Dear Redeemer Community,
It is hard to believe that it has been 15 years since I made the decision to join the Parish Day School faculty as a kindergarten teacher. It was the perfect opportunity at that juncture in my life. I was thrilled to be teaching in a community I loved in a position that was conducive to the growth of my young family. With the majority of my experience as a fourth-grade teacher, at the time I thought it would be a brief stop before I would return to teaching older elementary students. While I had been a teacher for over ten years, I did not understand the enormous value of a high-quality early childhood education.
What I learned after arriving at Redeemer was crucial to my journey as an educator. The early years are an explosive time of growth, and the teaching and learning styles at Redeemer exemplify how children learn best. In a learning environment that is a little messy and a little noisy, exploring the outdoors is as important as what happens in the classroom. Together students and teachers question, experiment, and wonder. This type of active, collaborative, hands-on learning leads to greater curiosity, engagement, and positive development.
Research tells us that early childhood education is an extremely important period in child development. Ninety percent of brain development happens between birth and third grade, and those years are the most sensitive and critical in a person’s life. The alignment and continuity from preschool through third grade are crucial to positive student outcomes. I am grateful for all I have learned at the Parish Day School over the past 15 years and am honored to currently be the Head of School, leading an incredible faculty of 27 who are dedicated to the full spectrum of early childhood learning.
Our growth through the third grade these past four years has been rapid, exciting, and full of gifts. While we are proud of all we have accomplished, we have more work to do. We need an enlarged and improved facility to house our elementary students, ensuring greater collaboration among the team of teachers who educate them, as well as furthering our sense of community, a crucial building block in student development. We need a larger, updated multipurpose room to accommodate the existing needs of extended day programming, lunch for our growing number of students, our vibrant music program, and the day-to-day activities that enhance our outstanding school. Our existing preschool building and playground need renovations and updates to respond to our 21st century learners, and finally, we need to add to the Heritage Trust Fund to support our new and improved buildings which house our program.
The Parish Day School has an outstanding team of educators dedicated to our youngest learners and families excited to experience our unique model firsthand. We are committed to maintaining a comparatively affordable tuition rate, need based financial aid, and establishing a faculty enrichment fund to meet the needs of our growth. As we embark on the Parish Day School’s Capital Campaign, the first fund raising effort in school history, we are thrilled to have each one of you at our side and hope all members of our community will find meaningful ways to offer support.
The Parish Day School has been a primary mission of The Church of the Redeemer for 72 years, and our recent growth has attracted a more diverse group of families who are excited about our work in early childhood. With our first class of third grade graduates, we have truly seen the positive benefits of our early childhood model and growing school program, especially as it enhances our school, parish, and Baltimore.
With a vibrant church and school community, Redeemer is a gift to our city and future!
Warmly,
Mary Knott
Head of Parish Day School