Hurricane Relief: Re-Opening St. Croix Montessori

Healing Through Learning Opportunities, Community Service & Creating Beautiful Outdoor Spaces for Our Children

With electricity fully restored at the end of December 2017, the St. Croix Montessori community has engaged in re-establishing a sense of normalcy for our families while balancing the long work of rebuilding and preparations for the 2018 Hurricane Season.

With the support of our GlobalGiving community, we were able to:

• Offer Chess Club at no cost to families
• Provide 23 families holiday presents
• Send 25 students and 5 adults aboard the World Ocean School’s educational schooner, The Roseway
• Host 3 parent educational events
• Represent four tracks (administrative, elementary, primary, and assistants) at the AMI-USA refresher conference and course – the first time in the history of the school!
• Design a student-inspired play space; and
• Engage our community in building a play space that recycles downed trees, telephone poles, and tires, and provides a beautiful, inspiring place for our children for years to come. The first Play by Design project in the Caribbean!

While we are deep in the work of preparing for the 2018 Hurricane season and an increase in demand for access to safe, engaging learning spaces, we want to celebrate the moments that our GlobalGiving community has made possible.

Nautical Science Aboard The Roseway
St. Croix Montessori students can see The Roseway sailing into Gallows Bay from their classroom each winter. Our ability to attend this year’s educational program was directly possible by the GlobalGiving Community’s support. Thank you for providing us this enrichment opportunity!

The Roseway is the non-profit, World Ocean School’s educational schooner. We sailed four miles off the shore of St. Croix. Before sailing out, the children were giving the opportunity to assist the crew to raise the sails and at the same time, they were given a lesson on the names of the sails. It was a very windy day, so the crew only raised the jumbo sail. The children were divided into three teams. Each team had one student leader and two adult chaperones.  The teams toured the ship and rotated from one station to the next where they were given lessons on:

• the history of the Roseway,
• the special names of the parts of the ship (bow, stern, port, and starboard),
• the special names of certain areas on the ship (the saloon, the helm, the  galley and the head),
• simple machines (pulleys, lever, and axle),
• the names of the sails (peak, throat halyard, and jumbo) and
• tying knots (figure eight, bowline, square knot and barrel).

At the end of the day, the children were given the opportunity to see how the Roseway crew communicated to lower the sails. At a value of $5,000, we were able to support this nonprofit experience at no cost to our families. The teambuilding experience was incredible for parents and students!

Community Comes Together To Build A Healthy Space
The destruction of our trees was a visible reminder of the trauma experienced in September. While we have so much to rebuild on our island, we knew the importance of creating something beautiful and engaging for our families and students. Thus, the Building Healthy Spaces project was born.

We went into the project hoping to replace our DIY playground with a few slides, but ended up being the first school in the Caribbean to be selected by Play by Design! Over 4 months, our families and students worked with the experienced playground designers and engineers to take our dreams and make them a reality, while also honoring our natural environment and Crucian beauty.

Children created pictures of their dream playground. We interviewed parents, alumni, and teachers for their thoughts. Play by Design created blueprints for a playground that would serve our diverse children from ages 2 ½ to 12 – and provided the expertise of ensuring a safe outdoor play space.

Over 100 volunteers came together and in 5 days they built from hand an entire playground.

Our doubts at focusing on a playground while there are still so many other areas to build were melted away. Parents shared that for the first time since September, they enjoyed building! They had the opportunity to learn about their community members and felt inspired and rejuvenated. One father commented that seeing his children and helping out with other families was the highlight of his year.

For our students, they were excited to assist in the construction preparations and supporting the volunteers on campus. From the youngest to the eldest, students joined together to bake food for volunteers, create signs for campus, assisted in putting up construction fencing and tape, helped feed volunteers and make sure we stayed hydrated, and they created celebratory songs and ribbons for the opening night. Elementary students assisted our youngest students by walking them to class each morning and ensuring everyone stayed in the “student-safe” zones.

An enormous amount of support came from La Roche College’s Ministry of Service students and Howard University students. We discovered some Montessori alumni among the college students! They met with our early childhood teachers and students, and shared their experiences and impressions of our island.

Despite knowing we have much construction ahead, our community has been inspired.

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!