Our Mission

Mountain Sage Community School offers Waldorf-inspired, arts-integrated education, fully incorporating sustainable living practices into student learning. Each child is empowered to cultivate meaningful connections to their intellectual, physical, emotional, social and creative capacities in healthy, safe and beautiful learning environments. Through a supportive community of peers, parents and teachers, each child will become a confident, self-directed and engaged learner, invested in their own education.

Geodesic dome in the garden

Our Vision

Mountain Sage Community School is a highly sought after school providing a rigorous educational program where a whole-child approach to learning results in student curiosity and enthusiasm, allowing each child to reach the fullest expression of their individual potential. Children emerge from Mountain Sage as intelligent, compassionate, creative thinkers, who are engaged citizens with a strong work ethic, prepared to become stewards of the earth and its many diverse communities.

By integrating traditional Waldorf methods and curriculum into the Colorado Academic Standards, children will leave Mountain Sage with a life-long passion for learning, well prepared for the transition into other academic programs.

Mountain Sage embraces the key aspects of the local sustainability movement, providing students and their families with an increased connection to their local environment. By utilizing the rich community resources of Fort Collins, and through ongoing cultivation and development of the school’s land with edible gardens, all children deepen their connection with the earth, self and community.

Life at Mountain Sage

At Mountain Sage art, music, movement, storytelling, and drama are woven throughout the academic day. Such activities awaken the imagination and creative powers, bringing vitality and wholeness to thinking and learning. World language, health and conflict-resolution will also be a part of the curriculum. The innate beauty and artistic elements of each subject are honored through each encounter with the materials. Our intention is to present the world as a beautiful and wonder-filled place where anything is possible. Math IS music, science IS art, and the totality of the way the world works IS poetry. This powerful method provides all children, despite their differences, the opportunity to completely participate in their own education, cultivating compassion and respect for self, others and the natural world. A deep connection to the earth is supported through applied seasonal studies and year-round outdoor activities including gardening, nature walks, use of natural materials, work with farm animals and practical, hands-on projects that integrate curricular subjects. The school day has a structured “rhythm”, allowing for an” inhale and exhale” during the academic day. A play-based kindergarten and long outdoor recesses allow time for self-guided activity throughout the grades, providing space for this important aspect of learning.

School grounds host edible gardens, with perennials and fall bearing crops that become our fall harvest. Families and staff work together through the summer to tend our well loved garden. The addition of a school greenhouse/growing dome in June 2016, has provided a year-round learning environment bearing organic produce.

We are proud of the strong positive relationships between staff, students, and parents at Mountain Sage. Parent involvement was the driving force in the creation of our school, and must remain for continued success. Through parent education offerings, we support family well-being. Mountain Sage gives young people a sense of belonging to a community grounded in respect for people and the natural world. As a result, children graduate possessing self knowledge and knowledge of the world, while recognizing the interconnectedness of the two.