ACADEMIC ENGAGEMENT AND SPECIALS – Daily Routines
For the Lower School, the first quarter of the academic year 2024-2025 has been very full of learnings. Teachers in the LS have placed a primary emphasis on two foundational tenets of Mountain Academy, place-based learning and student-centered learning. On a daily basis, we start off each morning with Morning Circle. We share hopes and dreams, play community-building games, and talk about family and emotional aspects of ourselves. Passing the “talking stick”, we learn about patient and respect and ask each other questions in the spirit of appreciative enquiry.
Then it is off to the respective 1-2 and 3-4 Fundations classes where we learn the ends and outs of word and sentence formation. Throughout the day, 3-4 teacher Lucy Hayward and 1-2 teacher Mayme Sullivan, along with Macey Ackman leaning specialist, guide the LS student body through Math and ELA. In Science, we have been focusing on the biotic and abiotic worlds in the context of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Under the guidance art teacher Dave Berry students have been studying the mediums of leather, paint, and photography.
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT – Place-Based and Student-Centered
Through the lens of Place-Based Learning (PBL), Lower School students have taken numerous opportunities to explore within the confines of this place we call home. On Indigenous Peoples’ Day we were enthralled hearing stories about Sacajawea from author and activist Randy’L Teton. Ryan Peterson, fly fisherman extraordinaire and MS student NIco’s Dad, came into our class and spent almost two hours showing us how to tie flies and talking about riparian ecosystems. Aaron Nydam, bicycle skills and safety specialist and MS student Greta’s Dad gave us a comprehensive and super-fun presentation/participation. We visited the National Wildlife Art Museum to hear author/illustrator/long-distance hiker Tim Musso give us a presentation on (Sterna paradisaea) arctic terns and his woodblock print process of illustrating. And, perhaps the most memorable and most engaging of all of this Fall’s character-building PBE adventures, was the Fall Extended Journey to Harriman State Park. We hiked. We stayed in yurts with wood stoves. We learned from the State park ranger. We learned how to spin fish. We heard elk bugling every morning and evening. We ate a lot of s’mores.
STUDENT CORNER – Sophie Perez Benitez
Sophie Is a 2nd grader in the Mountain Academy Jackson Campus Lower School. On a daily basis, she amazes us with her artistic abilities. Her use of color and shading with pastels is one of her specialities. She keeps a big ball of aluminum foil in her Science desk and loves to sculpt different animals. On a recent day, she was busy sculpting a small figurine when she asked her teacher, “Jeffrey, do you know which animal this is? It is a GECKO. YES!!!”
On any given day, she might be seen running in the field, boisterously screaming her joy and climbing trees, followed by a session playing with stuffies as she shows the nurturing side of her persona. Under the ever-observant and insightful watch of Spanish and 1-2 teacher Mayme Sullivan, Sophie is a thriving bi-lingual thinker, creator and speaker. The two of them can often be seen having mini-conferences about language comprehension and clarifications about Sophie’s wonderfully sensitive emotional side.
