The Berkeley School is deeply saddened to announce the death on April 5, 2010 of former Head of School Janet Stork. Janet joined TBS, then Berkeley Montessori School, in the summer of 2006. During her years at the helm, she was a true change agent, moving our school away from a strict Montessori pedagogy to a more inclusive research-based program that incorporates the best of current educational thinking. Janet’s professional experience was broad and always intellectually focused on effective teaching. She began her career as an early childhood and elementary teacher, moving into administration at schools such as Eliot Pearson Children’s School at Tufts University, her alma mater, and Dalton School in N.Y. She was a foundational contributor to Project Zero at Harvard, working closely with Howard Gardner and others on a variety of subjects such as assessment, documentation, and curricula based on the framework of multiple intelligences. Her colleague from Project Zero, Mara Krechevsky, wrote, “Janet Stork was an outstanding educational leader, critical and creative thinker, and researcher who traveled easily between the worlds of educational theory and practice, finding innovative and creative ways to bridge the two. As someone grounded in the research side of the field, I greatly admired Janet’s ability to make the newest findings in educational research relevant and accessible to teachers. Early on, Janet identifed key implications of the Reggio approach for instruction and assessment, not just for American early childhood education, but for education at all levels.” The world of education has lost a profound thinker and researcher, and TBS has lost a transformational leader and beloved friend. Our deepest sympathies go out to Janet’s children, Andrew and Catie Birnberg, whose compassion and courage attest to their mother’s many gifts as a parent. Read the reflections of our current Head, Mitch Bostian, in his weekly letter, here, on sharing space with Janet’s library for the past month.