Voyagers' Community School, Eatontown

Voyagers’ Community School Is a progressive Infant to Grade 12 School providing daycare, preschool, full day kindergarten, elementary and middle school and high school. Our students grow life skills and intellect while learning traditional academics in a non-traditional environment that prioritizes creativity, curiosity, independence, outdoor exploration, and respect. We teach all the academic subjects you’d expect. What’s different is our approach. The outdoors is one of our best classrooms, and all of our students are outside almost every day. In middle school, the outdoor program is the center of the student’s experience. We cultivate curiosity. The most meaningful explorations in life come from innate curiosity. We nurture and develop inquiry as a way of life. At Voyagers’, being creative and making things is a part of learning at all times, and in all contexts. The arts and engineering and design permeate in all classes for all ages. Our entire educational approach, and creative expression is integrated into every student’s everyday experience. We expect engagement. From their earliest days as a Voyager, we ask a lot of our students. We don’t have much homework, but we do have immersive and in-depth project work and ongoing study whether building with blocks or composing an analytical paper. We respect our students. Children’s opinions matter. We treat our students with respect. We trust them, have great expectations for them, and give them significant responsibility. We pay attention to the distinct learning strategies children use to make sense of the world, and we teach, guide, and mentor them, with individual focus made possible by an optimal student to teacher ratio. We offer best-in-class technology access for our entire community—most students have iPads, our film classes use professional cameras, and our parents receive access to a state-of-the-art mobile communications platform that keeps parents closely engaged with the classroom. We strive to help children prepare for and move beyond our imagination of technology to come. We expect our students will be the inventors, innovators and changemakers of the future.