Wisdom of The Willows Blog

The beginning of a new school year means resuming many familiar habits and routines. However, adjusting to a new grade and teacher can be both exciting and challenging, even if your student has a group of familiar friends in their class. Here’s some advice for students to help them navigate this transition smoothly

Read about the benefits of having book buddies and how it helps develop stronger literacy and social-emotional skills for our students.

A group of 25 Willows 7th and 8th Graders took a 6-day service learning trip to Puerto Rico, learning about its culture, geography, and history, all while performing multiple acts of service to benefit its communities and environment.

At The Willows, we emphasize experiential and thematic instruction, critical thinking & problem solving, and the development of social emotional skills. 

Forming strong and concise arguments is a fundamental skill that grows increasingly vital as students progress through their academic journey. At The Willows, we understand the significance of this skill and mindfully integrate its development into our curriculum as early as 3rd grade. By the time students reach Middle School, they have the opportunity to delve deeper into argumentation by joining our debate team.

As lower school art teachers at The Willows, Kristy Acero & Christian Isbell are no strangers to big ideas. It’s common for them to incorporate curricular lessons into ideas for thoughtful and detailed student art projects, transforming them into artistic prompts for a wide variety of classes. With these prompts. students often explore visual meaning through their own individual perspectives. However, more recently, Kristy & Christian shared an idea to celebrate Lunar New Year, not as individuals, but as a collective Willows community.

For a single week each school year, The Willows pauses the day-to-day curriculum and delves into Intersession, an in-depth, cross-disciplinary study of a single theme conducted in multi-age groups. This year’s projects will examine the 2023-2024 school-wide theme, Strength. Intersession activities always promote collaboration, creativity, and problem-solving skills for every age group.

Every year for Family Education Night at The Willows, we invite all students and their families onto our campus to experience firsthand experiential learning through hands-on activity. The theme this year is Mathematics. Throughout all grades, families will be able to go to their child’s classroom and work together on engaging math activities

At the onset of each new school year, Willows 6th Graders embark on a multi-month unit focused on forensic sciences and their intersection with the U. S. judicial system. Simulations of forensic activities help demonstrate these essential processes. Starting with a mock crime scene in the science lab,

In a past blog discussing our school-wide theme Strength, we stated that we “encourage our community to resolve to make the difficult decisions when there are quicker and easier alternatives available.” This notion is demonstrated in the collective work done through our composting program, led by Willows Middle School teacher Liz Stocksdale.

Our commitment to SEL & the RULER approach has grown steadily, and recently, four teachers and Head of School, Lisa Rosenstein, had the opportunity to share our integration of the RULER approach with Celsiusskolan, a school in Edsbyn, Sweden!

When faced with the decision of where to send your child to school, there are a wide variety of factors to consider. Such an important choice deserves careful consideration to ensure that your child receives the best opportunities for success. From optimal teacher-to-student ratios to dedicated and innovative teachers...

Welcome Back Willows! We hope that you had an enjoyable summer full of rest and relaxation and are ready for the start of school next week! Before you know it, we’ll be fully immersed in academics, athletics, and the arts, so take a moment now to establish a plan for the upcoming year.

The school-wide theme for the 2023/24 year is Strength. Throughout the school year, we will consider Strength in curriculum and community, investigating how each of us can adopt healthy mental, emotional, and physical ideas of strength.

As any Willows teacher will tell you, they assume numerous roles to successfully lead their students through an entire school day, inspiring and...

The Willows curriculum, based in part on the principles of experiential learning, offers engaging, hands-on approaches to bring learning to life for...

Few skills, if any, are more fundamental to early childhood education than reading. The American Academy of Pediatrics affirms this sharing that “reading regularly...

Preparing students for the future remains the principal purpose of a child’s school career, even as curricula and educational practices evolve. Teachers and...