Our Mission

To encourage students to build a meaningful and fulfilling relationship with the world through their creative exploration. Our environment and curriculum are designed to nurture the unfolding development of the "whole child," including academic knowledge and skills as well as artistic, reflective, intuitive and interpersonal knowledge and abilities. We emphasize each child’s unique interests, strengths, and personality within a supportive, cooperative, caring community of learners.

Our Philosophy

We view education from a holistic perspective which means, first, we are concerned with the whole child - emotional, social, physical, moral, spiritual, artistic and creative as well as intellectual dimensions of their development - and second, that every child’s life is connected to wider contexts of experience - peers, family, community, culture, and the natural world.

Like all progressive educators, we see children as natural learners and honor that principle. We recognize that children come to the classroom with many gifts, multiple intelligences and languages, full potential, uniqueness, and natural curiosity. We strive to design a learning environment and to use teaching practices that support children’s characteristic ways of exploring, discovering, and constructing their knowledge of the world. Teachers draw forth the intrinsic motivation of each child so that learning becomes an interactive process that values imagination, creativity, and joy, fostering a love of learning. Instead of dividing up the mind and the body, science and the humanities, action and thought, intelligence and emotion, holistic education seeks to bring these together. In this way, we foster the values of both independence of each learner and interdependence of all subjects as well as all aspects of life. Holistic education seeks to foster a sense of connection to both the natural world and the human community; we feel this approach cultivates social as well as ecological responsibility, a compassionate sense of wonder, and genuine self-understanding.

Teachers at Bellwether join children in their sense of wonder as they learn. Teachers work to develop relationships with each child at Bellwether, to understand each child as a unique individual, and to help facilitate their learning. Teachers collaborate with students by sensitively observing, listening, actively participating in, and documenting discoveries. Through these elements, teachers guide learning by providing appropriate materials and activities, asking provocative questions, and by supporting creative risk-taking. Teachers encourage children to make connections, see relationships, and take multiple perspectives throughout their learning. Teachers at Bellwether seek to develop critical and reflective thinking skills allowing students to construct their own learning and knowledge through inquiry.