Kerry Peerman[email protected]
School SummaryLocated in downtown Springfield, Virginia, Garfield was built in 1952. In July 2017, the renovation of Garfield was completed. This renovation includes an entire new wing and updates to the entire building. Garfield's mission is, "We cultivate and empower lifelong learners by developing 21st century skills; establishing relationships with students, staff, and families; empowering passions and strengths; and engaging students academically, socially, and emotionally." At Garfield we believe in utilizing Project Based Learning (PBL), an instructional delivery model where students explore a real world challenge while being exposed to a real-world career or role. Through the process, students will learn academic content and learn how to solve problems in meaningful ways, a skill that they can transfer to any future problem: from applying to colleges, finding a job, or purchasing their first house.
We expect all of our children to graduate high school being college and career ready, and we know that one way this can happen is by instilling a strong set of academic and social values within our instruction each day.
Staff members are committed to high academic standards for all learners and value the unique strengths of individual children. Each day, staff members reap the rewards of working with a culturally diverse population. Garfield is truly a community of learners including the administration, teachers, students, and parents. Emphasis is placed on developing literacy, participating in hands-on experiences, enhancing social skills, developing critical-thinking skills, working cooperatively, and practicing cultural sensitivity. Indeed, at Garfield, we celebrate our community of independent and caring learners!
Garfield is proud to be a Responsive Classroom school, ensuring that academic and social learning occur simultaneously and are viewed with equal importance. The Responsive Classroom approach includes seven basic principles which are:
- The social curriculum is as important as the academic curriculum.
- How children learn is as important as what they learn: process and content go hand in hand.
- The greatest cognitive growth occurs through social interaction.
- There is a set of social skills children need in order to be successful academically and socially: cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-control.
- Knowing the children we teach-individually, culturally, and developmentally-is as important as knowing the content we teach.
- Knowing the families of the children we teach and working with them as partners is essential to children's education.
- How the adults at school work together is as important as individual competence: Lasting change begins with the adult community.
Parents can be involved in a variety of ways here at school. Garfield has an active PTA, promoting a close relationship between home and school. Volunteers are an active and integral part of our program, supporting classroom teachers, the cafeteria, and the teacher workroom. Parents are also welcome to have lunch with their children or attend a daily Morning Meeting in the classroom. Parental involvement at Garfield benefits the school experience of our students, providing additional support and enrichment in various ways. The reading and math programs focus on the use of volunteers who help strengthen students' reading fluency skills and math skills. Our trained volunteers work with individual students or student pairs in grades K-6. Many interesting after-school clubs are offered thanks to dedicated teacher volunteers and the PTA.
Garfield is fortunate to have multiple community partners that help with school-wide events like our Back-to-School Fair, provide food for school events, ensure students have healthy weekend foods, support after school activities, and display student artwork.
We know that communication with our families will be a key to our success. In addition to using the Blackboard Connect Keep in Touch call out system, teachers maintain a Blackboard site and Garfield has a Facebook page (Garfield Elem) and a Twitter account (Garfield ES). We welcome your comments and questions about our school and look forward to partnering with you to ensure greater success for our children.
Last Updated: 2020-07-24