The original Cottonwood School can be found in eastern Montana, 20 miles from the closest town of Ismay.  Although no longer an active school, the building still stands isolated on the plain.  It is the one room schoolhouse where Sara’s grandmother taught in the 1930s.  

Following in her grandmother’s footsteps, Sara founded a preschool co op in her Brooklyn living room in 2014.  The living room school became a laboratory for Chris’s architectural thesis: The Walking School: A Peripatetic Model for Education.

A mixed-age learning environment rooted in curiosity, discovery and play attracted a crowd and Sara went on to partner with New York City’s Agile Learning Center to develop and pilot an early learning environment using adapted agile tools.  The pilot was a success and the Brooklyn micro-school found a permanent home and doubled in size two consecutive years.

Having aligned their passions in education, architecture, and community building Sara and Chris founded Montana’s first Agile Learning Center and Helena’s first progressive independent school for students of all ages. Learners and staff from Montana visited New York City and learners and staff from New York visited Montana. Cottonwood is constantly evolving and with the needs of the community and with that evolution comes change. In 2024 closed the doors to its full-time school in Montana. Partnerships with other micro-schools around the country through virtual and in-person connection, residency programs, wellness offerings became the focus of Cottonwood’s team with Brooklyn as the main hub of activity.

Today, more than a decade after Cottonwood began as a tiny school in a Brooklyn living room, we are a 501c3 non-profit centering our work around Education, Arts, and Wellness. To be continued…