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?
- Create a Green Schools Committee of faculty and staff (2022 – ongoing).
- Facilitate annual outdoor overnight trips for Upper Elementary and Adolescents (ongoing).
- Became a Certified Maryland Green School (2022 – 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).
- Added four new staff members to serve as Outdoor Environment Assistants (2021 – 2022).
Right image: Adolescents pick fruit directly from the natural landscape on their fall Odyssey (2021).
Recent Highlights
Earth Day Celebrations at Greenspring
As part of our Allegiance to Nature at Greenspring Montessori School, our faculty and staff organized a special Earth Day event for our children and families. Our Toddler, Children’s House, Elementary, and Adolescent classes took on various projects around our campus...
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...
Fall Adolescent Odyssey to East Hill Farm
In early October, our Adolescents ventured to East Hill Farm in New Hampshire for an immersive Fall Odyssey trip. The Farm is located at the base of Mount Monadnock on 150 acres where they raise heritage breed cows, goats, and pigs along with horses, sheep, chickens,...
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?
- Build a peer coaching community among the staff.
- Engage the Board of Trustees in meaningful ways on and off campus.
- Offer complimentary wellness and community-building activities to staff including yoga, pickleball, book club, and social outings.
- Foster belonging using Human-Centered Design.
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).
- Create a curriculum with a meaningful representation of all identities and family structures through books and classroom resources (2022 – ongoing).
- Offer ongoing Professional Development for all staff in anti-bias education (2019 – ongoing).
- Invest in anti-bias resources for our classrooms and Library (2020 – ongoing).
- Create alignment between classrooms and levels with anti-bias curriculum (2020 – ongoing).
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?
- Build the whole community’s embrace of and use of Spanish through complimentary Spanish lessons for staff, updated campus signage, and conversational practice (2022 – 2023).
- Implemented a new model for Dual Language Classrooms focusing on expressive Spanish language (2022 – 2023).
- Launched a Sister School Committee to explore an international Montessori school partnership for the benefit of our students, families, and staff (2022 – ongoing).
- Implemented a digital literacy curriculum for Elementary (2021 – 2022).
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 (2023-24).
- 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
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...
October 2022 Capital Project Update
We are excited to share that our Elementary Village is 90% complete! The final touches are being completed in November and we are patiently waiting to move into our new building.Since the last update, we have seen many changes on the exterior. The site was graded,...
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?
- Develop and build the Greenspring Center for Lifelong Learning (2022 – 2024).
- Create a weekly mentoring series for 2023-24 year for new Guides and new Heads of Schools (2022 – 2024).
- Continue partership with schools and universities including Johns Hopkins School of Education (2019 – ongoing).
- Continue parenting workshops throughout the year for enrolled families and the greater community (2019 – ongoing).
- Grow social media presence on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook with an international audience (2020 – 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).
Highlights from the 2022-23 school year
website users
parenting and community events
views on YouTube
hours watched on YouTube
Want to learn more?
Contact us to learn more about our Strategic Direction and the big work happening at Greenspring Montessori School.
