Message from our Head of School
Welcome to The Berkeley School! We are an intentionally small, community-oriented school, serving just under 300 children from early childhood through middle school. At TBS, our teachers pay attention to our students, our students pay attention to each other, and everyone pays attention to what really matters: learning.
As I enter my second full year as Head of The Berkeley School, I’m proud to continue the important work begun at TBS by former Head Janet Stork. Like Janet, the TBS teachers and I believe in drawing from the best of current educational research to create a program that puts learning firmly at the center of our work. We are inspired by the values and principles of our Montessori legacy to balance the “wild” of creativity with the “tame” of structure — and we recognize, at every turn, the important relationship between the two. We incorporate ideas and principles from Reggio Emilia, from the groundbreaking work that comes out of Harvard’s Project Zero and Teaching for Understanding, and from clinicians on the cutting edge of neuropsychology and education, because those are the best sources we know for effective, research-based teaching methods. As we move into the second decade of the twenty-first century, we know that teaching skills is important, but it’s only a start: students also need the motivation to use those skills, and the awareness of when to use them. TBS graduates leave with all three — skills, awareness, and motivation — firmly in place.
Using every resource available, our teachers work hard to create cultures of thinking and learning that suffuse every academic and social experience. At every level, we use classrooms to make students’ thinking visible to themselves, and to teachers, because only in doing so can our students come to understand what thinking really is, and how it is done. TBS students are observant and watchful; they consider ideas deeply and carefully; every day, they reflect on their own learning, understand their strengths and challenges, and undertake learning activities that reinforce the importance of making meaning together.
At TBS, education means students can, and should, learn differently. For our teachers, that’s basic. Unparalleled professional development opportunities (Project Zero, Facing History and Ourselves, Readers’ and Writers’ Workshop) ensure that our teachers have the knowledge, and the experience, to infuse every aspect of a typical class period — the structure, the activities, the learning purpose, the process, and the product — with educational practices that work for all learners. After all, only teachers whose own growth and learning are vibrantly alive can keep those things true for their students. As a result, at a time when many schools begin to emphasize grades and test scores as fixed measures of students’ understanding, TBS emphasizes authentic assessments that reinforce students’ belief in their ability to learn and to grow.
We want our students to experience school as a welcoming place, where everyone is involved in learning; a place where all adults and children are held to similar expectations; a place that is committed to bringing out the best in everyone. Only then do students live the value that school is not something that is “done” to them, but, rather, is a place where they join in a community of learners, and develop the courage to remake their world.
We hope you will be inspired to learn more about our school, and we invite you to contact us with any questions you may have. Welcome to TBS!
— Mitch Bostian
Head of School
