Welcome to Greenwood School’s website. Whether you are visiting us online from southern Marin County, the wider San Francisco Bay Area, or from more distant parts I hope our site will give you a feeling for the warmth and vibrancy of our K-8 school.
With two years under my belt at Greenwood, and over 23 years of experience in Waldorf education, I can say that there is a vitality here that fulfills the hopes and efforts of the school’s founding families. Since its founding in 1992, Greenwood has developed an exceptional curriculum, faculty, and school culture where happy, alert, engaged students are not only well prepared for high school, but for life-long learning.
Greenwood’s integrated approach to academics is rigorous, dynamic, and full-blooded. Whether the subject is math, history, science, language arts, ecology, or foreign language, a Waldorf-trained faculty brings it to life. Academics are enlivened and integrated through story, drama, singing, painting, orchestra, movement, games, and handwork.
I was initially attracted to Greenwood School when I saw what came to life through integrating a Waldorf-inspired approach to academics, an exceptional Waldorf-trained faculty, and an impulse toward innovation. Here are a few examples:
- A one-of-a-kind environmental studies program, where the classroom extends outdoors each week, is a model for integrating a deep eco-literacy into future generations of children.
- An award-winning poetry program and teacher, Devika Brandt, known nationally for awakening a love of, and a facility for, language.
- A governance model that integrates a school director while maintaining a vital, collaborative faculty culture.
- A Learning Support Program, for students identified with learning challenges, which integrates Waldorf developmental insight with expertise in contemporary educational therapy.
- Seasonal community festivals that bring children, teachers and families together to celebrate our bond with the earth and each other in an imaginative, meaningful, and inclusive way.
If the “Waldorf ” approach is new to you, do read our curriculum section. An essential characteristic of Waldorf education is its developmental approach. Children are taught subjects at each stage of their development in ways that will be most receptive to them. Waldorf’s unhurried and measured approach to learning concentrates on the physical, emotional, and intellectual foundations of literacy resulting in students who grow more confidently into each academic stage of their development.
Greenwood is simply a wonderful village school, in the heart of beautiful Mill Valley, with a lively, experiential, multidisciplinary curriculum that awakens a love of learning.
If what you see here on our site appeals to you, I encourage you to come for a visit and see our students, faculty, and program for yourself.
I look forward to meeting you when you come.
Robert Schiappacasse