Hurricane Relief: Re-Opening St. Croix Montessori

On Monday, September 18^th, the day before Cat-5 Hurricane Maria struck the island of St. Croix, and just twelve days after we had cleaned up from Hurricane Irma, we shuttered our school and made a pact:

First: Take care of yourself, your family, and home.
Second: Assuming it was safe to leave our neighborhoods, we would meet back at school on Friday, 30 minutes after the curfew lifted.

With deep gratitude for your support, St. Croix Montessori School re-opened our doors 13 days after Hurricane Maria and we returned to full school-day operations within 3 weeks of the devastating storm.

While we remained on generator power until December 21^st, your support creates capacity for our regrowth, and, as many public schools have been condemned and remain on half-day schedules, we are working with you to lay the foundation for safe, supportive, academically-rigorous early childhood options for our small, Caribbean community.

St. Croix Montessori is located closer to Christiansted, it’s main building sitting atop a hill and at the bottom, an office trailer waiting to be constructed into our library, office, and nurse’s area. The hallmark of our school for the past 12 years of Casa (preschool), Lower and Upper Elementary have been our trees.

Our trees – luscious, green, sturdy and winding trees - have helped children learn to climb, swing, hang, and have shaded us as we listen to AfroCaribbean tales. Those ancient, deep-rooted trees existed through sugar plantations, USVI Emancipation Day, and the transfer of our islands from Denmark into a US Territory. Our beloved trees have always welcomed, inspired, and awed families.

Just after Hurricane Maria, we came to school to find a heaping, twisted mass of branches; car hoods and metal roofing wrapped around broken palms, torn wires, downed tree trunks; pieces of fencing, gutters, and galvanized steel strewn everywhere; and a battered, but beautiful school.

Those incredible trees saved our school.

As Dr. Maria Montessori says, the school is a society. St. Croix Montessori’s first cleanup had more than 30 people across ages 5 to 75. We faced an incredible list of unknowns and challenges, but we were determined to show up and try our best.

“I came to show our kids how much we care about them and our Montessori family, to model hard work and determination in a crisis. To teach my kids that at a helpless time, it is empowering to be helpful,” a parent shared. “And simply because we have so much love for the school.”

Parents, aunties, grandparents, and cousins brought gloves, water, assorted tools, garbage bags, rags, and snacks. Children collected smaller debris, swept water, leaves, and dirt from their classes’ porches and rooms. We scrubbed, sawed, hauled, sweated, laughed, cried, and celebrated our community together. When the Head of School was injured during cleanup, five families arrived with crutches and ice.

“It was the first glimmer of normalcy,” a parent recalled, “the first time we emerged from our home…we needed to know that we could return to some form of our life before the storm.”

The most important ways to help children recover from the trauma of disaster is to make sure they feel connected, cared about, and loved (SAMHSA). Students re-discovered one another’s company and found relief in finding their classrooms beautiful and whole. They celebrated the arrival of each person. Through art, poetry, circle, and storytelling they learned each other’s experiences and how their lives had changed. They expressed feelings of fear, excitement, curiosity, and hope, and practiced supporting one another.

As a Montessori school, we consider the whole person; our teachers, parents, staff and children are practiced in the art of stepping back and observing. A daily practice of meditation and yoga soothed our minds and bodies. The children re-planted seeds and discovered flowers that were blooming on a Hibiscus tree. They placed the bloom on display because “all of the flowers at my house blew away.”

Beauty inspires a child. At St. Croix Montessori, there’s the constant hum of generators in the background. Our hilltop schoolyard now offers a clear panoramic view of Christiansted harbor and Buck Island. Our daily habits include a new set of responsibilities - stocking gasoline for the generator, oil changes, and a great deal more text messaging because phone calls often don't go through and Internet is temperamental.

There’s also the gift of hope and support from our Global Giving community – we are not alone on this journey! Our beautiful, sunny classrooms welcome Primary and Elementary children and their families each day. The children cheerfully wear sunhats as they cut flowers for Botany lessons.

A non-profit Montessori school, St. Croix Montessori is a minority-led, minority-serving institution with predominantly low-income families. St. Croix Montessori directs 100% of giving to our community-based programs and providing AMI-certified instruction in Primary and Elementary classrooms for children ages 2 ½ through 12 (preschool through 6^th grade). The school also offers Summer Enrichment to over 150 students each year, including percussion, Caribbean culture, wilderness skills, creative arts, and science.

Our journey to resiliency is due to your compassion and generosity, and our incredible island community. St. Croix Montessori was one of the first schools to re-open on the island. With your support, we:

• Cleared 24 tons of debris so that children could return to school and our trees could healthily regrow
• Mulched downed branches to replace 4 inches of lost topsoil on playground and community picnic area
• Offered emergency financial assistance of roughly $5,000 to 6 families who lost their source of income as a result of the hurricanes
• Provided 4 students displaced from Rattan Montessori school Primary education while their school recovered
• Opened 6 weeks before public schools and we began operating on a full-day schedule within 3 weeks after Hurricane Maria
• Led twice weekly yoga and meditation sessions for Elementary children and staff, and daily yoga and meditation for preschool children and staff
• Supplied 23 families and 6 staff members with clothing, food, emergency supplies, children’s books and activities, and healthy snacks
• Donated over $3,500 in relief items and 45 personalized, holiday children’s presents to other nonprofits for distribution to island families impacted by the storm
• Provided hotspot to 2 nonprofit directors and 10 parents to support access to FEMA application and other Internet needs during the first month of recovery
• Replaced damaged furniture and supplies in our two classrooms
• Created children’s play features out of downed mahogany, including tables, climbing ladders, tic tac toe and dominoes
• Up-cycled empty wire spools into children’s tables and seesaws
• Selected for Play by Design’s 2018 Charitable Community-Build Playground Project, in which students submit their wish list to experienced designers, who help our community custom-design and build a $30,000 natural play space onto our campus over the course of 6 days in March 2018

Over the next several months, St. Croix Montessori is continuing this process of healing. We invite you to stay the course with us and support us as we continue our journey of progress.

Thank you for joining us on our journey to build a resilient, thriving community dedicated to growing children’s emotional, social, and academic skills for life!