by Mistral Dodson | Apr 11, 2025 | Uncategorized
Education doesn’t stop at the classroom door—it expands into the world. Our Travel Study Program is a hallmark of our experience-driven model, offering students unforgettable, immersive learning adventures that blend academic exploration, cultural connection, and personal growth.
From sailing a tall ship to Catalina Island, to navigating local ecosystems or engaging in service projects across the globe, our students take on real-world challenges, build confidence, and return transformed.
🌍 Why Travel Study?
Because children remember what they experience.
Because real learning comes from doing, problem-solving, and seeing through new eyes.
Because the world is our classroom—and every journey holds lessons in science, culture, empathy, and self-discovery.
🧭 On each trip, students…
✔️ Take responsibility as leaders and team members 
✔️ Journal and reflect daily, growing self-awareness
✔️ Engage in hands-on fieldwork tied to science, history, and geography
✔️ Return with a deeper sense of purpose, curiosity, and global citizenship
✈️ Recent destinations include:
At Phoenix, we’re not just teaching students what to learn. We’re showing them how to engage with the world—and who they can become.
🎒 Want to know what’s next on our map?
👉 Schedule a Tour or Contact Us to learn more about how our Travel Study program is changing lives. 
by Mistral Dodson | Nov 25, 2024 | Uncategorized
Empowering Girls to Lead, Grow, and Thrive
Here we recognize the unique challenges girls face in traditional school environments. Our intentionally small, multi-aged classrooms eliminate the typical pressures of middle school—like navigating boy/girl dynamics—and replace them with opportunities for collaboration, mutual respect, and leadership development.
Here, friendships are built on curiosity and teamwork rather than labels or expectations. Instead of focusing on who’s dating whom, our students focus on solving real-world problems, leading service initiatives, and growing into confident, compassionate leaders who are ready to take on the world.
Girls Who Lead, Together
Our girls don’t compete for attention—they thrive as equals, innovators, and changemakers alongside their peers. Whether it’s working on STEAM projects, leading school committees through our Early Act Club, or exploring the outdoors during multi-day trips, they are encouraged to lead with confidence and courage.
At Phoenix, girls:
- Discover their voice: Through project-based learning and leadership opportunities, girls learn to think critically, speak confidently, and take charge.
- Excel in STEAM: They engage in hands-on science, technology, engineering, arts, and math projects, showing them there are no boundaries to what they can achieve.
- Foster mental wellness: Our whole-child approach prioritizes emotional growth, helping girls navigate adolescence with resilience and a sense of self-worth.
- Collaborate, not compete: The pressures of cliques and labels are replaced with collaboration and shared success in a community where every student matters.
Why It Matters
Girls deserve a space where they can lead without limits, explore without fear, and grow without barriers. At The Phoenix School, we’re redefining education for girls—because we believe every child deserves the chance to thrive, not just survive.
Let’s prepare your daughter for a world that needs her talents, ideas, and leadership.
by Mistral Dodson | Nov 6, 2024 | Uncategorized
Things MATH is not…
Math isn’t about completing endless worksheets or rote memorization – it’s about fostering critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and creativity.
When they just complete worksheets…what are they actually learning?
Math is a dynamic field that involves critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, and exploration.
math is not just about rote memorization or completing endless worksheets.
Math problems often have multiple solution paths. Encouraging students to think critically about which approach to take and why helps develop analytical skills that are applicable across various disciplines.
Real-world problems rarely come neatly packaged in a worksheet format. By presenting students with open-ended problems, they learn to apply mathematical concepts to solve practical problems, preparing them for challenges they may face in their future careers.
Math offers opportunities for creativity and exploration. Allowing students to experiment, make conjectures, and explore different strategies fosters a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts and promotes a sense of ownership over their learning.
Math is deeply intertwined with other subjects such as science, engineering, art, and even music. By engaging students in multidisciplinary activities, they see how math is relevant and applicable beyond the confines of the classroom.
Math isn’t just about numbers; it’s about conveying ideas and reasoning effectively. Providing space for students to write, draw, and explain their thinking helps them develop communication skills essential for success in both academic and real-world settings.
When students are merely completing worksheets, they may miss out on these crucial aspects of mathematical learning.
Phoenix has been incorporating hands-on activities, collaborative problem-solving tasks, real-world applications, and opportunities for creativity and exploration into our math curriculum.
Our approach not only makes math more engaging and meaningful for students but also better prepares them for the challenges they’ll encounter in their academic and professional lives.
