“As a professional educator, as a student at Little Earth in the school’s infancy, as a parent of a now 17-year-old former Little Earth student,and as a past teacher at Little Earth, I have known the school inside and out. In many of my graduate courses in Education and Psychology at Swarthmore College and Northwestern University (using texts contributed to by Ellen Souberman!), I reflected back on the immortal teachable moments from the Bunny sandbox, in circle time, or when putting on playground puppetry, plays, or parades.
In my private practice helping children with learning disabilities to giftedness, interpreting IQ results, and helping design educational plans, I think a lot about which educational decisions across children’s 16+ years of formal education merely seem good in the moment and which have “legacy.” A Little Earth education has legacy. I still pull from early lessons I learned from “The Cactus Monster” (a prickly pear pad with toothpick legs- could you imagine a more terrifying villain?). I still attempt to carry on the same balance of academic rigor and artistic exploration. I can’t help but attribute to Little Earth the seeds of courageous curiosity about the world near and far. The very same kids that chased me down The Hill remain my longest friendships to this day.
Steven Munzenrider, a co-founder of Little Earth School and co-author of Little Earth School: Education, Discovery, Celebration,(Schoken Press, 1987) as well as the founder of a sister Little Earth school in Egypt, asked me to his home a few months before he died at much too young an age. In passing on to me stories and convictions, his last hopes and laughs, and even the legendary black tie he always wore during his Magic Shows, Steven passed on the unquenchable flame of learning and teaching. This is the stuff that Little Earth is made of.”
Dr. Jordi Kleiner
Student & Alum