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Reviews, get directions and information for Great River School

Great River School

About

Great River School, a Montessori public charter school, serves students in grades 1 - 12 at an urban campus in St. Paul.

Story

Founded on leadership, service, and peace formation, Great River fosters independence, critical thinking, respect, responsibility to self, to others, and to the earth.

Mission

Great River School, an urban Montessori learning community, prepares students for their unique roles as responsible and engaged citizens in the world.

Address: 1326 Energy Park Dr, St Paul, MN 55108, USA
Phone: (651) 305-2780
gro.loohcsrevirtaerg@ofni
State: Minnesota
County: Ramsey County
City: Como
Zip Code: 55108



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Reviews
I attended great river school for my first 2 years of high school, with not having any past experience with Montessori charter schools. I enjoyed the freedom and time we got, to learn to manage our time to get work done. But, honestly I came to realize that the cons outweighed the pros, especially in my second year there. Especially with my math class, taught by Sarah. She was extremely passive aggressive and very lazy with her teaching. Also, giving her students obvious opportunities to slack off on homework assignments, quizzes, and exams, but still pass the class with a decent grade. I felt very uncomfortable being in class and advisory with her, I ended the year with almost no respect for her. Now I feel as if I've learned close to nothing and I feel very behind for my next grade of math at my new school. Also our head of school, Sam, was passive aggressive with students as well, and found very little time to assist us and help us, even though that was his job. Despite these bad experiences, I also had 2 really good teachers, Nelson and Mike, they were really good at helping us learn what we needed and making sure we understood the material, and I came to respect them as not only my teachers but as people. The students were also very very cliquey and didn't seem to like to accept in new friends. I left the school with only about 2 or 3 good friends I still see today. Overall, it was a learning experience but great river still has a lot of work to do and honestly I'm not sure if they even care, once again, they just seem lazy and unstructured.
8 years ago (01-09-2017)
I am going to start this review off by giving some credit to Great River. This school is where I formed most of my friendships that I have right now. Because of the school's size it was easy to get to know every single person that went there and be friends with them too, even people who are multiple grades ahead or behind you. That being said, there were many things about GRS that could use some work... a LOT of work. Teachers There were a lot of teachers at GRS that were very good at their job and actively tried to form relationships and mutual trust/respect with the students. In terms of this, some teachers that come to mind are Nelson Inz, the Social Studies teacher, Christina Beck, the former English teacher, Mike Rausch, the science teacher, and Zack Scott the music teacher (especially Zack. Zack is one of my favorite teachers of all time. He is one of the most kind, caring, and wise human beings out there. His patience is impeccable and his intelligence in terms of music is out of this world. If you are remotely interested in music I highly suggest doing the Musicianship elective to build your relationship with him and also learn lots about music). While there are very good teachers who are very good at their job, there are also teachers who are terrible and are in no place to work in a school setting. One teacher that comes to mind is Sarah Hansen, the math teacher. Right off the bat, if your math teacher is bad, you already know the class is going to go badly, because math is a subject/class that needs to have a good instructor teaching it. Sarah Hansen was not. She would spend the class period telling stories about when she was young, or even just telling stories about what she was eating the previous day. Completely unimportant and irrelevant things like that. On the surface, this may not seem like an especially big deal... Until you realize she tells these stories for 90% of the class period. The other 10% of the class period is spent actually "teaching" the subject matter (I put quotations around the word teaching because I do not even know if what she does can qualify as teaching). So she ends up teaching the beginning of the subject at the end of class, so by the time your next math class comes, which can sometimes be two or three days after your last math class, you have absolutely no idea what you were learning about before... Meaning you are 100% lost learning the subject matter, and when you ask for help and express the fact that you don't know what is happening, she will get mad at you and say you were not paying attention. Another problem with her teaching is that she will take months and months to grade work... literally. Sometimes I would get notifications that she graded homework from months before. For example, one time at the end of the school year I got a notification from Powerschool (the program we use for checking grades) saying she graded something. I checked and it was from November... that is like a half a year ago, and then after taking a long time to grade work she would make an excuse. Sometimes an excuse as stupid as "I ate a lot of steak last night" (she actually said that!). One last gripe about her teaching; she would make it so easy to slack and still get a passing grade. -Her quizzes and tests were graded by the students, making it extremely easy to cheat -She had a rule where as long as you turned in your assignment on time, you would get 100% of the credit, and when checking the work sometimes she would not realize that you didn't even do all of the work -She. Graded. Our. Final. On. Participation! Because of all of the above, I found myself completely lost at my new school in math class. Completely lost. She did not prepare me at all for my next year of math. PART 2 ON ANOTHER POST
8 years ago (23-09-2017)
PART 2 Classes Classes were always pretty decent at Great River (except for math. duh). We did not have many tests or quizzes, and mostly spent the class period being engaged and learning things that were relatively interesting. For the most part, teachers were relatively well equipped to lead an activity and teach a classroom, and I ended up learning a lot from most of my classes. Sometimes the class was very disrespectful and the teachers would not really know how to control it. Overall, the classes were good, and I learned a decent amount. The Spaces at GRS This is one of the biggest things that made it very hard to learn sometimes at GRS. The classrooms were very small while the class size was relatively big, this made it very hard to feel comfortable while learning. It felt extremely cramped at most points in the day. Sometimes the classrooms were very very badly kept, with food on the ground, and sometimes trash around the room. The biggest problem with the spaces at GRS is the fact that there would be classrooms in, well.... not classrooms. Due to the fact that GRS accepted many more students than they could actually take, many times, there would be a class learning in the dining hall, so there would be food where you are learning and also it would make it extremely inconvenient for people who are trying to get to class because they were not allowed to walk through the classroom, even though the classroom is in a central location like a hallway. This would mean, to get to a classroom right on the other side of the dining hall, you would have to walk around the whole school. This is one of the biggest problems with Great River, their use of space is terrible and it makes it hard for anyone to be a student there. Administration (Dean of Students, Director, etc.) This is where things get very very bad. Our director of Great River, Sam O'Brien, was never around to help with people around the school. In fact, there was a point where I did not see this man for around a month straight. I do not know what happened, but he was not even at school for like a whole month, which was just more laughable and baffling than anything else. Sam tended to be very condescending while talking to students and classrooms. It was not an uncommon occurrence to be called out in front of everyone at a community meeting and just be, well, talked down upon (that was just a problem in general with this school, the teachers did not really have many boundaries in terms of what they can and cannot do in front of everyone at community meetings: getting into arguments with students, calling kids out in front of everyone, etc.). While I did not like Sam, the dean of students, Matt McElrath was great. Overall, this school has tons to work on. Their use of space, the faculty they hire, the teachers, the teachers, the teachers, Sarah Hansen... It was just a mess.
8 years ago (23-09-2017)
I don't know about you people but, I personally love the rampant elementary students and their not-so-different A1 counterparts AS WELL AS the giant boulders and passive aggressive nature! (All of which nobody asked for!) I love you all and will miss you greatly; hippyshit and all.
8 years ago (27-06-2017)
Has anyone really been far even as decided to you even go want to do look more like?
8 years ago (01-11-2017)
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