Letter from the Head of School

They are 12 years old and already impressive young adults in the making.  They are young enough to have to jump from the back seat of a car to the ground.  They have been here long enough that we can take the measure of their learning and their readiness for new frontiers.  They are new enough to schools that their eyes are still wide – as they always should be – with the prospect of the journey unfolding before them. They are the children of Summit Montessori. 

As its new Head of School, I can attest that Summit Montessori aspires to be what every parent wishes for in a first school – wise and warm-hearted, individually knowledgeable, open and good-humored – and richly challenging and supportive every step of the way. 

We believe in a vital, enduring partnership with the parents of these terrific young children.  We know that first experiences leave indelible impressions on the young.  Far more than later schools, and vastly more than the much-chronicled societal obsession with college, it is in the earliest years of school where patterns are established for life.  It is during these earliest years that children develop their expectations of school – and of themselves.  It is here where children can experience the ready joy in school friendships, the growth of motivation and self-confidence, and an abiding eagerness to learn. 

During my first evening in the Boston area, I toured Summit’s magnificent old mansion on Pleasant Street in Framingham.  Even then, moving down dimly lit passage and stepping into silent classrooms, I could sense the resonance of young voices and little feet.  In the morning then, as the children arrived, bundling out of that line of snowy cars, I felt the extraordinary fulfillment of what had only been intimations the evening before.

I have met with members of every constituency in the Summit community.  I have spoken at length with parents and trustees.  I have shared a full day in June with the faculty, uniting in shared values and in goal-setting for the future.  I have knelt beside the younger children, and sat on the floor, chatting with the bright and outgoing kids who make up the Upper El.  The fact is that the warmth and generosity of everyone I have met along the way has confirmed to me what I had begun to sense early on – that this, after all, is a very special place.

I have been at The Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights for some 23 years.  During the last 12 of those, I have also worked to train and support more than a thousand young teachers throughout the Northeast.  I was not necessarily inclined to move on because, in the course of my career, I have come to understand that the spirit of community that suffuses a school is deeply precious to me – and is as rare as it is fragile. 

But early this year, I had come to sense that it might finally be time to move on.  When I began to be contacted by educational placement agencies, I was very particular.  I did not know where or whether I would find such a place.  But I knew what I was looking for – a great little school with a heart of gold. 
And I have found it.

I hope that you will come to see the place that is Summit.  Vastly more intimate than the sprawling day schools, ever cozier than so many of the little for-profit start-ups, Summit may well at first appeal because of the light-filled rooms of learning that make up this mansion.  But what truly draws the most perceptive of parents isn’t the gentle beauty of the school setting.  It is the quality of the teaching and the values of the families that have chosen to make up this remarkable community. 

Welcome to Summit Montessori.

Richard Eyster,
Head of School