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School Summary
Located in downtown Springfield, Virginia, Garfield was built in 1952 and has been renovated twice. Our school embraces a richly diverse cultural population and is dedicated to providing a high quality learning environment for all. Each child at Garfield is given the opportunity to meet success and prepare for the future. Given time and appropriate instruction, all children can learn, but it takes a whole community to make a significant impact on the lives of children.
At Garfield, parents, teachers, community members, and the students themselves work together to create a unique educational environment. Emphasis is placed on developing literacy, participating in hands-on experiences, increasing character education, developing critical-thinking skills, working cooperatively, and practicing cultural sensitivity. Indeed, at Garfield, we celebrate our community of independent and caring life long learners!
Garfield has an active PTA, promoting a close relationship between home and school. Volunteers are an active and integral part of our program, supporting classroom teachers, the cafeteria, and the teacher workroom; serving as field trip chaperons; sponsoring Reflections; and hosting teacher events.
Parental involvement at Garfield benefits the school experience of our students, providing additional support and enrichment in various ways. The reading and math buddies programs focus on the use of community volunteers who help strengthen students’ reading fluency skills and math skills. Our trained volunteers work with individual students or student pairs in grades K-6.
Garfield is fortunate to have multiple business partners that help with schoolwide events, provide food for school events, and display student artwork. Artwork is also displayed at the Springfield Post Office and the Richard Byrd Library. We also work with a variety of faith-based organizations to support the needs of our students and families.
Three wireless laptop carts help students access technology while they learn core subjects. Each grade-level has access to a Smartboard and a digital camera to enhance instruction. Each class at Garfield uses Interactive Notebooks as a learning tool. The notebooks provide students a means of recording new learning while making connections, responding, and interacting with concepts through pictures and words.
Garfield is proud to be a Responsive Classroom school, ensuring that academic and social learning occur simultaneously. The Responsive Classroom approach includes seven basic principles which are:
1. The social curriculum is as important as the academic curriculum.
2. How children learn is as important as what they learn: process and content go hand in hand.
3. The greatest cognitive growth occurs through social interaction.
4. There is a set of social skills children need in order to be successful academically and socially: cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-control.
5. Knowing the children we teach—individually, culturally, and developmentally—is as important as knowing the content we teach.
6. Knowing the families of the children we teach and working with them as partners is essential to children’s education.
7. How the adults at school work together is an important as individual competence: Lasting change begins with the adult community.
Parents can learn more about Responsive Classroom by attending our Morning Meetings which occur daily in every classroom K-6.
Many interesting after-school clubs are offered, including: Yarn Club, Fitness and Running Club, Bridge Club, Game Club, P.E. Club, and a number of afternoon specials for students occur regularly throughout the school year. These clubs are funded with Safe and Drug-Free grants and PTA funds.
Last Updated: 2007-07-20
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