With Greensboro Montessori School's tuition payments dedicated to covering Greensboro Montessori School’s operating expenses, grants from the Annual Fund provide the necessary resources to make our School more than excellent - to make us truly exceptional. Through the benevolence of parents, alumni, community partners and friends of the School who give to the Annual Fund, Greensboro Montessori School is able to award grants biannually to teachers and students with specific classroom needs or transformative ideas or both!

Current year grants are funded by the previous year's giving. Contributions generously given and humbly received from last year's Annual Fund have begun taking shape through five grants awarded this fall. They range from simple classroom enhancements for our littlest students to significant technology investments for our elementary programs to supplies for creating a new ecosystem on campus (starring chickens) for our oldest scholars.

Our fall grants are as varied as they are inspiring, but there are two things which bind them all. They are not only the result of giving, but also the reason for giving.

For everyone who has given in the past, is giving today or will give in the future, thank you for supporting Greensboro Montessori School. We are who we are because you have invested in us, and we promise to pay it forward by investing everything we can and all that we have in our students.

Our mission-driven work of shaping children into responsible, global citizens culminates in an eye-opening leadership experience for our Middle Schoolers when they travel to the United Nations in New York City every fall to participate in the Global Citizens Action Project (GCAP). Last month, eleven of our 8th graders participated in the 2016 GCAP conference on October 23-26.
This week, we spoke to two of our current 8th graders, Isabel Egbert and Jean-Lou Paré, about their recent trip.

GMS: Tell us how your trip started

Jean-Lou: On Sunday we flew to New York. After we checked in at our hotel, we met some of the students from other schools. There were eight or nine other Montessori schools from different states and also the Dominican Republic. There were over 150 students at the conference.

Isabel: For most of the day on Monday, we heard presentations from many different NGOs [non-governmental organizations] about the work they are doing to help people around the world. Some of the organizations were Save the Rain, Vision For and From Children, Room to Read, and HeForShe.

Click Here to view a brief clip from the NGO presentation forum. Excerpt provided by chaperone, Joan Tao.

Jean-Lou: That day at lunch we went to an Ethiopian restaurant and for dinner we ate at a Moroccan restaurant. Later that night we met up with kids from two of the other schools and had a great time ice skating in Rockefeller Center.

2016 GCAP Conference - Ethiopian lunch

Lunch at Queen of Sheba Ethiopian restaurant

GMS: Was there one aspect of the trip that was your favorite or was the most memorable?

Isabel: I loved being in New York City and everything about this trip.  For me, the most memorable part was visiting the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. It is hard to describe the feeling of being there, but it helped me put into perspective all of the people who lost their lives. At the memorial fountain, you can read the names of all of the people who died that day. What I thought was really cool, is that white roses had been placed by the names of people to celebrate their birthdays.

Jean-Lou: I agree that being there was hard to describe. It was just like the quote that we saw on the wall of the museum. I took a picture of it with my camera.  “No day shall erase you from the memory of time.”


 2016 GCAP Conference - 9_11 museum

GMS: Tell us about your tour of the United Nations building.

Jean-Lou: We visited the General Assembly Hall and an art exhibit about clearing land mines. We saw lots of different rooms and sculptures in the United Nations building and each had been contributed by a different country. On Tuesday, we also met with delegates from the Sierra Leone mission. One of the reasons we chose their mission is because our class will be reading the book, A Long Way Gone, later this year. It's a memoir of a boy growing up during the civil war in Sierra Leone.

Isabel: The delegates from Sierra Leone told us about the history of the country and how it was founded by Portuguese explorers who gave the country its name. It means “lions in the mountains." We learned about the civil war that broke out in the 1990s and then how the Ebola epidemic impacted the country a few years ago.

Jean-Lou: Before the Ebola outbreak, they had a rapidly growing economy, but then, all of the international companies withdrew. They made some very strict health rules to help control the spread of the disease. The delegates told us about their country's current president, Ernest Bai Koroma, and how their economy is starting to recover. It was sad to learn that after the Ebola epidemic many of the children were left without parents. But the delegates told us that in Sierra Leone there is a belief that everyone in the village is responsible for raising every child.

GMS: Tell us more about what you learned from the non-governmental organizations

Isabel: Many of the people giving the presentations were college students and that made me realize you don’t have to be an adult to make a difference. Actually, there was a 15 year old girl who told us about the organization called Vision For and From Children.

GMS: Have you thought about which organization you will choose for your follow-up presentation to the community?

