Greenspring Montessori School Strategic Direction
A Lens to Reflect
Greenspring Montessori School’s Strategic Direction provides a lens for everyone in the community to reflect and focus our efforts to better the school community, even during this challenging time in our lives and in the School’s history. In partnership with every member of our community, the School will increasingly become a better version of itself over the coming years.
Click on the links and scroll through the page below to see our Strategic Direction in more detail.
Mark Berman
Chair of the Greenspring Montessori School Board
Strategic Direction 1
Inspire an Allegiance to Nature
Cultivate an environment where children build an allegiance to natural spaces with an awareness of how their actions can impact climate change. Young people are nurtured to respect nature and value sustainability. Staff educate and serve as role models.
What does this look like at Greenspring?
- Develop Outdoor curriculum with our Naturalists (2023 – ongoing).
- Create a Green School Committee of faculty and staff (2022 – ongoing).
- Offer staff professional development from regional naturalists to understand the native plants and wildlife on our campus (2022 – ongoing).
- Facilitate annual outdoor overnight trips for Upper Elementary and Adolescents (ongoing).
- Began offering outdoor sit spots for our children to observe and regulate themselves daily (2023 – ongoing).
- Became a Certified Maryland Green School (Completed 2023).
- Partnered with a landscape architect to create a comprehensive outdoor plan for the community (2019 – 2023).
- Invested in Outdoor Environments with the construction of decks and purchase of weather-resistant materials (2020 – 2021).
Right image: Adolescents pick fruit directly from the natural landscape on their fall Odyssey (2021).
Recent Highlights
Saving Time for Unstructured Outdoor Play
Unstructured outdoor play — child-led, imaginative activity without rigid rules or predetermined outcomes — is essential to healthy development. By immersing themselves in natural environments, children can reap a multitude of benefits that are crucial for their...
Native Tree Planting on Campus with the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay
This week the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay planted 69 native trees and shrubs across campus. This opportunity is funded by a grant from the Chesapeake Bay Trust to support the Maryland Five Million Trees initiative.We have a variety of native species, including...
The Gifts of Summer
The Gifts of Summer The summer break provides unique challenges but also unique opportunities for unstructured time, including the freedom to explore outdoors, as well as building independence, and meaningful contributions.Unstructured Time While it’s tempting to...
Strategic Direction 2
Cultivate a community of ownership, empowerment, and human-centered values
Human-centered values empower community members to practice and embody ownership and trust so that each member – students, families, and staff members – live in a community built around and for its people.
What does this look like at Greenspring?
- Operationalize our staff values to create a structure within our community (ongoing).
- Build a peer coaching community among the staff (ongoing).
- Engage the Board of Trustees in meaningful ways on and off campus (ongoing).
- Offer complimentary wellness and community-building activities to staff including yoga, pickleball, book club, and social outings (ongoing).
- Foster engagement and belonging using Human-Centered Design (ongoing).
Left image: Staff create a space for ownership and empowerment during a faculty meeting (2019).
What is Human-Centered Design?
Human-centered design is an approach to problem-solving based on a philosophy that empowers an individual or team to design products, services, systems, and experiences that address the core needs of those it serves.
Human-centered design consists of three phases. In the Inspiration Phase you’ll learn directly from the people you’re designing for as you immerse yourself in their lives and come to deeply understand their needs. In the Ideation Phase you’ll make sense of what you learned, identify opportunities for design, and prototype possible solutions. And in the Implementation Phase you’ll bring your solution to life.
Strategic Direction 3
Elevate student self-construction through diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging
Our students must self-construct into advocates and leaders that can stand for all of humanity. To that end, it is critical that we offer an environment that embraces the important work of DEIB.
What does this look like at Greenspring?
- Adhere to clear values as a school community (2022 – ongoing).
- Offer Professional Development for all staff in anti-bias education (ongoing).
- Invest in anti-bias resources for our classrooms and Library (ongoing).
- Create alignment between classrooms and levels with anti-bias curriculum with a meaningful representation of all identities and family structures through books and classroom resources (ongoing).
