Rooted for Sixty Years

This year, the Chiaravalle community celebrated a meaningful milestone: 60 years of Montessori education in Evanston. In September, more than 500 community members gathered at the Fall Family Festival to launch our 60th year. In May, current and former parents, faculty, alumni, and friends came together at the 60th Anniversary Gala to celebrate what we’ve built, and what we’re building next. These two moments bookended a year that unfolded in the spaces between.

Empower

Bettering the world through action and service

Students across the school engaged thoughtfully, compassionately, and confidently with the world around them through service learning, leadership opportunities, environmental stewardship, and social-emotional learning experiences designed to connect personal growth with purposeful action. Chiaravalle piloted Yale's RULER framework this year — giving students, families, and faculty a shared language for labeling emotions, empathy, reflection, and conflict resolution. These include The Mood Meter, The Meta-Moment, and The Blueprint, tools that help anyone in the community navigate hard moments through perspective-taking rather than reaction.

In honor of our 60th anniversary, students across the school committed to 60 Acts of Service: an initiative connecting classroom learning to real community needs. Here are a few examples of what that looked like:

Environmental stewardship isn't a unit at Chiaravalle — it's a disposition we cultivate over years. Sometimes that looks like prairie restoration or ecological fieldwork. Sometimes it looks like this:

Innovate

Education evolving thoughtfully

Faculty across program levels worked together on curriculum alignment, assessment, and instructional continuity, ensuring that what students experience in one classroom connects meaningfully to what comes next. At Chiaravalle, we know that intellectual achievement takes many forms.

Our teachers piloted expanded Montessori-aligned math assessments to better inform instruction and collaborated across Lower and Upper Elementary to design a shared transition assessment supporting students as they move between program levels. Early Childhood and Kindergarten faculty also continued Writer’s Workshop coaching work to strengthen writing instruction and differentiation.

Digital Citizenship instruction began in Upper Elementary and expanded into Middle School this year using the Common Sense Media curriculum as a foundation, while faculty engaged in ongoing conversations about artificial intelligence. Students explored questions of online safety, media literacy, respectful communication, screen habits, and digital footprints. Upper Elementary students analyzed clickbait and sensationalism, debated the benefits and risks of artificial intelligence, created a Community Meeting skit on protecting personally identifiable information (PII). In Middle School, this work extended into a broader inquiry: what does healthy, responsible technology use actually look like for adolescents?

Guest authors and speakers enriched learning for Elementary and Middle School students.

The school also strengthened connections between Montessori practice and current learning research through partnerships and professional learning opportunities, including guest speakers such as Dr. Elizabeth Wakefield of Loyola University, who explored movement and learning, and experts from the Virginia Frank Child Development Center, who focused on the neurodevelopmental needs of Early Childhood students. Faculty also continued work in Universal Design for Learning, executive functioning development, and refinement of the Belonging and Peace Education curriculum through a Montessori lens.

Nurture

Human relationships and dignity

Rooted in Montessori peace education, Chiaravalle continued to strengthen a culture where belonging and inclusion work are woven into daily classroom life, community traditions, and the rhythms of daily school life.

Community groups and cultural celebrations, like Cultural Fest, celebrate the specificity of particular traditions, foods, and stories that make each family who they are, building deeper relationships across the school community. 

Parent education expanded to include dialogue on race, identity, media literacy, and raising multiracial children, extending learning beyond the classroom door. Relationship-centered student support remained a priority across program levels. Friendship groups, relationship mapping, mentorship opportunities, and cross-age experiences helped foster empathy, leadership, and connection throughout the community.

Invest

Sustaining our institution to support our work

Ensuring Chiaravalle’s long-term vitality requires both careful stewardship and a willingness to adapt. Throughout the year, school leadership and the Board focused on strengthening enrollment, aligning resources with student needs, and making strategic investments that support the school's mission for future generations. Chiaravalle is committed to financial transparency: the school is independently audited annually, and year-end financial statements, 990s, and our Annual Report are available to parents and faculty on our website. This spring, the school finalized several intentional program and enrollment adjustments designed to support healthy classroom communities and preserve long-term program vitality. Beginning in 2026–27, Chiaravalle will expand Toddler programming with a second Toddler 1 (16-24 months) classroom. Early Childhood will return to a five-classroom model aligned with pre-pandemic enrollment and space utilization. Lower Elementary will transition to two robust homerooms designed to strengthen academic and social cohorts.  The Board Finance Committee also continued strengthening transparent financial reporting practices to provide accessible, high-level visibility into the school’s financial stewardship and long-term planning.

The Chiaravalle community demonstrated extraordinary generosity throughout the school’s 60th anniversary year.

At the 60th Anniversary Gala, the school also advanced its three-year 60th Anniversary Campaign for Access & Innovation, which supports socioeconomic accessibility and music programming. Throughout the evening, pride in the community Chiaravalle has built over six decades and confidence in the students who will carry its mission forward in the years ahead were evident. As Head of School Robyn McCloud-Springer reflected in our 60th Anniversary Gala video, “When we put all of our intentions and our energy together, beautiful things happen. And, if there's one thing I’ve learned about Chiaravalle, it's that beautiful things happen here.”

One memorable moment unfolded as twenty-two graduates stood before more than 200 family members, friends, faculty, and alumni and reflected honestly on their journeys: their successes, setbacks, growth, and hopes for the future. Together, their speeches offered perhaps the clearest expression of Chiaravalle’s mission in action. As our closing graduate speaker noted:

Chiaravalle didn't just educate us. It carved us into something worth becoming. And now — it’s time to show the world.

Looking Ahead

Chiaravalle enters its next chapter the same way it began: with students at the center, and a community committed to growing alongside them. Thank you for partnering with us in your child's education. Your trust, presence, and participation help make Chiaravalle a place where students are known, challenged, supported, and prepared to contribute meaningfully to the world around them. With gratitude, Robyn McCloud-Springer, Head of School & Elizabeth Al-Dajani, President, Chiaravalle Board of Trustees