To my fellow GMS Families,

Welcome to the 2018-19 school year!

The Greensboro Montessori School Community Association (GMSCA) is excited and honored to welcome families joining our school community for the first time.  We’re also proud to welcome back our returning families for another wonderful year at GMS!

Our hope is that every family will find value in the GMSCA.  Our mission is focused on building and sustaining community. More specifically, "the GMSCA is a dynamic, inclusive organization that strives to enrich the school experience for all. We foster a vibrant school community, and serve to bridge and connect home and school while supporting the mission and goals of Greensboro Montessori School."

Unlike many public and private schools, membership in the GMSCA is automatic and free! We don't ask for or require dues. Nor do we ask you or your children to sell anything. Instead, our activities are funded through other ways, with our primary source of income being the School's fall and spring Scholastic Book Fairs. We also raise funds through initiatives like Harris Teeter's Together in Education (link your VIC card to #1849), General Mills' Box Tops for Education, and AmazonSmile.

The most visible way you will see the GMSCA in action is through GMSCA-sponsored events, teacher appreciation initiatives, and community volunteering.

We invite you to connect with us. Whether you join our private Facebook group, volunteer at the Fall Festival (details coming later this month), or contribute in your own way, we appreciate every gesture of kindness and community-building. Most importantly, know you don’t need to attend a meeting, host an event, or take a day off work to volunteer to be an essential member of our school community.

We’re looking forward to an amazing 2018-19 for our School, our families and, most of all, our children.

See you at school!

Cordially,

Karen Kelly

GMSCA Lead Coordinator

2017-18 has been a fantastic year at Greensboro Montessori School, and we very much appreciate the students, families, and teammates who have been part of our community. Looking back on our year together, we have accomplished much, grown together, and discovered new things, ideas, and places. This year, our community came together in new and vibrant ways to build a new foundation that will launch our School into the future.

Looking back on any given school year, there are many ways to articulate or quantify success. For me, knowing that every single one of our students, and every single one of our teammates, joyfully worked hard is satisfaction enough. But that is just the beginning of the story. Our team recently reflected on why we each think this year was such a success. Here are a few of our answers:

Yes, we had a fantastic year.

With the last day of the 2017-18 year upon us, our final week is an opportunity to joyfully celebrate our graduates, sadly say goodbye to departing friends, and congratulate each other on all we've accomplished and learned. We should also humbly remember how fortunate we each are to be part of such a loving, empowering, and grounded learning community like Greensboro Montessori School.

Whether you’re a student, parent, teammate, alumni, or friend of the School, we’re glad you are part of our crew.

Calling all green thumbs! Greensboro Montessori School is seeking summer volunteers to help us tend our lush, 10-acre campus!

More specifically, our campus is home to four organic, permaculture gardens, which have been flourishing since 1997. These gardens serve as outdoor classrooms where our students engage in environmental education unique to Greensboro Montessori School. Students participate in year-round experiential lessons in which they tend to every aspect of garden work ... from seed to table. We have over 20 fruit-bearing trees, a pond, honey bees, chickens, a commercial-grade teaching kitchen, and much more. This year we’re looking for five families in total, one from each of the major divisions at our School - Junior High, Upper Elementary, Lower Elementary, Primary,  and Toddler - to help keep the gardens growing and looking gorgeous all year long!

When do we need you? We would love volunteer support from Monday, June 25 through Monday, August 6, and we will adapt  our need to families' summer vacations. Ideally, we would love for volunteers to schedule work time anytime on Monday and Wednesday mornings between 8:30 a.m. and noon. Eliza Hudson, lead environmental educator, will be on campus at those times in case any assistance is needed. However, if you can only volunteer on another day, for instance, on the weekends, we would love to work with you!

What will you do? Weeding, watering, mulching paths, and harvesting, when available. All we ask is you check in with Eliza for 15 minutes at the beginning of each week to prioritize your work. Other than this "administrative" task, our summer garden volunteer role is designed to be a no-stress opportunity ... we encourage you to bring your children, have fun, relax, and enjoy the gardens in the peak season!