- Hired an Equity and Belonging Coordinator (2023).
Right image: Children’s House students parade the campus with handmade flags on International Flag Day (2021).
Recent Highlights
Winter Reading List: Service and Stewardship
We have pulled together a beautiful collection of books to talk about service and stewardship with children. Take a look at her recommendations below! You can find these books in our library if you would like to borrow them to read with your child.Books about Service...
Sharing your Culture and Traditions
At Greenspring Montessori School, we welcome and celebrate people of diverse backgrounds, histories, perspectives, identities, cultures, religions, and races. Our learning environment is strengthened and enriched through a community that reflects the nuances and...
A History of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Work at Greenspring
Our work in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) has been ongoing over the past five years. We started this work when a group of families came to us highlighting the need for our community, and since then have spent a good deal of time educating our...
Strategic Direction 4
Develop effective communicators for a new era.
We build actively engaged listeners and effective writers and speakers. Our students will express themselves in the language and embrace the means of a new era.
What does this look like at Greenspring?
- Document the Spanish and Dual Language curriculum in our Curriculum Guide (2024 – ongoing).
- Grow our Dual Language community with a commitment to supporting our Spanish-speaking staff (ongoing).
- Visited sister school Lancaster Montessori in Mérida, Mexico for our inaugural capstone Adolescent trip (2024).
- Implemented a new model for Dual Language Classrooms focusing on expressive Spanish language (ongoing).
- Launched a Sister School Committee to explore an international Montessori school partnership for the benefit of our students, families, and staff (2022 – 2024).
Left image: A Lower Elementary student works in the school Media Lab.
“Effective communication is as much about listening as it is about expression.”
– Greenspring Faculty Member
Strategic Direction 5
Enhance our campus to support continued growth.
Find opportunities to use and expand the campus to further realize our educational vision. Enrich our grounds and create venerated spaces to embody our Montessori principles of environmental respect and holistic education.
What does this look like at Greenspring?
- Launch the Capital Campaign for the Campus Outdoor Plan (2024-25).
- Completed the Campus Outdoor Plan and began to implement sections of the design (2022 – 2023).
- Completed the Elementary Village and moved into three new classrooms (2022 – 2023).
Right image: A Children’s House classroom during the morning work cycle (2020).
Recent Highlights
Native Tree Planting on Campus with the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay
This week the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay planted 69 native trees and shrubs across campus. This opportunity is funded by a grant from the Chesapeake Bay Trust to support the Maryland Five Million Trees initiative.We have a variety of native species, including...
March 2023 Capital Project Update
Our new Elementary Village is complete! We celebrated the completion of the Susquehanna Village with a ribbon cutting on January 20, 2023. This Elementary Village is home to two Lower Elementary classrooms, an Upper Elementary classroom, a full kitchen, and outdoor...
December 2022 Capital Project Update
Eight years ago at Greenspring, an ambitious and inspiring campus-wide vision was born of expansive prepared environments—indoors and out, state-of-the-art facilities, and a well-stewarded, earth-friendly home to students, staff, and families. From that, an essential...
Strategic Direction 6
Infuse authentic Montessori values in our community, the region, nation, and the world.
The world is our community. Greenspring accepts responsibility to grow into a national and global educational leader.
What does this look like at Greenspring?
- Produce the Voices in Montessori Podcast to share with Montessorians internationally (2022 – ongoing)
- Offer high-caliber professional development to schools through the Greenspring Center for Lifelong Learning (ongoing).
- Created a weekly mentoring series for new Guides and new Heads of Schools (2022 – 2024).
- Developed and built the Greenspring Center for Lifelong Learning (2022).
- Continue parenting workshops throughout the year for enrolled families and the greater community (2019 – ongoing).
Left image: Head of School, Tamara Sheesley Balis presents to Johns Hopkins School of Education graduate students as part of our outreach efforts (2019).
2023-24 Year in Review
Greenspring Center for Lifelong Learning
Want to learn more?
Contact us to learn more about our Strategic Direction and the big work happening at Greenspring Montessori School.
