Oak Farm Montessori September 2018
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Lorene Dekko Salsbery, Founder November 10, 1961 – December 16, 2009
s we kick off the 2018-2019 school year, the Oak Farm campus is filled with action-packed activity. With the excitement of the campus expansion, we are also beginning to plan for our 20th birthday celebration in 2020. Several families and faculty have been here since the earlier years and had the opportunity to experience the school’s development first hand. Many had personal conversations with our founder, Lorene, about her dreams and vision. With our expanding student body and many new families, we thought this was a great time for everyone to reconnect with Oak Farm’s past. Over the next nine months, we invite you to join us on a journey that will take us back to the beginning of our school, Oak Farm Montessori, The Greatest Story….Let it be told
How Oak Farm began, a letter from our founder Only when I reflect on past roads taken, can I see the connection between myself and what was to become Oak Farm Montessori School. “Traditional schooling never made that much sense to me, so I am sure it is with great surprise to those who knew me as a student, that they would one day find me starting a school, one I would teach, administrate, and lead to be a model of excellence. I would ask myself, “How many people find school meaningful?” “How many do well in our current system, and is it possible others would want something different for their children as well?” While my two daughters were finishing their toddler years and beginning their primary education at a Montessori school in Fort Wayne, I began a new position at the Dekko Foundation as President. I had the opportunity to tour 25 different, public and private, school systems in Iowa, Alabama, and Northeast Indiana, speak with their superintendents, observe classrooms, and meet numerous teachers. As a collective group, we would attend Bill Daggett’s International School Reform Conference, and be engaged with him in discussions on how to make our schools better. This gave me exposure to the issues surrounding education from Kindergarten to high school, “But, what about our youngest children?” I was hearing that the brain is formed by the time a child is six years old. Visits to 30 day care centers, church ministries, and home providers were conducted, as well as traveling with fellow foundation grant makers to the National Association for the Education of Young Children. This was my professional life, while personally I was attending parent education nights, engaging in discussions with the directors, serving on their board, attending Montessori conferences and volunteering at my children’s school. Eventually, the question that was bound to arise, as it does with most of us who understand school reform and Montessori was, “Why are we reinventing the wheel?” Choice, choice, choice. Montessori trusts the child with choices, yet adults do not have the choice in choosing an educational system that reflects their family values. Well, you can, but you must have money; money to pay taxes and then money to pay private tuition. On my dad’s grave is the inscription, “Only the educated are free.” Freedom: the freedom to choose, the freedom to be educated; but first, you must have money. At this point, I knew our choices in Northeast Indiana, and there was not a single non-traditional choice for people in the counties where I grew up and had known people for a lifetime. I thought, “This is what I can give back to the community.” The Dekko Foundation became interested and supportive because it fit my dad’s ideals about education, financial freedom that comes with education, a free market system (hopefully someday), entrepreneurial spirited students, problem solvers and lifelong learners. My dad talked about all of these things as I was growing up; long before they were popular topics. I think he would be proud. Most importantly, I think I have served God and may He continue to bless this school. And, as many of my stories in the Montessori Lower Elementary classroom have ended, “This is how Oak Farm Montessori School came to be.”
LORENE DEKKO SALSBERY, FOUNDER
Jeni Ekovich, Infant/Toddler Teacher
The Importance of Routine
Routine plays a crucial role in healthy child development. This is especially evident in the Infant and Toddler classrooms because it is important that children know consistency and what to expect next. When children feel that their environment is stable, they build trust and confidence; not only in their caregivers, but also in themselves. Every morning, when a student enters their cubby, they remove their shoes and coats; putting them in their prepared spaces. They then put on their slippers and enter the environment. The day to day routine in the classroom is consistent and predictable with morning work cycle, lunch, nap and preparation for dismissal. While this emphasis on routine in the classroom is important, it should support a similar routine maintained in the home as well. When children have consistent morning schedules before coming to school, it sets them up to have a successful day. If you are struggling with routine at home, please reach out to your child’s teacher. This is an excellent way to troubleshoot or gain some new “tools” to try. We are all happy to help bring more Montessori practices into your home.
