All that’s new at the Antioch School

New Antioch School Younger Group Teacher Linda Greene helps students Evelyn Potter (right) and Sara Zendlovitz read poems about fall.

By Diane Chiddister

To Antioch School Board President Angela Brintlinger, the school’s recently completed renovation project reflects the school’s philosophy.

“We teach our children to be self-sufficient but also to work together, to value the power of community,” she said in a recent interview. “For me, the renovation project represents what we’ve been teaching, that if you and others bring your unique talents and skills to the table, you can do amazing things.”

The Antioch School will celebrate its renovation with an open house for the community this Sunday, Sept. 23, from 2 to 4 p.m. at the school. The school will also kick off the new school year this weekend with a talk by Chris Mercogliano, a well-known leader in alternative education and co-director of the Albany Free School. The talk will take place on Saturday, Sept. 22, at 7:30 p.m. at the school.

The school’s renovation project, which took place over the summer, was the result of “thousands of hours” of volunteer work over the past two years contributed by school parents, teachers, students and community members, ranging from fund-raising to physical labor, Brintlinger said. The project cost about $370,000, a sum raised from a combination of donations from parents, teachers and community members, and “generous contributions” from two area foundations, which asked to remain anonymous.

One of the oldest alternative schools in the country, the Antioch School was started in the early 1920s as a school for the children of Antioch College faculty. It later became independent of the college, and its current building, constructed in the 1950s and placed on the edge of the Antioch College campus, was designed by famed architect Eero Saarinen, who also designed the St. Louis arch. The building was designed to create a bright, light-filled environment for children.

Those who visit the Antioch School this fall will see the same overall structure as was built 50 years ago, but one which now has new energy-efficient windows, new insulation, a new heating and electrical system, and new flooring, all of which replace the original systems. Plus, the school has a new coat of paint, inside and out.

“Everything looks brighter and cleaner,” Brintlinger said.

The new energy-efficient windows and electric and heating systems will spark discussions and lessons on sustainable, energy-efficient living, according to Brintlinger, who said a parent committee has been formed on ways to bring eco-literacy into the curriculum.

“We want to keep our children thinking about living lightly on the earth,” she said.

Overall, Brintlinger said, the Antioch School community hopes that its huge community effort the past several years will set the school up to be in good running order for the next half-century.

New teacher at home
Also new at the Antioch School this fall is Linda Greene, the Younger Group teacher who replaces longtime teacher Kit Crawford, who retired last spring.

While she is new to the Antioch School, Greene is not new to teaching children, and she has logged 15 years in the San Diego public school system, where she taught grades kindergarten through high school. She has an elementary school certification, plus masters degrees in curriculum design and in painting and drawing.

Before she knew of the job opening in the Younger Group, Greene and her husband, who grew up in the Dayton area, had been considering a move to this area from San Diego, where they had lived many years and raised their three children. Greene had also been intrigued by the Antioch School, which she had discovered on an earlier trip to Ohio. Especially, she was intrigued by a school that seemed to reflect her own philosophy of how children best learn, a philosophy that often felt at odds with that of the San Diego public schools. For instance, the emphasis on standardized testing assumed that all children learn in the same ways and at the same rate, an assumption with which Greene strongly disagreed.

So when Greene saw an ad last year in the Yellow Springs News, to which she subscribed, for an Antioch School teacher, she jumped at the chance. And things fell into place as their San Diego home quickly sold, and they found a rental in the village.

Now, only several weeks into the school year, Greene feels she has come home.

“When I walked into this classroom I felt so at ease,” she said in an interview last week. “I felt I was in an environment that I understood, and that understood me.”

Specifically, Greene is thrilled to be able to put into practice her belief that children learn best when they learn at their own pace and in their own way, following their interests. One day last week, she found herself spending an afternoon with her class building a maze for the group’s gerbils, a situation that she believes illustrates several important aspects of the Antioch School philosophy; first, that children’s interests spark learning, as when the maze-building, for which the children were enthusiastic, led to discussions and experiments on math and measurements.

And the project also, according to Greene, illustrated the benefits of multi-age classrooms such as the Younger Group, which contains first through third-graders.

“There were 5-year-olds next to 8-year-olds, and they were all treated with the same respect,” she said. “I see the tenderness that is allowed to come out in this school, an older child helping a younger child. We are very much a family.”

Even though she embraces the Antioch School philosophy of learning, Greene acknowledges that, after 15 years teaching one way, having to learn a new way can be challenging. But she is up for the challenge, and also feels grateful for the support she’s received from her colleagues and from her children’s parents.

“The people here are walking their talk,” she said. “The parents are so committed to their children’s learning.”

Greene is also happy to be living in Yellow Springs. She and her husband used to visit artsy towns in northern California, she said, and he always told her that if she liked those towns, she’d like Yellow Springs. After living for decades in a car-centered culture, she is amazed to be able to walk or bike to work, and she especially appreciates the sense of community she feels.

But she reserves her highest praise for the Antioch School, which she sees as unusual in the landscape of American education.

“I hope people understand how special this place is,” she said. “This is not the norm.”

Contact:dchiddister@ysnews.com