Senator’s Visit to Cowles Blends Education and Agriculture
U.S. Senator Tom Harkin spent part of a Friday afternoon with students at Cowles Montessori School.
Maybe U.S. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) got more than he scheduled for when he visited Cowles Montessori Friday afternoon, maybe not.
He was officially there to get an up close look at all the ways Cowles used the Farm-to School Grant the school received from the Iowa Department of Agriculture, and there were certainly many of those on display. But he also got the full tour of Iowa’s only public Montessori school, from Pre-K through 8th grade, and he could be forgiven if his head was spinning by the time he had to leave ninety minutes later. On the other hand, Senator Harkin – who chairs the congressional committee that oversees education policy – probably wasn’t surprised by the curricular whirlwind that took him all the way from homegrown popcorn and homemade salsa to quadratic formulae, deforestation and human anatomy without ever leaving the one building. After all, as he told his tour guides, his own kids had the Montessori experience in their early grades and he’s a big believer.
Award-winning teacher Heather Anderson’s classroom of first through third graders wowed Senator Harkin with their reports on the school’s produce and butterfly gardens and the school’s very own prairie where they like to take their recess (shades of Laura Ingalls Wilder). He even got comfortable on a first grader-sized chair while his hosts regaled him with enthusiastic summaries of their work. They had a lot to say about growing things. The old playground axiom that it “takes one to know one” came to mind.
Upstairs in the 4th-6th room he sat in on a one-on-one between teacher Stacey Jones and a student cracking the nuts of three-digit square roots while the rest of the class busied themselves with independent work, many of them adorned with seasonal caps that clashed with their activities, making them look like scholarly elves.
Then it was on to Edward Moody’s cohort of 6th-8th graders. Their space might best be characterized as a lab or a think tank. It has that sort of vibe to it. When Senator Harkin remarked on the students’ work with quadratics Moody said, “If they can do it we let them do it,” an explanation much simpler than the material scrawled on his whiteboard.
One of the tour guides, along with Cowles Principal Greg Grylls, was 7th grader Chloe O’Connor, a true lifer at Cowles. “I’ve been coming here since daycare when I was a couple months old,” she told Senator Harkin. She’ll have to leave after 8th grade and move on, even though the place looks and feels fully equipped with everything anybody could need, including Millie, the therapy dog, who was part of the welcoming delegation upon Senator Harkin’s arrival (she’s a story in herself, one for another time).
It’s a regular beehive here, someone thought, which begged the question of whether or not Cowles actually has one of its own. “No,” said Chloe, “but Mrs. Anderson does at home.”
After making the rounds a la the flight of a bumblebee, the senatorial entourage made its last stop in the Pre-K/Kindergarten room of Mary Jean Annexstad where the ambiance downshifted from practically collegiate to soothing and meditative.
Senator Harkin didn’t say so but he might have been wishing by then that his busy schedule had room in it for a quick nap.
