Teacher Profile: Bella Kosmacher, Lower School Division Director
- High Meadow School
- 12 minutes ago
- 4 min read
For Bella Kosmacher, coming to work at High Meadow was both a leap of faith and a return to her roots.
Born in Madison, Wisconsin, Bella Kosmacher spent her youth in New Hampshire. Her mother made the move to study at Antioch University with David Sobel, an influential environmental educator credited with developing the philosophy of place-based education.
“I had a very mixed educational experience,” Bella recalls, spending some of her elementary years in a Waldorf school. Bella speaks fondly of time spent homeschooling after her mother finished her graduate work: “I was really interested in the Renaissance, so we studied the Renaissance. We went to Renaissance fairs, to the library. I ended up learning the violin. I was also a dancer, and movement has always been a really big part of my education.”
She went on to public high school, and notes that, throughout her early years, “I did a lot of learning by doing. We went to Cape Cod every summer, learning about rogue waves and sea shanties, and snorkeling in kettle ponds left over from the Ice Age.”
"As educators, we’re always kind of walking a line between meeting the needs of individuals and also meeting the needs of a whole group."
Her interest in teaching also started from a young age, sparked by her first job as an assistant dance teacher at the age of 8 or 9. She remembers the thrill, as choreographer for a musical at her high school, of “getting to see my ideas come alive.”
In college at Vassar, Bella studied geography. She then moved to New York City to work as a teaching artist, and later as program manager for a company that brought international artists into schools. “That led me into some teacher training, helping teaching artists with professional development. Then, I decided I wanted to have my own classroom.’
She began her Masters in Childhood Education at Brooklyn College with a focus on science and environmental education, finishing during the Covid pandemic. Looking to land somewhere similar to where she grew up, High Meadow “seemed like a great chance to get out of the city and start teaching,” Bella says. “I really resonated with the sense of strong community, with integrating the arts and nature. It felt familiar. I took the job before I even came up to see the school.”
In her first year at High Meadow, she taught Kindergarten and dance. “When I started, I was teaching in the yurt with the composting toilet,” she adds, “always a fun detail!” Since then, she’s served as Assistant Teacher and then Lead Teacher in 1st grade, teacher representative to the Board of Directors, coordinator of All-School Gatherings, a member of the all-staff band, The Principal’s Office, and now, Lower School Division Director.
“A big part of my role is curriculum development,” she explains, “working creatively to think about how our school can take state standards and requirements and bring them to life in interesting ways that are connected to our values.” For example, “adopting history standards that also bring in the voices of those not always heard, using primary sources, and following students’ interests within the guidelines.”
Part of her inheritance as a teacher, she also brings a place-based lens to her work, asking, “How can we study our own neighborhood or county as a way to look at bigger concepts through a local lens? Something I’m super proud of was developing a 1st grade Community Study that was an in-depth inquiry into what happens to our waste.” They did a trash inventory in the classroom, guided research with books and videos, interviews with adults about different waste streams, and developed a partnership with the Transfer Station in Marbletown.
“It was so cool to see something that was so close to the kids’ experience, but that they may not have thought about more deeply. They were just hungry to learn more about it.”
Bella also leans into her role working with teachers to develop their practice. “I feel really lucky that the teachers at High Meadow are passionate about developing themselves as educators, and finding ways to grow their skills to meet the needs of their students.”
She notes that, like the work of democracy itself, creating democratic school communities isn’t easy. “As educators, we’re always kind of walking a line between meeting the needs of individuals and also meeting the needs of a whole group. Something we’re also helping develop in our students. What do I need and desire, and how does that blend with the needs and desires of other people?”
As she looks ahead to High Meadow's future, Bella hopes to be part of “further developing the infrastructure of our spaces to be really dynamic and a big part of the learning.” For example, adding student-created interpretative activities to the nature trail, and otherwise making the living and built environment “really like another teacher.”
She also plans to continue incorporating mindfulness into her work. “I have been really lucky to have access to mindfulness, yoga, and movement throughout my life,” including a weeklong summer training for educators with Little Flower Yoga. “The more I move through my life as an educator and as a human, the more strongly I feel developing mindfulness and heartfulness for ourselves and our students is really the foundation of any justice or equity work we want to do in the world.”
Want to find Bella off campus? You can catch her performing with Andrea Maddox and the Hey Y’alls, as well as a handful of solo shows, around the region.
