K-12 Education

"Excellence, Education, Ethics, and Ecology", is The Willow School’s mantra. A small, independent coeducational day school for students in kindergarten through eighth grade, The Willow School is committed to combining academic excellence and the joy of learning with experiencing the wonder of the natural world. It's campus is nestled on a 34-acre wooded site in rural New Jersey countryside, and the building and its surroundings are an integral feature in school’s curriculum. Children at The Willow School study the connections between mathematics, literature, history, and the natural world; observing ecosystem patterns and cycles; and sustaining a thriving natural environment.

To accommodate a growing community and increasing student body, the Nazareth Area School District set out to develop a new middle school through a decidedly holistic integrative approach. Chosen for optimum community impact, the new facility’s location creates a “campus” relationship with the existing adjacent high school allowing convenient community access to both schools’ resources and reduces bus traffic.

This centrally located, community-based, high performance K-5 school enhances and embodies curriculum as a “living textbook” for its 550 students and the community. A number of unique outdoor elements such as a rooftop science lab and an amphitheater invite learning, and community-oriented features include a parenting and tutoring center, inter-generational tutoring services and an adjacent renovated warehouse serving as an early childhood center.

As the first LEED Gold certified public school in New Jersey, Summerfield Elementary takes a hands on approach to teaching and fostering an understanding of sustainable practices with students and the community. With an emphasis on Live Event Learning and indoor/ outdoor connections with the classroom, Summerfield utilizes the surrounding property’s 22 acres of wetlands, streams and nature trails as part of the curriculum. In redeveloping the Neptune Township site, the project team worked to revive the existing brownfield, planting local vegetation and implementing bio swales.

As the first LEED certified public school in Ohio, Licking County’s Career + Technology Center (C-TEC) earned state-wide attention. Central Ohio’s Green Building Council, along with a number of other state organizations, sent representatives to observe the school’s innovative leadership in action, and C-TEC still provides tours of the new facilities for numerous interested parties. When asked why C-TEC decided to go green, the school district facilities manager at the time, Rick Orr, tells people that the energy savings potential was a primary factor in C-TEC’s decision to pursue LEED certification.

The Winston Preparatory School’s Norwalk campus consists of 13.2 acres and seven existing buildings. 7group in collaboration with other Alliance for Regeneration members engaged Winston students, faculty, staff and the community in a highly interactive master planning process focused on regenerative design and development practices to create a campus Master Plan. Winston’s “educate the whole child” philosophy aligns with this regenerative/whole living systems approach in ways that allow the school’s curricula to be aimed at restoring and regenerating the health of a degraded site and to optimize the Winston experience as “a colony of learners”.

Since 1983, Chartwell School in Seaside, CA, has been helping students with learning differences (primarily dyslexia and ADD) develop skills to learn successfully and return to mainstream education. When Chartwell decided to construct a new school campus, its vision was to create a learning environment where the students’ natural environment was a visible part of their education; where the building would inspire the community about the possibilities of sustainable design. 7group facilitated an integrative process that helped the Chartwell family design their program and align around project performance goals to enmesh setting, curriculum and environment while remediating a former abandoned military base overlooking the Monterey Bay.

Constructed in 1958, the original Arthur W. Ferguson Elementary School was meant to be a temporary facility until a new school could be built. The modular facility lasted more than 50 years until it was possible for the School District of the City of York to build the new 90,250 sf school. Having secured a $500,000 Energy Harvest grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, the project focused not only on making a healthy learning environment for its anticipated 750 students, but also on maximizing energy efficiency.