Growing into our new home | The Homepage

By Laura Gyre

Hello from Three Rivers Village School! On the day I’m writing this update, the TRVS community is also celebrating an exciting milestone: welcoming our fortieth student. We’re still a small school, but now we can officially say we’re twice the size we were at this time last year!

A student creating a tower out of spaghetti and marshmallows. Photo by Lauren McNulty

This kind of growth is something we’ve been working toward for a while, but it has also in part been made possible by the wonderful new building (the former YMCA on Chatsworth Avenue) that we moved into late last February. In a way, it’s hard to believe we’ve already been here almost a year, but it has definitely been a year of growth for us – and not just numerically.

After finishing the necessary building renovations and the physical moving process (unpacking and setting up the entire library was no joke, for example), we got to work on revising our rulebook to match our new environment. We had to ask, and eventually answer, a bunch of questions about things like whether our old outdoor playlot rules apply equally to the (awesome!) playground that’s now right across the street from the school. As a democratic, student-run organization, children and adults worked together to complete all these projects.

When school started up again in the fall, we had a bunch of new students to go along with our new building, and a whole new set of growth-related challenges to address. We had to think a lot about how to maintain a culture that supports the highest possible degree of self-determination while also making sure to respect each other’s rights. Fingers crossed, but halfway through the school year (and having celebrated a variety of new accomplishments and popular school traditions) I feel comfortable saying that we seem to be growing into some of what we’d been imagining about this space all along.

As usual, we appreciate the support of the neighborhood during this time! If you’d like to learn more about what we do and see some of our updates to the space, we have a couple of info sessions coming up on February 8 and March 9. Please let us know if you’d like to attend by calling (412) 408-3388 or registering on our website.

Laura Gyre is a staff member at Three Rivers Village School.