Welcome to Fieldston Lower!

George Burns
Principal, Fieldston Lower

Like all children, students at Fieldston Lower were born curious, and they are natural learners who are intensely interested in the world around them. They are social beings who want and need close relationships with other children and with the adults in their lives. They are full of energy and excitement as they grapple with the intellectual, emotional and physical challenges of being a growing and developing person. They have, of course, a great deal to learn, and home and school are the places where they do most of their learning.

At Fieldston Lower we work to create an environment where the complex dimensions of children's lives are understood and respected, and where a rich diversity of people, ideas, and experiences is embraced. The respect starts with the simple recognition of each child as an individual. Children come to school with different strengths and weaknesses, interests and fears, joys and disappointments, and an enormous range of experiences. Our classrooms are places where all these differences can be accepted, appreciated, and valued as each individual learns how to be a responsible and contributing member of the group.

Children, particularly young children, learn best by engaging in active learning experiences. By working with concrete materials in the classroom and in the world around them, our students are able to build their own knowledge using the teacher's help in focusing and organizing their thinking. These concrete experiences help children to develop age-appropriate models of the world, which will continue to be refined and expanded as children move towards abstract thinking in the older grades.

Located in the greenest part of New York City, Fieldston Lower’s 320 students enjoy the benefits of a small and comfortable campus environment only a 15-minute drive from the upper west side of Manhattan. They also take enormous pleasure in a curriculum that is designed to engage all aspects of their development, from their intellectual, creative, and artistic sides, to their physical, emotional and social sides. Our very dedicated teachers make great use of the outdoor campus environment as well as the resources of the greater New York area to bring our students out into the world and to bring the world back inside the school. Our goal is to create a community of learners who reflect the wide diversity of the world we live in and who develop the skills they need to work and live together both at school and in their lives outside of school.

We hope this virtual view of our school will give you a strong sense of what Fieldston Lower is all about, and we certainly hope you will come visit. After all, learning starts with first-hand experience.

George Burns

Principal