The title of this post, “A School with Nature as a Textbook” sounds like a fairly modern notion, doesn’t it? Outdoor schools, Montessori Educational principals, Nature Preschools, and outdoor classrooms are things we tend to consider as new and innovative changes to “traditional” educational models involving cavernous halls filled with students listening to a lecture given by a professor, a teaching assistant, or even a recorded lecture or seminar.

What if I told you that the phrase “a school with Nature as a Textbook” was a phrase used by a Boston based newspaper to describe the Los Alamos Ranch School in the early 1900’s? Many of us know that the Montessori method has been around for “awhile”, but did you know that Maria Montessori opened the first Montessori School “Casa de Bambini” in Rome on January 6, 1907?

Here in the United States, our Los Alamos Ranch School and so many other similar schools came about because of a man named Colonel Francis Wayland Parker. He founded a school in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois in 1901. The Parker School (formally called the Francis W Parker School) is still in operation today as one of the premier educational facilities in the US.

According to Parker, “A school should be a model home, a complete community, an embryonic democracy.” The Francis W Parker School’s website states:

Since its founding, Francis W. Parker School has educated students based on a philosophy that aims to support their growth and development by making them aware of and responsive to the fundamental needs of society.

The school’s philosophy became known in the 1900’s as “the Parker Method”. Schools advertising this educational philosophy began to pop up all over, but the one that impacted Los Alamos was the San Diego Parker School. 100 year later, the school is still operating today and includes two more campuses, one a “lower” school for younger students and another that offers bilingual education.

When the Los Alamos Ranch School was no more than a spark of an idea in Ashley Pond’s mind, he was a guide and camp host at the then Pajarito Club, (more about that in a future post). During the summer of 1915, Pond hosted the Johnson Family at the Pajarito Club. Templeton and Clara Johnson lived in San Diego with their two sons Winthop and Alan. The boys had just begun attending the San Diego Parker School, which Clara Templeton had founded after being less than pleased with the educational opportunities then available to her sons. Pond was fascinated by Clara Templeton’s “progressive” educational program. He’d been longing to implement a similar program in New Mexico for years. Pond had grown up a “sickly” child and the turning point for him had been his parents’ decision to send him to a Western Ranch for the “healthful air”.

Winthrop Johnson would go on to graduate from the Los Alamos Ranch School eleven years after that conversation between his parents and Ashley Pond. Winthop’s father, Templeton Johnson, was an architect educated in Paris. He’d designed campus buildings for the San Diego Parker School with an open design where open sided classrooms were clustered around a central courtyard. That design is quite similar to much of the architecture we’re familiar with here in the Southwest. Designs that capitalize on the climate in order to create spaces that encourage collaboration.

The Parker School Method or the “Progressive” educational model emphasized health and outdoor education. Physical activity was seen as key to a child’s proper development. Working with the hands, limited book learning, group collaboration and small group instruction with an emphasis on individual learning needs and styles was key.

To our modern minds this sounds almost like a “duh” moment. A good number of great schools, (including our own district), from all grade levels and regions utilize “Socratic” learning methods that encourage students to learn from each other and from questioning not only the teachers, but everything, as a method of discovery.

In the fall of 1915, all of Ashley Pond’s children went to San Diego to attend the San Diego Parker School. This left Pond with a lot of time on his hands and a passion for his Ranch School ideals. The rest is history.

The black and white photos above are from the Francis W Parker School’s history and were obtained from their website here. I love these photos because they are so reminiscent of what we now think of as “Montessori”. However, they also very much represent the Parker philosophy of “making them (children) aware of and responsive to the fundamental needs of society”. These photos show students “playing” at running a store or shopping. It also appears that they are “playing” at doing laundry. But that wouldn’t be entirely accurate. The Francis W Parker school acquired old dolls. In the photo, the students are laundering doll clothing so that it can be reused on refurbished dolls created from the pieces of old dolls and then resold to support the school!

This philosophy became critical to our Los Alamos Ranch School, but in a unique way. Instead of rehabbing dolls, the boys of the Ranch School were running a ranch. They grew what they ate and learned important lessons in architecture, animal husbandry, engineering, building, and surveying.

This closeness to nature and the ability to utilize “nature as a textbook” is still one of the things I love best about Los Alamos. As before, I give credit for photographs of the Ranch School to John D Wirth and Linda Harvey Aldrich as well as the Los Alamos Historical Society archives. Information about the San Diego Parker School and the Francis W Parker School can be obtained through their website links. And when you’re ready to join our community here in Los Alamos, give me a call! I love life in Los Alamos and I’d love to share that with you and your family!