New Year Updates!
Happy New Year, Worldmind Community!
We hope the holidays have brought you joy, togetherness, rest, and moments of reflection.
Just as the natural world slows down during the darker days of this season, this time of year provides us with myriad opportunities to invite stillness and introspection into our daily lives.
At Worldmind, faculty and staff have focused our 2022 musings and 2023 plans on how we can come together more frequently and joyously as a community.
As we reflect on the challenges and successes our students and families have shared with us, we strongly believe that time together will minimize the former and exponentially increase the latter.
We have also been inspired by the brilliant and beautiful words of Robin Wall Kimerer, in her bestselling book, "Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants." Kimerer reminds us that our strength is in our connection, and that It is a mistake to separate the individual well-being from the health of the whole. Her book — which we highly recommend -- is an urgent call to togetherness, one that we plan to heed in 2023.
Here are a few opportunities we are looking forward to in the new year:
We will be offering monthly family gatherings. During these gatherings we will bring in professionals from different fields to discuss important topics that we are seeing at the school and in the community.
Our upper elementary and middle school students will be doing job shadowing. We have set up job shadowing with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, SAME Café, and in our preschool and lower elementary classes. We are also working on placements at the Denver Art Museum and the Denver Zoo. Students will shadow professionals in these fields in order to learn more about that field and profession. Families will be contacted once students have received their final placements.
We are developing relationships with the Denver Zoo and the Denver Art Museum to expand more learning opportunities in all classes.
We’re excited to announce that we found a wonderful new online platform for the school. We will be introducing School Cues in a few weeks. This will take the place of Brightwheel and Bloomz so that everything will be in one place.
The elementary and middle school will continue trips to Star K Ranch each month through May.
The lower elementary school will be hosting a few more markets.
The upper elementary will be opening their café once a week.
We’re excited to welcome Justin back to the Worldmind staff and community. He will be joining the preschool team at City Park for the remainder of the school year.
What else might you be interested in doing together as a community? We will be sending you a brief survey to capture your ideas. We will also be putting together a Community Gatherings Group who will help us ideate and implement new ways of building togetherness. Please plan to participate! We will all benefit greatly from more time with our community.
The complex world in which we live carries additional challenges and opportunities for our incredible students, families, faculty, and staff. We believe our greatest strength is in our connectedness, and cannot wait to see what we accomplish together in 2023.
- Megan Patterson, Executive Director and Founder of Worldmind School