The Lower School Experience
Our priority is establishing a lifelong love of learning as early as possible.
We encourage our K–5 students to ask questions and tap into their natural curiosity through imaginative exploration, play, and creation. Collaboration is paramount, and our students quickly realize that positive learning experiences are built on caring relationships between their teachers and each other.
The result? A strong academic foundation and limitless intellectual growth.
“I feel like I just belong in the perfect school, which is Foote!”
“I liked doing the All About Me project because you learn how something is special to someone else and kids can learn about other kids and themselves.”
“I think our teachers want us to help take care of the chickens so that we learn responsibility. Taking care of animals is really important.”
Our community is one where childhood has integrity, where joy and wonder are prized, where students have the space and the support to grow into their most authentic selves.
Just the right size.
In small homerooms, students in kindergarten through fifth grade to have a chance to form tight-knit bonds with each other and their teachers. Our intimate class sizes also provide introverted students access to quiet time and calm spaces to play and learn.
At the same time, there are many opportunities for students to expand their friend group during shared moments between other homerooms and other grades. It’s incredibly heart-warming to see our students find and make new friends during recess, school assemblies, and even as they pass each other throughout campus.
“Excellence in the Lower School is helping each child reach their potential but also helping them imagine their own potential before they get there.”
—Cara Hames, Head of Lower School
You Belong Here!
From the Head of Lower School Cara Hames:
“Teaching is not a consolation prize to larger dreams or aspirations. It’s a calling that requires so much more than knowledge. Teaching is the deepest form of expertise. To teach requires not just doing, but understanding content, context, and in our case children at a transformative level.”
What we love about Lower School!
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