Letters of Intent

An Article from the 2023-24 Annual Report

Letters of intent are communications that teachers write to families at the beginning of the school year which share their beliefs about children’s competence, identify key concepts that children will be learning, and reflect on the local and global community. Writing these letters provides an opportunity for teachers to consider their values and set goals and intentions for the upcoming year. This is one of many ways that we foster close relationships with families and build community as a school.

Examples of Letters of Intent from the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year:

Preschool

Dear Preschool families,

We are excited for this upcoming school year! We look forward to joyfully investigating the world around us. Along with your children, we will create a space for deep, meaningful learning – a space where everyone’s unique interests are valued, while also developing our identity as a class. Through play, children will explore, experiment, and develop mastery of many skills.

We are looking at our school-wide theme, “The Wholeness of Responsibility,” and how we can dive deeply into this beautiful intention with children. In many ways children naturally reflect on this every day, questioning, “Whose job is it to take care of me, my space, the environment, and the animals around me?” How can we ponder the effects of our actions on the environment, on our friendships, and on ourselves? What is the relationship between rights and responsibilities? How will growing and sharing ideas together invite multiple perspectives and possibilities?

We know that building strong, trusting relationships with children is essential to their growth and development as learners and individuals. When children feel safe to take risks, it opens up opportunities to explore in new ways. When we view children as competent, capable, and intelligent individuals, we further hold space for risk-taking and learning.

Within our teaching team we hold many passions and skills that we bring to the classroom. We all have a deep appreciation for music and art. Our love of nature enables us to bring the beauty of nature and science into the work children do, into the classroom itself. We feel so lucky to have the opportunity to work with your children in and around our beautiful campus and to witness the emergent curriculum that unfolds.

This letter is a sneak peek into some of our thinking and the possibilities we’re imagining. We will continue to share thoughtful glimpses into explorations and discoveries by the children and teachers. In the community that we create together this year, we’ll share stories with you of the children’s growing comfort with their sense of identity and belonging.

In love and partnership,

Carrie, Brent, Emma, and Chrystalla

1st Grade

Dear 1st grade families,

Children come to school as authors – born to share their stories and listen to the stories of others. They are reading the world from the moment they are born; they are working to make sense of their experience in relationship with the people in their lives. This matters because the process of learning to read and write is a naturally compelling one that must begin with them – with their ideas, feelings, and stories. First grade will be a place where we support children to develop the tools they need to tell their stories and to find out more about what matters to them, about what they want to say, and about how they want to say it.

First grade is also a place where a community can thrive. We will dive into this big idea of what makes a community while exploring the relationship between the individual and the whole. What makes me a part of this community? How can I be all of myself and a part of a group at the same time? What happens when we grow aware of how our actions impact others? What feels successful? What happens when I wait? First grade can be the place to grow comfortable with conflict, understanding that it will always exist, and there is always a way forward.

This year we will also explore our relationship to the natural world. We plan to explore this relationship by taking advantage of nature just outside our classroom doors. One goal and expectation for our students is to develop an understanding of our interdependent relationship with natural spaces.

How might nurturing our relationship with the natural world support empathy and agency? How will our relationship with the natural world help us learn more about ourselves and one another? What new connections will we uncover? What ways will we find to share what we are learning with an audience outside our classroom walls? How do stories help people make change?

This is a snapshot of some of our intentions for the year and a window into some of our thinking. We look forward to sharing many more windows into the children’s and teachers’ learning experiences and the evolving theories we are constructing together.

Looking forward to the year ahead,

Bridget and Heidi

5th Grade

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe” – John Muir

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken” – Oscar Wilde

Dear 5th Grade Families,

One of the core tenets of this school is the quest to create a culture of curiosity, one of inquiry. Like learning in general, there is no pinnacle to learning through inquiry. Through regular practice math skills can be mastered, but the deeper questions about life, about oneself and our relationship to others and to the world belong to the pathless road that is inquiry and curiosity. As the 5th grade teacher here at Oak Grove School, I strive to meet the kids with curiosity, love, and patience each day. Co-cultivating an understanding of social and emotional well-being and the wholeness of the students is my first priority. We know that kids cannot tend to their learning when they find themselves in a dysregulated state or when they lack a felt sense of belonging.

This year’s theme at Oak Grove is to be a light unto oneself. This is, of course, an extension of last year’s theme, total responsibility. Each of the themes pulled from Krishnamurti’s teachings is closely related because each of them is inseparably linked to the perennial questions of life. During our year together, we will explore topics of self, how we relate to ourselves and others, how our pre-set ideas of the other influence and often stymie possible connection and any deeper understanding. In our Sexual Health and Wellness curriculum, we discuss changing bodies and minds, the influence of media, the ways we consume cultural messaging, and we keep an empathetic eye on the often mercurial nature of peer relationships as puberty and adolescence unfold.

Like many teachers and schools throughout the world, I am a teacher who believes and teaches a growth mindset. In 5th grade, we embrace the power of “yet.” For instance, “I don’t know how decimals work…yet.” We know it’s not exactly that practice makes perfect, but that practice makes permanent. Effort, bravery, resiliency, and the courage to try again and again matter. This is as much true in academics as it is in relationships. In this classroom, I ask that the kids show up to try and to try hard, and when we inevitably fail in this or that, we take time to explore the profound learning taking place. And when we inevitably succeed in this or that, we reflect there as well. This habit of trying, of re-visiting and reflecting, offers itself to the building of new and intentional neural pathways, that is, the super highways in our minds that inform our behaviors.

