Our Mission
The mission of Desert Marigold School is to provide an educational context that emphasizes intellectual achievement and the imaginative, artistic, and moral growth of its students. By addressing their heads, hands and hearts, Desert Marigold will encourage students to be lifelong learners and independent thinkers as well as self motivated, self-disciplined, creative, adaptable and responsible individuals.
We seek to establish and maintain a school that provides an individualized, nurturing approach and achieves the following goals:
To ensure each child’s excellence in core academic skills by providing a curriculum enlivened with the arts of painting, music, theater, movement, singing, sculpture and handwork
To educate according to age and development, so that learning and growth are united.
To present the curriculum in multiple and integrated ways, so students have many different opportunities to learn concepts, as well as see the relationship to the larger whole.
To nourish the spirit of curiosity so that students continue to learn long after the end of formal training.
To encourage fundamental values and life skills, including responsibility, perseverance, integrity, self-discipline, trustworthiness, craftsmanship, friendship and compassion.
To make available this quality of education for all ethnic and socioeconomic sectors in our community.
Our History
Since 1994, Desert Marigold School (DMS) has served students and families in the metro Phoenix area by working to bring alive the deep principles underlying Waldorf Education. First as a developing member of the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America (AWSNA) and now as a member of the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education (APWE), DMS has grown from a tiny Kindergarten into a thriving K-12 school. Throughout our entire history, DMS has also been a key member of the Arizona Council for Waldorf Education (ACWE), a trailblazing organization that models collaboration and mutual support between private and public endeavors.
Currently, DMS is the only comprehensive K-12 Public Waldorf School in the United States, with a dedicated and experienced staff serving over 300 students. We celebrate the diversity of our amazing community, rich in different cultural, family, and faith traditions, and so generous in its support of our beautiful school.
