As those who have been at Greenspring for the last several years know, our school is transforming. In 2017 we launched a Capital Project – Great Foundation, Great Future – to address the needs of our aging buildings and to provide our children with new, beautiful, safe spaces, designed just for them. This project consisted of four Phases. Three years ago we finished Phases I and II, renovating and building the Main Building and Emerson Village, providing two beautiful villages designed just for our Toddler and Children’s House communities. Phase III will be the addition of a new building, our Elementary Village, and Phase IV will be the design and creation of our Outdoor Spaces.
Announcing Phase III of our Capital Project
After we completed Phases I and II we decided to pause and settle into our new buildings and give our community a much-deserved rest after several years of fundraising and construction in our small community on our small campus. We have always had every intention of completing the Great Foundation, Great Future Project and were starting to enter the conversation when COVID descended.
It surprised us all that, in the midst of COVID, our growing elementary community called upon us to resurrect the conversation. We began talking with our staff and our parent community. Last spring our Board of Trustees voted to move forward with Phase III: The Elementary Village and we began to get excited about finishing what we started. We then spent several months redesigning our plans with our architects at GWWO and our teaching staff. Needless to say, our Elementary Team is now excited as well and cannot wait to be in their new spaces! The Lower Elementary and the Upper Elementary classrooms (three classrooms in total) will share the new 5,500 square foot building, enjoying large classrooms (the smallest is 1,100 square feet!), a community kitchen, and meeting space as well.
We are currently in the throes of finalizing our permits through Baltimore County and waiting on bids from several contractors which are due on November 1st. We are delighted to share that we should be breaking ground in December with an expected completion date of September/October 2022.
Then on to Phase IV
Additionally, we have secured Natural Learning Initiative (NLI) to support the design and development of our outdoor spaces as Phase IV: Our Outdoor Spaces. This includes our playgrounds, outdoor classrooms, and communal spaces. NLI will be on campus to evaluate and learn more about the site in the beginning of November. While they are here, we will host a Community Meeting to give you all, our families, the opportunity to share your thoughts and ideas with the team.
An Opportunity to Help Make all of this Happen
Phase I and II were funded through a Capital Campaign which raised $1.25 million for the project. In addition, the School contributed $1 million and we borrowed $4 million. Our estimates are that Phase III and IV will cost just over $4 million to complete. The School will be contributing to the project again and we are working with our bank on securing an additional loan.
We will also give our community the opportunity to contribute to this project. We invite you to consider a financial gift to support the project. For those of you who have been with us for a few years, you may recall that Phase IV has already been seeded with donations from our Grandparent Community. An appeal to our Grandparents during Grandfriends’ Day a few years ago resulted in raising the funds needed to hire NLI to create a Master Plan. We have been hanging on to these funds and are excited to finally put them to use!
Addition of Little Barn to our Phasing for Capital Project
We are needing to add another phase to our project. Little Barn, currently the home to the Lower Elementary Redbud Class, is going to require a significant renovation – if not a full overhaul. When we had a pipe leak in the building earlier this fall and began to pull up the flooring and take out drywall, we began to understand how much work this building needs. We have fixed the leak and are repairing the floors and the walls so that the Redbud class can return to their classroom. And while there is nothing prohibiting the children from being in the space this year, the building needs a full renovation. Thus, we are adding Little Barn to our “to do” list. Once our Elementary Village is complete with Phase III, Little Barn will become a much-needed space for our community (a dedicated space for Discovery? A new Art Room? So many possibilities!). Once we decide on the long-term use of the space, we will begin working with architects to design it intentionally.
Parent Roundtable
As we round the bend into December, we want to make sure our community is prepared for the coming changes to campus. While we are excited to have the new Elementary Village, we also recognize the challenges that lay ahead. We hosted a Parent Roundtable in early November to answer your questions and discuss the project in more detail.
This year, the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) Committee had an ambitious goal of creating lessons and resources for global holidays and cultural celebrations. The Committee strives to create thoughtful and authentic resources for our Guides without a tokenistic or “tourist” approach to exploring diversity with children. To do this, the Committee spoke to the faculty and staff about the holidays they celebrate at home and what aspects are most important to them. Below is a word cloud of all of the holidays celebrated by the faculty and staff at Greenspring. The staff was excited to see the many ways in which our community celebrates, and they were then invited to share with our students the special aspects of the holidays they celebrate at home.