After reading this post do you agree that math education should involve more than just completing worksheets?
by Mistral Dodson | Aug 8, 2024 | Uncategorized
At The Phoenix School, we hold a simple: reading is one of the keys to unlocking a child’s potential.
Reading is…
- The gateway to realizing the mind’s potential.
- Essential for economic independence and upward mobility.
- The bedrock of our constitutional democracy.
- A right we have allowed to become a privilege.
📚 Why focus on reading?
Reading is the foundation of all learning. It helps children expand their vocabulary, sharpen their critical thinking skills, and understand the world around them. Whether they’re decoding new words or diving into an imaginative story, reading builds the confidence they need to tackle new challenges.
At The Phoenix School, our students are encouraged to read a minimum of 7 books over the summer, with each child choosing books that capture their interest. This personalized approach is designed to cultivate a love of reading and a strong reading habit that will serve them well in all areas of their education.
But we don’t just focus on reading for reading’s sake. We strive to develop critical reading skills that allow our students to analyze and better understand the stories they read. We encourage them to do something creative and informative with the content they’ve read, which fosters a deeper connection to literature.
Reading is an integral part of every aspect of our curriculum. We individualize reading, ensuring that each student reads at their appropriate level, regardless of their grade. When our students return from their summer adventures, they’ll have the opportunity to present their book projects to the entire school and pitch their favorite reads to their classmates.
At The Phoenix School, we believe that fostering a love for reading is one of the most important things we can do for our students. It’s more than just a skill; it’s the foundation for lifelong learning and success.
by Mistral Dodson | Jan 26, 2024 | Uncategorized
🌟 What sets Phoenix apart? We help students understand themselves and their role in local and global communities. Learning is a lifelong journey, and it happens everywhere they go!
Here’s how we do it 👇🏽
🔥 Learning isn’t confined to textbooks and classrooms – it’s an education that spans doing, being, exploring, experimenting, questioning, researching, designing, engineering, leadership, community, and the list goes on!
🏰 At Phoenix, students don’t just learn – they think critically, explore deeply, collaborate, contribute globally, learn from failures, and celebrate success! Students are given the tools, ideas, and encounters needed to sculpt the best versions of themselves.
🤝 Students, parents, and teachers work together in the TK-8 journey. Students feel seen, heard, and understood because we prioritize process over product. Project-based learning is the heartbeat of our interactive and curiosity-inducing curriculum.
🎓 Our roots in education disruption go back over 40 years when we started trailblazing our innovative, experience-driven learning community on Winter Island. Since then, we have been in many locations around Salem, which is one of our core values.
🌐 We aren’t confined by walls – the world is our classroom! Learning happens everywhere – at school, connecting globally, and out in the vibrant community. We spark a love for learning by cultivating curiosity, fostering exploration, and intertwining learning with life experiences.
🔥 Rolling enrollment is underway and we have limited spots (you can’t do personalized education in a 500 student school!)
by Mistral Dodson | Jul 2, 2022 | Uncategorized
On Wednesday of this year’s Adventure Week, the Phoenix Kids went to do a workshop with two self-defense instructors at Forged Martial Arts Studio. The kids did some exercises, some games, and some drills to help them do better teamwork and learn about self-defense.
The instructors started by having the kids do some warm-up exercises to get them ready and making sure everyone was excited to participate. The students were super energetic and excited while warming up, and they kept that energy through the whole day. The students were great at listening to the instructors and following the directions.
The first priority of the instructors was safety, making sure the kids were always safe. They gave very specific instructions and the kids did a great job following them. The older kids were great and helped the other kids focus their energy, and helped the instructors keep everyone safe. A lot of the focus of one of the games was teamwork and leadership; the game was for teams to silently work together to form the shape of a letter or number. The kids got the hang of it really quickly, and the older kids were great student leaders.
After all the warming up and playing tag games the instructors started teaching the kids some Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. But before they started they started teaching any techniques they talked to the kids about bullying. They made sure that the students knew that the point of martial arts isn’t to fight, to only use it as a last resort if someone tries to hurt you physically, and that talking should always be what you try to do first.
After they made sure all the kids understood they started practicing techniques for defending themselves if someone tries to tackle them. The kids had a lot of fun wrestling with each other on the mats while the instructors made sure everyone stayed safe. The instructors finished up by talking about the philosophy of martial arts, and how it’s about self-discipline and learning from one another. The Phoenix Kids made sure to all thank their instructors for what they learned before heading back to the school to eat lunch.
Cassandra, Montserrat Intern
