to get a message 20 years after graduation when the now-very-adult student just needs some guidance. Because of that length of commitment, our school carefully picks just the right teacher for a class, taking into consideration the needs and strengths of a given year’s group of children. Year over year, in parent surveys, the relationship with the class teacher is cited as the number one reason families love the school. 

We treat the subject areas just like any other academic area at school. Some children don’t like math very much, others might not love music, and most often “I don’t like this” actually means “This isn’t easy for me”. There is value in learning to work hard at something that is challenging, or to push yourself to complete a task even if it isn’t your favorite thing to do.

By offering a variety of subject classes in addition to mainstream academics, it is much more likely that every child will be challenged by something at school, and that every child will have an area in which they can excel.

The majority of our graduates go on to their local public high school, but when they choose to apply to private high schools, they usually are accepted. Some common choices outside of their neighborhood school are Portland Waldorf School, Catlin Gabel, Jesuit, Valley Catholic, and the Beaverton Arts and Communication Magnet School.

Wherever they end up, our graduates thrive in their high school experience. At Swallowtail, students develop the skills to set their own goals, break them into manageable steps, and achieve them. They are given the freedom to learn about who they are and what interests them, and the expectation that they are responsible for their own learning. When they arrive at high school, they are ready to hit the ground running. The feedback we get is that our students are far more mature and self-directed than the typical teenager. This difference continues into college, where our students work closely with their professors, setting up independent study classes and designing their own majors. Our graduates have degrees in such varied fields as Engineering, Spanish, Biology, Physics, Music, Psychology, Journalism, and more!

We do not assign homework through 2nd grade. In 3rd grade, homework begins in the form of nightly reading and the first research report. As the students progress through the grades, the amount of homework gradually increases, but even in the 7th and 8th grades we keep the amount manageable, anywhere from 10-30 minutes per night. We have found (and recent studies have supported this idea) that students retain information from their class studies as well or better if they have time for rest and reflection between class days rather than homework. 

This rest and reflection is only effective if it is unencumbered by screen time, so we ask that students do not use screens during the school week. Although this can be a difficult adjustment at first, families who give up screen time during the week report back that their homes are more harmonious, behavior is better, and their children quickly developed other ways to entertain themselves, enhancing their imagination and problem solving skills.

Our students do not take standardized tests, which do not accurately reflect which students have mastery of a concept but rather which students are good at taking tests. Too many variables unrelated to learning, like anxiety or learning style, can impact the results of a test. Tests, like letter grades, were developed to allow an outside observer to determine whether students were above a certain arbitrary threshold of learning. They do not confer any benefit to the student, and in fact can be detrimental to positive learning. Students can become so fixated on the grade or test score received that they lose all sense of inner motivation and striving - with two possible undesired outcomes. A student who works very hard but cannot pass a certain subject at grade level might give up and believe they are “bad” at that subject. Another student who easily passes tests in certain areas might not develop the work ethic and study habits that will be needed when the work becomes more difficult at a later age.

Rather than using grades and tests, we ask that each student do their best work every day, on every assignment. If a student turns in work that is below their ability level, the teacher really will ask them to rework it and turn in something better, regardless of how it compares to the other students in the class.

We do not have a minimum requirement for fundraising, but we do ask that every family participate in the way they are able. This means we expect that every family, regardless of the amount of tuition they pay or number of hours they volunteer, will participate in fundraisers, support the auction, and make a personally significant donation to the annual giving campaign.

We require families to contribute at least 40 volunteer hours per year, although some families volunteer much more than that! Some volunteer in the classroom, chaperone field trips or days at the farm, or sit on fundraising or steering committees, while others might sew play costumes, organize the library, or maintain the grounds. The wide variety of volunteer opportunities allows everyone to find a volunteer role that fits their schedule, their skills, and their interests.

Waldorf instruction is designed to meet the needs of different styles of learners. Movement, art, music, drama, and speech are woven into all aspects of the curriculum. When learning about the history of Rome, students write about it, act out part of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, sculpt an arch out of clay, watercolor paint the aqueducts, listen to stories about the accomplishments of the Roman army, and throw javelins out in the field. This approach allows every child to showcase their learning in a way that feels natural to them, and also challenges each student to try something that is difficult or uncomfortable for them, while developing needed skills for life.