Interested in helping? Please email Eliza Hudson and plan on attending Volunteer Orientation on Wednesday, June 13 at 1 p.m. If you are unable to make this Orientation, we can offer a personal orientation at a time more convenient for you.

Sara Stratton leads Primary students in making dressing for their strawberry spinach salads.

Springtime is always joyful in Greensboro Montessori School's organic gardens. Winter buds swell and burst, capturing the eyes and hearts of community members, no matter their age! Flowers of all kinds call to us and to our pollinator friends, and sooner than we realize, we reach the height of the season.

This year brought a colder and wetter forecast than in the past. We’ve still yet to harvest our first sugar snap peas, but the strawberries and spinach are out with a vengeance! We continue to enjoy the lushness all the early rain and cool weather brought, even as temperatures rise. Here’s a brief update from our spring adventures!

Primary and Lower Elementary have enjoyed plenty of weeding, watering, planting, and tasting. We just finished a week full of strawberry spinach salads, with a bit of fennel and spring onions thrown in for fun! (Check out the recipe below if you’re interested in trying this at home.) In Upper Elementary, we celebrated the conclusion of our Student Climate Change Summit art exhibition with a persimmon-ginger-honey ice-cream party! Everyone agreed it was fun to make and even better to taste!

Thanks to everyone who attended our Spring Community Garden Workday in the Primary Garden. Together, with roughly 20 volunteers from our school community (ranging in age from 18 months to 70 years old!), we had a blast and accomplished a swath of projects:

What else have we been up to in the organic gardens this spring? We have been incredibly blessed with the generosity of The Fund for GMS. You may have noticed several new Adirondack chairs, benches, swinging benches, outdoor sinks, and chalkboards in all three of our organic gardens. We also have a new Lower Elementary toolshed coming soon. The students have relished in these new additions to their outdoor classrooms, and we couldn’t be more grateful to have such gifts shared with us from within our school community. Thank you, for your continued support of environmental education at Greensboro Montessori School. From all of us on your environmental education teaching team, Happy Spring!

Strawberry Spinach Salad

For the salad:

For the dressing:

Eliza HudsonAbout the Author

Eliza Hudson is Greensboro Montessori School's lead environmental educator. Eliza holds her bachelor's degree in biology from Earlham College in Richmond, Ind. She has built and tended school gardens, taught hands-on cooking lessons and connected local farms to school programs working for FoodCorps. Prior to joining Greensboro Montessori School in 2014, Eliza was a classroom and after-school assistant at the Richmond Friends School, a farm intern at a family-owned farm in Ohio, and served as assistant director at a summer day camp in an urban community garden in Durham.

Greensboro Montessori School has taught environmental education since 1995 and has been permaculture gardening on its campus since 1997.

Greensboro Montessori School welcomes families from all cultures and ethnicities, with over 20 different languages spoken in our families’ homes and people of color representing 27% of our student population. The International Fair is an annual celebration of this rich diversity.

Organized and hosted by the Greensboro Montessori School Community Association (GMSCA), the 2018 International Fair is a two-week event, which kicks off on Monday, May 7. Community volunteers – students, parents, faculty, staff, and friends of the School – will share their native countries, cultures, and customs with students through individual classroom presentations. The specific countries about which our students will learn are Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Egypt, France, French Polynesia, Ghana, India, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Panama, Romania, and Scotland. These presentations will run through Thursday, May 17.

The 2018 International Fair will conclude with an all-school assembly the morning of Friday, May 18. Our students will enjoy a robust program featuring:

Our students, themselves, will also star in the assembly, as we invite them to wear traditional, cultural dress to school on Friday, May 18. Whether students want to share their personal cultural heritage through dress, or wear traditional clothes from a culture different from their own, we welcome all forms of cultural expression on this special day.