Jean-Lou: I hope to do my presentation on the organization Room to Read that was started in Nepal. I was surprised to learn there are schools around the world where the children don’t have any books to read. This organization provides books for schools to help children learn to read in their native language. The organization also works with the governments in those countries to help teachers and also supports the education of young girls.

Isabel: I am planning to do my presentation on HeForShe which builds awareness about the issues of gender equality and specifically getting men and boys involved in the pursuit for gender equality. I also think its cool that Emma Watson [British actor from the Harry Potter movie series] promotes this cause and is the UN Goodwill Ambassador for women.

GMS: How will you stay connected to this experience and share it with you classmates.

Jean-Lou: At the end of the conference we voted to decide which organization we would work together to support. We chose Save the Rain which builds water catchment systems for villages that don’t have clean drinking water. To start, we are planning to use the money we raise through the Middle School Rock-a-thon and the proceeds from the lunch we serve at the Greensboro Montessori School International Fair to donate to Save the Rain.

 On Tuesday, November 29 at 4:00p.m. each 8th grade student who attended the conference will give a presentation to the faculty and parents about one of the NGOs they learned about and its important work around the globe.  Any and all GMS parents are welcome to attend this event.
NOTE: Special thanks to Nancy Hofer, Doug Williams and Joan Tao for chaperoning this extraordinary experience.
2016 GCAP - Nancy Hofer

Nancy Hofer dines with Isabel and Elizabeth at the UN.

2016 GCAP - Doug Williams

Doug Williams joins the fun skating at Rockefeller Center.

2016 GCAP - Joan Tao

Joan Tao and her daughter Sophie on the front steps of the United Nations.

What do the oldest fabric in the world and a vintage typewriter have in common with my dentist? And what do they have to do with art?  Well, I encountered each of them in the course of one week, and the intersection of these seemingly disparate things gave me an “a-ha” moment about the symbiotic relationship between creating with technology and hands-on art making in our School’s art studio.

As a mixed-media artist, I am naturally drawn to tactile, malleable, hands-on materials and adore using these materials in my lessons. If you walk into Greensboro Montessori School’s art studio, you will see a variety of rich textures, fibers, paints, clay, found objects and nature. You will also find a technology wall where one of the School’s 3D printers, a computers and iPads live. These two worlds co-exist harmoniously in our art studio and with each new day I am learning and teaching how technology and art are interwoven and applied in the world beyond the studio.

For instance, many Greensboro Montessori School faculty recently participated in an excellent coding workshop from Code.org. During this workshop I learned how coding is fun and creative and identified a great way to apply this technology in my classroom. Once armed with coding knowledge, students can practice their skills by writing an algorithm resulting in a specific design being drawn on their computer. They can bring this code to their art lesson and exchange it with another student. From there, students run each other’s algorithm to see if it produces what the creator originally intended.

Another project where technology and art intersect is stop motion animation.  Students use a stop motion app on our classroom iPads to tell stories, but they also use physical objects make stop-motion animation the good old-fashioned way (by moving an object in small increments, taking photos of the object after each movement, and viewing multiple photos per second in a continuous sequence to create the illusion of motion). One of the most famous stop-motion animation films is the 1964 television special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. In our classroom, students manipulate KEVA planks, not wireframe figurines, to make their movies. The excitement has been great, and upper elementary students often rush back to class to ask Cathy Moses to come see their work!

Middle school students have been very helpful in teaching upper elementary students about the School’s 3D printer and 3D drawing program, SketchUp, which brings me back to my “a-ha” moment about the connection between art and technology.  Within the course of one week at school I led a felting project demonstrating how to create with the oldest fabric in the world and guided lower elementary students in a freedom of speech exercise where they used a vintage typewriter to create art with their own words. I was reminded how each of these discoveries represented a technological shift at the time of their invention. At the end of the week, I went to the dentist and experienced a modern technology and art revolution in the making.

As crazy as it sounds, and as personal a story it is, my time at the dentist was real-world affirmation of the integration of art and technology. I was scheduled to get a crown and had anticipated my visit being the first of two required to complete the procedure, but then I was introduced to CAD/CAM (computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing) dentistry. While I was in the office, my dentist used technology to capture a 3D rendering of my tooth (CAD) and reproduce it onsite with a grinding and milling machine (CAM). While the grinding process used in my dentist’s office is different from the fabrication method used in 3D printing, the use of technology to produce sculpture in both cases highlights the inspirational interplay between technology and art. (And to top it all off, my ceramic crown was fired and glazed onsite, just like our students’ pottery is fired and glazed in our kiln!)

