Sugar Land - Missouri City Edition | March 2022

BUSINESS TheWalden School Sugar Land private school celebrates 20 years of pre-K, kindergarten education A s Mike McGilvray peered down at a photo taken of him alongside several of his pre-K BY HUNTER MARROW

your child that individual attention,” Mike said. Through these smaller ratios, The Walden School looks to provide individualized instruction. “Our kindergarten oers full lan- guage and phonics,” he said. “Most schools typically do one or the other.” Whereas some students learn better through phonics, which focuses on reading and writing through the relationship between sounds, other students may prefer whole-language instruction, which emphasizes iden- tifying words using literary context without focusing on sounds. It is an example of the branching

and kindergarten students during a Saturday baseball event, the message he wanted to share about his school was clear: It is all about the kids. Mike and his wife, Paula McGilvray, a kindergarten teacher, have run The Walden School, a family-run endeavor bringing together 20 stamembers with enrollment that hovers around 135, since 1993. Previously oering classes and camps on SouthWilcrest Drive, in Houston, the school has operated out of Sugar Land since 2002. Mike is early childhood education teachers that focuses on high-quality edu- cational services, according to its website. Across its curriculum, The Walden School maintains a low stu- dent-teacher ratio, Mike said. Ratios vary among the individual classrooms, but the school keeps a 5-1 or 6-1 student-teacher ratio for its 2-year-old students, 7-1 for its 3-year-olds, and 8-1 for 4-year-olds. “The main thing we wanted was to have small ratios in the classroom so that teachers could be able to give accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, a nonprot associa- tion representing

The Walden School co-owner Paula McGilvray teaches a group of students ahead of Valentine’s Day. (Photos by Hunter Marrow/Community Impact Newspaper)

The Walden School oers a host of after-school programs, such as: EXTRACURRICULAR PROGRAMMING

Kindergarten and rst grade grads summer camp

approach to pre-K and kindergarten learning the school provides, Mike said. The school also oers summer camp every year for kindergarten

“MYGOAL IS TOHAVE CHILDREN FEEL GOOD ABOUT THEMSELVES.” MIKE MCGILVRAY, COOWNER OF THE WALDEN SCHOOL

Baseball

Ballet and tap

Gymnastics

and rst-grade graduates. The camp is broken into weekly themes, and includes swimming, eld trips and arts and crafts. The school also oers after-school programs, such as soccer, baseball, taekwondo, ballet and tap. After-school programming has always been a focus, hearkening back to Mike’s early days in pre-K education in the 1970s and 1980s. “My goal is to have children feel good about themselves,” Mike said. “If you feel good about yourself, you’ll be successful.”

Computers

Music lessons

Mike and Paula McGilvray have run The Walden School since the early 1990s.

Field trips

TheWalden School 16103 Lexington Blvd., Ste. A, Sugar Land 281-980-0022 www.thewaldenschool.com Hours: Mon.-Fri. 6:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m.

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SUGAR LAND MISSOURI CITY EDITION • MARCH 2022