Weekly Message from Steve Warner, Head of School (May 20, 2013)

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

Weekly Message from Steve Warner, Head of School (October 17, 2011)

Each week Head of School, Steve Warner, addresses GreenMount parents in a weekly letter. This is his letter from October 17, 2011.

Greetings GreenMount Community,

            Who are we?  With the upcoming Open House event on Saturday, it is important that our message to prospective families is accurate and consistent.  We enjoy talking about the fact that we allow our students to develop “deep smarts” and that we are not constricted by a state-mandated curriculum that is “a mile wide and an inch deep.”  Indeed, we do allow our students to find areas of interest and to explore them in depth with the objective of having them become curious, reflective learners.  I should mention that we do reference the state curriculum a great deal because our students ultimately end up in public school at the high school level.  But unlike public schools, we are not constrained by the Voluntary State Curriculum.  We can pause along its K-8 highway to create projects and experiences for our children for which the VSC has little time allotted.  We are happy with our ability to make these kinds of choices for students.

            When we talk to others about our classes being multi-aged, do we all know what we are talking about?  Is it simply that we group students of different ages together because we like the idea of kids at different grade levels together?  Actually, there is a lot of research to support the idea of multi-age grouping.  One article can be found at http://www.multiage-education.com/multiagen-b/themulticlass.html, which is a web site for multi-age education and at which other information on the subject can be found.  When this school was started in the basement of a church, the whole school was one group of just a few children.  As the school grew, the founders saw the advantages of the multi-age concept and continued to form classes in this way.  In the article referenced above, the author states:  “A common belief is that multiage classrooms benefit the younger age group, but short-change the older students. This couldn't be further from the truth! From my experience as a multiage teacher and mother, it is the oldest age group that benefits the most in a multiage class. They have the benefit of continuing their learning with the same teacher, of developing leadership positions within the class community and of reflecting on their academic progress as they revisit basic concepts with their younger classmates. The more advanced student is freed from the constraints of a graded curriculum when the teacher is designing a program from a child centered perspective. At the same time, children that would struggle in a traditional graded classroom experience success when given more choice  in the level of daily activities. An experienced multiage teacher learns to provide a balance of challenge and success for all students.”

            The author references “experienced multiage teachers.”  Given our long history with this type of grouping, I don’t think you are going to find too many staffs that are more experienced with this concept  than ours.

            Finally, I would like to thank the parents who came to the Adjunct Back to School Night.  These 15 parents were able to hear directly from the teachers who teach our Keystone programs and came away with a better understanding of their value to the overall program.  I am sorry that more parents with concerns were unable to make it.  We also had our first parent meeting on Thursday last, attended by seven parents who were there to ask questions and suggest ideas.  Although poorly attended, we had a good discussion and it is hoped that at least some small portion of our parent community came away with some useful information.  Perhaps more of you will be able to attend our next get-together.

            “When your children reach adolescence, they fire you as parent. You’ve got to scramble to get rehired as a consultant.” - Mike Riera       

At some point, your children will find ways to keep you out of the schoolhouse.  Come now while you still can.           

Cheers,

Steve