Wildwood School Viewbook: Brave Learners, Thinkers, and Doers

Every year, Wildwood Pod teacher Tahnee Muñoz finds “some new challenge to dive into,” such as creative ways to teach writing. “I’m growing constantly,” she says, “as a teacher and a human being.” The explanation is simple. “We’re a community of learners,” Tahnee says, and she doesn’t just mean the students. Wildwood provides its staff with a host of professional development opportunities, she says. “We’re constantly on the lookout for fresh ideas, all with an eye toward best practices.” In the Pods, which combine kindergarten and first grade, each child is at once learner, peer, and mentor. At this early level, Tahnee and her associate teacher introduce innovative curriculum such as Systems Thinking—the

interconnectedness of ideas and things. Life Skills are woven into the daily fabric, and students draw pictures of moments when they showed “grit” or bravery. “We’re honoring the fact that children have deeper thoughts about their world than people sometimes give them credit for,” Tahnee says. Tahnee “stumbled into law school for a hot second,” then changed course to become what she’d always wanted to be: a teacher. She earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology and Asian-American studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her master’s in education at California Lutheran University. Each day at Wildwood brings a new delight—including the student who struggles with reading but perseveres to complete an entire book for the first time. “This,” Tahnee says, “is a happy place to be.”

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