We look forward to a delightful two weeks commemorating our community's rich, cultural diversity and Dr. Maria Montessori’s commitment to peace education. Please ask your children to share what they’ve learned from their classroom presentations and visit our Photo Gallery in late May to enjoy the best moments from the International Fair.

Along with the revitalization of the Primary Classrooms that already happened in January, classroom grants are another big part of The Fund For GMS. The student-faculty-staff committee met over the winter and made decisions about the classroom grants funded by this annual drive, and we are now actively working on bringing those grants to fruition. With record-breaking parent participation and 100% participation from faculty, staff, and the board, we are delighted to announce our 10 grants from 70 in 70: The Fund for GMS. Each grant fits into one of three categories which organically emerged among the winners: Technology, Curricular Enrichment, and Outdoor Play.

Technology

Greensboro Montessori School's director of information technology installs a new UHD TV in the Junior High language arts classroom.

Collaborative learning through technology: All of Greensboro Montessori School’s Elementary and Junior High programs, serving grades one through nine, now benefit from state-of-the-art projection systems. In addition to our five existing SMART Boards, we now have six new mounted 55” ultra-high-definition (UHD) televisions, each accompanied by Apple TV 4K units. This technology system allows for wireless sharing and projection of educational programming from the School’s suite of MacBook computers and iPad devices. In addition to serving students, the systems can be used for staff meetings, parent gatherings, and other functions.

Real-time science demonstrations: Last fall our seventh- and ninth-grade students visited the Duke University Marine Laboratory where they spent hours of their own volition using a microscope which broadcasted to a high-definition television (watch the video of their fun here). Everyone in the classroom could view what was being seen under the microscope with breathtaking clarity. This system is now installed in our science laboratory, along with a new set of six high-quality dissecting microscopes which were recently used for shark dissection in Upper Elementary.

Functional technology in Lower Elementary: Our Lower Elementary classrooms are the beneficiaries of a charging station for their iPad devices and a shared printer. Prior to this technology grant, students using the School’s Read&Write literacy software had no access to print their work. Hence, teachers had to transfer and print any work done by students in the administrative office. With their own printer, students can independently complete their work which maximizes the benefit of their software.

Curricular Enrichment

A permaculture design sketch of the permanent home for Maria's Market.

A permanent home for Maria's Market: Junior High students at Greensboro Montessori School have multiple opportunities to delve into the study of economics through entrepreneurial experiences in both individual and group projects. Through their careers program, Students operate a micro-economy, which includes finance; management (student council), farming; culinary arts (restaurant); research, design and production; and yearbook. Farming, more casually called the farm team, is in charge of harvesting produce and eggs which they sell to restaurant for profit. Through a venture called Maria’s Market, they also sell to the public. A grant from The Fund for GMS will create a permanent home for a farm stand (which was built by the research, design, and production team) from which Maria’s Market will be open for business on select Friday afternoons.

Creativity on display: In a recent blog post about our Music Ensemble program, Upper School faculty, Jonathan McLean, noted how the daily integration of the arts is “something vitally different that we do here at Greensboro Montessori School.” A new gallery-style art hanging system in the Upper School will give creative works a new way to shine. The professional display system will further elevate art programming and pave the way for formal exhibitions in the future.

More functional (and beautiful) outdoor classrooms: In The Secret of Childhood, Dr. Maria Montessori writes: “There must be provision for the child to have contact with nature, to understand and appreciate the order, the harmony and the beauty in nature… so that the child may better understand and participate in the marvellous things which civilization creates.” Our permaculture gardens are one of the primary ways our students interact with nature, and recent investments made possible through The Fund for GMS have greatly enhanced these spaces. Chalk boards provide a space for displaying messages, lessons, and recipes. Scattered Adirondack chairs encourage small group work and reflection. A fence panel gracefully hides the HVAC units. And, a child-accessible tool shed in Lower Elementary builds students’ confidence, independence, and efficiency.

Outdoor Play

The leveled site for the Gaga Ball Pit, looking back over the athletic field toward the Upper School.

