The Terra Schools

We moved our son 4 years ago from Willow Creek to Terra Marin School, we love it there.

Terra Marin is worth writing a review for. The staff of teachers are caring and genuine. The care and attention they give each student and their needs by far exceeds any of our expectations. Wendy and her staff will do their best to accommodate each student's learning profile and needs. This is one of those schools a parent can drop off their kids and feel at ease knowing they're being held, understood and heard.

Great school. Our daughter started spanish immersion program here, last summer. Indoor outdoor program. She enjoys her day here. The teachers Emili and Maria are great. The principal or owner, Wendy is very involved. Every time I see her I get a very positive vibe. She will make this school very successful and popular I believe. Rest of the staff has been very good also. No complaints. I would highly recommend.

This is the School I wish had existed when I was in elementary school. Our daughter loves Terra Marin. She enjoys going to school, learning to read and write, math, science and building things in class.

I thought I was dreaming when I heard about a school that models our values of kindness and curiosity, and combines outdoor learning with learning different languages. At Terra Marin, I do not need to enroll my child in extracurricular classes to give her exposure to Music, the Arts or foreign languages. These are part of the curriculum!

On top of a comprehensive curriculum, Terra Marin has fabulous teachers who care about the children in their care. She loves her teacher Riva, loves her schoolmates, loves Earth Education with Alex, Outdoor Education, Theater class with Aiden, Art with Jasmine, Music with Kat and Spanish class with Israel. My daughter came to Terra Marin worried about not being able to read, probably as a result of me trying to teach her during the pandemic. Well, no more. She is sounding out words and learning to write without fear of failure.

As parents that work full time, aftercare is an important consideration for us as well. She loves to stay in aftercare with the preschoolers and Preschool teachers, Emili, Maria, Jose and Patricia. The only thing she doesn't love is Mandarin, but she will thank me later. ;)

In addition to the wonderful curriculum and teachers, every year they put on community events like the Lunar New Year Festival and a full length play with the school from K-8th grade. It has been incredible to have our Kindergartner be a part of these whole school productions. The kids support each other from K-8th grade, and learn to prepare and perform on a given day.

I have been very impressed with the vision that Wendy has for Terra Marin and the level of execution to that vision and values. As part of our process on deciding where to send our daughter, we visited several other independent schools and our local public school. It was easy to see that most schools claim to value different learning styles, kindness and curiosity. With careful examination, i found those to be claims, rather than the reality of the schools.

At Terra Marin, the parents teachers and students have formed and supportive community and I am grateful that my daughter gets to be a part of it. I can tell that everyone that works at the school is valued and that they are a part of this mission. The Administrators, Johanna and Rebecca, really care about the school and the kids. The bus drivers, Mel and Michael, take pride in keeping our kids safe on their way to and from O School and Earth Ed. The teachers of the upper grades: Pippa, Andy, Izzy, Chloe, Alex, Lesley, Mike and Aiden are incredible. I look forward to my kid being in each of their classes, even though my child and Riva made a pact that she would stay in Riva's class forever!

I really want to thank Wendy and Shauna for being the incredible forces behind this community. I am grateful they decided to open this school in my town and that we are a part of the community. For our family, Terra Marin provides a safe and healthy environment for our child to grow and learn.

Our 3 daughters have attended Terra Marin for 5 years. It has been a life-changing experience for them. The teachers are an absolutely incredible group; they are so attentive and supportive. The academics are just right - our daughters' progress is measured, and they are met academically at their just-right level. The outdoor time has increased our children's confidence; and they often surprise us with their practical outdoorsmanship knowledge and skills. We feel beyond fortunate to be a part of the warm, engaging community.

We are so happy to be part of Terra Marin. They are a top notch school. My boys received a warm welcome by their peers and teachers and felt a sense of belonging and acceptance from day one. This school lets students follow their passion and go as far as they want academically. I love their outdoor earth science program. Not only is it wonderful for them to bond and learn more about their natural world, it also is an excellent break from classroom learning. Terra Marin's faculty really care about their students and pay attention to their students on an emotional and academic level. I highly recommend this school, they are a jewel!

Our 1st grade daughter and preschool-aged daughter both started at Terra Marin 2 months ago.

When we toured, we were amazed by the super friendly teachers and administrators, the school's promise of differentiated learning by ability (in math and reading, students are grouped by ability level rather than grade), the strong social-emotional component, and of course the lure of a full day per week in nature. We were wondering, "What's the catch?"

