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04/16/2023 08:32 AMConstruction is now underway at the new Slate Upper School building. Town officials, educators, and community members were on hand on April 11 for a groundbreaking ceremony.
The Slate School’s student body has steadily grown since it opened its doors in the fall of 2018. Since then, it has progressed from serving kindergarten and first-grade-aged students to educating 51 students between kindergarten and fifth grade. The school hopes to add grade six in the 2023-’24 academic year. The construction of the upper school will meet Slate’s increasing student population for higher grade levels from seventh to 12th.
The upper school is expected to welcome its first cohort of 15 seventh-grade students in the fall of 2024 and projects to grow its student population by that class size by adding a higher grade level each year at the building.
“For each grade seven, we’ll be adding five additional students for a total of 15, so we’re growing our class,” said Julie Mountcastle, the head of Slate. “We’ll add a cohort of 15 each year until we reach our capacity of 90 in the fall of 2029.”
At that rate, Mountcastle said the combined enrollment at Slate by 2029 will be 160 students.
Like its K though five students, the seventh-grade class will comprise two teachers. According to Mountcastle, there will be three teachers in total at the upper school by fall 2025 once the first cohort of eighth-grade students begins their education.
While hiring two new teachers for grade seven will be “the bridge to the upper school curriculum,” a distinction between the upper and lower schools will rest in the curriculum.
As part of Slate’s “curiosity-driven curriculum” for the lower school, students in K through five drive their own learning experience through the vehicle of their interested subjects. Students at the upper school will instead have outlined integrated coursework that is “non-siloed and interdisciplinary,” according to the school’s founder Jennifer Staple Clark.
“As opposed to a more traditional curriculum that might be [teaching] chemistry, math, where it’s very siloed and separate and you’re learning things kind of with just that one lens, we’re going to have courses that are incorporating all of those in particular themes,” said Staple Clark.
Some of those courses focus specifically on subjects such as water, sugar, and salt. The interdisciplinary approach comes through with the incorporation of the chemistry, history, biology, and geography of those individual subjects.
Staple Clark elaborates using the example of the salt course.
“We can think about table salt, which is NaCl [sodium chloride], so this brings in the chemistry. So this brings in chemistry. We can think of how an acid plus a base equals a salt plus water. And how the body uses salts and when you sweat how salt is part of your [body]. The whole anatomical process - there’s just so many different aspects of salts,” Staple Clark said.
In regards to the historical component, Staple Clark said a question that can be asked includes, “How is salt mined?” Students will learn about “the history of salt and how was salt used as currency…so you can see kind of this whole non-siloed interdisciplinary approach to the courses,” she said.
Staple Clark added that similarly to the lower school, individual research topics will also be available to older students on top of their courses, a total of 40 that have been drawn out.
As the recipient of several honors related to environmentalism, Mountcasle and Staple Clark said they are committed to maintaining an eco-friendly profile with the additional building. This will be achieved partly through the materials and methods that are used for its construction.
Staple Clark said the school will avoid using Red List construction materials, such as lead, arsenic, and PVC, that can cause serious health and environmental concerns.
“We also work to ensure that we’re only disturbing a specific area of the property as we’re doing construction,” said Staple Clark. She also said they want to make sure vehicles that will be used for construction “are the newest” and capable of producing low emissions of pollutants.
Additionally, the school is determined to keep invasive plant species free from the construction site, such as bamboo and other destructive invasives. Mountcastle added that they would continue to maintain and improve surrounding wetlands at the property and “over time replant only native plants that would thrive in the wetlands. Several classes at Slate already take place in its outdoor spaces, and addressing ecological concerns is an action that the school is committed to making for those classes and future classes part of the upper school course curriculum to thrive.
“When we think about classes that students are taking, we think about the course called, ‘Water,’ we’re sure that students in that class will have great interest and great opportunity for hands-on work because we have these incredible wetlands,” Mountcastle said.
The school will host an information session on May 2 for attendees to step inside the “Alma,” a shared open space that can be used for different kinds of recreation, such as yoga. Mountcastle said she hopes the community will use that space she describes as “acoustically beautiful” for its recreation and as a place for conversations.
While looking for space to accommodate the upper school, Mountcastle said Slate saw that many in the community had strong opinions about the project, including some in opposition. She said the “Alma” can provide a peaceful space “where people can share differing opinions without having to raise their voice to be heard.”
The information session on the upper school will take place on May 2 at Slate School, 124 Mansfield Road, North Haven, at 9:30 a.m. Register at https://slateschool.org/upper-school.