The Social-Emotional Advantages of Small Class Sizes
Discover the benefits of small schools and advantages of small class sizes – why these intimate environments create better learning outcomes for high schoolers.
A Boarding School Experience From Student to Parent to Staff
One woman’s boarding school experience spans three roles at Olney: student in the ’70s, parent in the 2000s, and educator today.
Admissions Inquiry Thank You Page
Thanks for reaching out! Someone from our admissions team will follow up within two business days from admissions@olneyfriends.org. If something is time-sensitive, the main office is at 740-425-3655. While You Wait Take a few minutes with our guide on what small schools actually do differently. It’s a short read. Read the Guide
How Experiential Learning on Our Farm Prepares for College
At Olney Friends School, a USDA-certified organic farm is part of daily campus life. Here’s what students learn, and why it matters beyond high school.
International Boarding School: A Planning Guide for Fall
Spring is when families start planning for international boarding school. This guide covers financial aid, enrollment timing, and how to get ahead.
Inside a Progressive School That Puts Community First
Discover how Olney Friends School defines progressive education through a spirit-first approach that transforms students into values-driven leaders.
Quaker Education Provides the Right Environment
Discover how our Quaker education cultivates independent thinking, leadership, and integrity, preparing students for what comes next.
Is Your Teen Ready? 10 Signs They’ll Thrive at Boarding School
Wondering if your teen is ready for boarding school? Our guide reveals 10 signs of readiness and how Olney Friends School’s unique Quaker values-based education helps students flourish.
5 Reasons City Parents Are Choosing Rural Boarding Schools
How Rural Boarding School Life Benefits Your Teenager Transitioning from an urban area to a rural area can be difficult. You worry about job availability and access to urban comforts like shopping and dining in nice restaurants. But that’s when you’re an adult. For teens transitioning from an urban school to a rural boarding high school, the stakes are different. In fact, the values you seek out as a parent occur more naturally in rural boarding school life than in urban school life. In a rural boarding school, life moves at a more intentional pace. Your teens have space to breathe, think, and connect deeply with nature, humans, and themselves. They get to pass through an academic system that combines rigorous learning with practical and value-based education. 5 Reasons Why Parents Love Rural Boarding Schools Here are five reasons why city parents are choosing rural boarding schools, like Olney, and why you should Rural school life facilitates immersive learning. Due to characteristics like lower population density, abundant natural landscape, a quieter environment, and more room for outdoor learning, rural boarding schools are uniquely positioned to offer a more interconnected learning approach. Just imagine a boarding high school with fewer than 50 students sprawled across 350 acres of land, a student-centered farm program, and shared responsibilities. At Olney, immersive learning extends far beyond the walls of classrooms and into our USDA-certified organic farm. With our expansive grounds and over 20 certified organic crops, our students are active participants in sustainable agriculture, livestock care, and food production. Our farm-to-table program teaches responsibility, patience, and problem-solving. Whether they’re tending crops or caring for animals, students gain a deeper understanding of biology, environmental stewardship, and teamwork through shared responsibilities. This kind of learning environment encourages your teen to seek a better understanding of nature. Citizen science gives teens a chance to move beyond theory and truly participate in real-world research. And due to the ecological nature of rural areas, rural boarding school life positions your teen in a learning environment where they can easily relate class topics to real-world problems. By having direct access to environmental challenges and being able to engage with them through environmental science, your teen develops sharper critical thinking skills, a deeper connection to nature, and a sense of responsibility beyond themselves. We offer a transdisciplinary curriculum that relates academic discussions to accessible real-world problems. Citizen science challenges our students to solve accessible issues in our neighborhood, such as establishing a baseline for stream quality in our local watershed. In a rural boarding school, community isn’t just a buzzword; it’s a lived experience. With fewer students, shared responsibilities, and a culture of mutual respect, your teen becomes part of something meaningful. At Olney, community is one of the core principles behind our Quaker values. Our students work with each other on the farm, gather together to worship, converse openly and vulnerably with each other to reach consensus decisions, and cooperate with each other during outdoor activities. Ultimately, these routines don’t just ensure that your teen understands the value of community, they also ensure that they have a strong sense of community that can withstand challenges that lie beyond the walls of the school. A common stereotype is that rural education means limited exposure, but we’re proving otherwise. The small, quiet, and intimate nature of rural education allows our rural boarding school to have more control over what students are exposed to. This means teachers can facilitate meaningful dialogue aimed towards seeing the bigger picture about a topic or problem. At Olney, one-third of our students are international students, which means global awareness is integrated into the everyday life of your teen. This diversity manifests itself both academically and socially. We approach history in a manner that explores the experience of diverse groups within the periods. This nuanced, connective approach to learning is consistent in our curriculum and non-academically, in the sense that we celebrate various cultural events and encourage cross-cultural collaboration. By the time they graduate, your teen doesn’t just have a global understanding of the world, they’re also prepared to take part in it with curiosity, humility, and purpose. Rural boarding schools offer something that is becoming increasingly rare in our hyperconnected world: the opportunity for teens to develop a healthy relationship with technology. According to an academic survey, a high percentage of teenagers who used social media extensively showed high psychological tension. In urban schools, students are overwhelmed with digital, while rural boarding school life encourages more intentional technology use. The Olney Friends Boarding School Difference At Olney, your teen experiences digital detox periods, where they engage in practical activities like aquaculture and animal husbandry, depending on the season, as well as social activities , like community meetings or silent worship. The aim of this structured process isn’t to reject technology entirely, but rather to encourage mindful practice and positive usage. The physical distance from urban digital infrastructure that rural boarding school life offers, combined with our purposeful scheduling that prioritizes human interactions and outdoor activities, can help city teens rediscover focus, deep thinking, and genuine human connection. By graduation, our students have developed what many urban teens lack: the ability to be fully present, think deeply without digital interruption, and maintain authentic relationships in both digital and non-digital spaces. Learn more about how we help teens become intellectually, emotionally, and socially ready for college and beyond in our unique rural setting.