So far, our team has created lessons and resources for the following holidays and celebrations: Navratri, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Diwali, Native American Heritage Month, Hanal Pixan and Día de los Muertos, Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, Christmas including traditions from the Czech Republic, Kwanzaa, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Chinese New Year, Black History Month, Purim, and Holi.
Some faculty worked with students to make traditional dishes, while others read stories and brought in artifacts from their culture to share with the children. The DEIB Committee worked with members of the faculty and staff to create Montessori nomenclature cards for children to learn more about aspects of the holidays if they were interested. In addition, interested staff members have been invited to speak to colleagues about the holidays they celebrate. This has been an important piece of belonging at Greenspring, and we have all learned so much from one another.
In addition to providing essential belonging cues to our staff, this work has become a staple in our classrooms. The children are eager to engage in conversations with one another about the holidays they too celebrate, and they are beginning to notice threads that are carried through various cultural celebrations. Children have noticed that many holidays across religions center around the lunar calendar. They have also begun to see how food and artifacts share similarities from cultures that are geographically dispersed. It is wonderful to see the ways in which the children are absorbing and interacting with this work.
The Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Committee at Greenspring Montessori School is a dedicated group of faculty and staff working to provide lessons and resources for Montessori educators to further the work of DEIB. To learn more about this work, please visit the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging page of our website.
As emerging adults, it is crucial that adolescents learn and grow in an environment that matches their development as well as gives insight into the time in which we live; we must improve each individual to improve society.
Dr. Montessori calls the Erdkinder the “school of experience in the elements of social life” where work is an introduction to both nature and civilization and provides a limitless field of scientific and historical studies. Adolescents work through experiences on the land: growing crops and caring for animals. They also run a shop where they buy and sell produce and handmade items, promoting personal craftsmanship over mass production. This allows them to fully engage with the two main independences indicative of this developmental stage: social and economic. The shop becomes a general meeting place for their extended community where they take responsibility for the corresponding financial and moral obligations associated with running their own business.
Adolescents volunteer with Real Food Farm in Baltimore City, growing fresh produce for communities in need.
An Adolescent organized a service project to clean up the Jones Falls waterways.
Throughout their educational studies, they meet with experts from various fields as they study the earth and living things, human progress and the building up of civilization, and the history of humanity. They will build a library of atlases, primary documents, and other resources that highlight the connection between peoples and cultures throughout time. They explore scientific progress in biology and chemistry through individual or small group projects that are related to the land whenever possible. All curriculum areas are interrelated and these connections are consciously discussed. This also includes self-expression: music, language, and the arts and the development of the personality that entails ethics, mathematics, and modern languages.
Adolescents learn water conservation from indigenous farmers in Arizona for their Spring Odyssey.
Adolescents clear brush on an Arizona farm.
Adolescents are brought closer together by their work on the land throughout the year.
Within this framework, the moral and physical care of the students is also a priority as they face difficult physical and emotional transitions. They must be provided with work that is in the open air of nature, promoting plentiful and nourishing food that is their own produce whenever possible. A space that allows them to peacefully reflect and meditate when the psychological characteristic of decreased attention takes hold. They learn about nutrition and how to properly care for themselves as they discuss health and wellness topics with adult role models that guide them towards informed decision-making. There is a division of labor, which leads to a genuine cooperative community. They are diplomatic in their acceptance of other’s points of view through Socratic discussions.
Adolescents learn about the Chesapeake Bay watershed while fishing and living on a boat for their Fall Odyssey.
Work on the land provides natural consequences unmatched by any other environment. The plethora of studies inspired by the land also provides a true understanding for the range of careers available today; our wide and thorough education grows their professional interests so that they can take part in the science and technological applications being used to understand and solve the complex problems of our times. The land also provides the right type of freedom where they act on individual initiative within clear limits and rules that results in the self-discipline necessary for success. Our students will know how to put things right: how to adjust a machine, mend a broken window, build a shed, forge a path, and that most importantly, that they can be self-sufficient.
An Adolescent makes field notes on a Maryland native plant garden.
Schools today do not offer this essential balance of manual and intellectual work, leaving adolescents unprepared for taking an active role in society. Our environment acknowledges that these two kinds of work complete each other and are equally essential to a civilized existence and is designed to balance them so adolescents gain a clear understanding of the society for which they are about to join, one that demands a personality of character that adapts quickly and easily.
In order to emerge into the final plane of development, maturity, adolescents must be made to feel capable of succeeding in life by their own efforts and merits. Montessori reminds us that when adolescents’ needs are met within this framework, they can then provide humanity with the clues and hope for future progress.
