farewell

With great sorry, I say goodbye to Summers-Knoll School. How much I will miss the wonderful teachers and most especially the children with their sweet hugs and their delightful excitement in learning.

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the new building -- the financial side: how the project is coming to be

This extraordinary undertaking, moving to a new wholly-owned school building! If you haven’t seen it yet, come, take a tour (contact Bethany Schultz, Summers-Knoll’s Project Director for the move, at bethanys@summers-knoll.org ). Bring your friends and family. It is an amazing place & location and has vibrations of beauty and learning and cooperation in the walls and windows and hallways. I felt this the first time I entered, even with peeling corners in the old part, at one time a dairy! With that section now demolished from the inside, the feel of the architecture is even more exciting. The dreams are coming to reality from what has been envisioned by our head of school, by the board, by the teachers, the staff, the parents and by the children! to be our new school building.

What a privilege to be part of this transition.

The purchasing of the building (land contract, so it isn’t really ours quite yet) made possible through the hard work of the board, and most especially, our angel parent who navigated the agreement with the Michigan Gift of Life owners. This building had sat patiently for three years on the slow market, just waiting for Summers-Knoll to seize the opportunity, which also came about because of substantial other events that transpired last year.

Giving credit where credit is due

Meanwhile an extraordinary architectural firm, Angelini & Associates, Architects, has planned, dreamed, revised, produced drawings after drawings, met with all the constituents and listened to our needs and desires. They and we are now working with Phoenix Construction, both with the initial demolition and with the build-out construction that is about to begin. We have been given hours and hours of volunteer or in-kind work, from the grounds-keeping work provided by Ron Weiser’s company, to technical support by Dan Pritts, design ideas and implementation by Linette Lao, Thomas Livernois’ assistance with the façade and repair, Dan Blakeney’s incredible videography, as well as a year of planning by both this year’s Board of Directors (our school trustees), Fran Loosen, Paul Schutt, Matt Berg, Karen Godwin, Mark Stranahan (who also provided an huge amount of contextual building design ideas), and last year’s board members, Todd Austin, Laura Wagner and Anthony Nitsos, as well as Building Committee Members: Fran Loosen, Mark Stranahan, Mark Moellering, Matt Berg and Bethany Schultz, plus our the members on the Finance Committee, Patrick Thornton and Dan Pritts, in addition to Matt Berg, Joanna, and myself. Also the Tech Committee, headed up by Dan Pritts, with the help of Mark Moellering, Becky Trombley Domegan, Linh Song, and the Capital Campaign Committee, in formation now, headed by Fran Loosen, and with Linh Song, Jenn Monk-Reising and additional board members. Gwen Harrigan has provided background support, along with JoLynn Montgomery; and a WONDERFUL crew including Anne Leo, Robbin Hitchins, Rosie Bellovan, Trinh Pham, Mickey Arvoy and, again, Mark Stranahan scrubbed and cleaned and tore down on our first cleanup day. Please forgive me if I have left any of our dedicated volunteers out of this listing. I believe there have likely been substantial other individual contributions, and truly, I regret if I have not given each her or his due.

What else makes this possible? The money, of course!

We have been given extremely generous donations, anonymously, the foundation of our coming Capital Campaign that is being planned for implementation by Jenn Monk-Reising and the Development Committee. In addition to receiving grants, we have a very generous long-term loan from a local foundation, and this week we are signing a Loan/Line of Credit with United Bank and Trust to help underwrite the construction costs. We are continuing to operate the school with carefully budgeted funds, very lean, to say the least. The assistance of parent volunteers in so many areas of the school allows us to keep to our budget. This is the backbone of our community and the Summers-Knoll culture.

We received many times their worth of Border’s beautiful furniture and fixtures as they were closing. Bethany continues to find generosity from others of both their time and donated goods for the building, a host of offerings.

Because of the generosity of one of our benefactors, we will be able to sell our current Manchester building (itself a gem) when we move into the new location on Platt, and we will be in the position to repay a good amount of the immediate borrowed money.

The envisioning, also, is wonderful to hear and to be a part of.

What will the classrooms look like? How will the children go in and out of the building? Where will the middle school students find safe spaces for their own relaxation/learning? How will the staff interact with the classrooms and the central locations? Where do the telephone and data wires go? How will the internet work? Hurrah! We can still use County Farm Park, just from the East side! Where will parking, pickup & dropoff be? How much larger a summer camp will we have? How will we use the lunchroom and kitchen? Where is storage? There are windows everywhere! There is a central enclosed courtyard garden with a Japanese maple and other lovely small trees and plantings.

Each piece of this project has been extremely well considered, discussed, revised and determined. We are almost to our initial goal when we will MOVE IN!!!

And we have many more exciting plans for the future, especially concerning community involvement, yet to come.

Please also see http://skcommons.blogspot.com/ for Bethany’s blog about the changing building.

the generosity of summers-knoll campers

Math Merchants -- Summers-Knoll Camp week 10 -- was a great success again this year!

Teaching led by camp director Shan Cook and including counselors and helpers Stephanie, Trista, Eric, Allie, and Jeremy (while Escape campers happily went off-site for week-long adventures with Dianne and Dawn), the week-long production culminated in Friday's shops including a sports store, a bank, a pet shop and animal rescue, a paper factory, the very popular sweet shop and multiple others.