Going gaga for Gaga (Gaga Ball, that is): The Montessori method promotes physical movement as a path to improved mental cognition. It’s no wonder our Upper Elementary students are clamoring for a Gaga Ball pit, and thanks to The Fund for GMS, they will soon have one. The Gaga Center in New York City describes Gaga as “a fast paced, high energy sport played in an octagonal pit … Dubbed a kinder gentler version of dodgeball, the game is played with a soft foam ball, and combines the skills of dodging, striking, running, and jumping, while trying to hit opponents with a ball below the knees. Players need to keep moving to avoid getting hit by the ball. Fun and easy, everyone gets a serious workout.” Greensboro Montessori School’s Gaga Ball pit will be installed near the center of campus, nestled between the athletic field, Lower Elementary garden and Primary CASA playard.

Increased accessibility to soccer: We’ve replaced our outdated, tremendously heavy soccer goals with contemporary goals featuring 4-inch round aluminum uprights and crossbar with a white powder-coat finish. Not only are these goals durable and cleanly designed, they are easy to move making soccer more accessible to students and extending the life of our athletic field. Rather than taking the goals down immediately following the soccer season to protect the field, we can easily relocate the goals to the side line. This move shifts shooting away from the 18-yard box (the high traffic area around the goals) and allows Primary and Elementary students to continue using the goals well into fall.

Keeping sand in its place: The Tod Squad, as our Toddler faculty are affectionately called on campus, noticed their sandbox experiencing recurring issues with large quantities of mulch and rainwater flooding into the area and covering the sand. They requested wooden edging around the perimeter of their sandbox to preserve the longevity and quality of the sand (and the Toddler’s sand work, in general). This edging has already been installed, and our youngest students love their enhanced space.

Growing a vine tipi in Toddler: The Toddler play yard is full of fun, but also lots of sun. By berming up the perimeter around the Toddlers’ bamboo tipi, our environmental faculty can train some vines onto it, thereby creating a natural, shaded area for the students to play in and enhancing the beauty of our play area. Annual vines will be planted first, and more hardy, permanent perennials will be planted next.

visual art elementary schoolWhat do you love in the world and think is worth preserving?

Upper Elementary students wrestled with this important question during their class project for the Green and White Bash silent auction. My daughter, Stella, is a student in the Upper Elementary classroom, and I was privileged to assist the children in transforming two blank puzzles into a lively mixed media college. Since the Bash’s theme was “sustaining our future” through the funding of student scholarships and staff professional development, I thought it would be fitting for the class project to address this idea of sustainability. So, I asked each student to design a single puzzle piece that identified their own personal junction of love and preservation. All the pieces joined together to form a single, unified collage.

The project turned out to be both intellectually and artistically challenging for the class. Some of the students needed clarification on the question and took extra care to reflect on the conceptual differences among sustainability, preservation, and conservation. Others thought of multiple ideas and found it hard to choose a single focus for their piece. They would sit in thoughtful silence, rifle through magazines for inspiration, or simply run off to do something else, planning to return later. For other children, the process was easier and they settled into their work instantly. Regardless of how quickly their work progressed, it was humbling to witness the moment when each child’s idea clicked into place. You could sense the wave of clarity and purpose wash over them as they set themselves to task. They would sift through the huge pile of assorted collage papers and magazines and dig through buttons, cork, sequins, pom pom balls, threads, beads, and other odds and ends to find the perfect color, texture, or imagery to convey their idea.

elementary school visual artThe students’ approaches to composition varied as dramatically as their themes. Some enjoyed working very flat, while others preferred a more 3D composition. Some students chose clipped images and text, while others wanted to incorporate their own drawings. Some designed beautiful miniature scenes of forests and picnics, while others worked more conceptually and built up layers of interest. Each piece was transformed into a unique and carefully crafted work of art.

