St. Michael’s is a Orthodox Christian elementary school in southwest Santa Rosa, in beautiful Sonoma County, California. Some of our children's parents have said that it is the "best kept secret of Sonoma County". The school was established in 1994 and is deliberately small. We generally have between 12 and 18 students.  With three very experienced teachers, the children receive a well-rounded education, filled with art, poetry, practical work experience and loving attention.

Although, we have never presented ourselves as an highly academic school, our emphasis on Christian values and personal relationships have resulted in graduates who have been very successful in their high school studies. Many of them have been placed in Advance Placement courses in high school, or have immediately started taking junior college courses at Santa Rosa Junior College. The pictures on this page are from the first half of the 2001-2012 school year.

In December of 2011, we were able to put together another newsletter, focusing on the activities of the spring.   When we looked through the pictures we took, we were surprised at the variety of field trips and special projects we had last spring. The newsletter is another long one, four pages of full color. Click here to see it.

As part of what we call our "Morning Opening", we gradually learn a psalm and a poem.  After our simple morning prayers, the student read the psalm and poem we have printed in large font and posted on the wall.  On Wednesday and Friday, we provide "recitation opportunities" for those who would like to recite, from memory, as much of the Psalm or poem as they can.  Gradually all the children learn both the Psalm and the poem.

Once again one of our graduates told us that he already knew the poems being taught in his high school "poetry class".  He had learned the poems in a very organic way during our "morning opening".

Annual Spring Dinner, Friday, February 10 - 7:00pm.  Join us for a wonderful event at St. Seraphim's Orthodox Church in Santa Rosa.  Email us (jkhughes@stmichaelschool.us) or call 707-545-0861 for more details.
This event was a great success.  Serge Anderson and his crew cooked a delicious dinner.  Eating easting, we burned a few calories with an evening of Irish dances.

Bowling Night - Sunday, May 6,  4:30 -6:30 pm. Meet at Double Decker Lanes in Rohnert Park for two hours of bowling and pizza.  $39.00 per lane for up to five people.

Annual Celtic Festival, Saturday, May 26, Holy Dormition Orthodox Church.  Each year our church community and the school parents host a fund-raising event which we call the Celtic Festival.  A description of the event is at the bottom of the page.

Children thrive and develop in a warm, personal setting and this is the atmosphere we maintain at St. Michael's. Some have called it "the next best thing to home schooling."  While larger educational institutions work on the factory model of education, St. Michael's values the less institutional, more personal teacher-student relationship model. This approach has been very fruitful.  We expect the highest from each student and the students are challenged to fulfill their God-given abilities.  Yet, the children are measured according to their ability, not to the ability of others.

Although we are an Orthodox Christian school, not all students are Orthodox Christians. They have come from many backgrounds.

In 2006, our local paper, The Press Democrat, ran a short article about our church and school. They described the property as "a sanctuary of swaying trees and tidy buildings, a 2-acre island of tranquility." Many people who visit tell us that they "never knew this church and school were here". Please visit the church's web site at holydormitionchurch.org.

We hope that parents who may be interested in St. Michael's will get a good sense of the spirit of the school through this site, especially the sections History and Philosophy, Articles on Education, and Newsletters.

If you have any questions about the school, please contact us at 707-545-0861 or jkhughes@stmichaelschool.us.

The parents of our students are working together to produce a newsletter at least once a year. To see the latest one, click here.  We also have PDF files of newsletters produced in previous years.  You may find these in the Newsletters section of the web site.

We also hope that other parents and teachers can benefit from our combined 50+ years experience, both in homeschooling and in a classroom setting.

On Saturday, May 26, 2012, our church and the students' parents will host the sixth annual St. Michael's Celtic Festival, as a  fund raiser for St. Michael's Orthodox School.

The day is filled with many different craft activities, an Irish High Tea, several Irish music jam sessions and a lecture about Ancient Celtic Christianity. At 3:00 pm, we process to the school playground (also called St. Michael's Meadow) to have our local version of Scottish Highland Games. We throw telephone poles (well, small ones), toss heavy weight backwards over a bar 12-15 feet in the air, and have several wonderful tugs-o-war. (Why, in a contest between adults and children, do the children always win? Are there that many of them?)

Then we will learn some Irish dancing, have three legged races and other games.  In other words, we will enjoy being with each other.


By clicking twice on the poster to the left you can view it full size and read the schedule we used last year.  The 2012 Festival will most likely follow a very similar schedule.

Before the time of modern "entertainment", people enjoyed life and one another in the sharing of music, games and crafts. Leisure time was a time of creativity, not a time of passivity. (This was before the era of "couch potatoes".) These activities strengthened the sense of community and appreciation of others - something that modern entertainment fails to do.

In our church's annual Harvest Fair in the autumn and St. Michael's Celtic Festival in the spring, we try to give our children (and ourselves) a taste of the joy of community, a taste of the joy of a life in Christ.

For pictures and videos of last year's festival, go to holydormitionchurch.org and click on Celtic Festival.