With the purchases of the customers (thank you camper parents!!!), the burgeoning merchants collected $300 in quite real money for their offerings.

The children then made the generous decision to donate the total funds collected to the Humane Society of Huron Valley, to help with their animal rescue.

What a wonderful outcome for a week of play and learning.

photo: previous week magic show

preserving traditions & summers-knoll summer camp

my first butter

Summer Camp at Summers-Knoll always has wonderful imaginative fun projects and play for the children. This year has been especially delightful for me, since my grandchildren have been at the camp for several of the camp weeks and I've been able to see them at play and with the other children on a daily basis. I always am impressed by the director, Shan Cook, and her wonderful team of teaching counselors, and by the activities offered. This year, in addition to the very popular Star Wars Camp and various Escape activities -- by bus to locations surrounding Ann Arbor, which have included especially during this hot hot July, wonderful swimming parks -- many of the camps include activities that have produced creative products. I was delighted one day when I came up from my basement office and found my grandson shaking a small container of whole milk. One of their activities that day was to make butter (to put on pop-corn, of course). Nigel may not have known it, but I, too, had just recently learned this very traditional method of making butter at a local group, Preserving Traditions, and now every week I purchase delicious local whole milk from which I top off the cream into a small container, and shake it for the same 15 or 20 minutes as Nigel was doing. It turns into delicious bright yellow butter, enough for a few days of toast

I enjoy very much when aspects of my working life can interweave with my family and personal life as well. Summers-Knoll is certainly a place that best allows that to happen.

sweet sweet end of year

The oldest children graduating. In County Farm Park, lovely location, lovely ceremony, perfect weather. And with the delight of Joanna reading her beautiful poems, descriptive of and to each child. And for me, approaching the first anniversary of my being at this wonderful school, a sweet moment.

Today is also the day after another emotional day for me.

Last fall, I had the opportunity to explore the building for sale at 2203 Platt, with the anticipation that the board of trustees might bid to purchase it. The first time I walked in, it felt perfect! Even with musty smells (it had been unused for several years), papers on the carpets, it didn't matter. The courtyards, the opportunities for building space within interesting walls, the sunlight in unexpected places, the driveway, the landscaping, the woods next door, County Farm Park still available (!), just to the east instead of to the west, safe drop-off space, nooks and crannies inside and outside for explorations -- it was made to be be a school in spite of different prior use.

I returned yesterday to walk through the building again. This time I could hold in my head the suggested schematics created by our incredible architects with the input of ideas from every part of our community. In addition, after a wonderful cleaning day last weekend on the part of volunteer kind parents (thank you, thank you!), the place was sparkling, the floors clean, the counters wiped. And the gorgeous central courtyard, with luscious Japanese maples, flowers in full bloom, the sun bright and inviting. The landscaping surrounding the building was tended to, again, a donation from a generous parent.

It is happening! This will, with the grace of everyone involved, be the beautiful new location for an expanded school, one that will accommodate students through middle school, within a environment that will retain the culture well established from Summers-Knoll's inception and cradled over the past many years by the current head of school and board of trustees.

It is a privilege to be part of this change.

a meaningfully well-lived life & the cape cod dunes

When I was a child, I spent joyous summers on Cape Cod. As an adult, I often have gone to the outer cape (along the "arm") for September vacations. My visits to the town of Wellfleet, which was also an important place for my dad, always refresh me physically and bring great calmness to my spirit. For some of us, Eudaimonia was not a well-known word or concept until becoming acquainted with it through the Summers-Knoll auction and celebration event. This year, with our auction at the beautiful and encompassing Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum at the University of Michigan, the concept became part of the reality in my life.

Two blogs that apeared around the event date helped bring alive the meaning of this Greek word. The concept is what I have tried to model for my children. I am happy when they find in their lives spaces that can be reflective for themselves and that can bring them joy. It is also what I see shared with the teaching for the children at this wonderful school.

The one article (thank you, Joanna) comes from Umair Haque, interestingly enough from the Harvard Business Review blog, Is a Well-Lived Life Worth Anything? http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2011/05/is_a_well_lived_live_worth_anything.html

The second is from the blog of the NPR show, On Being, an article by Jill Schneiderman, Plugged in to the Outer Cape, http://blog.onbeing.org/post/5553970578/plugged-in-to-the-outer-cape

Jill Schneiderman's words express my own experience, "...this is a soothing feeling of awe and connection. Walking in the dunes or across these mudflats puts me in touch with deep time..."

Each time I visit the sea and can feel the sand of the dunes while looking out at the expanse of the ocean, I experience the same awe and deep awareness of connection with nature and with others.

We at Summers-Knoll currently have the great privilege of planning for a move to a new building and a new space. It is most exciting to be part of a process that includes hearing the dreams and ideas and hopeful expectations on the part of the community: the board members, the teachers, the children, the parents. I admire the attentive listening on the part of the designing architects. We have not only opportunity but a true responsibility with this new stage in Summers-Knoll's history to create a space that will expand the ideas of community and sharing and creativity that currently mark the atmosphere and culture of the school.

Eudaimonia May 14, 2011

Click to register http://summers-knoll.org