After the last student finished, I packed up all of the supplies and took everything home to (literally) put the pieces together. As I assembled the individual pieces into a finished collage, I was amazed by how well the variety of themes and designs worked together. Thirty-seven distinct responses to a single question had morphed into a microcosm of our beautiful, crazy modern world. Elements of nature (birds, oceans, trees) wove through interpretations of social life (family, friends, holidays) and modern living (technology, medicine, Disney). The Upper Elementary class project about sustainability had become an ecosystem of gratitude and hope for the future, where nature merges seamlessly with people, technology, and traditions: very much like a day at Greensboro Montessori School!

Elementary school visual art sustainability

Gina Pruette Elementary School Montessori ParentAbout the Author

Gina Pruette is a parent and regular substitute teacher at Greensboro Montessori School. In addition to her commitment to the School, Gina is an active volunteer within the greater Piedmont Triad community where she leverages her expertise in marketing and events planning, fundraising, and tech solutions to further the missions of various nonprofit organizations. Gina recently completed Racial Equity Training through the Racial Equity Institute to strengthen work with diverse populations, and she holds a bachelor of arts from the University of Pennsylvania.

Greensboro Montessori School's mission is to nurture children to be creative, eager learners as they discover their full potential and become responsible, global citizens.

The 2018 Green and White Bash is just around the corner, with this year's soirée conveniently falling on St. Patrick's Day! Thanks to generous underwriting from the Proximity Hotel, guests will enjoy an extraordinary, entertainment-filled evening for an all-inclusive ticket price of just $100:

Green and White

Proximity Hotel and O.Henry Hotel artist in residence, Chip Holton, paints the scene in the middle of an event. Chip will be painting live at the 2018 Green and White Bash? Who will take home his final piece?

We're excited to announce the evening's delectable dinner, sponsored by Olmsted Orthodontics, specializing in Invisalign and Braces. Chef Hesling and his team have worked to serve a delicious and hearty meal to accompany our the evening's festivities.

Designer Cocktail
A Galway Rose featuring Emulsion American Gin from Greensboro Distilling Co.'s Fainting Goat Spirits, St. Germain, rosemary simple syrup, and seltzer

Passed Hors d'oeuvres
Crispy Avocado and Roasted Tomato with lime caviar
Tuna tartar with salmon roe, avocado relish and shaved cucumber
Crispy chicken schnitzel, roasted cremini mushrooms, and vadouvan aioli

Live Action Dinner Stations
Shaved Tête de Moine
Open faced crostini featuring prosciutto fig or mushroom port wine and topped with shaved Tête de Moine cheese from Switzerland

French Dip Sliders
Thinly shaved roast beef, sautéed with onion and mushroom, then topped with brie fondue, and served with aus ju for dipping

Risotto in a Parmesan Wheel
Delight in risotto cooked in a giant Parmesan wheel and prepared to your taste with an assortment of fresh vegetables and seasonings

Seasonal Whole Roasted Vegetables
Roasted cauliflower and carrots with lemon cumin aioli served warm from a traditional carving station

Dessert
A gracious display of fruit-inspired éclairs
Individual dark, white, and milk chocolate mousse with whipped cream

[dt_sc_h3]Sustaining our People[/dt_sc_h3]
We are overwhelmingly appreciative for the inspirational "things" our School received from 70 in 70: The Fund for GMS. This successful fundraising campaign (we raised over $76,000 in 70 days) helped us revitalize our Primary classrooms and fund a substantial slate of classroom grants.

As we enter spring, we look to the inspirational "people" at the core of our School: our students and faculty. The more we can support these individuals, the better prepared they will be to sustain each other and our community. The better prepared they will be to sustain our future and the world. Proceeds from the 2018 Green and White Bash will support our people in the form of financial assistance for students and professional development for faculty.

[dt_sc_button type="type2" link="https://gms.betterworldcollective.com/event/2018-green-white-bash/" size="medium" bgcolor="#62bb46" textcolor="#ffffff" target="_blank" timeline_button="no"]Purchase Tickets for the Green and White Bash[/dt_sc_button]

We recently sat down with Upper School Faculty member, Jonathan McLean, to learn more about Greensboro Montessori School's Junior High Music Ensemble. Here's an edited transcript of our conversation.

