Philosophy

The cooperative model provides parents the opportunity to be actively involved in their young child's preschool experience. Parents share responsibility for running all aspects of the preschool. These include monthly meetings, weekly jobs, committee work, maintenance hours, and fundraising.

A member of each family works one morning a week as a teacher along with the director and five other parents. Parents gain an understanding of child development, experience in working with children of different ages, and close relationships with their children's peers. Parent education is integrated daily and at monthly meetings. We pull from Positive Discipline, Bev Bos, the works of Gessell, Ilg, and Ames, and an understanding of individual temperament to support our parenting and school philosophy. This has helped the Peter Pan community work well with children of many temperaments and backgrounds, including children with special needs.

Children benefit from the cooperative model because of the deep interconnectedness they experience between family, education, and community. At Peter Pan we focus on individual growth and social development and use our experiences as an opportunity to learn from one another and our environment.