LOOKING AHEAD,

NIA HOUSE MEASURES TIME

by Eve Uberman, Nia House Director 

Where has the time gone? My Nia House journey began in 2001 with youthful spirit. Now, in 2023, as we prepare for Nia House’s 50th anniversary next year, I can only hope to age as gracefully as this amazing community institution.  

There are so many inspiring ways to measure the passage of time at Nia House. Your children, grandchildren, family members and friends just keep growing in mind, body and spirit.  From the currently enrolled children, to graduates who are now sending their own children and grandchildren to school, we have had the pleasure of seeing successive generations as well as extended families come of age at Nia House. In 2023, we had four  graduates return as summer volunteer interns. They swept countless dustpans of sand from our  three sandboxes — the very sand that you routinely find spilling out of little shoes onto the floor of your car or onto your threshold. 

As generations evolve here at Nia House, so do our plans for the school. It is with great pleasure that the NH Board of Directors shares our new Strategic Plan– a plan that guides the activities, culture, finances, staffing, enrollment, and support that NH offers the community. The Strategic Plan widens our view to envision the next fifty years of our school’s future. It takes a particularly close look at the next five years. Our significant goals include: enrolling 50% of students with financial aid support, recruiting diverse staff, ensuring the school’s buildings and grounds have beautiful longevity, and reaching 200 more students and their families by 2028, with up to 84 enrolled children at a time. Using Maria Montessori’s concepts, especially that of peace through education, Nia House will continue preparing all young learners for ongoing school readiness– our greatest aim.  

While I reflect on our school’s past and future, two-year-olds are arranging flowers and preparing tea service. Three-year-olds master the sequencing of table-setting and find intense concentration in grading, sorting and pouring. Four-year-olds master care and empathy, leap from great heights  and associate enormous numerals with quantities. The five and six-year-olds amaze us with their intuitive emotional knowledge and uncanny retention of facts about the natural world. At Nia House the children and staff alike are truly remarkable individuals who surprise me with insight, humor, and kindness every day.  

As I look out from my desk onto the yard, I am also struck by the history of our school site and the buildings. Our old bungalows that currently house the primary classes once traveled down University Avenue on trailers and landed here on 9th Street in 1980. From where I sit in our newer building, I admire the amazing photo of former school director Sandy Krestan closely following these buildings as they headed in our direction with the signs of “Ledger’s Liquors” and “The California Motel” hanging just above the streetlights. Thanks to the work of Nia House alumni parents Denise Hall Montgomery and Aran Kaufer, our newer front office and toddler classrooms opened in 2015. They have both extended and unified the safety and usability of our school’s site, and have given us an increased capacity to serve young children’s needs.  

The front gate still stands exactly where you remember it, offering safety, hope and peace that we continue to hold inside this place. 

Come see for yourself how NH has gracefully aged. So many of us have returned year after year, wrinkles and all, as we, like you, cherish the love, respect, history and practices of Nia House. We embrace this moment, reflecting on our values and history and redefining our collective hope for humanity and our vision for a beautiful tomorrow.

Please join the Nia House community as we prepare for our 50th Anniversary in 2024, sharing gratitude to our founder: Tia Waller-Pryde, and long-standing school leaders: Lee Wagner, Sandy Krestan, Jeanie Maier, Tita Lang, Phea Sath; holding onto our school’s vision of narrowing the income and race related educational opportunity gaps; providing financial and Montessori child development related support to as many families of young children as possible. 

Though impossible to measure, the ongoing connections with you, our community, fuel the Nia House Board of Directors and me with the inspiration and leadership to continue setting goals and modeling more educational equity. As our purpose describes, with your help, Nia House prepares future world leaders.  I can’t wait to celebrate the growth of all children in their future world leadership roles.