As we continue to create with our hands in collaborative and productive ways in Greensboro Montessori School's art studio, we will continue to grow the use of technology as well, because technology helps strengthen the development of our students 21st century skills and introduces them to career opportunities where art and technology co-exist.

Greensboro Montessori School has announced two major changes that will launch in fall 2017: 1) The expansion of its middle school to include ninth grade and 2) The transition of sixth grade, previously a part of Greensboro Montessori’s middle school, to the School’s upper elementary division. Both changes will enable the School to more authentically deliver the Montessori experience for both students and faculty, a hallmark of which is three-year, multi-age groupings within each division.

The three-year groupings that will result—grades four, five and six in upper elementary and grades seven, eight and nine in middle school—are consistent with the pivotal three-year cycle first articulated by educator Dr. Maria Montessori (1870–1952) and later supported by the American Montessori Society, of which Greensboro Montessori is an accredited school member.

Montessori’s three-year cycle recognizes sensitive periods of growth and development shared among each age group. It also allows for skills and concepts to be introduced, explored and mastered through three consecutive and collaborative years of learning.

Commenting on the addition of ninth grade to Greensboro Montessori’s offerings, Associate Head of School Nancy Hofer said: “As researchers and educators increasingly refer to ninth grade as the make-or-break year of high school, Montessori methodology changes the conversation by positioning ninth grade as a capstone year in middle school. Young adolescence is a monumental time in the life of a child. Rather than lead every student down the same path, the Montessori philosophy empowers us to look at each student individually and develop a custom learning plan to unlock his or her full potential. Offering ninth grade to our students and their families is just another way Greensboro Montessori School supports this philosophy in both theory and practice.”

Richard A. Ungerer, the American Montessori Society’s Executive Director, added: “Greensboro Montessori School is one of only six AMS-accredited schools in North Carolina, and it is the only AMS-accredited school in the state’s Piedmont Triad region offering middle school. We are thrilled to see their commitment to the continued process of self-reflection and school improvement that is a critical part of what it means to be AMS-accredited. And by introducing these curriculum shifts, the School reaffirms its commitment to developing the whole child through the time-tested, research-based educational approach of Maria Montessori.”

Greensboro Montessori will graduate its first ninth grade class at the end of the 2017-18 school year. To inquire about enrollment at Greensboro Montessori, please contact Rhea Egbert, director of admission.

This summer I've been introduced to Montessori Market, a summer camp Greensboro Montessori has offered for the last 17 years. Through a unique blend of environmental education and hands-on learning, campers participate in a week-long business preparing consumer goods for sale to the general public at the conclusion of camp. Just as our 2016 graduating class impressed me, Montessori Market has revealed yet another School tradition which is so much more than meets the eye.

Montessori Market is an all-hands-on-deck camp featuring contributions from the entire school community. Whatever produce we can't harvest from our own permaculture gardens, we source from local farmers. Both faculty and students work together to gather ingredients before camp even begins. This year, Nancy Hofer, Mary Jacobson, Kristy Ford and Andi Bogan chaperoned our Lower Elementary Al Fresco summer camp students to a local blueberry farm where they hand picked blueberries for jam. We also needed peaches which led me to think about The Produce Box, a service which delivers fresh produce from North Carolina farmers to my doorstep each week.  After one quick trip to Raleigh and the overwhelming generosity of The Produce Box, we had boxes of peaches, certified organic zucchini, green bell peppers, corn, jalapeños and tomatoes.

TPB_Pano

A panoramic view of The Produce Box's warehouse in Raleigh.

Pallet of produce from the Produce Box

A pallet of produce generously donated by The Produce Box.

The students began camp with a full refrigerator of fresh, North Carolina-grown produce and three sprawling gardens from which to pick fresh basil for pesto and lavender for sachets. They have also made a wide variety of handmade crafts to accompany their foodstuffs.

Mary Jacobson and students in the Montessori Market summer camp.

Mary Jacobson, a Lower Elementary faculty member, oversees food prep for blueberry jam.

Montessori Market handmade crafts

Campers prepare a variety of handmade crafts while taking a break form the kitchen.

