MAXIMIZING THE LIGHT: The new Upper School library at Chapin, part of a $13.2 million two-year building project, provides flexibility, many opportunities for collaboration, exciting new technology and lots of light. (Photo Courtesy of Chapin School)

Major new construction projects just completed at Stuart Country Day School and Chapin School have created new environments for students, teachers and administrators.

Chapin Upper Schoolers (grades 5-8) arrived on September 8 to find a new, two-story, 14,000-square-foot addition, including classrooms, a library, technology lab, offices, meeting rooms and a learning commons complementing a similar building completed a year ago for the Lower School.

Stuart Lower Schoolers (K-4) returned two weeks ago to find—not the enclosed classrooms of the past, but instead a “magical garden” of open spaces set up for a variety of academic, creative, and collaborative activities.

Bookshelves that look like bushes, a blue, stream-like carpet, ”palm leaves in the clouds” and a ”pebble pathway” all enhance the indoor garden effect of the transformed space known as Millie’s Garden, named for Millie Harford, one of Stuart’s founding mothers and an early pre-K teacher.

“It’s an exciting time for us,” explained Michelle Dowling, head of the Lower School at Stuart. “This has been in the works for the last three years, as far as changing our model and how we want to educate our girls.”

The planning began a year ago when Ms. Dowling and her colleagues were asked by the School Head and the Board to “have a visionary thought about where we wanted to go.” The chosen model was one of collaboration and flexibility, a community-based approach to working together, but, Ms. Dowling said, “we were not physically set up to have these collaborative sessions or to understand what was going on in each other’s classroom.”

Hubs in various spaces—an arts and crafts center, a lego wall, STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) centers, a stage for performances, creative centers with play dough for sculpting, and areas for poetry-writing, doodling, and areas where the girls can just be themselves, or work collaboratively in their own way—surround the central library, with flexible furniture throughout to accommodate different activities and different sized groups.

“The more we use the space,” said Ms. Dowling, ”the more we’ll have a sense of how we want to use it. We don’t have it all scripted, but this new environment has already created a real energy among the students and teachers “

As the new school year moves into its third week, Ms. Dowling describes a “real willingness among the faculty to be able to come together and collaborate. They are more engaged than they have ever been because they have this shared space. They are doing an incredible job in building community, and we are all committed to the idea that the students can be creative in their learning.”

The Stuart Lower School project, entirely completed during the past three months and costing just over $1 million, was launched by a lead matching gift from Betty Wold Johnson, a past Stuart parent and trustee.

A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT: Stuart Country Day School’s $1 million plus Lower School renovations feature a “magical garden,” complete with leafy clouds, bush-like bookshelves and a carpet that looks like a river. (Photo Courtesy of Stuart Country Day School)

Change at Chapin

Collaboration, flexibility and change are also on the agenda at Chapin School this fall, with Dr. Pamela Fiander taking the helm, as the Upper School moves into its new building.

“There’s a wonderful sense of new beginnings,” Ms. Fiander exulted. On the subject of transformations taking place within this new space—and the Lower School addition completed a year ago, Ms. Fiander quotes Winston Churchill: “We shape our buildings, and afterwards they shape us.”

Ms. Fiander echoed the themes of collaboration, flexibility and student autonomy, “The new space with fungible furniture helps to bring teachers closer together so they can collaborate with each other, and we always provide opportunities to go where the children take us.”

Upper School Head Gil Olvera confirmed Ms. Fiander’s vision. “Already in this new space I find teachers willing to collaborate more on projects and activities. This space provides students a more mature way of approaching their education. They will learn quickly how to use the space and their time wisely. The collaboration between teachers has already yielded results.”

Kevin Edwards of NK Architects, project manager of the entire building project at Chapin, described how the construction was “all designed to maximize light, to maximize views to the outside, and a big part of that was creating those very large common areas, impromptu teaching areas.” The new buildings, he explained, were designed ”to promote education and assist the teachers, giving them what they need to do their jobs. You can see the excitement at Chapin.”

For the two phases of the two-year building project, Chapin School’s Limitless Futures Capital Campaign raised over $8 million of the $13.2 million total cost.

Ms. Fiander, eager to lead Chapin on the journey into its new spaces, described this as “an extraordinary moment in the school’s history, bringing significantly enhanced facilities for the Chapin students of today, and promising limitless opportunities for the students of tomorrow.”