5th grade is quite a time in one’s life. The kids have one foot in early childhood and one foot moving into late childhood, puberty, and adolescence. This is their final year of elementary school. The kids may sense the end of their early childhood. Many researchers refer to this time in a child’s life as the age of sorrow. We provide space to process this. Simultaneously, it is also a time of possibility, growing skills, and the ability to take on more complex multi-step tasks. Developmentally, they begin to focus more on what other kids are doing and wonder if they are normal. They are, of course, perfectly normal. Generally speaking, this is a time when our kids become less focused on their parents and more focused on their peers. This shifting focus deepens in intensity as they move through middle school. Helping them foster healthy relationships and providing them with the tools to communicate their needs, questions, and concerns is paramount. As parents and teachers, I believe a primary goal of ours is to position ourselves as askable adults. We want our kids and students to come to us with their questions. Armed with accurate and sound information, we can support them in making well-informed and safe decisions.

Whether we are investigating the Great Depression from various vantages or responding to live conflict taking place here on the playground, 5th grade holds space for reflection and capacity-building, so that we grow our muscles of empathy and understanding. Peaceful and empathetic communication is needed in this world and is possible when we are a light unto ourselves. We explore these themes through Council and guided inquiry, as well as through our curriculum. We will spend time in the garden this year learning how energy moves through ecosystems, and we will calculate how much carbon is being stored in the oak trees here on campus, all while holding room for one another to develop and grow as people.

In learning and gratitude,

Sage

7th & 8th Grade

Dear 7th and 8th grade families,

Part of the official mission of Oak Grove school reads as follows: “It is the intention of the school to offer a place where the whole community can inquire together into the perennial questions of humankind and explore an approach to life that is whole, mindful, and intelligent.” This statement is at the core of why I teach, and more importantly, why I continue to be inspired by the community of learners around me.

This is a place, this school and my 7th and 8th grade humanities classroom, where we are all learners together. Material is presented, but the real learning happens in discussion and critical thought about the material – whether that be a document from history, a novel, a poem, short story, or newspaper article. There are no experts here, only curiosity. Your students will hear from me ad nauseam the adage that I would rather see them attempt something new with curiosity and fail spectacularly than to follow my prompt exactly from beginning to end and achieve 100% completion. I truly believe that in that risk-taking, authentic learning happens, and when attempted while in community with people who both encourage the risk-taking and bolster us with support when failure inevitably happens, it strengthens us as confident people.

I have worked with adolescents in the middle grades for the past 22 years, and from day one, back in 2002, in the sweltering summer heat of the Bronx in New York, as I was met by a boisterous class of summer school 8th graders at JHS 149, I operated from the belief that these kids, indeed all kids, deserve to be heard. In the subsequent years I have taught in inner-city classrooms of East Oakland, in youth detention centers, in suburban libraries, in poetry workshops, and here, among the sprawling oaks and granite paths of Oak Grove. One thing remains constant no matter where I find myself – voice is of the utmost importance. If we are able to communicate authentically and listen authentically, I believe we foster belonging, empowerment, and community in amazing ways. So from those first days I have been focused on creating spaces and experiences that help grow students as confident writers, writers who do so not just because they are asked to, but because they have something to say.

This year, as we grapple with the concept of civilization, as we tackle difficult novels, and as we write from a place of authenticity, I would challenge you as parents to really listen to your children (a daunting task sometimes as they move into this stage of adolescence, I know). As they begin to form the beginnings of their identity as learners and as people, your students have a beautifully raw perspective on the world and themselves. Given the space and opportunity, we have much to learn from them.

In solidarity and community,

Aaron

High School

Dear High School Parenting Adults,

We are delighted to welcome you to another new school year at Oak Grove High School, where each day is an opportunity to nurture curiosity, creativity, and character. As educators dedicated to the growth and development of your children, we want to share our heartfelt commitment to creating an environment where every student feels a genuine sense of belonging.

Oak Grove High School is founded on the principles of inquiry, self-reflection, and relationship. We believe that when students feel valued and understood, they are more likely to thrive academically and personally. Our goal is to cultivate an atmosphere where joy and learning go hand in hand, and where each student is encouraged to explore and discover their passions, whether they be in the arts, sciences, athletics, or beyond.

We understand that growth comes from a blend of challenge and support, and we are here to guide each student through their own educational journey. By fostering a growth mindset and leaning into discomfort, we encourage our students to embrace challenges as opportunities for learning and to develop resilience and confidence in their abilities. This is what we want for our students, and we realize it requires us to bring these traits forward in ourselves — to be a mirror in the relationship.

Our commitment to partnership means that we view education as a collaboration. We see you, our valued parenting adults, as integral members of this journey. Together, we aim to support and inspire our students to become socially-responsible young adults who contribute positively to the world. Your involvement and insights are crucial as we work hand in hand to nurture passionate artists, deep thinkers, and empathetic individuals.

We are excited about the many experiences and opportunities that await our students this year. We look forward to celebrating their achievements, supporting their growth, and sharing in the joy of their discoveries. Thank you for entrusting us with the privilege of educating and inspiring your children.

Sincerely,

Your High School Teachers