There’s No Place Like Home
Macy McNaughton, UE3 Teacher
The year is off to an exciting start! New building, new teachers, new carline, oh my! Over the summer, all of the Upper Elementary teachers worked hard to set up classrooms as well as create new procedures and boundaries for the students. We have worked relentlessly to create atmospheres for learning in all of the classrooms. Now that the students have arrived, our building feels more and more like home everyday! The classrooms are larger; which allows more space for the students to work collaboratively, as well as independently. The teachers have created their new flow of systems, which includes all of the day-to-day processes. For example: lunch set-up, classroom contributions/chores, playtime space, activities, boundaries and preparing the curriculum for the school year. The year has been busy, and the move has been exciting. We hope that you take time to come visit us at our new environment at some point. Our classrooms are open for parents to visit. Please feel free to call the school to set up a time to observe the work happening in our new home!
Family Community Michal Miller, Lower Elementary 1 Have you heard the age old saying that teachers shouldn’t smile until December? As a teacher, I get it, you want to establish the idea that you’re in control and the kids had better listen up! But, in classrooms around the world, in Indiana, and especially here at Oak Farm, the idea that the teacher is the “boss” is old. What we, as teachers, and as Montessorians have come to believe is the children have as much responsibility and say in the classroom as the teacher. Which means, at this time of year, the beginning of the school year, our classrooms are working hard on establishing a strong community. A community that feels more like a family and looks more like a home than the traditional notions of a classroom. When you do the math, many of us spend more waking hours together in our classroom than we do with our own families at home. Why wouldn’t we want our classroom community to feel and function like a loving family? When you come to observe in our classrooms, you might notice students calling us, teachers, “mom,” by accident, you might notice students working side by side as if they were siblings, and you might have a difficult time finding the teacher mixed in with the groups of students working on the floor or completing daily chores. Whatever you come to find as you observe in our classrooms, I hope you are able to feel that each community is as strong and as connected as a family. A family working independently and yet all working together. Want to know more about how we build our strong familial communities in our classrooms? Take a look at our photos of students working together to complete chores, helping one another with various works, problem solving and getting to know each other better through fun and games, and by doing work together to care for our shared gardens and outdoor environments. Take a peek at our lower elementary students in the pictures and come visit our familial communities at work in our classrooms!
GARDENS ARE A DYNAMIC TOOL FOR ECOLITERACY EXPLORATION Brett Bloom, Ecoliteracy Coordinator
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ou probably have noticed a marked increase in activity in the gardens near Lower Elementary in the past few months. I wanted to share what is happening with the gardens and the many ways they are being used in the Ecoliteracy Program at Oak Farm. There are two gardens near Lower Elementary. One is laid out in a giant spiral. Students, volunteers, and I are slowly filling it with perennial fruits and vegetables. I am using permaculture (Permanent + Agriculture) design
principles to establish many beneficial relationships between plants, the soil, the immediate environment, and the potential for learning in an immersive and dynamic setting. Come for a tour and I can demonstrate how this works. The other garden, closest to Lemper Road, is in neat rows of annual vegetables. The idea is to provide students experiences with two very different methods—of arranging a garden and growing edible plants—each with its unique set of rewards
Lower Elementary Ecoliteracy Team harvested tomatoes, butternut squash, and onions, some of which will be integrated into hot lunches at Oak Farm.
and challenges. Some of the fruits and vegetables in the gardens are familiar to student, like strawberries and tomatoes, while others will seem strange and exotic, including native fruits like chokeberry and elderberry. The gardens provide the opportunity to directly experience where food comes from; often children remark that they have never picked their favorite fruit or vegetable before visiting the gardens.
Sandy Knox, Primary Outdoor Specialist— and anchor of early ecoliteracy at Oak Farm—brought primary students for a tour of both gardens
Toddlers visited and picked strawberries and tomatoes for a snack later in the day.