Two months in, our high expectations have been blown out of the water. Our daughters are happier than they have ever been. They were immediately assessed are are being taught at their exact level in each subject. They are having so much fun making robots, building rafts for the classroom hamster, and analyzing fairytales that I don't think they even realize they are learning. They come home and teach me social-emotional concepts that are profound to me and make me want to be better.

We are Terra Marin lifers!

Terra Marin School is a new private school located in Mill Valley CA. We joined the community this past fall (son started 1st grade) and could not be more grateful for the school and larger community.

The teachers/staff are beyond thoughtful, supportive and innovative. The schools pedagogy and values are refreshing and innovative even for this progressive area of the country (SF Bay Area). The school curriculum is well balanced in servicing the "whole child". The school size allows a flexible and nimble learning approach that is not found in any other type of school.

Between the outdoor experientially based learning opportunities and commitment to challenging the students at their academic needs it really is an idyllic learning community.

We are very appreciative of the whole Terra Marin community (staff, faculty and students).

We began at Terra Marin with their outdoor education camps. We were SO impressed with the knowledge that my kids were learning - both language AND ecological! We then started there with a 2nd grader and TK (mandarin immersion). Honestly, I couldn't imagine a better place for both of my kids. My older has struggled in public education and with tremendous support from his teacher and ALL levels of the administration, he's absolutely thriving at Terra Marin. My younger is also having a very special experience (she's literally become fluent in Chinese!!!) -and both kids LOVE having outdoor education two days/week. My husband and I laugh sometimes at how awesome their lives are! Wouldn't you love to be bussed to incredible locations all over Marin county - Lake Lagunitas, Tennessee Valley, Muir Beach and a host of Mt. Tam sites!!?? Another aspect that is unique and special about Terra Marin is the yearly school musical. I was involved with theatre my entire childhood and I can honestly say it supported my growth and development in countless way (building confidence, creativity, learning how to problem solve, working in teams etc). This past weekend, we all joined a bunch of other families and painted the sets as they prepare for performances next month. The sense of community is SO strong! Our family feels so grateful to have found this incredible school.

Terra Marin has been wonderful for our family. Our son has attended since day one, attracted by the vision the school had for an integrated academic and outdoor education program with language learning. Every year the school added more: theater teachers- a big school musical! social emotional learning specialist, and extra teachers so all the kids can learn math at the same time and be in a class that fits their level. So a first grader who is doing 4th grade math can be in that class. Although my kid isn't super advanced in math, by being in classes with a range of ages he has learned that it is NORMAL for kids to be diverse. This means that kids don't do the competition/shame thing. My kid learned to read right on the same schedule as his older brother (who graduated from a top college with a degree in philosophy)- both of them didn't read till 8. In another school my kid would have felt badly about himself. He didn't.

The outdoor education is linked statically with higher test scores and this doesn't surprise me because I've seen how it does something far beyond classroom learning. In a classroom only one kind of attention is useful. Focused, narrow attention. The ability to look at the board and listen to the teacher and tune out the windows and the other kids. In outdoor education the super fun games are teaching the kids increase a broader range of attention skills. They scan the filled and trees looking for which kid has the squirt bottle, they plan a strategy to catch that kid, they focus on plants to identify the ones that they need to win the game. They are learning to switch their attention from small, to scan, to internal thought and back again. Think about driving- it takes a lot of different forms of attention. Outdoor education does that.

TM has diversity in a lot of ways that most private schools don't have- more class diversity, more nuerodiversity. We are an LGBTQ family and we are not the only one.

Because of outdoor education and TM leadership, the pandemic didn't close us down. We were open from June 2020 onward. We shifted to small pods. We stayed outdoors. We tested 3x a week the entire school and staff. Considering that there are still many variants to go (Covid has only so many amino acid combinations it can make so there are a finite amount of variants) I am relieved my kid is in a school that can rise to the occasion as we don't know if another set of lock downs or some other fresh hell might happen.

I've also appreciated the leadership's commitment to high quality teachers. Hiring has been consistently impressive. And, although this sounds cold, I am thrilled that leadership is willing to let go of teachers. In the first year of the pandemic a new teacher, who looked great on paper, was my sons teacher and by thanksgiving it was clear to me it wasn't working- nothing criminal, nothing horrible, just not a fit. By January my sons class was integrated into another class with a fabulous teacher and the other teacher moved on. I really appreciated the commitment to the kids.

The growing pains for the school have been about organization and that has been annoying to parents. It didn't make it worse for the kids. Every year has improved.