Year End Report 2022
We see our children as artists and makers who use creative languages to communicate and share questions, ideas and theories. Our move to Featherstone Center for the Arts in 2022 strengthened this image of the child and has inspired us to deepen our practice and further our engagement with the arts.
Year End Report 2022
December 31, 2022
Board of Directors Report
The Garden Gate Board of Directors was restructured in 2022 to include several sub-committees that meet throughout the year. The full Board now meets three times a year and includes reports from each of the committees. Our annual Year End Report has been adapted to reflect the work of each of these committees in addition to the Directors and Staff.
Directors’ Report
The beginning of 2022 found us still wrestling with Covid-19. Many children remained out after positive exposures over the winter break and positive cases among children and staff forced the closure of classrooms during January. Teachers and children continued to follow Covid-19 protocols, spending the majority of time outdoors, wearing masks indoors, and socially distancing when unmasked. As we had during earlier closures, we sent home creative materials kits for each child to keep and use during the week. As 2022 passed, we gradually felt the stresses of operating during Covid lessen and were able to return to some of our pre-Covid activities near the end of the year.
In September, we hosted an Open House for families, alumni and the community in our new Featherstone location. Garden Gate alum, Lucas Thors who is now a writer for The Martha’s Vineyard Times, attended the event and wrote a feature story titled, ‘A new place to explore’ https://www.mvtimes.com/2022/09/28/new-place-explore/ And in December, we hosted our annual Winter Family Gathering, with a new twist. We provided hot chocolate, treats and winter fun and parents had the opportunity to shop at the Featherstone Holiday Gift Show while children played.
Dawn and Leigh Ann continued their commitment to sharing their experience and expertise with other early childhood educators in the field. In January, Leigh Ann recorded a podcast for Defending the Early Years that aired in May. The podcast, titled “Creating Community with and for Children" can be heard on the DEY website https://dey.org/podcast/creating-community-with-and-for-children/ In April, Leigh Ann was also interviewed for a research study, “A Phenomenological Study of Early Childhood Professional’s Lived Experiences with Risky Play” Then in October, the administrative team from Harvard Yard Child Care in Cambridge, MA returned to Garden Gate to tour our new classrooms and meet with Leigh Ann and Dawn. We also welcomed the Early Childhood Education Cohort from Martha's Vineyard Center for Education & Training (formerly ACEMV) to our September Open House and then presented an overview of our philosophy and pedagogical approach to their Cape Cod Community College class in October.
The Directors have been working closely with our expanded Board to broaden and strengthen the leadership of the school. In May, the Board voted to restructure the organization of the Board with a shift to a Committee Model. Throughout the year, the Directors met with the Finance Committee, Curriculum Committee, Parent Advisory Committee, Featherstone Partnership Committee, Alumni Committee and the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee.
Staff Updates
Staff were focused on professional development and growth in 2022. Our full staff spent our Professional Development Day in April visiting the Lincoln Nursery School on the campus of the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, MA, meeting with their Director, talking with their staff and conducting our own staff meeting onsite. There are many parallels between the school/museum relationship and our relationship with Featherstone https://thetrustees.org/place/decordova/
Dawn has taken on the role of Kindergarten Teacher/Coordinator and has done incredible work in furnishing our Kindergarten Room and preparing a Kindergarten Curriculum that recognizes and celebrates the strengths of each student. Feedback on our developing Kindergarten Program has been wonderfully positive.
Both Sandra and Amanda were enrolled in college level courses to further their certifications in 2022. Sandra is pursuing Teacher Certification and Amanda, taking on a full course load in online evening classes, has achieved the qualifications for Director Certification. Leigh Ann is participating in a Pedagogical Leadership Cohort with Dr. Tiziana Filippini, pedagogista from Reggio Emilia. This Leadership Cohort will inform Leigh Ann’s new role as Curriculum Coordinator. Our entire staff is highly trained with an impressive level of experience. Our professional early childhood educators are committed to continued personal and professional learning while providing the highest quality care and education for our children. Even within our small program, we are committed to supporting opportunities for teachers to feel challenged and fulfilled in this work.
Finance Committee
Garden Gate was fortunate to be able to support its operating budget with a number of large and small grants in 2022. Early in 2022, families were eligible for Covid relief funds to subsidize tuition for families whose school attendance was affected by Covid. We also received American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Child Care Stabilization funds aimed at providing economic relief to child care programs impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic across the country. These Stabilization Grants continued throughout 2022 and allowed us to fully staff our school, cover teacher absences and provide bonuses for teachers as they worked through this unprecedented time, while keeping tuition for families at 2019 rates through most of 2022.
