Join us for a wonderful evening among Hershey friends and supporters. Gala guests will enjoy a champagne welcome, dinner, an open bar, an exclusive live auction, a wine and craft beer pull, and so much more.
The event title, “Shine” is from the well-known children’s song, “Let it Shine” (unknown origin). Shine is specially designed to celebrate the light in every child that is waiting to be ignited through the joy of learning.
While the gala is a wonderful time amongst friends, it also serves to provide vital funding that benefits the children of Hershey. It supports this successful educational template for students all over the world. Proceeds from the event go directly toward maintaining and enhancing optimal learning environments, staff development, and operational needs.
Seating is limited. Be sure to buy your tickets early.
HOLA Ohio and Painesville City Schools held a bilingual math workshop titled, “Counting on a Better Future” on Feb. 22, 2023. Approximately 30 students signed up for the program, which was designed to use gameplay to build math skills for Painesville City elementary students. As part of the project, Hershey Montessori School’s Spanish students volunteered to serve as tutors. To prepare for this community service opportunity, they had to first participate in a tutor training session.
“¡Qué experiencia tan maravillosa para los estudiantes | What a wonderful experience for the students!” stated Brooks Cavin, Hershey Middle School Director.
The free tutor program consisted of eight weekly sessions from 6 to 7:30 p.m. for students in grades K-2 and for students in grades 3-5. At each session, HOLA’s chefs provided a free dinner made for all students, parents, families, volunteers, and staff. During the workshop, HOLA also provided a wrap-around component and met with parents to assess and provide services or resources to support any household needs.
“Part of my main goals with the [HOLA] community center was to create a culture of learning in the Hispanic community and improve educational outcomes,” said HOLA Ohio Executive Director Veronica Dahlberg.
Addressing the need for math skills, Painesville City Schools Director of Teaching and Learning Wendy Camper explained, “As much as we are all focused on literacy and improving literacy skills – we’ve really seen – since COVID – a massive decline in basic math skills, which is leading to significant challenges as the children move up [through the grades].”
Hershey students had fun while serving as volunteer tutors and helping the students with their math skills while playing the games. Math skills are rooted in gameplay and are a fun way to learn. Some of the skills taught include: taking turns, strategizing, rotating, counting, logic, telling time, problem-solving, and developing fine motor skills.
During the event, HOLA also provided a wrap-around component and met with parents to assess and provide services or resources to support any household needs.
Hershey Montessori School looks forward to deepening its community connections with HOLA and the community service this relationship provides for its international and domestic students.
Students Excel with Experiential Learning, Using a Global View, Whole Systems Approach
Nicole Lederle, Middle School Guide
It started in the classroom and then continued in the woodshop, where collaboration met conceptualization, which ultimately led students to a new marketable product.
Nicole Lederle, leading Hershey middle schooler’s Industrial Revolution Humanities class, invited collaboration with Sean Wheeler, Hershey’s Woodshop Manager.
Students were assigned readings about the historical context surrounding production in the late 19th century, including an analysis of quantity vs. quality with cottage industries and factory production, noting related working conditions for minors and adults. Nicole wanted students to have a sensorial experience of a working assembly line. Sean proposed a wooden cell phone amplifier for a case study.
After a thorough safety orientation, students took detailed observation notes in the Program Barn as Sean made a single amplifier as a craftsperson would. The process required seven different power tools and the application of polish to reveal the wood’s rich, cherry color. Students were trained at different workstations in the following class, and in a future class, they will run a real assembly line, including counting how many amplifiers can be produced in the time it took a craftsperson to make just one while working alone.
Additionally, the middle school Humanities class seamlessly linked to the campus Microeconomy program, a cornerstone of Montessori education, which is structured to provide adolescents with purposeful opportunities to participate in and manage small business endeavors in order to grow through the personal experience of economic activity. Students were tasked with conducting a cost analysis.
Student-crafted wooden phone amplifiers
They learned that the phone amplifier’s raw materials cost about $5 per unit. Each finished cell phone amplifier sells for approximately $30 at market.
After playing music 30% louder than the phone’s unaided speaker, Sean measured a flat board that had been milled from a felled tree on the school’s campus. Each board was long enough to make just over four amplifiers. Stacking the boards, he counted by increments of $120 as students’ eyes widened: “$120, $240, $360, $480, $600…”
As adolescents use their brains and hands, working and growing in responsibility, they gain respect for the value of labor and learn that they, too, are capable of it.
Dr. Maria Montessori advised that educators should not give more to the brain than we give to the hand, and Hershey’s middle school guides are doing an incredible job balancing that, while creating a collaborated, whole systems, experiential approach for their students.
Dr. Montessori made it clear that the mind of the child at the elementary level is working in an exciting new manner. It is very different than we experienced in children from 3-6 years of age. These natural characteristics require the adults who surround them to give support and guidance creatively and appropriately. Pat Ludick will speak about these new characteristics and how we respond, with intention, to this important period of human development at the Elementary Levels at Hershey Montessori School.
Patricia Ludick is in her thirty-seventh year of working in Montessori education and was one of the planners and contributors in the early Montessori adolescent movement in the 1980s. Pat has consulted with public and private Montessori elementary and adolescent programs, presented at conferences, conducted workshops, and has guided teachers many summers at the AMI Montessori Orientation to Adolescent Studies. Pat holds an AMI diploma, a certification in special education, a Master’s degree in curriculum and instruction, and a certification from John Carroll University in Spiritual Direction. Pat has most recently been named an AMI auxiliary 12-18 trainer. She is the mother of 5 grown children and the grandmother of 12.
This event is open to all who RSVP. Childcare is available to Hershey families who RSVP.
While the Hershey Montessori School’s 200-year-old sugarhouse was donated, dismantled, and reconstructed on the Huntsburg Campus in 2021, it wasn’t until this Spring 2023 that the sugarhouse would have its own maple syrup system.
Thanks to Martin Chabot, General Manager, and Jerad Sutton, Ohio Sales Representative, at CDL Sugaring Equipment, the students at the Huntsburg Campus, guided by HMS faculty Natalie Hudak, now have an 18” x 48” wood evaporator to learn the process, science, history, and fun of making their own maple syrup.
Butternut Maple Farm, Sugar Pines Farm, GTP Plumbing, Valley Hardwoods, and numerous other volunteers also contributed equipment, labor, and expertise. These donors are multi-generational maple syrup producers here in Northeast Ohio. Their reason for donating is to pass along their knowledge, passion, joy, and respect for the earth that comes from making pure maple syrup.
Thanks to these generous maple syrup producers and their forefathers, our students today have an opportunity to nurture their connection to the earth and carry on the historic art of making maple syrup.
Imagine a beautiful place filled with activities that are designed around your needs, calling to your curiosity and imagination. Picture a community where children are surrounded by people who understand, encourage and challenge their strengths. Envision a child learning each day, immersed in a culture of respect and a course of study based upon personal interest and engagement.
Serving children from birth through age 18, Hershey offers challenging, highly individualized programs that focus on the uniqueness of each child.
Hershey offers an exceptional experience on two campuses, including the truly unique, world class farm school.
