Twice a year, Rainbow’s Omega class takes a field trip in their west Asheville community to their adopted spot on State Street and Amboy Road. It started two years ago when the class, a combined seventh and eighth grade, planted native elderberry bushes provided by Quality Forward. Since then the class has been revisiting the site to check the bushes’ progress, pull invasive, nonnative plants and to clean up the abundant litter left by those who neglect to see the site’s natural beauty.
This November the Omega class was happy to see new growth on the elderberry plants. They were also pleased to notice a lot less trash than on previous visits but still managed to gathered seven bags of garbage and found another discarded computer, an object they find on every trip. They pulled enough invasive plants to form four large piles to haul away. However the find of the day had to be the Rainbow Mountain Children’s School Adopt-A-Spot sign which was laying on the ground, grown over with ivy.
Thank you Omega for your hard work and for making Asheville even more beautiful.
Imagine was spectacular this year. The script was written by Rainbow teacher, Justin Pilla, directed by teacher, Dusty McKeelan with music written by parent Billy Goodrum. Additional music was provided by former Rainbow parent, Richard Gannaway.
All the grades worked together to put on this wonderful production of the seven domains. Puppeteer, Donovan Zimmerman, of Paperhand Puppet Company came to train the staff in puppet making and work with the students to build the puppets you see in the video. Marvelous.
With its holistic learning environment, and our research-based methods to elicit creative and critical thinking, many wonderful families have become part of the Rainbow family.
New this year to the school is Duncan, a rising second grader. His younger brother Raleigh will attend the Rainbow Community School Pre-school beginning in November when he turns three years of age.
Duncan’s family is relocating here from Ireland.
Along the way, however, they’re making a few stops. They have traveled to Dublin, Amsterdam, London, and Los Angeles. They will make one more stop in the historic Washington, D.C. just before settling in Asheville and beginning the school year.
We look forward to Duncan sharing his experiences with his classmates as he begins second grade. In fact, his experiences will add a lovely flavor to our global initiatives program!
We’re also very excited that Raleigh will be joining our community in November, too.
It’s always a pleasure to see our students passionate for personal activities. Caleb Mcntosh’s (sixth grade) and Lena Usher’s (sixth grade) poetry was published in the Mountain Xpress newspaper in March. Rainbow Community School is very proud of you! Below are the poems that were published by the Mountain Xpress.
I used to Be
I used to be squeaky, whiny, loud kid,
Now I am not,
I imagined rivers flowing, waves rolling,
I had a thick black hair, blue eyes,
I was a monkey,
Now I am not,
Now I have soft brown hair with bluish green eyes,
A few things about Rainbow Mountain this week, March 7 through March 11, which you may want to know:
