Park’s volunteer tour guides for prospective families share their favorite places to show on their tours.
If you wander Park’s halls mid-morning from about October through February, you may encounter a volunteer tour guide quietly observing a classroom with prospective parents in tow, or enthusiastically extolling the merits of the maker space or woodshop as they head into the stairwell.
During the 2023-2024 admission season, 23 parent or guardian volunteers gave almost 300 tours for potential new Lower Division families at Park. (Families interested in applying to the Upper Division have student tour guides.)
With about 45 minutes allocated for each tour, our guides warmly welcome families in the upper lobby, offer them a cup of coffee, and then embark on a journey to showcase the unique experiences of our Lower Division students at Park. They are ready to answer questions from a community member’s perspective, providing personalized insight into our school.
Being a tour guide doesn’t require memorizing every fact about the school (anything we don’t know is easily answered by our incredible admissions team!). But it has taught each of us more about the school, given us windows into our children’s experiences, and reminded us what we love about Park. Plus, there’s a cheat sheet of facts given to every tour guide during orientation!
Here are some of our Tour Guides’ favorite spots in the school to show families and how the places and objects in our school reflect things we value and appreciate at Park.
Cyd – Visual Math
I love showing off any examples of visual math. Upper Division often has great ones, and I enjoy spotting the Lower Division body tracings for the measuring unit, or the shapes and characters created on graph paper to show understanding of area and perimeter. Many parents are curious about STEM fundamentals, and all the visual math is a great way to show how Math can be accessible and interesting at all levels. I also love showing off our creative spaces (studios/kilns/etc), and the library! I love how our librarians curate early reading collections for our youngest who are learning to navigate as well as curating multiple themed collections at the library entry and lower level.
Amanda – Blandings Turtle Displays and Student Photos
My favorite two sites are: one, the photo wall, where we get to talk about the diversity of Park’s families across every demographic register and our commitment to equity through our financial aid policies and our focus on inclusion and belonging, and two, the turtle wall across from Ms. Armour’s classroom, where we get to highlight Park’s goal of creating learners and doers and changemakers, the interdisciplinary and multi-modal way students engage with science at Park (math, drawing, etc.), and just how fun and creative our STEAM curriculum is.
Tamy-Feé – The STEAM Wing
I love showing people the STEAM wing, especially the lower-division science classrooms. I love that we have science that is “right-sized” for our kids’ small, wiggly bodies and curious minds. It’s beautiful because you always think about chem labs being too dangerous for five-year-olds, but they’re doing biology, chemistry, and physics and all the things they’ll do again in a deeper way in 4th, 6th, or 7th grade. They’re building a strong foundation of intellectual curiosity, and even though they don’t necessarily know how to write a science report they create representations of science reports by drawing out what they’re observing! Whether it is drawing a larva, chrysalis, and then butterfly or sketching out the tallest Hot Wheels track; they are using art to record their scientific findings.
Cheryl – The Library
I love bringing families into Park’s Library, and introducing them to our phenomenal Library Team! The Library is my favorite place on campus and always reminds me why I love this school. Every Park child spends time in the library each year they are a student, so collectively, our Library Team gets to know all of our kids and see them grow from Day One. And, because they know our students so well, they create beautiful book displays and bulletin boards that are windows and mirrors for our kids, reflecting the identities and experiences of Park families. I like to point out featured books that address social justice themes, so that potential families know that equity and inclusion are important values in our community.
Kelly – Anywhere There’s Staffulty
A highlight of being a tour guide is getting to see little Park moments I wouldn’t have otherwise. I’ve seen a lower-division teacher encouraging students to applaud a classmate for trying a math problem in front of the group. I’ve heard librarians problem-solving a way to say “yes” to a student’s request to borrow technology that would have been easier to refuse. I’ve seen little moments of kindness and support between students in hallways, and a member of the admin team comforting a student on their way to the nurse’s office. I’ve seen faculty and staff at Park in action, supporting students and each other, in dozens of such anecdotal ways. I always leave Park after a tour feeling a bit of a glow, feeling so lucky that my kids are learning in such a great environment from teachers who are so dedicated, intelligent, and kind. We have amazing learning spaces, but it’s the people in them that make Park great.
Interested in being a tour guide next year? We would love for you to join us! E-mail Ashley Custodio and let her know you might be interested in the Fall!
