about us
The Winchester School was founded in 1970 to teach two years of pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade children a balanced program of strong academics in the language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, and a foreign language with stimulating art and music classes, both children’s and classical art and music. Time for the children to play with one another, both outside and inside the school, and first-rate field trips, both for fun or to augment things the children are studying, are a vital part of the overall program. As Mary Rhim, the director and founder of the school, put it: “I wanted to start a school that was a complete answer to what I looked for and wanted for my own children when they were young.”
A parent once described Winchester School as “an undiscovered gem on Bel Pre Road.”
Winchester School received accreditation from the Maryland State Department of Education during its first year of operation. For the first five years, the school offered two 3-hour programs, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. But the increasing demand from parents within the school for an alternative to full-time day care for young children changed the direction of the school. The school became dedicated to offering the best possible academic program for 3, 4, 5, and 6-year-old children with loving, experienced, college-degreed teachers at the helm with the additional hours of before-school and after-school child care added. For the past 32 years we have maintained our hours of operation from 7:30AM to 6:00PM. We are, therefore, an accredited private school with before and after-school child care for pre-kindergarten through the first grade. In September 2007, we are offering second grade.
For a number of years Winchester School had two locations, one in Bethesda and the other in Silver Spring. After renting space from churches, it was exciting to find a permanent home at 3223 Bel Pre Road in Silver Spring, where we have been for the past 26 years. We receive high praise for the excellent foundation our children exhibit when they leave us to enter their neighborhood public schools or a number of large 12-year private schools in the Washington metropolitan area.
Winchester School remains a small, caring, family-oriented school with a combination of an excellent academic curriculum and superb teachers to teach it – a combination not easily found. A parent once described Winchester School as “an undiscovered gem on Bel Pre Road.” Our children every year never cease to amaze us with their abilities, their enthusiasm, and their accomplishments. We will always demand excellence from Winchester children. Our motto: “Exemplary behavior, highest possible achievement. Nothing less will do.”
The Winchester School was founded in 1970, and its purpose remains today what it was initially: to create an environment for children within which each child is able to feel safe, respected, and loved and in which he is encouraged and helped to begin the life-long process of acquiring the necessary skills and knowledge, the values and traditions of our culture. We believe that we are an extension of what good families have already begun. At the same time, we believe that school should be a special place in which a child steps outside his family to experience the companionship of other children, the nurturing of his teachers, and the excitement of expanding his world through learning.
Each child who comes to Winchester School brings his personal uniqueness: a genetic endowment, a particular family history and home environment, a basic temperament already recognizable – all of these in combination spell blessing or burden to the child. We believe at Winchester that each child comes through the door with a potential and a desire to learn. Our responsibilities lie in using the wisdom of our experience in exerting our very best creative effort to reach each child as he comes to us. We cannot always “make it happen” to the degree we would like, but the opportunity to allow it to happen and to help it to happen in accordance with each child’s potential is always present in our school.If the nurturing and education of the child are the reasons for the existence of the school, the teachers are the movers and shakers within its walls
Our general methods of instruction and types of learning activities are based on age-appropriate, logically organized and sequential learning programs within eight basic areas: the language arts; mathematics; science; social studies; Spanish; art; music; play and physical education. Teaching within these areas combines group instruction based on age with a high degree of individualized teaching within each age group. To augment the book and paper and pencil learning, hands-on materials and activities as well as a great variety of manipulative materials are present in all of the learning centers. Both in-house and away from school field trips further stimulate the child and enhance his learning at Winchester School.
If the nurturing and education of the child are the reasons for the existence of the school, the teachers are the movers and shakers within its walls. Their combined intellect, experience, and love are the single most important factor in the creation of an environment and the promotion of an educational program which will be of the greatest benefit to every child. Inspired teaching is an art form of the highest order and as such the very soul of an excellent school. It is the teacher who carries on the academic tradition, who sets the moral and ethical tone of the school, and who serves as an essential adjunct to the child’s family.
Only to the degree that we are able to bring together the child and his family with the teachers, the atmosphere, and the program of the school are we successful. We aspire to make the Winchester School experience one in which a child experiences acceptance but also the discipline to change or to do better; develops self-awareness but also has empathy for others; learns to use his mind to think and to create but also to judge and to reject; and continues his acquisition of skills and knowledge and of a sense of values and of priorities that will serve him throughout the rest of his life.
Winchester School has a distinctively different organizational set-up from the usual pre-K, Kindergarten, and elementary school class rooms: namely, a rotational system through six centers, in six different rooms, with six different teachers. The pre-K three-year-old class is the only group that does not rotate but rather has its own room with a lead teacher and several teacher assistants. The six centers through which all other age groups and grades rotate are as follows: (i) language arts; (ii) mathematics; (iii) science and social studies; (iv) Spanish; (v) art and music; (vi) physical education and outdoor play.
