We relish the length of the relationships that we have with our Winfield children. For a child who starts in the Toddler House at 16 months and goes through Kindergarten, we have had the privilege of being a part of their life for five years. If you ask a Winfield teacher why they work with this age group, you will often hear some variation on the notion that the growth (physically, emotionally, academically, and socially) that the children undergo over the course of their time with us is nothing short of astounding, and that being able to witness that first-hand is incredibly fulfilling!

But for all of our students, eventually, the time comes to move on. The sadness of saying goodbye is balanced by the celebration of the people they have grown into. As Maria Montessori wrote, that process is not just about preparation for the next school but about setting them up with the tools that will ensure success through the rest of their life.

When we look at the learner outcomes that we are fostering at Winfield, they of course include academic preparation, but that is just one aspect in the constellation of outcomes, described in the document on this page. Many of these fall into the category commonly referred to as soft skills, and represent what more and more contemporary research is pointing to as key indicators of success as adults.

In the immediate future though, Winfield children leave here having mastered being in a community outside of the home, navigating the social emotional aspects of being a part of a group, and having developed their autonomy and a love of learning. The repeated experience of going through the cycle of developing an interest in something and exploring it on their own terms, and then sharing their knowledge (as our Kindergartners do with their capstone project), allows them to develop their sense of owning their own learning. Ask many Montessori children how they learned something and they will likely declare that they just knew it; knowledge is self-derived, not handed to the Montessori child.

There are, of course, the practical aspects of what the next step is for those leaving Winfield. For most of our children their local public school is their next landing place. Each year we also often have some number of children moving from Winfield’s kindergarten into other area private schools. Our parents have the flexibility of deciding what school works best for their child and their family, knowing that the child has prepared themselves well for whatever comes next!