Q: What exactly is Music Ensemble?

A: We have a lot of students who want to play a lot of different things or perform a lot of different [types] of music ... anyone from somebody taking violin, to taking piano, to taking singing lessons, to just hanging out at home banging around on the piano. To follow the child - and the best thing for each child - I've found is the Music Ensemble, which is just a big band.

Q: Is Music Ensemble part of students' regular coursework, or is it an elective?

A: The closest thing it's to is an elective. Certain people are required to be in it. If [a student is in] my Creative Labs class and they are always [applying] for positions for composers or being in the band, then yes, it's a requirement they have to be in Music Ensemble. They give up one of their independent studies, which makes it like an elective, and come in [the studio] and rehearse.

Q: How often do you rehearse?

A: One class block every week, which is an hour and fifteen minutes, which is barely enough. But it is Wednesdays. We loose [lots of Fridays and Mondays] every year for [teacher workdays] and national holidays. That's why I put it on Wednesday, so we lose fewer of them. We also have dress rehearsals and sound check rehearsals before any show, [which would] be on a Saturday or Sunday usually, or right after school.

Q: Who can participate in Music Ensemble?

A: Anybody that's already had at least a year’s worth of lessons on a instrument, because Music Ensemble is not for me to teach you how to play an instrument. Creative Labs, actually, is [when] I can spend some time showing a student some stuff about how to play an instrument and then get a student hooked up with an after-school or out-of-school teacher. [Music Ensemble] is an advanced music experience, and the student needs to have already made a commitment to learning an instrument. Vocalists are taking voice lessons, and some have also taken lessons on piano.

Q: Are your vocalists also taking voice lessons?

A: One, two, three. Three of them are. One of them is not. Two of them have taken lessons on piano and have switched to vocals. Once you learn an instrument, particularly piano (because if you go off to music school everybody has to take Piano 101, it's like English Composition 101 to be a writer), you can play pretty much anything.

Q: What is the age range of your current Music Ensemble?

A: 12 through 15, [but we currently have a guest drummer] who is in fifth grade. The [typical] grades are seventh to ninth ... I invited him [to join] for two reasons. One, he's a student of mine, and he's highly advanced for his age. He could play in any band and make money right now if he wanted to. He practices with me once per week and also at home. [Two,] all my drummers graduated. It was an advantageous moment.

Q: What is the single greatest lesson your students take away from working in Music Ensemble?

A: That’s easy. Working in a band is working in a group. When you do group projects in the classroom, how do you assess how much each person is carrying their weight if it's an outside project? We don't know how to do that right now. In class though, it's a little easier ... but in a band, if you are not carrying your weight, everybody knows it. There is no calling somebody out and being unfair and them saying, "No, I know my part." No, you don't, because we have to stop because [someone's] part is wrong, and I don't mean that in a harsh way, it's just one for one, like math. It's either right or wrong. It's either in tune, on rhythm and in the right spot, or it's not. That's the single most important lesson: you cannot hide in a group.

Q: How long have you been teaching Music Ensemble?

A: Music was one of the first things I did when I got to Greensboro Montessori School [in 2002]. The middle schoolers were revolting against the traditional class where students are learning music on recorders playing from the same book I used when I was in Junior High. You have to do something current for adolescents to get engaged. So when you immediately say the word “band,” they want to play.

Q: What have you learned teaching Music Ensemble?

A: The first lesson I learned was the drawback to individual lessons. I think that all people who [teach] individual lessons should have some sort of network where they get their students together to play in an ensemble or a band. I would get a full band together [at Greensboro Montessori School] and each student may have had 2 to 3 years of lessons on their given instrument, and we'd start the song, and we'd play through it, and it would just be cacophonous and terrible. If you just pulled [each musician] out magically and just listened to them, they would nail the song, but they had been taught in a vacuum. As long [as a student thinks they're] playing the song correctly, they're not even tuning in to the other members of the group. So that goes back to the step above learning to work in a group. One, you can tell who is not carrying their weight, but two, its awful, its not pleasant. To teach you to tune into that goes into all the other stuff about brain development and mathematics and what music does to your brain.

