Dear Parents, Alumni and Friends,

As the chair of your Head of School Search Committee, I wanted to remind you that our remaining two candidates will join us on campus for back-to-back visits beginning Thursday, January 26.

We encourage you to attend our Parent Meet and Greet events for our last two candidates. After meeting each of the them, we hope you will share your thoughts through participation in a quick survey which we will email to all attendees of the respective events. The survey will open the day the candidate visits and remain open for two days after the end of the visit.

Stay tuned for more details on our remaining candidates in the upcoming edition of The Pinwheel. In the meantime, should you have specific questions about this process or comments about our candidates, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Best wishes to you and your family!

Sincerely,

David Bouska
Search Committee Chair

Dear Parents, Alumni and Friends,

On behalf of your Search Committee, I wanted to update you on the work we've been doing over the last several months. As we've previously shared, we have been working with Carney Sandoe & Associates (CS&A), a nationally recognized search firm, to help us in our search for the next Head of School.

Over the last four months, our dedicated consultant from CS&A, Marlene Shaw, has identified and reviewed qualifications of more than 30 candidates. The candidates had a wide variety of experiences and skill sets. After much discussion with Marlene, we narrowed the candidate field down to six excellent semi-finalists.

During the first week of January, the Search Committee interviewed each of the six candidates. This was done by teleconference as the candidates are from all over the country. Each candidate possessed skills and attributes that would benefit the entire Greensboro Montessori community.

After lengthly interviews, follow-up phone calls, and multiple discussions, the Search Committee is pleased to announce we have identified our final candidates whom we have invited to visit the School. We will send out information about the candidates via email several days prior to their individual school visits.

After meeting each of the candidates, we encourage you to share your comments through participation in a quick survey. The survey will open the day the candidate visits and remain open for two days after the end of the visit.

In addition to sending our Search Committee updates by email, we are also posting them to this dedicated Head of School Search webpage. Should you have specific questions about the process or thoughts about the candidates, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Best wishes to you and your family!

Sincerely,

David Bouska
Search Committee Chair

Greensboro Montessori School's 12-point Pinwheel is an ideal symbol for the educational philosophy of our School. Designed by an alumni parent, the Pinwheel represents many designs in the natural world. It also portrays the power of the triangle and highlights a simple shape – the scalene right-angle triangle — the School uses to introduce geometry for both work and play.

The scalene, right-angle triangle is part of the Constructive Triangles, materials within Montessori’s “Visual Sense” Sensorial works used to demonstrate how all plane geometric figures can be constructed from triangles. Montessori teachers recognize when children are ready for new discoveries, and they guide their students through direct experiences with simple to complex concepts using the help of didactic materials. The Constructive Triangles epitomize this learning process.

Through manipulating triangles, a very young child gains understanding of the triangle as the first form of reality. In the Rectangular Box of Constructive Triangles, the child finds pairs of matching triangles featuring black lines. One of these pairs is green, scalene, right-angle triangles. When the child joins the triangles along the black lines, she discovers how two triangles create one parallelogram. Later, in the Triangular Box of Constructive Triangles, she revisits the green, scalene, right-angle triangles. This time, the two join to form one equilateral triangle.

Parallelogram from the Rectangular Box of Constructive Triangles.

Equilateral Triangle

Equilateral Triangle from the Triangular Box of Constructive Triangles.

With the Constructive Blue Triangles, the same young child uses 12 identical blue, scalene, right-angle triangles to create stars; investigate the ideas of equivalency, congruency and similarity; and build more complex shapes. Directing herself in her work, she organically uncovers the power of learning through the simple and playful exploration of triangles.

Just as the scalene, right-angle triangle is the physical and symbolic representation of a powerful learning process hidden within the Constructive Triangles, the Pinwheel is the physical and symbolic representation of Greensboro Montessori School: a transformative community where professional, passionate educators use children’s individual interests, innate senses of curiosity and inherent thirst for knowledge to unlock in them a lifelong love of learning.