The Green Mount School - Philosophy

Philosophy

Since its inception, GreenMount has embraced a child-centered educational philosophy. According to the school’s website:

“We see our school as a diverse community where children are given the space and time to learn and the encouragement to succeed. Students develop academic, behavioral and personal skills that enable them to thrive in different environments. The curriculum is connected to or grounded in real-life experiences. It is creative, multicultural, community-based, and centered on experiential learning through thematic curricula. ”

Along with a strong foundation in mathematics, science and language arts, the curriculum is supplemented with music, art, theatre, environmental and urban explorations, physical education, and library studies. Each year the curriculum is fashioned around three different theme-based programs. Some examples of themes are “From Radicals to Reagan: 1960-to-1980”; “Australia and Oceania”; “The Age of Extremes: World Wars, Boom and Bust, Harlem Renaissance”; and “The Greening of GreenMount.” Each theme culminates in a school-wide event where students share what they have learned with family and friends.

These themes are integrated into the curriculum via a variety of projects the students undertake. For example, 5th and 6th graders did the following projects in Fall 2007 while studying “From Radicals to Reagan: 1960-1980.”

1. Participated in a mock debate between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. to explore the differences and similarities between King’s message of nonviolent civil disobedience and Malcolm X’s “by-any-means-necessary” black nationalism.
2. Organized a mock protest march on Washington D.C., circa 1968, as if they were the committee planning the event. This entailed creating a budget, lining up speakers, planning a parade route, developing a transportation plan for 200,000 protesters, and designing posters and bumper stickers.
3. Created a mock band that survived the musical changes from 1960 to 1980 intact. This assignment involved creating two album covers for the band, one using the design aesthetic of 1960 and one the design aesthetic of 1980; writing lyrics for a song on each of the albums; and crafting a pseudobiography for the band, covering its two decades of existence. The students also wrote a paper about one of the real bands from this period that served as a musical influence for their imaginary band.
4. In music class, students studied the history of rock-n-roll and performed songs from the Beatles, the Who, and Bob Dylan at the culminating theme event.
5. In art class, students studied artists ranging from Andy Warhol to Claes Oldenburg. In studying Warhol, they took his famous image of the Campbell's Soup Cans and crafted sculptures of what they considered the perfect local iconic foodstuff: Old Bay Spice tins. Drawing on Oldenburg’s work, the entire school created an oversized picnic: each class contributed a sculpture ranging from a giant paper mache sandwich to a Capri-Sun juice box to the largest bag of Utz potato chips ever to grace a picnic table.

The curriculum is generally oriented towards multidisciplinary, project based learning (PjBL), usually centered on the theme in question.

Based partially on Howard Gardner's notion of multiple intelligences, the school is dedicated to multi-age education. This is reflected in the classes themselves, each of which contains two grades (The classes are currently separated into kindergarten and grades 1/2, 3/4, 5/6 and 7/8). Students frequently work in groups of mixed ages and mixed abilities.

Fridays, which are half days for students, are considered “community days,” during which the entire school meets as a unit and embarks on a single daylong project, usually oriented towards the current theme being studied. All of the students get together to work on a theme-related project with their “buddies.” First graders are paired with 8th graders, 2nd graders with 6th graders, etc.

Students also participate in a variety of out-of-school activities, including field trips, community service, middle-school apprenticeships, camping trips, and (for 8th graders) international travel.

The school regularly has visiting artists and lecturers from the Baltimore area. Past visitors have included filmmaker John Waters, children’s book author Nancy Patz, Baltimore Blast players and Edwin Mulitalo of Big Ed's Band Foundation and Baltimore Ravens superstar.