A Message from the Head of School
Dear Friends,
The Park School of Buffalo is a unique community with a long history of educational innovation, honoring students as their individual selves, and a deep-seated belief in a shared responsibility for taking care of each other. These are not accidental developments, but are intentional, core parts of our mission, dating back more than 112 years. I am so incredibly happy to share with you what it truly means to be a Park Pioneer today, while highlighting all the accomplishments and milestones that Park has embedded into our community over time.
What does it mean to be a Park Pioneer?
Park is Individually Focused
Progressive Education calls for schools to pay attention to who your child is as a unique, individual learner. We believe that our students are best served when we know how they learn, and approach their education accordingly.
Park is Experiential
Progressive Schools believe that experience is the best teacher, and that learning is strongest when we leave room for making mistakes, and for the incredible growth that follows them. Park believes in Learning by Doing.
Park is a Community
Progressive Educators know that students value their schooling more when they feel a responsibility to it. Park’s intentional, universal focus on kindness and strong community means that our students care about themselves, their places in our community, and each other.
How this impacts students…
Park’s motto is Veritas et Gaudium - Truth and Joy. More than a century of experience shows us that Park students leave us for college and the wider world as intellectually curious, self-confident, resilient, good citizens. They engage the world around them, knowing who they are and how they can contribute to the greater good. Park students are true Pioneers!
Park sits on 34 beautiful acres, giving us a feel very similar to that of a small college. Our campus includes natural woods and marsh areas, our beloved pond, the trails that connect them, and the wildlife that lives within. Our students live in and use this connection to the outdoors every day at Park, regardless of their age or grade level.
For our Lower School friends, this might look like:
- bird identification behind the Helen Long Building or Berardi Family Field Station,
- measuring precipitation at the weather station by the playground,
- tracking the numbers and types of turtles around the pond and marsh during a nature walk.
Our Middle School students might use that same weather data to:
- create a digital forecast with green screen technology,
- plot the solar system to scale from one end of campus to the other, or
- track plant growth from seed to vegetable in our greenhouse and garden.
In the Upper School, this might mean:
- analyzing “blood” spatter in Forensics class,
- conducting water studies in our man-made stream to help assess, predict, and manage the long-term health of campus water sources,
- walking during Physics class, indoors and out, to determine caloric potential in the food we grow and eat by setting them on fire and measuring the resultant heat.
The above is representative of how experiential learning, especially tied to the outdoors, allows Park students to learn in their own ways, by trying and failing, and by collaborating with their peers on projects that tie them directly to this beautiful campus we all share. And because we do this work together as often as possible, Pioneers quickly learn, understand, and value the benefits of working in partnership with others. This all leads to learning that is engaging, long-lasting, and fun. Stop by to see us and get in on the action!
See you on campus,
Lisa Conrad, Head of School
