The Long Ridge School Stamford, Connecticut Head of School Start Date

THE LONG RIDGE SCHOOL STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT HEAD OF SCHOOL START DATE: JULY 2020 WWW.LONGRIDGESCHOOL.ORG Fast Facts Established: 1938 School type: Independent, coeducational day school Grades: Beginners (age 2) through elementary (grade 5) Enrollment: 76 Students of color: 32% Total faculty: 23 Student/faculty ratio: 5:1 Campus acreage: 14 OVERVIEW The Long Ridge School (LRS) is an independent, coeducational nursery and elementary school located on 14 woodland acres in North Stamford, CT. LRS enrolls children two years old through grade five, drawn from many local Connecticut and New York towns. Long Ridge is a small school by design with a diverse and globally inclusive community and a long commitment to progressive education. Children are known and valued as unique individuals and stay children longer as they thrive in an environment created specifically for them. Learning is an active and joyful experience that prepares students to solve the problems and challenges of the future. Passionate, professional teachers at Long Ridge are themselves continuing learners, constantly improving their practice to ensure gold standard academic programs with a modern, collaborative, problem-solving approach. The Long Ridge School’s forward-thinking, project-based curriculum methods are embraced by the graduate education schools at Columbia, Stanford, and Harvard. Provided with strong programs in math, literacy, science, music, and the arts, graduates are actively recruited by the best area middle schools including St. Luke’s, King, New Canaan Country School, Ridgefield Academy, The Masters School, Harvey, and Hackley. LRS seeks a Head of School who will join the community in July 2020. John Ora was appointed as Interim Head in July 2018 and will serve through the 2019-2020 school year. He has brought an innovator’s mindset steeped in sound pedagogy and practical application, an approach perfectly aligned with The Long Ridge School’s progressive educational philosophy and the innate curiosities of young children. For its permanent Head, the Board is seeking someone who will help to further define and execute LRS’ mission so that it can continue making the bold moves necessary to propel it forward and secure its future. The Search Group | Carney, Sandoe & Associates 2 [email protected] | www.carneysandoe.com THE SCHOOL The Long Ridge School was founded in 1938 by Harriet Rowland, a parent and educator who envisioned a school that valued children as individuals. Rowland created a place where each child’s needs would be met and, as the school grew from the first class of six students, LRS teachers have continued to make sure every voice is heard and every child is known and valued. Today, The Long Ridge School serves 76 students age two through fifth grade. A true learning community, LRS guides students to achieve their own potential through individual attention, interdisciplinary study, and child-centered multi-age classrooms where curiosity and exploration power learning. The Long Ridge School occupies a unique position as one of the few Connecticut independent schools dedicated exclusively to preschool through elementary education and, as such, students come from many local Connecticut and New York towns. LRS is committed to supporting diversity/ multi-culturalism in all its forms in a warm and inclusive environment. Thirty-two percent of students identify as students of color. In addition, 37% of the student body receives financial aid. Dedicated and energetic teachers nurture the development of the whole child and lead the curriculum development process to ensure students are engaged intellectually in a supportive environment. With a total faculty of 23, LRS is proud of its passionate educators, administrators, and specialists who possess a deep understanding of the intellectual and emotional needs of young children. This is borne out in the numbers: almost half of the teachers have been at the School for more than 10 years, teachers have an average of 20 years’ experience as educators, and 60% hold advanced degrees. Teachers are also committed to continuing professional development and learning to understand and employ current research on how children learn best. The Search Group | Carney, Sandoe & Associates 3 [email protected] | www.carneysandoe.com Three key components underly the ethos that pervades the school, both within and outside of the classroom: Social-Emotional Learning: Teaching the emotional, social, and language skills students need to manage their feelings and behavior, to express themselves, and to work and play well with others. Character Education: Instilling in students the expectation that they should try their best every day to be good people and providing them specific examples of strong character and virtuous conduct. Individual and Group Management: Having a consistent set of developmentally appropriate classroom and recess behavioral management practices used by all staff members. ACADEMICS The LRS academic program creates the foundation for a lifetime of learning through a dynamic, enriched curriculum that engages students as full participants in their school experience. Throughout the preschool and elementary grades, small class sizes and a student-faculty ratio of 5:1 offer plentiful opportunities for differentiated and one-on-one instruction. An integrated program of multidisciplinary study means that every unit combines active literacy, mathematical inquiry, scientific exploration, and artistic expression to further learning. Beginning in Preschool, students also study Spanish, gradually building vocabulary and practicing oral, listening, and writing skills. Multi-age classes are a hallmark of the LRS program, with two-year age groupings providing rich and comfortable environments that accommodate a range of developmental levels and learning The Search Group | Carney, Sandoe & Associates 4 [email protected] | www.carneysandoe.com styles. Long Ridge teachers are skilled in tailoring instruction to suit the range in the classroom, and pay close attention to students’ needs, closely observing each child’s growth. By spending two consecutive years in the same classroom, students develop a sense of continuity and familiarity that supports risk-taking and challenge. In addition, younger students benefit from their peers’ guidance, and older children consolidate knowledge and practice leadership through work with their younger peers. Preschool The LRS Preschool consists of the Beginners program for two-year-olds, and Nursery for ages three and four. During these years, students learn and grow in a warm and nurturing environment that cultivates positive attitudes about school. The Preschool has the advantage of being a part of wider school environment, providing children with the benefit of resources that include music, library, and physical education. Outdoor play and exploration of LRS’s wooded campus is part of the daily routine. Preschoolers at LRS practice cooperative play, build confidence, and develop intellectual curiosity, becoming active and joyful learners eager to make sense of and engage with the world around them. Elementary In Kindergarten through fifth grade, LRS students continue to develop as learners through multidisciplinary work in mathematics, language arts, social studies, and coding. Organized with individual instruction in mind, classrooms provide opportunities for students to work independently and in small groups with teachers; time with specialist teachers lets students explore science, arts, technology, Spanish, physical education, and library skills. LRS teachers have adopted the Bridges in Mathematics program for grades K-5. Bridges in Mathematics is considered the gold standard of modern progressive math programs and it meets The Search Group | Carney, Sandoe & Associates 5 [email protected] | www.carneysandoe.com or exceeds all Common Core math standards. The math concepts it teaches are very similar to Singapore Math, but the instructional methodology — student centered, collaborative, and inquiry based — more closely matches Long Ridge’s progressive classrooms. In language arts, LRS students learn to be active and enthusiastic readers, working one-on-one with teachers who track their reading progress and developing communication skills through discussion. Daily writing allows students to develop expressive language and build fluency in spelling, punctuation, and grammar — skills that serve students well across disciplines. Literacy — both reading and writing — is an area where Long Ridge works hard to have the best program possible. The LRS literacy curriculum incorporates elements from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project with its twice-yearly assessments for students. To support the program, LRS is adding the Fundations® program to its K-3 classrooms. Fundations® is a recognized leader in explicit multi-sensory reading instruction designed to provide students with key foundational reading skills. Running reading records are kept on each child to measure and assure progress. The social studies curriculum includes explorations of fables and fairy tales, art and artists, the Medieval World, and Colonial American history. In addition to exposing students to a broad array of knowledge areas, each unit emphasizes cross-disciplinary thinking, cultivating students’ abilities to analyze, synthesize, and create. Finally, in science, a dynamic, experiential approach draws on students’ natural curiosity and sense of wonder. Each class visits the

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