Meet Brimmer’s New Head of Lower School

 

 

I want to get to know all of the Lower School students and their families and to support students’ learning and teachers’ efforts to creatively and thoughtfully curate Brimmer’s integrated curriculum. I look forward to spending time in classrooms and using my over twenty-five years of experience to support all of the thoughtful work that came before me and to lead new initiatives that are in keeping with the School’s mission and guiding principles.

 

 

Knowing our Lower School students and understanding how we can best support and guide each one of them. Small schools, especially ones with an administrative and teaching structure similar to Brimmer’s, offer a strong sense of community, but they also allow us to pay close attention to the needs and interests of each individual child. With a strengths-based approach, we can meet children where they are and help guide them forward, utilizing the many resources within our school community. I look forward to playing a part in this process.

 

I am equally excited about working with the outstanding and experienced team of educators. They bring myriad skills, talents, and sensibilities that enrich the educational path of our Lower School students. What happens in each of their classrooms is equally important as the work we do together to ensure a steady, inclusive, and comprehensive education.

 

Young children are free-spirited, joyful, and eternally curious. They engage with the world using all of their senses. Whether building with blocks, forming letters and numbers, listening to stories, reading on their own, dressing up, running about on the playground, or learning to code, they are doers, experimenters, and inventors. They are likely at one of the most rapidly changing and curious-filled times of their lives. As such, it is important that a child’s first years in school capture and build upon this curiosity, growth, and sense of wonder, and at the same time, lay the foundation for early literacy and numeracy.

 

Hands-on, multi-sensory learning endeavors should be balanced with imaginative, exploratory play that allows children to make sense of their world and the people in it. Young children need time to observe, time to tinker, time to practice, and time to be with others and develop the language of negotiation and conflict resolution. Recognizing that there are distinct social, emotional, physical, and intellectual characteristics that define each stage of a child’s development, early childhood curriculum is best developed with these considerations in mind.

 

Working with children and finding the best ways to support their learning and their intellectual and social-emotional development is what inspires me most of all. I am a firm believer in Ross Green’s mantra that “Kids do well, if they can,” and the role of the educator, and parent, is to discover what skills children need to do well not only in school, but also in life, relationships, and later in their careers. Educators have a very special lens from which they are able to view each student. While emotionally invested, they are able to objectively, and without judgment, discern each child’s unique strengths, talents and passions, as well as the challenges that interfere with his or her growth. With careful observation, collaborative partnership with families and a genuine appreciation for the individual, educators can positively impact the trajectory of a child’s experience in school and in life. As I was preparing to transition from Nantucket Lighthouse School, the faculty and staff organized a special All School Meeting to say goodbye. It was a very special moment, and I was lavished with thoughtful gifts: songs, poems, cards, performances, games, and a beautiful piece of art to which each child contributed. Near the end of the meeting, one of the fourth-grade students approached me with a gift and said, “You changed my life.” Moments like these, moments when you realize you have had a positive impact on a child’s life, are when I feel most inspired and joyful!