Our Wildwood, Summer 2021, Volume 46

FEATURE Looking Back on the Founding of Wildwood

Dream …” list (wildwood.org/whenparentsdream), generated as the middle and upper school program was starting to be envisioned. In a session facilitated by the founding director of middle and upper, George Wood, current Wildwood elementary parents, at least some of whom had older children in other Los Angeles schools, were able to co-create the broad goals of what a K-12 Wildwood School would grow into. George and I spoke at length about his work to bring his own experience and knowledge to bear while marrying it with the priorities that Wildwood School parents, trustees, and employees had identified as they envisioned what a K-12 school would involve if it were to serve as a natural extension of all they’d known and appreciated about Wildwood elementary. Pulling together others as founding faculty—Tassie Hadlock-Piltz, Mark Ossenheimer, David Reese, Melinda Tsapatsaris, and others—George was clearly motivated to deliver on and honor that group of parents and trustees who were relying on all of them to give life to a middle and upper program that would engage and empower children and young adults in ways equally meaningful and authentic to the elementary program. Of that parent group, George said, “Some of the parents had bought into the vision even before I got there. They knew what they were looking for. That’s why they came and found me.” George, Tassie, Mark, David, Melinda, those parents—and all the founding folks—saw school not as a means to an end but as something relevant, important, and of its own in the present. Melinda recalls how “radical” some of that early work felt at the time, rightly pointing out that John Dewey’s research and work largely focused on how children learn as children but not in adolescence. The charge at Wildwood was to extend the elements of progressive practice in education through the high school years by emphasizing things like interdisciplinary work, projects, portfolios, and the centrality of social-emotional learning as being key to guiding young people through adolescence. An emphasis on the work of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (See pages 16-19 Wildwood’s DEIB Arch.) was front and center in creating K-12 culture, just as it had been in the K-6 program. A CULTURE OF SERVICE AND COMMUNITY Wildwood School has had countless partnerships, large and small, with public school partners over the years,

the time I was there.” Marcia, of course, was central to the work, and along the way, she and her colleagues stayed true to that original philosophy while increasingly documenting curriculum, structures, and systems that would make the school sustainable. HOPE, GROWTH, AND OPPORTUNITY Hope Boyd joined Wildwood after years teaching and serving as an administrator at more traditionally structured schools. In response to my wanting to understand what Hope’s transition to Wildwood was like, Marcia recounted her saying repeatedly that “Wildwood was the school she’d been carrying around in her head. ...” Geoff Boyd, Hope’s son, corroborated the sentiments, sharing that “I think she saw Wildwood as an opportunity to really create something with value, and I think that meant a lot to her—more than just a job, more than just having a place to go.” Geoff remembers his mother as “incredibly excited” about the inevitable growth of Wildwood in the late 1990s. She’d brought with her to Wildwood an understanding of how schools operate and was able to put systems and structures in place at Wildwood that hadn’t existed before. But it was through the expansion to K-12 that she was able to contribute most to what Geoff remembers as being one of her key passions: being a part of guiding children to grow into kind, contributing adults. Clearly central to the shift from an elementary to a K-12 was a commitment to preserving the culture of Wildwood, to creating a school that—in age-appropriate ways—would continue to place a premium on what would come to be known as the Habits of Heart, as well as the Habits of Mind. That is evidenced in the “When Parents

2001: George Wood with secondary students

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