Our environment
While the school has a long history of play and learning in the out of doors, we have spent the last decade walking purposefully towards creating a platform that supports equity in nature.
We know that access to nature should be the right of every child.
At our school, we provide access through our play yard and to pockets of urban nature. We extend and expand these opportunities through our summer Tinkering and #optoutdoors programs. This commitment is further grounded in research, and staff members’ continued education. It is turn shared through presentations at educational conferences, mentorships, and parent education.
It is built upon the foundational principles of the school. For decades this school, in its current location and its previous locations, shaped outdoor access, however small, however hard to reach, as part of our educational philosophy.
Our outdoor classroom.
Our Outdoor Program
We propose re-contextualizing nature and risk. We are walking towards equitable early childhood learning. We are expanding our access to nature while protecting our own health and the health of the children enrolled.
We are moving our programs to all-outdoors. and shifting our pedagogy to center ourselves in a place-based model.
Open air and education go hand-in-hand.
Our Outdoor Play Yard is unique in the local playground landscape. It features plenty of construction materials for young builders, climbing structures, spaces and “loose parts” for dramatic play as well as nature discovery. We complement this with neighborhood walks which support literacy, math, science, and geography.
We will be outside, every day, in every weather.
Learning and Risk Benefit
We know that learning springs from hands-on experiences and a reflective process of trial and error, success and failure.
We offer opportunities, planned and unplanned, for the children to experience first hand intellectual and physical risk, holding to the adage that the strongest tree in the forest is the one buffeted by the most wind. In this, the children are charged with assessing their own risk while being monitored by the adults. They gain a better understanding of danger versus safe exploration, and incorporate this knowledge into their approach to learning and expression of that learning.
Materials
The Cooperative School was established in 1942. We have curated, crafted, and collected unique educational manipulatives that support and cultivate learning using all senses and the whole body. These are changed out regularly over the course of the school year.
our Teachers
Our teachers are experts in early childhood development. They hold education degrees and have completed continued education courses in human growth and development and pedagogy. The teachers create the curriculum for both the parents and the children.
This background along with years of direct experience with children and parents means that your child’s first school experience will be one of partnership informed by research and best practice.