The insect hotel was made to encourage beneficial insects to live close to our plants and for students to witness the various stages of this process. Lower and Upper Elementary students helped paint, put a roof on, and begin to fill in the square slots of the insect hotel. Students piled 5” long segments of bamboo in one of the square areas. Hollowed out bamboo is a perfect home for solitary mason bees that live individually and not in hives. The mason bees lay their eggs and seal them in with mud. We want to encourage solitary bees to live here as they are highly efficient pollinators, up to 100 times more productive than a single honey bee. We will work to attract lacewings—with a square filled with rolled up cardboard—as they eat aphids and other destructive insects. The tomato trellises are made from maple saplings cut by students from the OF forest. The removal of the trees is part of a long term conservation plan being developed by John Brittenham (Oak Farm parent and Restoration Ecologist at Blue Heron Ministries). The culling of maples, thousands of them, will help restore the forest to an open oak savanna, one of the world’s most endangered ecosystems. Through plantings and further conservation work, we will extend the oak savanna out onto the new property to the west of Upper Elementary. On the very last day of summer camps at Oak Farm, the campers in the Gardening and Foraging Camp that I ran, put together this geodesic dome. We made it with wooden struts, and plastic connectors that were 3D printed at Oak Farm’s Innolab. We will cover the dome with heavy duty transparent plastic and use it as a greenhouse so students can start seedlings in it next spring. The dome, like the spiral form of the garden, will help draw connections to naturally occurring geometric patterns in the garden. Fibonacci spirals occur in milkweed seed pods, sunflowers, snail shells, cut open cabbage heads, and more. Geodesic structures can be found in strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, a nearby sugar gum tree seed pods, and various flower seed pods. Break the geodesic dome into is constituent components of triangles, pentagons and hexagons and there are even more relationships to explore.
Elizabeth Green, Primary 3 Lead Teacher
in the Primary environment
Creating Community
As humans, we have an innate desire to interact with and build relationships with others; creating a sense of belonging. For a young child, these important early relationships are fostered in a family “community”. Here, the child is part of a parent-child relationship in which crucial social skills are learned and trust is built. Oftentimes, children have siblings and the family community expands. As a child grows, however, another social setting enters his realm: that of the classroom community at school. Just how is a sense of community cultivated in a school setting? What does this look like in the Primary environment in particular? Because the Primary environment includes children ages 3-6, there is always a group of returning older students who have built relationships with classmates and teachers, learned the guidelines of the classroom and understand the dynamics of how the environment works. It’s these mentors, along with the teachers, who help guide the new students in a myriad of ways: they give lessons, put on coats and shoes, guide when cleaning up lunch, show turn-taking when solving a conflict, walk children to the nap room and reassure them if they are sad. In addition, there is a “community” time each day when the class comes together as a group to partake in a lesson, sing a song, discuss a problem that a student brings to the group or delight in a child’s treasure that he discovered while on a walk with Sandy in the woods. All the while, the children are practicing turn-taking, control of movement, patience and respect of others. Ultimately, relationships are created, conversations take place, problems are solved, guidelines are followed, work is done and trust is built. A community is being created.
Community building spaces Hands-on technology education
We’re Here!
At the start of our second year of the high school program, we have been busy. Creating an ideal environment for our learning community is hard work, but it is so fun we hardly notice. Jenn Jordan, High School Teacher
Place-based history
Collaborative Math Work Space
“The essential reform of our plan from this point of view may be defined as follows: during the difficult time of adolescence it is helpful to leave the accustomed environment of the family in the town and go to quiet surroundings in the country, close to nature. Here, an open-air life, individual care, and a non-toxic diet, must be the first considerations in organizing a “centre for study and work.” ~ Dr. Maria Montessori, From Childhood to Adolescence
Shared Experiences Jon Agler, Middle School Teacher
Shared experiences help to create community, and to kick off the school year, the Oak Farm Middle School community created a lot of shared experiences on our annual fall trip. We spent four days together at Camp Storer, just outside of Jackson, Michigan. It was a time of fun, growth and a lot of memory. We were able to participate in the high ropes course, canoeing, horseback riding, team building, scavenger hunts and a lot of laughs. Every year it is fun to see how the students grow in such a short time. We like to start the year with camp because it helps our students to build a foundation of community that will last the rest of the school year. We also believe that it helps us to follow Dr. Montessori’s plan in creating an ideal environment for our students.
“One thing I really enjoyed about the camp was their high ropes course. It was challenging, but from that we also reached out of our comfort zone and tried something new.” Cora, 8th year
“I loved the horseback riding. I also loved the campfire and the Dutch Auction!!!! I learned a lot of survival skills. It was amazing!!!” Adeline, 7th year
“My time at camp can be summed up in 3 words: teamwork, leadership and loads of friendship. The middle school as a whole community grew a whole awful lot in 4 days! Fall trip is an amazing experience that brings us all together as one. I will forever remember Fall Trip 2018.” Rachael, 8th year
“Camp was fun. I pushed myself and got to know my classmates.”
Wesley, 8th year
“Camp was by far my favorite memory from this year. I really enjoyed learning alongside my peers, and growing our friendships. My favorite camp activity was the Team Challenge wall. I’m looking forward to next year at camp.” Hannah, 7th year