High School

High School Program Description

Learning to Act in the World
An in-person and online program for students from grade 9 to 12, offering a unique curriculum challenging and supporting the students to develop clarity in thinking, creativity in their expression, and to be engaged in the world around them. We emphasize project based learning, individual attention to each student, and a balance between the intellectual and artistic.
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"I believe in intuition and inspiration.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.
It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research." 

- Albert Einstein


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​Registrations now open for 2021/2022 School Year! 
We are accepting applications for students from grade 9 to 12 for both in-class and online participation. We offer a balanced curriculum covering all the foundational subjects. The curriculum will be shaped by the needs of the students who are enrolled in keeping with appropriate grade level expectations.
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Read below for Program, Schedule, History and OSSD credits.
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Follow links for Fees and Contact for High School coordinator
Our Program
We welcome students from grade 9 to 12. Our utmost concern is the harmonious development of each of our students. We are emphasizing weekly lessons in foundational disciplines, including science, math, and French. We provide balance through artistic disciplines of visual arts, movement art, music, craftsmanship, and sports.

The adolescent human is awakening to their thinking through fundamental questions of What, How, Why and Who. This evolving quest is best served by a phenomenological approach to the subjects presented. We therefore always approach our teaching from the perspective of observing the outcome - the experiment, the masterwork - to then gain an in-depth understanding of how it comes about.

Our lessons, whether online or in person, are designed by our experienced teachers to be engaging for the young person at all levels of their being - head, heart and hands. Assignments are grade specific to meet each individual learning journey. One unique aspect of our program is the incorporation of a social enterprise. In the last two years we worked on a gardening and tiny home project.
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The weekly lessons will be carried mostly by Mr. Kubanek, Mme. Richard, and Mr. McMillan. Our main lesson blocks focus on covering all academic areas in a rotation that provides an incredibly rounded curriculum over the course of several years, and within each year. Our program runs Monday through Thursday. Fridays can be shaped by each family in accordance with the needs of the students. (See our Main lesson block subject year schedule and our weekly schedule below.)
 

​Our Faculty
Our faculty consists of highly skilled, Waldorf experienced teachers we've had with us for the last three years. See more about the teachers: Teachers and Community
Program Schedule

Throughout the year our teachers and occasionally outside master teachers offer 3 to 5-week main lesson blocks. After the main lesson of the day, we provide a schedule of lessons in foundational disciplines, including science, math, and French.
 
Flexible Online Participation
We are encouraging students to participate in our complete offering. The program is designed to give the students a well rounded curriculum that way. However, we are open to discussing students signing up for only selected main lesson blocks and specialty classes. This is especially true for students joining us online. See 2020/21 weekly schedule and main lesson schedules below. Blocks in blue mean they are open for online participation. The 2021/22 academic year will be similar in design.

​Weekly Schedule
Sample scheduled from the 2020-2021 School Year.

* Light blue shading are classes available for online students.
 
In addition we have project based components including a science fair project, book reports, and art projects.  ​

​Main Lesson Block Schedule 2021 -22
September
English Essay composition
October
​Math Algebra
November 
Science, Chemistry
December
Art, Indigenous Art, History
January
History, Geography, History of Africa
February Math, Geometry
March-April
English Novel Study
April-May
Science,Human Physiology
May-June
Performance art, Review Play and Class Trip
 "Our experience at Polaris has been fantastic. The teachers are wonderful and really cater to the needs of each student. It has given us the wonderful possibility of having a Waldorf High School Education even though there is no school in our vicinity."
- Kansas Carradine, Parent of an online High School student

Our First Two Years
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To give a sense of the breadth of what we cover in our program, here is a summary of the preceding two years. In our first year we had blocks in Art History (Sylvie Richard, Eurythmist and Painter), European History (Arie van Ameringen, Master Waldorf Teacher), English: Novel Studies (Alan Krueger, Master Waldorf Teacher), Astronomy (Simon MacMillan, Astronomer), Indigenous Studies & Canadian History (Greg Scott, Master Waldorf Teacher), Soap Stone Carving (Greg Scott), Chemistry (Gordon Kubanek, Master Waldorf Teacher), and Theater (Peter Haworth, Actor and Director).

In our second year we had an internship on an organic farm, Botany (Amber Westfall, herbalist), Human Physiology (Ari van Ameringen), Biology -Environmental Stewardship (Lee Roy, Biologist), Poetics (Adam Barrows, Professor of Literature), World Geography and Modern History (Alan Krueger). Mathematics and Physics (Gordon Kubanek), Social Enterprise (Simon McMillan), and radio play as a performing arts project.
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In sports our students have had the chance to explore Lacrosse, volleyball, ultimate frisbee, broomball, skating, and badminton. We were also lucky to have an arborist, Trevor Bennett, doing a set of classes on wilderness survival and wood working, and guidance with our social enterprise from Urooj Qureshi, an expert in this area.

OSSD Credits
While we aspire to grow our upper years program into a full high-school, we do not yet offer OSSD credits. We are working on becoming certified for OSSD courses however, and encourage you to reach out to us to express your interest. We plan to offer some credit courses in the future. 

Teenagers today are being called to understand life in a radically new way. They need a new type of thinking that can flow with the movement of life itself, a thinking that is inwardly mobile and alive even while it remains outwardly rigorous and clear. It must be a thinking capable of embracing different points of view and of evolving judgements. Such thinking will be in tune with life, for it is itself alive. It will not be satisfied with definitions and will not rest until it comes to grips with truth and reality. It is this quality of cognition toward which Waldorf education strives.
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-Association of Waldorf Schools of North America
Geometry – Preparing students in logical thinking
 
"It is not from space that I get my dignity
but from the control of my thought.
By space the universe embraces me like an atom,
by thought I embrace the universe."

-Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)