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Health & Fitness

Celebrating New Beginnings

While Nexus Academy of Royal Oak is a brand new school with a 21st Century approach to learning – our school combines on-site learning with virtual learning – we still celebrate typical milestones like traditional schools in order to strengthen our academic community. To that end, the Nexus Academy community – students, families, staff and board members – recently gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony celebrating the opening of our state-of-the-art campus. It was exciting to see the pride on everyone’s faces during the ceremony commemorating the hard work put forth to make Nexus Academy of Royal Oak a reality.

With a little more than a month of school completed, our students have already made tremendous strides – both academically and socially. As each day passes, the students grow more comfortable with our unique learning environment, where students attend class on-site four hours a day, four days a week and do the rest of their learning online (at home or wherever they are most comfortable). Such comfort produces a warm and engaging school culture that is critical to student achievement.   

In the coming months, we look forward to challenging and encouraging our students to reach greater heights through a series of activities in school and off-site that will invite students to explore new concepts, new approaches and new experiences. With the support of our newly elected student government, these enrichment activities will align with our objectives in preparing students for success after graduation.

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Additionally, with an understanding that a strong, healthy body helps enhance mental focus and clarity, we are introducing the Pedaling Principal Challenge this fall, where I will try to ride more miles than our students using the Life Cycle stationary bikes we have on campus. Each stationary bike is equipped to hold a laptop, enabling students to learn while burning calories. Much like our school concept, we take a unique approach to physical fitness at Nexus Academy. Each student works with a personal trainer to develop a personal fitness plan to make exercise a fun part of students’ everyday routines – an individualized path toward a long-term healthy lifestyle. We’ll not only be promoting physical fitness with this challenge, but with the “loser” of the challenge – principal or students – having to donate time volunteering at a local charitable organization, we’re also developing a community of good neighbors. Wish us luck!

Whether it’s a ribbon-cutting celebrating the opening of a new school, the creation of a student government or participating in field trips, students at Nexus Academy still get to experience many of the activities students at traditional school have enjoyed for the last hundred years. The difference is that these activities are intertwined with a learning experience that is tailored specifically to meet each student’s individual needs and scheduling requirements. We’re off to a great start and I can’t wait to see where we go from here.

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