We received donations totalling $2,400 for our Scholarship Fund through our “Baby Cow” Fundraiser. Prints, stickers and notecards are still available for anyone wishing to make a donation to this fund. Garden Gate Child Development Center was also awarded a community grant of $2,260 to fund the "Creating Studios of Learning" program from the Martha’s Vineyard Community Foundation. This award is especially meaningful as it is the first inaugural grant made on behalf of the Emma MacKay Hall Fund, a new donor advised fund at the Community Foundation created in memory of Garden Gate graduate (and later a staff member) Emma Hall. A grant for $2875 was given by Farm Neck Foundation to partially cover the unexpected costs associated with lead remediation in our new Studio Two classroom. And finally, the Couch Family Foundation board approved a three-year, $80,000 grant to Garden Gate to support our Diversity, Equity & Inclusion initiative that will unfold over the next several months.
Curriculum Committee
Garden Gate hosted two Kindergarten Q&A sessions in 2022. Parent feedback supports an interest in innovative, creative curriculum for Kindergarteners. We are continuing to explore ways to document and share the learning that is taking place in this vibrant, child-led learning space.
Moving onto the campus of an active community art center has informed our curricular focus for 2022. This year’s Topic of Intent is “Creating Studios for Learning: gathering materials that deepen connection and invite wonder and inquiry”. Teachers are looking more closely at how children use creative materials to deepen relationships - with each other and with ideas. Monthly curriculum meetings with the Curriculum Coordinator help to provide a time and place for reflection and focus and propel curriculum forward.
Each of our teachers has enrolled in a four-workshop, Reggio-inspired series titled, “What is Progettazione? Exploring the Process of Design Thinking to Engage Children & Educators”. Loosely translated into English, progettazione is defined as a design thinking strategy for planning where teachers hypothesize about children’s interests, make predictions, document, and together with children, engage in an extended process of learning. The series will deepen the teachers’ thinking about curriculum and challenge us to incorporate new strategies for planning and documenting our work.
Parent Advisory Committee
The PAC organized a community food drive early in the year and worked to connect families in a variety of ways throughout the spring while we were still cautious of social gatherings. Outdoor meet-ups at the playground and a trip to the Buttonwood Zoo when Garden Gate was closed for Professional Development gave parents the opportunity to socialize and build community in spite of continuing Covid restrictions.
The PAC organized generous tokens of appreciation at Graduation, Thanksgiving and the Holidays. Gifts to the school and to teachers were meaningful and much appreciated!
Featherstone Partnership Committee
Of course in 2022, focus on our partnership with Featherstone Center for the Arts took on enormous priority. We began the year meeting with the Featherstone staff and Ezra Sherman, of Sherman Associates, to discuss plans for building Garden Gate its permanent home on the campus. Follow up continued later in the year and will continue into 2023. We also met with Featherstone’s Strategic Planning consultants to discuss Garden Gate’s role in Featherstone’s development of a Children’s Campus to bring more creative experiences to the island’s young children.
Moving out of 119 W. Spring street, our home for over 18 years, was a bittersweet endeavor. We are incredibly grateful to the Jeffers family for their ongoing generosity and support throughout Garden Gate’s presence. Sorting through decades of materials, packing up and tossing out, organizing the move, all while doing our best to keep our program running through the summer was just the beginning. Encountering and remediating unexpected lead paint in the Farmhouse classroom, setting up inspiring learning spaces in our two studio classrooms, completing licensing requirements and inspections got us ready to open on time in September.
The fall of 2022 was a time of settling in, exploring our new surroundings and beginning to imagine the future possibilities. The children and teachers became acquainted with the campus, the abutting nature trails, the art gallery and the Children’s Studio, where several Garden Gate students go after school to attend Featherstone’s children’s art classes.
At the end of the year, Dawn and Leigh Ann met with the Featherstone Board of Directors at their December meeting and shared Garden Gate’s appreciation for this new partnership and our own strategic plan and ways in which we look forward to deepening our relationships as we go forward. We met separately with the Featherstone staff to begin to explore ways our programs can complement and coordinate with each other, with plans to meet again in early 2023.
Alumni Committee
We were so thrilled to see so many alumni parents and students at our Open House in September - alumni from ages 5-26, parents from our very first Garden Gate classes. We were touched to be reminded of the depth of relationships that are formed at Garden Gate and the lasting impact our program can have in the community.
In an effort to reach alumni from our earliest graduating classes, students who are now in high school or college, even those who have graduated, we reached out through social media and reconnected through Instagram to many of our alumni. It is our hope that this will be one more way to stay in touch and reach out to alumni regarding future events.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee
In November, the Board voted to approve the grant application to the Couch Family Foundation for the DEI Project and to approve the formation of a DEI Committee formed of Board Members, staff and families to lead the project. Committee meetings will begin in January.
During this year of transition to the campus of Featherstone, we have been grateful to our incredible staff and families for supporting us, and encouraging us to move forward in our evolution. Through all of the roadblocks and small setbacks, you kept us going with kind words and generous helping hands. The result of our move, our fall grand opening in these new learning studios, has exceeded our expectations.
We are excited about this new beginning for Garden Gate, and are glad to be on this journey of learning and growth with all of you. We have accomplished a great deal in the past year programmatically, and amazing new things await us in the coming year. Cheers to the beginning of something beautiful!
With love and gratitude, Dawn & Leigh Ann