Yes, although the degree to which we can support a given student depends on many factors, from the experience of the teacher and the needs of the other students in the class to the manner in which a student’s needs present at school.

We do not have the specialized supports some schools can offer, but our general environment and educational approach are often beneficial to neurodiverse students. All students benefit from smaller class sizes, increased time for movement, and the continuity of staying with the same teacher year over year, but those aspects can be especially beneficial to certain students. We hare been able to successfully accommodate students with a wide range of diagnoses and abilities, including students with autism, ADHD, dyslexia, OCD and generalized anxiety. We have also had students try out our school, only to find that it isn’t the right environment for them.

We recognize that some students will need extra support to thrive in a classroom environment. We have a limited capacity to offer one-on-one reading and math support, although families are often asked to seek tutoring outside of school when a student needs a more targeted type of support. For students who need extra support, administration, teachers, and families work together to develop a plan for accommodations.

It is also important to acknowledge that there are some students whose needs cannot be met at Swallowtail. It sometimes becomes clear that a student is not making progress at our school, and in those cases we work with the family to find another educational option that might better serve their child. We cannot serve children whose behavior puts themselves or other children at risk, so in those cases a more rapid transition may need to occur.

We start teaching reading by telling stories. We purposefully choose stories with complex sentence structure and advanced vocabulary to develop those skills in our students. We then introduce letter sounds and shapes and progress to students writing their own thoughts. The process of decoding words is really such a small part of literacy, and can be the least interesting and most frustrating to early readers, so we bring that piece after a strong foundation in literacy has been laid. This can look like a delayed instruction of reading to the casual observer, but it’s really just a reversal in the order of instruction.

This approach provides a challenging and engaging curriculum for all students, while allowing those children who are not cognitively ready to differentiate letter shapes in kindergarten another year of brain development before that task is introduced. It is not uncommon to have a first grade classroom where some children are reading chapter books and others are still learning their letters. Because the focus is on stories, and then writing their own thoughts, students stay engaged and are able to progress at their own speed.

A child’s “misbehavior” is usually just a communication of a need unmet. For example, a student who wiggles and jumps out of their seat often needs to move more. We look for creative ways to meet that need and reduce the distraction in the classroom - like adding a giant rubber band to the front two legs of the students chair so they can swing their legs against the rubber band as they sit. In the case that these interventions are not enough to manage the distracting behavior, teachers or parents can bring a request for extra support, and together they will develop a plan to support that student. When specific social or emotional growth is needed, students can work one-on-one with our school counselor. She also visits classrooms to help develop healthy whole-group dynamics and to guide the students in some key areas around healthy friendships/relationships, setting boundaries, and building trust.

We believe school should be a safe and positive experience for all students. From the outset, we work to establish a healthy and supportive social dynamic in the class. We actively teach empathy, kindness, and consideration for others and give students the opportunity to discuss the way they would like the classroom to operate. Cross-class buddy pairings (i.e. 1st with 8th grade, 2nd with 5th grade, 7th with kindergarten) help younger students feel connected to the wider school community and keep care and empathy alive in our older students. It is not uncommon to see a group of students of all ages engaged in a large game of tag outside, or for a 7th grader to be the first to scoop up a first grader with a skinned knee and help them to the office. There is a real feeling of family and connectedness that is hard to describe until you see it, and that is wholly different from experiences at most elementary schools.

All that being said, there are times that our students experience the social disruptions that are typical in childhood We have different approaches to bullying based on age of the students involved. In the Early Childhood, students don’t really have the capacity for the level of social understanding involved in true bullying. We treat each incident individually and work to support healthy social interactions. In lower grades we work with children to repair harm they have caused, to recognize when an interaction doesn’t feel good, and to get adult help in those cases. In the middle school, we teach the students to go beyond protecting themselves and to start to feel some responsibility for those around them. We hope they can notice when someone else is not being treated well, and to have the courage to step in when they witness those moments.