Angel Oak Primary opened in August 2025 to serve students in Head Start - 1st grade. As a primary school, we are committed to ensuring that all of our students have a joyful first school experience, strengthened by deep family and community partnerships, and that we build a strong foundation for future school success.
Our Angel Oak family has participated in many academic, social, and community activities this year. We have offered many community-focused events such as Meet and Greet; Book Nooks and Literacy Night, which provided interactive family education; Career Day, which brought in community volunteers and local organizations to teach children about future careers; and our Hispanic Heritage Month and Black History Month celebrations. Our students' hard work was celebrated through our Positive Behavior & Supports program, which included fun special events such as our Glow Party, Candlelight Luncheon, School Petting Zoo, and a Water Day.
Grounding all of this community work is a clear instructional vision: our school supports all students in developing the World Class Skills of the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate by focusing on the use of student-driven, data-informed instruction that utilizes developmentally appropriate play and cultivates creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. Through the use of arts-integrated strategies tied to rigorous standards, students are challenged to explore and express their learning in engaging and creative ways.
As an arts-focused primary school, our students have access to a robust schedule of related arts classes: Visual Art, Dance, Music, STEAM, PE, and Library, ensuring all of our students receive a broad range of arts instruction. Additionally, our Music & Dance teachers collaborated this year to stage a winter musical with our 1st grade students, and a spring musical with our Kindergarten students; both shows were a great success! Alongside the musicals, we also hosted “Art Walks,” which allowed all of our students’ hard work in the visual arts to be on display throughout the school for their families and friends.
Beyond our related arts classes, we use an arts integration approach to instruction, and our teachers receive professional development in arts integration through our partner organization Arts Now. This year, the focus of this professional development was on strengthening early literacy skills through the arts; our teachers worked directly with experts in Drama and Dance to explore ways to incorporate these disciplines into their literacy instruction, allowing more opportunities for oral language and exploration of complex themes and vocabulary.
We are also the recipient of an Arts Integration grant from the ABC Institute, which supported some of our work with Arts Now, and also provided our teachers and students with resources in support of arts integration. Additionally, our school benefits from a wonderful partnership with Arts, Etc., a local organization whose partners in the arts have supported us in bringing world-class arts experiences to our school. This year our students had opportunities including the Gaillard, Charleston Stage, Engaging Creative Minds, the Charleston Chamber Orchestra, and the College of Charleston Opera.
Other grants and partnerships include: the SC Aquarium, which supported our 1st graders for a free field trip; Reading Partners, which provided targeted literacy instruction through a robust network of local volunteers; Water Wise, which provided water safety and beginning swimming instruction to 75 of our 1st grade students with the greatest needs; and Ground Swell Capital, whose financial support allowed us to implement a wide variety of community-building initiatives and events.
We have a very active Parent-Teacher Association, which we share with Johns Island Elementary (serving grades 2-5). Our joint PTA has worked hard to ensure that all of our students have access to in-school special events like the Holiday Shop and Field Days, and evening family events such as Movie Night and Valentine’s Dances.
Reflecting our school-wide focus on literacy, our School Improvement Council focused on increasing access to high-quality literacy materials for our classrooms and school library. As part of this initiative, they facilitated a successful community book drive for our librarian and teachers.
Angel Oak Primary had an amazing first year, thanks to the hard work of our staff, our students, and the incredible support we have received from our local community.
Anna Mims, Principal
Shannon Buhera, SIC Chair
