Our History
Good Shepherd Montessori School (GSMS) was founded by two families with an ambitious goal: fostering world peace through education. Our founders believed that within every child is both the capacity and desire to make the world a better place, and that the educational philosophy pioneered by Dr. Maria Montessori best nurtures that potential.
Beginning with only 16 children in a single Grade 1–3 classroom in 2002, today GSMS is fully accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Central States (ISACS), a full member of the American Montessori Society (AMS), and annually enrolls more than 150 children ages 3 through Grade 8 in six multi-age classrooms. The school has impacted hundreds of GSMS children, who in turn have impacted countless more children, coaches, teachers, parents, and neighbors.
The question that guided GSMS from its early days was, “how will the community be better for having known us?” The school was never meant to serve exclusively the children inside its doors. It was designed to be a place where a wide range of people come together, where big ideas and audacious dreams of a world at peace thrive inside its doors, and where that vision is then lived out in the community and beyond.
Several key ideals have informed the development of the school over the last 20 years.
- First, the understanding that vibrant diversity – both in society and nature – is foundational to human flourishing. This belief is central to our curricular choices and our comprehensive admissions process, which values socio-economic, aptitudinal, and cultural diversity.
- Second, a commitment to land-based learning is deeply embedded into our school ethos. Children at every level develop an experiential love of nature and have time to work and learn outside on our urban farm and at local partner farms. We like to say that our prepared learning environments exist both inside and outside the school doors.
- Third, GSMS has always taken great care to foster not only intellectual, emotional, and social development, but spiritual development as well. While knowledge and experience can answer the how questions of life, the why questions require something further. The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, a Montessori-inspired Catholic Catechesis, creates space for students to listen, to reflect, and to do the work of prayer in whatever form that may take.
Having reaped a wonderful harvest from our first 20 years of existence, we are excited to plant new seeds in our fertile soil and watch them blossom over the next 20 years.
To hear more about where we have come from – and where we are going – we invite you to schedule a visit today.