Q: What do students new to Music Ensemble need to learn?

A: They need to start listening to each other. It is self awareness and it's being aware of other people, and doing that thing Miles Davis said where everybody pushes and pulls each other. If somebody's lagging behind, it may be because they are having a hard time with a song, so the band has to tune into it, be a team, and slow down a little bit. You can get on them afterwards, like "why were you playing that so slow," but [during] a performance you support your team. But also, it may be, as they get the hang of it, somebody wants to pull the song back, and that sets the mood. Maybe someone wants to push it a little bit, but that's how musicians interact with each other.

Q: What is the most important thing you see your students do in Music Ensemble?

A: All the brain development that goes on after they learn the basics of working in a group, then to listen to each other, and then to get into it [with each other]. What I know as a performer and an entertainer is if you only have one person or 10000 people watching you, if the audience sees that [members of the band are] just up there doing [their] individual jobs, it's going to be apparent to the audience. And even if [the music] is in tune and played well, it doesn’t come together. There is a gestalt that happens when you are into your music, and I think thats the hardest thing to teach the kids to do, because at this age, kids get freaked out when they think people are watching them, and you know what I've learned from sports, it's not their parents watching them. It's their peers. That’s one of their biggest challenges they have - to perform. They don’t want to be awkward, they don’t want to play badly, they don’t want to seem stiff in front of their friends ... which actually, usually causes them to stiffen up.

Q: And where they are as adolescents, that’s an important factor to them, is what their peers think of them?

A: It is at the top of the list according to the best brain research and social and emotional research we have. They literally feel like they're going to die when they're not around their friends. So when their friends are in front of them, they cannot “mess up” in front of them. It's enormous pressure. That's a whole thing that doesn't even affect me. You know, I get nervous before I play, but once I start playing, I settle in. But these guys, that’s a real developmental thing for them to settle into that [and to learn to work through that pressure]. It will hopefully pay off when they get in front of people to present as an individual. Even if [these students] don't go on to be musicians, they will continue to feel comfortable ... presenting themselves, whether its for a college application, a job application, or giving a speech.

Q: As we wrap up our interview, do you have any final thoughts?

A: I am proud of fighting [for music and the arts] as an equal subject to math, science, and language, and I have teammates that have always supported me on that. Now I have a subject called Creative Labs which happens to be music, art, design, and anything like that, but that’s where the 21st century skills are going ... Every day you're getting music and every day you're getting art, which is what the [students] get here. It is equal across the board, but it does take a team that supports that and realizes that. I think that's something vitally different that we do here at Greensboro Montessori School.

Of all the behaviors common to the toddler years, few incite more distress and panic than biting. A single, split-second incident can arouse guilt and embarrassment in the family of the biter; horror in the family of the child who was bitten; and an alarming set of teeth marks on an unsuspecting classmate. Worst of all, the child who does the biting often feels even more bewildered about their behavior than their caretakers do. So why does it happen?

The Toddler faculty at Greensboro Montessori School takes biting very seriously, and they do their very best to prevent any such incidents while students are at school. However, it's not unusual for a toddler classroom to experience a few biting episodes over the course of the year. Rest assured, our Toddler faculty have a wealth of experience with this behavior, and they can partner with parents to craft a plan to address it. Even better, the plan will conform with the needs and motivations of the child who is biting. If you observe this behavior in your own child, please know that - although alarming - it is a normal and common part of toddler development, and it will pass.

If you'd like to read more about this parenting concern, or if you're experiencing biting at home, we recommend reading Maren Schmidt's blog entitled "Help! My Child Is Biting!"