Friends Western School

What makes FWS unique is our emphasis on community. Students are taught to be stewards of the world around them. Service projects, the examination and study of diverse cultures and participation in our local community are all components of the curriculum.

With weekly all-school meetings, monthly community lunches and intentional collaboration between the upper and lower classes, we encourage our students to develop an attitude of care and respect for each other.Our commitment to community-building creates empathy, integrity and flexibility. Children at FWS experience community on multiple levels: family, school, neighborhood and the natural world.

Friends Western School rests in the foundation provided by the Quaker belief that there is an inner light in each of us. This idea inspires the ethos of support, encouragement, respect and kindness that is evident at Friends Western. We seek diversity and welcome families of all faiths and no faith.

Friends Western School was founded in 2001 by Robin Durant, a longtime educator and member of Pasadena's Orange Grove Quaker Meeting. She was the moving force in the school, weaving Quaker values with other humanistic and pedagogical traditions, fostering the idea of parents and children growing together within the group, respecting each child's diversity of experience, and learning through balance of discovery and direct instruction.

As a member of the Friends Council on Education, we provide a curricula grounded in Quaker values so that students learn to lead lives of public purpose, seeking to be the change they want to see in the world. We honor the individuality and gifts of each child. Our curriculum is developed with the goal of nurturing confident, capable, self-sufficient learners.

We are a Quaker cooperative private elementary school, K through 5th grade. Class sizes are small, capped at 15 students per class. We group children based on their development. We have three classes of mixed grades ranging from K-5. We encourage interaction between students of all ages. We have three terms and a ten-month schedule with 6 weeks of breaks throughout the year.