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MEET WENDY XA, HEAD OF SCHOOL AT TERRA SCHOOLS

April 14, 2022

An interview from The Crier

How did you start your career in education?

Thank you, Celeste, for inviting me to share my thoughts with your community of dedicated parents. It is an honor and privilege to be here. 

Although my academic training was in neuroscience and I taught calculus and organic chemistry, I actually started pursuing early education as a parent. As my two daughters grew from infancy through preschool, I realized that the kind of school I envisioned for my oldest didn't match the places we were looking at. I wanted to send her to a place where she could develop not only her pre-academic but also her social-emotional intelligence, where there was a community of students and teachers equipped to facilitate this development. That vision was the seed for Presidio Knolls, a Mandarin immersion school I established in 2004 in San Francisco. It was incredible to watch the school become everything I envisioned, yet through my experiences working with hundreds of students and teachers, I started to envision creating something even better for my second daughter. I moved to Marin to create Terra Marin School.
 
Tell me about Terra Marin’s Social Emotional Learning. 
We created Terra Marin to help kids navigate the challenges of their world with empathy, compassion, and grit. Our teachers focus on strengthening self-regulation and building social-emotional intelligence in one-to-one learning opportunities. With our SEL program, children are happier, kinder, and listen better. We fold it into the entire curriculum almost more rigorously than our academics--we have a dedicated counselor who coaches teachers on how to best serve our individual students. It works! When students grow their social-emotional skills, their academic skills grow tremendously as well.  
 
Tell me about the outdoor program.
We call it Earth Education! Students spend at least one full day outdoors each week. They participate in all kinds of activities: they identify which plants heal or harm, they make ointment to reduce the pain of bee stings, they learn which plants are toxic to the skin and how to treat symptoms, and so much more.
 
They also have lots of fun with one another playing survival games like Camouflage, Skunk Spray, and Troll Bridge. Every Earth Ed class includes time for Sit Spot, a Native American form of meditation that encourages the kids to find a spot in nature where they feel at peace. They learn to walk quietly, follow animal tracks and make observations about the world around them.
 
These acute awareness skills help students form a stronger relationship with their environment. They feel like a part of nature, and they understand the balance of life processes that we are all a part of. They build their endurance over six hours each week, and they come back to school more alert, more curious about their world, and more excited to learn in innovative ways.


 
What are the benefits of language immersion?
Children who are exposed to multiple languages at an early age demonstrate better empathy skills in the long run. A Cornell University Study showed that multilingual children understand others’ perspectives much earlier than monolingual children. Over time, they build higher reading comprehension and interpretation capabilities. Not to mention that language is an extremely useful skill in its own right! Children are able to communicate with a wider range of people, which enriches their understanding of the world. Read more about language immersion.


 
What’s next for Terra Schools?
We’re launching a Spanish Immersion Forest Preschool this fall!  
 
Both Terra Marin students and Terra Mandarin Preschoolers spend one day outdoors each week. This fall we’re starting Terra Spanish Preschool, a Spanish Immersion Forest Preschool that spends three full days in the woods each week. The children will explore, learn, and grow in some of the most interesting and unique locations in Marin, including China Camp, Blackie’s Pasture, Mt. Tam, Lake Lagunitas and Roy's Redwoods. Along with the full Spanish program, which will introduce children to different Spanish accents (Spanish from Spain as well as from Mexico and other South American countries), the preschool will offer robust nature education, art, and even outdoor naptime! 

Interested families can try out the program this summer at our Spanish Immersion Earth Discovery Camp.

This is a paid advertorial for SMMC.