AMHERST — Seven years after they said goodbye for the final time, a tight-knit community of educators from the former Mark’s Meadow School reunited Monday for the unveiling of a plaque in the building where they groomed young minds in grades kindergarten to sixth grade.
The public elementary school opened in 1961 as an experimental laboratory school, with the University of Massachusetts College of Education, but in 2009 the Amherst School Committee voted unanimously to close Mark’s Meadow to save money and a year later about 190 students were relocated to the three other district schools.
UMass always owned the building on North Pleasant Street, and in January 2016 completed renovations to house the College of Education. There are now 70 offices and some classrooms in the building, which is connected to the older College of Education building next door.
Previously, the College of Education was split between the older building on North Pleasant Street and Hills South. With the renovations and added space from the former Mark’s Meadow building, the College of Education is now under one roof.
“It’s been very intellectually invigorating for faculty but I think also students too,” said Betsy McEneaney, associate professor of teacher education at UMass.
“UMass and the public schools have always had a close cooperative relationship,” said Robert Feldman, interim dean of the College of Education. “We wanted to recognize the contributions that the teachers and administrators made to the operation of the college.”
While it was open, Mark’s Meadow School was equipped with observation corridors, with one-way glass so teachers, education students, researchers and graduate students could observe the classrooms.
Former teachers and faculty from Mark’s Meadow gathered in Furcolo Hall at UMass Monday as Feldman commemorated the old school with a plaque. The plaque was hung outside, by the old entrance to Mark’s Meadow.
Mark’s Meadow School was not an average elementary school. Faculty members remember it for its diversity, innovation and close community.
“It was quite a school,” said Michael Greenebaum, principal of the school for 21 years.
Many staff members remembered Mark’s Meadow as being on the forefront of education. In 1969, the school received the federal Model Kindergarten Grant, which allowed them to lead the way in the transition from half-day to full-day kindergarten in the state.
It was a three-year grant, given to two other institutions: Lesley University and Tufts University. Through the grant, the school modeled full-day kindergarten for other schools in the state.
“It was a really fun thing to do,” said Kathy McKay, who was a kindergarten teacher at Mark’s Meadow when the grant was given.
According to Greenebaum, Mark’s Meadow was also the first school in Amherst to implement an after-school day care and breakfast programs.
Beginning in 1976, Greenebaum explained, the school began using multi-age classrooms. Teachers would meet with parents to discuss what age group their child would thrive in. At this time, there were about 300 kids at the school.
Until around the early 1990s, students could be placed in mixed age groups, determined by teachers and parents. Greenebaum remembers that the students would often be confused as to what grade they were actually in. “I took that as a compliment,” he said.
In the 1980s, the school launched what was called co-taught classrooms. These were classes in which special education kids were fully integrated in regular classes, explained Nick Yaffe, who was principal for the final six-and-a-half years the school was open.
Even with all of this innovation, one of the most important and unique qualities of the school was diversity, as noted by Greenebaum and many other former staff.
“It’s important for kids to learn from each other,” he said.
Mark’s Meadow was home to students from many different cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds, said Joan MacDonald, who taught third, fourth and fifth grade classes at the school. MacDonald was also a co-principal for two years, a Title I teacher to help students with reading, writing and math and ran the after-school program.
Every year, the school had a multicultural fair for students to wear their traditional clothing and bring in food from their heritage. There were cultural games and book readings set up in classrooms, followed by a presentation in the auditorium, MacDonald recalled.
“This really became a home for those international students,” Yaffe said.
Mark’s Meadow was a close community, according to Greenebaum. At the Monday ceremony, former faculty gathered to catch up and laugh about old memories at the school.
Greenebaum remembers reading “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe to fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders every Halloween in the auditorium. He also remembers the students bringing him various gifts with hippopotamuses on them, after learning that he loved hippos. To this day, his house is full of hippos.
Mary May, former music teacher for 25 years, recalls the students creating their own operas.
Mark’s Meadow was one of 20 schools in the country selected for the Kids Creating Original Opera program, through the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
May collaborated with Kirsten Lindblom, who taught fourth, fifth and sixth grade for 15 years. The two teachers went to New York in the summer for training sessions, then returned to help students create their own opera during the school year. This went on for three years.
The students did everything, from writing the script, to making the sets. “It was their show,” Lindblom said.
The students, who were between nine and 12 years old, auditioned for jobs such as production manager and stage manager, according to Lindblom. The young children took on many responsibilities to create the opera, which was performed at the school.
“That’s what was beautiful,” said Lindblom. “It sort of exemplifies what we did here.”
“People really enjoyed having fun” Yaffe said of the Mark’s Meadow community. While the former faculty was sad to see Mark’s Meadow go, many of them expressed gladness that the building is being put to use once more.
“I’m glad it’s giving future teachers and future educators and people working with kids a nice home,” Yaffe said.