Boarding High School Curriculum
Olney Friends School Curriculum Guide Courses and Academic Policies for the 2024-2025 Academic Year A Vision for Our Curriculum Leonard Guindon, Dean of Academics Our students name community as their most valued aspect of Olney. We represent a community of teachers and a community of learners. Classroom teachers hold the primary responsibility for delivering the curriculum. Tying the curriculum to the community we share, love, and build fresh every year facilitates optimal delivery. Non-classroom teachers—on the farm, in the kitchen, in maintenance, the business office, the administration, and the students themselves—become wonderful resources to bring the curriculum alive. As the only boarding school in America with a certified organic farm, we deserve a reflection of this status in the classes we teach. The community of Barnesville and the Appalachian region, with their own characteristics, lie beyond our community. This area experiences blessings and curses from fossil fuel deposits. Again, issues in the local community beyond campus provide opportunities for enriching the curriculum. Welcome to Academics at Olney Friends School Christian N. Acemah, Head of School At Olney Friends School, we strive to reach out to the entire student as a human being with multiple layers. We view you as a whole human, functioning beyond any silos, not just as a science student, an art student, or a non-student. We created a transdisciplinary curriculum to enable you to transcend disciplinary boundaries and engage all your intellectual, spiritual, social, emotional, and physical attributes. We hope you will accept challenges beyond measure in our safe environment. We hope you discover how much you can accomplish in your life when you overcome the urge to stick only to what you find comfortable. The good news is that you will embark on this kind of study with other like-hearted and like-minded community members who will encourage you to do and be your best throughout your career at Olney. In the end, when we function at our best as a community, we elicit the best out of each other. The transdisciplinary curriculum simply gives us some clues about what we can do when we challenge our preconceptions (those pesky chains on our minds and hearts) that keep us from realizing that which lies within us and within our grasp. Ninth and tenth-grade students will receive an introduction to different ways of understanding, evaluating, acquiring, and using knowledge. In the eleventh grade, you will examine what kind of relationship humans ought to have with the environment (built, natural, or otherwise). In the twelfth grade, you will determine for yourself what it means to become a good global steward. All the classes you enroll in—required or electives—will help you grapple with these questions. You will also find other questions along the way. You may wonder why we focus on questions. I have no answer to that matter, but I can assure you that if you delve into these kinds of questions, you will hone your critical thinking skills, deepen your appreciation for the environment, enable you to think through what it means to be an integral part of a community and give you a chance to test your own perseverance. All that you do at Olney prepares you for life after Olney in what can only be described as an unforgiving, volatile, unpredictable, and ambiguous world. Why not give yourself a chance to meaningfully care for and thrive in the world? Metanoia (μετάνοια in Ancient Greek), a companion class to all your other classes, will hopefully become one of our most anticipated courses. The Greek word Metanoia means the process through which one sheds the false self in order to see the true self. How intriguing! While it will focus on critical thinking, reading, writing, discussion, and learning about how to learn, it will become a class that enables you to discern the links between disciplines. In many ways, it represents a microcosm of all your other classes. A lead faculty member will manage that class, but you will have many other faculty members and guest speakers join you for certain parts. I look forward to experiencing this course with you. I feel equally excited about our new Agricultural Sciences course, the Euclidean Geometry class, Coding and Design, our art and music offerings, our Humanities program, and the slew of electives at your disposal. Of course, other traditional classes such as Biology, Algebra, Calculus, and Physics also receive instruction in the Olney way, so please get ready to explore and expand your mind. The possibility of our curriculum leaving an indelible mark on your soul exists for you. Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with Olney’s graduation requirements.Please speak with your advisor or the Dean of Academics about anything that seems unclear to you. We support your growth, so please let us know if you have any concerns or queries. I wish you all the very best on your journey here at Olney Friends School. Course Descriptions Metanoia Metanoia (μετάνοια in Ancient Greek) at Olney introduces students to approaches to critical thinking, reading, and writing. Ninth and tenth-grade students develop a foundation for more focused and sophisticated intellectual pursuits in the eleventh and twelfth grades. Metanoia provides the occasion for students to interrogate their grade-specific questions (mentioned earlier in this curriculum guide). Students read, discuss, and write papers on a selection of seminal texts from different civilizations (African, Eastern, and Western). Classes take the form of seminar discussions, in which a faculty member guides or coaches the students. Faculty members do not necessarily represent subject matter experts; they learn collaboratively with the students. Ninth and tenth-grade students enroll in Metanoia 9 and 10 for the entire academic year. Metanoia 9 starts with an exploration of what it takes to thrive in a college-preparatory high school. It addresses such issues as time management, study skills, textual analysis, and academic writing. The course then provides opportunities for students to test their newly acquired skills. Metanoia 10 builds on the foundation laid in Metanoia 9. Students learn some principles