Greetings, GreenMount Community,
An
important part of our philosophical base is the fact that, to the greatest
extent possible, we strive to maintain small classes that consist of students
of different ages, commonly called multi-age groups. This concept has been around for as long as
one-room schoolhouses. (Would you
believe that I attended an eight-room schoolhouse? Unfortunately, I guess you would.)
That aside,
there is much research out there supporting this idea, and we have known for a
long time that this concept works at GMS.
For one thing, we see how older students in a classroom take advantage
of leadership opportunities and the younger ones can often find good role
models. At GreenMount, multi-age
grouping has been working successfully since the school’s inception. Indeed, that is how the school started.
When teachers have two age groups in a
classroom, they sometimes have expectations for all students to reach the level
of the older students. Because students
often attain the level of expectation, this can be a good thing. On the other hand, we have to make sure we
are meeting the needs of students, especially those early learners. To address
that issue at GreenMount, we look for every opportunity to group students for
instruction with their age mates and intellectual peers. For instance, students in grades 1, 2, and 3
are with their grade mates for 53 percent of the instructional day that
includes the core subjects of language arts and math.
As we look to the future of our school and
reaching its capacity next year we will work to create these multi-age
groupings and to keep class sizes small, placing students in the best learning
environment for each of them. Over the
summer the staff will be working on scheduling so that our students are
afforded the greatest opportunity to learn and grow socially and
emotionally. I have previously mentioned
here that every staff meeting begins with an examination of our philosophy,
which includes multi-age groupings. As a
professional learning community, your teachers confront the hard issues,
constantly discuss student success and needs, and work to develop, refine and
inform their craft. One of our goals for
next year will be to increase our communication with you about how the
multi-age groupings are working.
Our school is in
great shape, and next year promises to be one that sees improvement to an
already successful program. Curriculum
has been rewritten and refined, the facility is expanding, and purchases will
be made to upgrade our technology so that students can take advantage of their
world more effectively.
Charles Kettering said, “My interest is in the future because
I am going to spend the rest of my life there.” Such is the case for all of us. See you there.
Cheers,
Steve
