All Saints Inquire Radio St. Paisios

Academics

Academics.

High expectations meet high support: an Orthodox Christian education with respect for Classical learning methods and a global aperture.

An All Saints student in a school polo, looking down with his hands open

Grades 3 through 12

十年樹木,百年樹人“It takes ten years to raise a tree.
It takes a century to raise a human.”
A ten-year academic continuum over the most decisive decade of a lifetime.

The continuum What a graduate can do

Photograph by Bob Stavrou at Greek Fire Studios

The Continuum

Grade 3 to grade 12. Select a grade for the year, or a subject for the whole sequence.

Opening 2027–2028 · grades 3–9 As the school grows · grades 10–12
Grade
Phase All Saints Primary All Saints Middle School All Saints High All Saints High
Koine, alphabet to the services Biblical & Liturgical, daily Modern Greek Modern Greek, continued
English Language Arts, every day Literature and written argument inside the Core Seminar writing Seminar writing AP humanities coursework
Theology and social studies Theology · History · Literature, on one four-year rotation Seminar depth Seminar depth AP humanities
Dimensions Math 3–4 Dimensions Math 4–8, through algebra Algebra Geometry · Precalculus AP Calculus BC · AP Statistics
Mystery Science Issues & Science, UC Berkeley Biology Chemistry AP Biology · Chemistry · Physics
Orthodox Studio Art · Byzantine Chant · Media & Theatre Arts Continued Continued, with staged productions
Folkstyle wrestling and Greek folk dance Competitive athletics Competitive athletics
Milestones The Greek alphabet The Classical Core rotation opens The AP sequence opens Internships First graduating class

Grades 3 through 9 open in 2027–2028. The school then adds one grade a year, to a first graduating class in 2031. Lower grades may open as the right faculty come.

What a Graduate Knows and Can Do

The school exists to form students who love God and neighbor with all the mind, heart, soul, and strength. Mind, heart, and will are the powers of the soul; strength is the body that carries them. Our learner outcomes are grouped the same way.

Mind

What a student knows, and how they think.

What a graduate can do

  • Reads closely and builds an interpretation from the text itself
  • Argues from evidence, in writing and aloud, and answers the strongest objection
  • Reasons with number, and investigates a question that can be tested
  • Reads and uses Koine Greek

Mastery of knowledge, and of the approaches to knowledge, is balanced with the courage to wonder and innovate.

Evidence seminar notes and annotated texts, essays and presentations, MAP and STAR, translation and reading aloud.

Heart

What a student loves.

What a graduate can do

  • Knows the Scriptures, the doctrines, and the shape of the services, and can explain them
  • Takes part in the prayer and worship of the school day
  • Attends to the person in front of them, and repairs a relationship they have damaged
  • Serves a parish, a neighbor, and the ordinary work of a classroom

Devotion to one’s own tradition is balanced with welcome of the stranger.

Evidence theology work, commentary on Scripture and hymns, service carried across a term, observed conduct.

Will

What a student does when it costs something.

What a graduate can do

  • Weighs a real choice against the teaching of the Church and the dignity of others
  • Keeps commitments, and says plainly when they have not
  • Plans their own work, and asks for help before the work is lost
  • Stays with difficulty, and changes a strategy that is not working

Humility is balanced with the boldness to speak.

Evidence work completed on time, honest accounts of mistakes, practice records, a problem carried across several sessions.

Strength

What a student makes and endures in the body.

What a graduate can do

  • Trains the body with skill, safety, and attention to a partner
  • Makes finished work in language, sound, movement, or image
  • Builds technique by repetition, correction, and patience
  • Revises after critique, and can say what changed and why

Diligent practice is balanced with rest.

Evidence performances and productions, drafts beside revisions, measured progress in a physical skill.

The outcomes are reviewed with the faculty each year and mapped to the curriculum. Write to admissions@allsaintsacademyoc.org for the map.

Four students standing together under the sycamores after school

Why These Years

The habits of study, friendship, and faith that carry into adulthood are set in these years.

Brain

The Great Pruning

The adolescent brain prunes unused synapses, by estimates reaching 40 percent in the prefrontal cortex, and strengthens the connections in use.

Source: Huttenlocher & Dabholkar (1997); Petanjek et al., PNAS (2011)
Mind & heart

Calibrating Emotional Centers

Emotional centers mature by the early teens; the prefrontal cortex that governs judgment is not finished until about 25. Students at this age feel decisions strongly before they can weigh them.

Source: NIH ABCD Study; Steinberg's dual-systems research (2008)
Memory

The Permanent Decade

Adults recall ages 10–25 more vividly than any other period.

Source: Rubin, Rahhal & Poon, Memory & Cognition (1998)
Identity

Grades 7–9 Peak

The sharpest identity differentiation lands in grades 7 through 9, exactly when peers overtake parents as the approval that matters.