We strongly feel that this somewhat unusual but very effective organization of the teaching program works to the benefit of the children. Each center is in a different room with its own teacher. The children are organized into the following age groupings: three groups of four-year-old Pre-K children (oldest, middle, and youngest) with 10 to 12 children per group; a kindergarten class with 12 to 15 children; a first grade class with 12 to 15 children; and for the coming year a second grade class with 12 to 15 children. The rotations are 40 minutes long, starting at 9:00AM and ending at 1:40PM with lunch from 12:20 to 1:00PM.There is no “falling between the cracks” at Winchester School as happens in too many schools. This arrangement is truly a win-win situation for everyone!
When we say that the three-year-old Pre-K group does not rotate, it does not mean that those children do not have the work of the six above-mentioned centers. They do, but the teachers of the centers go to them in their large classroom rather than the children going to the separate centers. In addition, the three-year-olds have other activities appropriate to their age .
Adjacent to the shelves holding the academic teaching materials specific to that particular learning center are library books and some age-appropriate play materials. When the daily academic lesson of the center has been accomplished, children may socialize quietly, look at books, or choose quiet play materials at the end of the class period. This combination of serious work and relaxing play which creates an invigorating and satisfying environment for young children fulfills our philosophical belief that a proper balance of work and play is absolutely essential for the health and happiness of young children.
The advantages to the children in the six-center rotation we feel are great: the school can hire a teacher who loves her specific subject, and she becomes expert in her knowledge of the subject and in her teaching of it; the children have the variety of going from room to room, teacher to teacher, subject to subject, all of which seems to give added emphasis to each subject; parents benefit by having six experienced, college-degreed teachers share with them how each one views their child. If a child is in Winchester for a number of years, each teacher gets to know the strengths and weaknesses of each child in her particular subject. There is no “falling between the cracks” at Winchester School as happens in too many schools. This arrangement is truly a win-win situation for everyone!
In building a rich, balanced program for young children, you must have clearly in mind what the quintessential elements of your instructional program are: in other words, for the developing child, what are the “musts” of a superior school environment for that child’s optimum growth in every aspect of his life. Consider for a moment Whitman’s thoughts when he wrote:
“There was a child went forth every day, And the first object he looked upon, that object he became; And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.”
When parents create a home for their children and teachers create a school, together we are creating the environment that the child becomes, not for merely a day, but for “stretching cycles of years.” And it is from this understanding that good homes and good schools evolve. What an awesome responsibility we parents and teachers have “to make it right” for our children!
At Winchester School, we consider five general areas when thinking about our instructional objectives: 1) intellectual; 2) social; 3) emotional; 4) physical; 5) spiritual. What follows is an attempt to give you an idea of the content of those five areas. The “intellectual” objective will be considerably longer and more detailed than the other four objectives because we want you to know exactly what curriculum we teach at Winchester and how the academic centers are organized.
- 1) Intellectual
- Our intellectual instructional objectives fall into eight basic categories: language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, Spanish, art, music, and physical education. In each of these areas we teach a sequentially organized curriculum which is age-appropriate. Our main objective is to encourage, to challenge, but not to force a carefully planned learning program in these areas which will serve as a foundation for the future intellectual growth of the child. (Details follow under “CURRICULUM”)
- 2) Social
- We strive to create a social environment at Winchester which though composed of children from diverse backgrounds is an accepting, warm, comfortable place for children to be. Our objective is to help children accept and respect the differences in people, to learn to share with others, to form happy friendships with one another, and generally to develop an awareness of all that is involved in being a contributing and positive member of a group.
- 3) Emotional
- For learning to be optimum, the emotional climate of a school must be right. At Winchester we are committed to having teachers and staff who themselves are emotionally stable and warm and, therefore, set the proper emotional tone in the school. We try always to help a child learn to respond emotionally in a healthy and positive way rather than in an angry, negative manner. By being good role models and by believing that emotional responses can be modified and/or learned, teachers can effect a good emotional atmosphere within the school.
- 4) Physical
- Our objective at Winchester is to provide time, space, and a program which recognizes the importance of physical activity in keeping the body and the mind of a child healthy. We realize the necessity of providing children with the time to free-play with each other and also of having a planned program of physical education in which certain age-appropriate activities and skills are involved. Our aim is to keep bodies and minds healthy insofar as physical activity contributes to that end.
- 5) Spiritual, Moral, and Ethical
- Although we believe specific religious teaching and doctrine belong only in schools which are admittedly church-related, we strongly believe in the need to impart spiritual, moral, and ethical truths by both example and by teaching. The great religions and cultures of the world have many moral and ethical principles in common, and we feel it is part of what Winchester School stands for to impart these truths to the children. We shall always teach children to be truthful, to share with others, to be compassionate, to be generous, to be loving These are some of the enduring principles of all civilized societies.