Our Identity

Neighborhood School opened its doors in September 1986 to a small group of second and third graders. The first floor of 34 Peter Parley Road became home base to this group of students as we explored ways to create a hands-on, learn-as-you-are-ready, creative, and cooperative environment. Seven students along with three part-time teachers quickly became a family of learners and undertook the challenge of establishing a foundation for a very different kind of Boston early elementary school.

As the school grew during the following years to include more students and teachers, principles of developmental education were put into action. This system ensured that mixed age groupings would be present in each homeroom and that students would have different positions in a level’s age continuum from year to year. Mixed ages helped create an atmosphere of normalcy for many different layers of learning to happen at once within a classroom or even within an activity.

Today, we are a group of loving, multigenerational, multiracial, multilingual, queer, trans, and allied teacher-leaders. As a staff of fifteen (nine full time), along with fifty students between the ages of five and twelve and their families, we find joy in creating rhythms of learning to support students in being critical thinkers and engaged community members. We envision and teach towards a more radically liberated way of educating.

We believe that transformation of our world is possible. Our teaching and learning holds justice at its center—an intersectional view of justice that examines how forces of power and oppression have shaped our world and how forces of resistance are woven throughout history, the present, and the future. We believe in the inherent worth of every person and in creating a learning community where everyone can be their true self. Through relationships grounded in trust, connection, and compassion, we engage in practices of transformative justice, drawing from Indigenous forebears. We are exploring what it means to be an urban school that values environmental justice and values a return to the land. We teach and learn with gratitude, returning to play, ritual, and connection to nature—appreciating the beauty of rich relationship and responsibility to each other.

We center liberation in our classrooms and our lives by learning from others about how to do so. We seek, value, learn from, and amplify marginalized voices to provide full and essential perspectives—and we understand that it is our responsibility as educators to forefront and explore them with our students. We value youth voice and agency, and we teach our academics in rigorous ways that allow students to be empowered and critical readers, thinkers, and communicators.

We learn through thematic and project-based learning experiences, led by curiosity, fueled by research and a deep understanding of each student, and framed by reflection. Through curricular and intellectual freedom, teachers create an environment where children are nurtured and challenged to become deep thinkers. Collaborations with community organizations on local issues are central to our learning process. Learners of diverse abilities are fully immersed in our program. We consider the balance of needs and resources in the admissions process to ensure that all members will have access to what they need. Our class groupings are vibrant, multi-age and multi-year groupings, providing time for students and teachers to know one another well and opportunity for roles to change (older/younger) from year to year.