Art is no poor stepchild in the curriculum at The Greenhouse School, and it shows. The Pentel Awards came last week and GHS wound up getting six of them, including two Special Gold Awards-the school’s best haul in years. For those who don’t know, art supply company Pentel has a juried international children’s art exhibit for which GHS students have competed for several years. Pentel receives over 200,000 entries worldwide. Only four Special Gold Awards are distributed in all of the US. This year, no fewer than two Special Golds were taken by young artists at GHS: Seven-year-old Max Gieg and eight year old Funmi Olatilu.

The school was founded in 1983 by Patricia Jennings-Welch, a lifelong leader and devotee of education, beginning with her own eight children. The Founder’s vision draws from an eclectic mix of Piaget, Montessori, Dewey, Vygotsky, Bruner, Gardner and her own philosophies, allowing that each would have grown and changed given infinite lifespan and accepting none as the holder of absolute truth.