McGuffey Foundation School

I graduated from McGuffey in 2003, graduated from the local public Talawanda High School in 2007, and am now pursuing a B.A. in Urban Education at Stanford University. My nine years at McGuffey were incredible, and taught me so much about life, love, and learning that I carry with me to this day. The relationship between students and teachers is very close, effortlessly friendly and respectful at the same time, which facilitates a profound respect among students for educators and for class content alike. With respect to the social experience, it would be very difficult to imagine anyone not fitting it at McGuffey. The friends I had in kindergarten — and my teachers! — are my best friends to this day, even though we're doing very different things across the nation.

The learning environment is very flexible and really encourages children to explore their own educational interests. Students are presented with all kinds of unique educational experiences, from attending nature camps, to logging miles with the school's running program, to putting on plays, to making digital moves with clay, to editing the school newsletter with minimal faculty help, to constructing mechanisms to safely deliver eggs onto ground-level cement from the roof of the school. It is very easy for a child to develop an individual personality with little fear of peer pressure, and to discover who they really are — always with room for growth and change. Students develop an appreciation for finding the "why" behind every aspect of life, and for establishing, understanding, and being able to support their own opinions, rather than following the teacher's opinions.

McGuffey instilled in me a very deep passion for knowledge and for humanity — or rather, helped me realize the passion and creativity that was in me all along, and might not have been nurtured in other learning environments. As a whole, McGuffey students love to think, and balance playful and serious outlooks on life.

My parents tell me about being cautioned against sending their kids to a little private school because the transition to a big public high school would be too much to handle. I'm pleased to say that my older sister, with her six years at McGuffey (now an N.Y.U. grad), and I both had a great time at Talawanda High, as did all our friends there and in surrounding schools as well. In fact, I think our high school experiences were better than usual.

I would recommend McGuffey to any parent looking for the ideal school for their kids. As someone studying education at the collegiate level, and having taught at the middle school level through the Americorps program City Year, I am perpetually amazed at how lucky I was to have grown and been taught in such an incredible place.