The Family Schools

Mission: The Family School and Salt Box support those who seek to raise stable and loving children in a chaotic world. We believe that children flourish when they grow in their spiritual, social emotional, physical, and academic development, and that families are unique and effective teachers of their young children. Therefore, our programs support, endorse, and strengthen each family's teaching.

Goals: We design our instruction to meet each child and family where they are and to help them continue to grow toward their goals. Each year, parents and teachers define the child's goals in individualized education plans, which teachers support throughout their classroom instruction, the child's independent work, and play. We cultivate spiritual development by supporting students as they form healthy relationships with themselves, their families and peers, and their communities. We foster social and emotional development by providing the tools students need in order to communicate clearly and express their needs, desires, and opinions. We ensure that students develop physically by providing opportunities for rest, nourishment, and exercise. Students grow academically as they ask questions, investigate, and conduct work in language and reading skills, math, science, art, and music.

Through our individual education plans, family meetings, communication with parents, home visits, and school reports, we ensure that we are journeying with families throughout each stage of their children's development.

History: The Family School is a licensed private school for children eight weeks to five years. Our present Executive Director Marcia Pioppi Galazzi founded the school in 1980 as a small school program with three teachers and nine students in the Crosby Barn in Brewster. We moved to our present location at 3570 Main in Brewster in 1983. We continue to thrive on our four-acre campus adjacent to Nickerson State Park. Although classrooms are located in the Schoolhouse, Salt Box, and the Lodge, our students' learning environment expands to our outdoor Olympic swimming pool, ball fields, basketball courts, pavilion, science and music yurts, playgrounds, and climbing areas.