by Admin | Jun 12, 2017 | Blogs
Rainbow Alumnus, Geronimo Owen, graduated from Carolina Day School last week with the incredible honor of giving a speech directed at his fellow 2017 graduates. As he and his classmates step into a world of unknowns, Geronimo reminded them of the power of choice. Stepping into adulthood means both attaining the freedom to make your own choices and reciprocally it means taking responsibility for those choices. However many adults due to lack of opportunity and systems of domination never get that chance. Within the context of their excellent private education, Geronimo sees it as his and his classmates’ duty to live fully in the world and give of themselves completely, to make choices that align with their passions and purpose, and to exercise that power of choice with intention. While he appreciates the draws of comfort, he also urged his classmates to go beyond comfort, asking “Why should we ever be comfortable with comfort?”
When he reflects on all those big “why” questions – why spend so much energy and time and money on this high school degree – he sees beyond the “good education, good college, good job” pipeline. For him the reason is still somewhat elusive and yet totally clear. It’s all about connection. At Carolina Day he found a group of “passionate and creative people who care”. He learned to “never underestimate your classmates” as they have this wonderful ability to keep surprising you no matter how well you think you know them. Making authentic heart-felt connections with the people in his Carolina Day community is what made his experience so meaningful.
As the school that empowered him in his transition from middle school to high school, we couldn’t be more proud of Geronimo. It is the gift of a lifetime to see where our students wind up and how they continously adapt all they’ve learned to help them in their new surroundings. Thank you Geronimo for sharing your voice. A big congratulations to you and to your dearest mama, Renee Owen, our Executive Director, for completing yet another chapter in your bright lives.
by Admin | May 31, 2017 | Blogs
As we get ready to celebrate our K-8 graduating students tonight let’s not forget our Preschool friends, who graduated a week ago in a lovely ceremony held in the auditorium. This rite of passage began, as all things at Rainbow begin, with a centering. Four eager preschoolers lead the whole community in mindful listening, deep breathing, and a blessing of compassion. What followed was the sweetness of young children as they received their diplomas one by one, and then finished the ceremony with a celebratory song led by music teacher, Sue Ford. Our youngest Rainbow students then took a few moments to have one last closing circle with their teachers, before they ran outside to play with their parents at the picnic. Congratulations to all our Dragonflies and Turtles for a year of stupendous growth and heart-warming transformation.
by Admin | May 22, 2017 | Blogs
Join us on Wednesday, May 31st at 6:30pm as we celebrate the transformation and growth of each of our students as they complete another milestone on their journey through childhood and into adulthood.
We are especially excited to honor the 22 eighth graders making the transition to High School this year. Before receiving their diploma, each graduating eighth grader will address their whole community with a self-reflective speech. Every year our graduates stun us with their insight, inspiring us into our own reflections on community, transition, and transformation.
Graduation will take place on the lawn of the Orr Mansion at Rainbow Community School on 574 Haywood Road, Asheville. Parking is available at 60 State Street on our lower Omega Middle School campus. Once the parking lot is full please be mindful of where you park in the neighborhood. Looking forward to seeing you at our beuatiful outdoor graduation celebration!
by Admin | Apr 26, 2017 | Blogs
Come celebrate the return of the faeries with us this May Day from 10:30am to 12:00pm in the Outdoor Classroom on Haywood Road!
We will celebrate the magic of spring by dancing together, wrapping the May Pole, eating berries-n-cream, blowing bubblles, bursting with song, and reveling in our bright costumes. We invite you to come dressed up in fairy, magical, and animal inspired outfits. We can’t wait to see you sparkle! If you feel inspired to, we also welcome you to bring small gifts to place in the nooks of nature for the faeries and their houses.
Beltane, or May Day, lies directly opposite Halloween in the solar calendar. Both mark the point between the preceeding equinox and the following solstice. The holidays mirror each other as opportunities both to interact with magic beings, wether ghostly ancestors or trickster faeries, as well as to mark a major shift in our relationshiop to the sun, wether we’re moving towards the shadows or turning towards the warmth of light.
Thank you for coming to celebrate this bright, flowering, new beginning of springtime with us! This is one of our favorite holidays we celebrate and we cant wait to share it with you. Check out our pictures from years previous to get a sense of the festive magic involved ♥.
by Admin | Apr 25, 2017 | Blogs
Quan Yin is a Buddhist deity of compassion. Her spiritual archetype, however, exists across many different religions and cultures. Mother Mary within Christianity and Sophia within Gnosticism, for example, represent similiar all-loving and all-merficul qualities. Many beautiful art pieces, theater skits, short stories and community projects were born out of Domain Day. This one, however, stands out as a unique integration of the creative and spiritual domains beautifying and uplifting our campus.
The Spiritual Domain Group designed and built this shrine with Quan Yin as its center piece. She had long stood by the water-feature in the outdoor classroom, before Rainbow teachers and Spiritual Domain Group leaders, Mark Hanf and Justin Pilla, spotted her and felt her to be the perfect point of inspiration from which to build a shrine. After having smudged the area with sage, the dozen students began by placing their own personal artifacts within the center of an imaginary circle. Students then took turns placing the large rocks in a measured and intentional formation to mark the boundary of the shrine. Max had been gathering these large obelisk- and sphere-shaped stones over the course of several visits to the same enchanted forrest creek. The mindfulness with which every piece of this altar was put together cast a spell of wonder over the young spiritualists. In between building the shrine, they picked up instruments from a blanket lined with shakers and hand drums to accompany the ceremony with music.
In its second year as an ‘annual Rainbow celebration’ Domain Day has received extremely positive feedback from students and teachers alike. Within a small multi-age group, students get to spend a whole day focusing on a domain they feel passionate about. They can choose between the physical, natural, social, emotional, creative, mental, and spiritual domains. This intentional time spent with teachers who have also been called to that particular domain gives students the opportunity to embody that domain more fully. And because each domain is connected, and linked to the greater whole, a student’s comfort in one domain inherently empowers their understanding of the others. In this domain group’s case, each student was able to embody the spiritual domain’s cornerstones of ritual, world religions, contemplation, and communion with the natural world, while simultaneously working through the challenges and gifts of the creative, social, and natural domains.
Thank you, Spiritual Domain Group, for leaving behind this radiant evidence of your connection to spirit. You have altered our space and given us a sanctuary at which to breath and center. We invite all who stop by our campus to visit Quan Yin, and if inspired, to leave her a token of gratitude.