Source: Klimstra et al., J. Youth & Adolescence (2010); Chein et al., Developmental Science (2011)
Wellbeing

75% Before 24

Three-quarters of lifetime mental-health conditions first appear before 24, rising most sharply between 12 and 15.

Source: Kessler et al., Archives of General Psychiatry (2005)
Faith

The Trajectory Is Set

Religiosity measured every year from 6th to 12th grade predicts a young person's sense of purpose at 21, both where they start and which way they move.

Source: Pfund, Schultz, Andrews & Hill, Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (2020), seven annual waves, NIH grant DA10767

Daily Koine Greek

The ultimate linguistic foundation for classical logic, biblical literacy and cognitive development.

Greek is the first period of every school day, grades 3 through 8: the alphabet first, then the words of the services, toward reading the Scriptures and the Liturgy in the original. Grade 9 and above continue in Modern Greek, rooted in the Biblical and the Liturgical.

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ Λόγος

en archē ēn ho Logos

“In the beginning was the Word.”

John 1:1

Α αalpha
Β βbeta
Γ γgamma
Δ δdelta
Ε εepsilon
Ζ ζzeta
Η ηeta
Θ θtheta
Ι ιiota
Κ κkappa
Λ λlambda
Μ μmu
Ν νnu
Ξ ξxi
Ο οomicron
Π πpi
Ρ ρrho
Σ σsigma
Τ τtau
Υ υupsilon
Φ φphi
Χ χchi
Ψ ψpsi
Ω ωomega

All Saints’ Classical Core

Three distinctive characteristics of the All Saints approach.

Theanthropological

θεóς theos, God · ἄνθρωπος anthrōpos, human being

Unfurl

Of the God–man: Jesus Christ, fully God and fully human, and through Him the whole relationship between God and humanity. Every discipline in the Core is studied in that light.

Interdisciplinary

inter Latin, between · disciplina Latin, instruction

Unfurl

Four courses holding one storyline. A student meets the same period in Theology, History, Literature and the Sacred Arts inside the same term, and is asked to carry what is learned in one into the others.

Global

globus Latin, sphere, the whole world

Unfurl

A canon that reaches past Europe. Students study the Church and the civilizations it grew among across the whole world, because that is the world God made, and the one a graduate will live and work in.

The Classical Core is where students study that relationship as it unfolded in history. Theology, History, Literature and the Sacred Arts hold to one storyline, so a student meets the same period from four directions in the same term. Each discipline is studied to depth, and the four together give the breadth to think about and engage with the world beyond the classroom.

Four disciplines run in constant conversation on one storyline.

Theology History Literature SacredArts
Four disciplines, one storyline.
Theology
The message of the Scriptures, the Church Fathers, the lives of the saints, and the liturgical tradition of the Church.
History
The times, places, people, and events of the world the Lord Jesus was born into, and from which He called His Church.
Literature
The human soul's longing for God, in stories, poetry, and texts across cultures and centuries.
Sacred Arts
Students take up the themes and the cultural and liturgical material of Theology, History, and Literature in the studio.

What the conversation looks like: in one trimester a student meets God calling Abraham out of Babylon in Theology, the civilizations of the Fertile Crescent in History, and the Code of Hammurabi in Literature.

How the Disciplines Align

The four courses follow the same period each trimester. A representative trimester for 6th grade:

Grade 6 · The Ancient Greek World
HISTORY The AncientGreek World THEOLOGY Acts andthe Epistles LITERATURE Plato’s RepublicAristotle’s EthicsHomer’s Odyssey SACRED ARTS Mosaics, Sophocles’Antigone, Greek FolkSong Analysis, 3DParthenon Recreation

How We Assess Learning

Much of the learning here happens in immersive work: case studies, location-based learning, and sustained projects. We weight formative assessment as heavily as summative, because students and teachers here are committed to improving the work while it is still in hand. Students take MAP twice a year and STAR each trimester, tracking math, reading comprehension, and writing.

STARRenaissance

Short, adaptive checks in reading, math, and writing that a student completes in about twenty minutes. We run them each trimester: a frequent, low-stakes signal that lets teachers adjust instruction during the term, while there is still time to act.

A nationally normed, adaptive assessment taken twice a year. MAP measures each child's growth against their own past performance and against peers across the country, so a family sees their child's progress over time and the faculty sees where to aim next.

Accreditation

As of October 2026, All Saints is in the accreditation process with the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). Accreditation evaluates an operating school, and we are growing ours around what accreditors look for from the start: a documented curriculum, credentialed lead teachers, nationally normed assessment, and, beginning summer 2027, a published annual report of enrollment, growth, and finances.

All Saints is a member school of the Society for Classical Learning and will pursue formal SCL accreditation. The school has also begun the process of registering as a Cambridge International School.

All Saints is an independent school operating under California's private-school requirements, organized as a California nonprofit corporation, with federal 501(c)(3) status pending.