Lower School
Welcome to the Lower school!
The Roland Park Country School Lower School is a place where each girl is empowered to be her best self. While she recognizes and celebrates her own limitless potential, she also understands the importance of acknowledging strengths in others and empowering her classmates. She understands that we’re stronger when we work together.
While our classrooms are a collaborative learning environment, our faculty understands that each girl learns in her own way. Our job as educators is to meet each student where she is and give her the tools to succeed and achieve at levels that surprise even her. We do this by deliberately and systematically delivering an education based around Four-Dimensional Learning. The first dimension is knowledge. This includes traditional classes and fact-based knowledge – reading, writing, math, science – and modern knowledge, including STEM, coding, robotics, and sustainability. The second dimension is skill. This emphasizes creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. The third dimension is character. We encourage our girls to step into leadership roles, not just for personal gain, but for the greater good. In this dimension, we create learning opportunities that develop mindfulness, curiosity, courage, resilience, ethics, and leadership. The fourth and final dimension is meta learning, which focuses on reflection and adaptation. We work with each student to examine her own thinking and help her adapt to learn in a way that works best for her mind. This results in powerful growth.
All of this happens in small classes, led by caring teachers who create a joyous environment that emphasizes balance. RPCS girls are deeply engaged in their education because they are allowed to be children.
If you are interested in learning more about what goes on in our Lower School, I encourage you to check out my blog, Puddle Jumping. And I hope you will come meet our community and experience the Roland Park Country School Lower School for yourself!
Warmly,
Lisa Teeling
Lower School Head
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Lower School Highlights
Our girls experience so much during their time in the Lower School, including:
Being a farm-to-table consumer, learning about eating the food that they grow, and how to grow it. Click here to learn more!
Lower School Highlights
Our girls experience so much during their time in the Lower School, including:
Performing their own original poetry.
Lower School Highlights
Our girls experience so much during their time in the Lower School, including:
Becoming a lobbyist for a day in Annapolis to use their voices and promote positive change.
Lower School Highlights
Our girls experience so much during their time in the Lower School, including:
Learning French, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.
Lower School Highlights
Our girls experience so much during their time in the Lower School, including:
Taking the stage throughout the year to perform, sing, dance and play instruments.
Lower School Highlights
Our girls experience so much during their time in the Lower School, including:
Getting involved in the Baltimore City community by engaging with and representing non-profit organizations.
Lower School Highlights
Our girls experience so much during their time in the Lower School, including:
Taking on STEM challenges, including Jr. Lego League and creating code to power simple machines.
Lower School Highlights
Our girls experience so much during their time in the Lower School, including:
Participating in lunchtime book clubs, including taking on the “Battle of the Books” challenge every spring.
Values, Character Education, and Social Emotional Learning
At each grade level of the Lower School, girls’ social and emotional intelligence is intentionally developed. This attention to the whole child is woven into every activity, not just a once-a-week course. Through the use of Responsive Classroom and The Toolbox Project curriculum, girls in grades K-5 learn how to recognize the traits in themselves and others that lead to healthy relationships and a sense of personal well-being. Toolbox lessons are taught by the Lower School counselor to give the girls access to the twelve tools within themselves that build self-regulation skills. The Responsive Classroom approach fosters respect and empathy. In addition, daily Morning Meeting time is used to build an understanding of unique qualities of culture, race, and circumstance that enrich our community. Our girls leave Lower School with a moral compass, prepared to see the good in others and appreciate the good within themselves.