As the students approach the end of the week, the most beautiful and compelling aspect of camp comes alive. With finished goods ready for sale, you have to wonder, "for whom and to whom will they sell their goods, and where?" I've since learned that Montessori Market has always worked for the benefit of children in need. Campers wake up bright and early to sell their products at the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market on the Saturday immediately following camp, and all proceeds are donated to a charity focused on kids. Hence, it's time to introduce BackPack Beginnings.

Founded six years ago by Parker White, a new mother at the time, BackPack Beginnings' mission is to deliver child-centric services to feed, comfort, and clothe children in need in Guilford County.  By ensuring food and basic necessities are given directly to children in need, BackPack Beginnings makes a positive and lasting impact on their health and well-being.  As a 100% volunteer organization, BackPack Beginnings serves over 6,000 children experiencing hunger and trauma in our community annually. Recently, Parker has been named one of four finalists for The NASCAR Foundation’s Sixth Annual Betty Jane France Humanitarian Award presented by Nationwide. This award honors incredible volunteers from across the country who have made a profound impact on children’s lives in their community. (You can vote for Parker daily from now until September 26; if she wins, The NASCAR Foundation will make a $100,000 donation to BackBack Beginnings.)

Our Montessori Market campers have been learning, cooking, and collaborating on behalf of BackPack Beginnings all week.  This Saturday, July 30, they will be at the Curb Market proudly displaying their finished goods, and a donation to BackPack Beginnings will allow market-goers to shop from their products. In addition to the pesto and sachets, shoppers may also select from blueberry jam, peach jam, salsa, zucchini bread, and a number of homespun crafts.

Peach and blueberry jam from Montessori Market

Peach and blueberry jams—lovingly made by students participating in Montessori Market—ready for display at the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market.

100% of the donations received on Saturday will assist the BackPack Beginnings' Food BackPack Program which helps fight childhood hunger in our community by filling the weekend food gap for children in need. By the numbers, this program sends 1,600 children from 26 schools with fresh food each weekend totaling 6,400 food bags per month. This effort is in addition to their Comfort BackPack, Food Pantry and Clothing Pantry programs. While our hope is that we receive enough donations on Saturday to empty our booth, any remaining products can be directly donated to BackPack Beginnings for direct inclusion in Food BackPacks or the Food Pantry.

So this is the story of how a summer camp evolves into so much more than a summer camp. How the Montessori philosophy challenges us, as adults, to push our kids to do more than text, snapchat and Netflix during summer break. How engaged faculty and community organizations prepare children for a lifetime of success by providing real-world experiences in running a business, manufacturing, time management, and philanthropy. And how children come together to help others less fortunate than themselves. And how Montessori Market is more than meets the eye.

My first day at Greensboro Montessori School was Tuesday, May 31, which was also the day of our Council of Elders interviews with our graduating middle school students. The week that followed was a crash course in the rich experiences exclusive to our students contrasted with the universality of adolescence…and most notably, the extraordinary academic and social accomplishments of students who have learned under the Montessori method of child-led education.

As I walked to Susana D’Ruiz’s Spanish classroom for my Council of Elders interviews, I quickly noticed how comfortable I felt in our middle school hallways. Down the main corridor, one side was lined with lockers, a familiar scene from any middle school in the country. And as I met with the interviewing graduates, I was immediately transported to middle school years when each moment swung along a pendulum between my own teenage angst and hubris.

But this group displayed a wealth of life experiences I never knew at 14:

But the graduates’ accomplishments extended well beyond these experiences, a point that came full circle for me when I attended their graduation ceremony.

The three-and-a-half-hour celebration featured heartfelt, personal introductions of each student from a faculty member of the graduate’s choosing. After each introduction, the respective graduate gave a speech. This combination – faculty introduction and graduate speech – repeated itself sixteen times yet was never boring or monotonous. It was deeply revealing about the extraordinary bond that results when faculty invest just as much heart and soul into their students as their students put into their work. The result of faculty who understand their students’ so well that they enable each one to reach his or her full potential.

And the academic results are astounding:

This list highlights just over half Greensboro Montessori School's Class of 2016. In all, our graduates will attend eight distinguished secondary institutions including those listed above and the American Hebrew Academy, Bishop McGuinness, Northern Guilford High School and Salem Academy.

As I begin to settle into my new role, I’m humbled by the success of these young adults 20 years my junior and feel a deep responsibility to shine a light on this magical place. A place where academic brilliance lives concurrently with Montessori methodology, two concepts that many mistakenly, and for us Montessori educators, might I add painfully, assume are mutually exclusive.