September 28, 2026

Important Dates…

Tuesday, September 29-Thursday, October 1: Class Photos. Please see detailed schedule below.

Thursday, October 1: Pumpkin and Raffle Ticket Sales for Autumn at Overfield begin.

Thursday, October 1: Dine to Donate, 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at Troy Old Scratch.

Friday, October 16: School CLOSED for Teacher Professional Development/Conference Preparation.

Saturday, October 17: Autumn at Overfield. Games and food will be available from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Pumpkin Glow walk will be open from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Monday, October 19-Friday, October 23: Visiting artist, Jake Lockwood of Muse Machine, at Overfield for week-long residency; celebration of the residency will be on Friday evening.

Letter from Leadership

Research is at the heart of our educational philosophy here at Overfield. We believe that children are born researching their world, using all of their senses to investigate and construct knowledge. A disposition toward research as an everyday practice for both children and adults is a foundational way of being, and is also multi-faceted. It pushes us to be in a state of awareness. It frames us as lifelong learners, always discovering more about our world–searching and re-searching the ways in which life continuously changes, taking note of the complexity and wonder of existence. It orients us toward meaning-making; taking the observations we have, communicating and comparing those with others’ insights, and then contextualizing these ideas to make sense of the “why” of our world.

This research is made concrete through the process of documentation. We make learning visible every day in the classroom through the act of recording its traces: using transcriptions, photos, and examples of material work to take the sometimes ephemeral process of learning and make it perceivable and shareable. Through this dialectic of research–through our capturing of the traces of this process, and through our shared dialogue about both the process and products of learning–we are able to become both better learners and better teachers.

This is an intentional choice. It consciously puts learning and thinking about learning at the heart of our educational practice, prioritizing both cognition and metacognition for children and teachers alike. This is formalized through many internal processes here at Overfield, including bi-weekly team meetings for each classroom, where we examine the documentation we have gathered; through monthly full faculty meetings we call Reggio Study Group; through the act of writing daily journals to reflect on and communicate with our families about that process; through the reflective evaluation process that guides professional development for staff; through the act of generating documentation on our walls that more closely analyzes and interprets the what of the learning, the why of the learning, and the how of the learning.

Another way that we ensure that this is central to our praxis is by declaring an annual Area of Research. This Area of Research, which is decided on as a faculty, is a way for us to know where to focus, how to organize ourselves, an impetus to reflect together as researchers around a specific topic, and to determine ways to let others know what we have learned. This year our Area of Research is focused on conversation. We have joined with other educators across Ohio who are also inspired by the Reggio Emilia philosophy, and who also have monthly Reggio Study Group meetings, to take on a common Area of Research through the umbrella of the study group consortium we are all a part of which is called Ohio Voices for Learning. Ohio Voices for Learning (OVL) is a group our teachers have been a part of since its inception in the early 2000s. There are roughly 15-20 Study Groups across the state during any given year, made up of teachers from private and public schools, librarians, museum educators, artists, and many others–all who are drawn together by a shared pedagogy. I have personally been a part of the group OVL since joining the staff of Overfield in 2002, and have served on the Executive Committee as the Chair, Past Chair, Technology Chair, as a Member at Large, and now as Secretary for the organization; Erin Johnston, our Finance Lead, is currently the Treasurer; Elizabeth Perry, our Atelierista, is an at-large member; and Julie Biddle, one of our Overfield Board of Trustees members, is the Co-Chair. All of our teachers are also members of OVL. As OVL members, we help host professional development initiatives, support Study Groups across the state, and advocate for meaningful, context based learning in schools–supporting research as a central and essential part of education.

As I have mentioned previously, this year OVL is collaborating with the North American Reggio Emilia Alliance (NAREA) to host an exhibit from Reggio Children titled “Mosaic of Marks, Words, Material.” This exhibit will be at the Springfield Museum of Art from January through May of 2027. We will also be collaborating to host the NAREA Winter Conference March 18th-20th in Springfield, which brings hundreds of educators together to think, dialogue, create, and learn. There are educators from Reggio who come to present and facilitate learning, and we engage in processes with them to support learners who come from all over the United States and other areas of the world. This is a big undertaking, and we at Overfield are right at the heart of making this possible! Thank you all for being understanding about our calendar change to better accomplish this, and for supporting our teacher’s learning. We will keep you abreast of ways you can assist us–as we host this exhibit, the conference, and even bring some of these participants to tour our school–as we get closer to March! We have a lot to be proud of here at Overfield, and we can’t wait to show all of the amazing learning that happens in Ohio!

Beth Poronsky – Program Lead