Teacher Profile: Rachel Roozen, Lower School Division Director

Rachel Roozen grew up with a love for the outdoors, digging up worms with her two sisters. Since then, she’s turned that passion into an educational approach that cultivates young peoples’ appreciation for science, for nature, and for each other.

Rachel was raised in Maryland, just outside of Washington DC. Living near the city, it was her father’s garden center that first offered her connection to the outdoors and living things. “At the nursery, my sisters and I would just run amok and be able to explore and do our own thing. That’s where my love of science and the outdoors came from . . . not my Catholic school background,” she laughs.

She went on to earn a degree in Environmental Studies and Environmental Science at Lynchburg College, a small liberal arts college near the Blueridge Mountains. Not only were there ample opportunities for outdoor recreation, Rachel’s coursework also got her out into the natural world, with field work and outdoor labs.

After graduation, she began working as an outdoor educator. “That was seasonal work and became tricky,” she recalls, prompting a shift into nature-based preschool teaching. Though she’d found a good fit, work-wise, eventually Rachel was ready to leave the congestion of Northern Virginia behind.

“I feel like for a lot of people, when you come to the Hudson Valley, you can exhale,” she says of her chosen home. She made the move, taking an Education Director position, at the Ashokan Center in Olivebridge, working in their schools outreach program. Now, she and her partner of 15 years live with their dog in West Shokan.

“During Covid,” she says, “Ashokan’s school trips kind of stopped, so I was seeking other employment. I’d known about High Meadow from a friend who had worked here before. From what I’d heard about the community, and the kids always being outdoors, it seemed like a really nice mesh.”

Rachel started in the 2s classroom in the 2020/21 school year. “It was a really interesting time to start a new job,” she says, with so many pandemic restrictions still in place, “but it felt really nice to be outside with the kids all the time, to really explore, and play, and be themselves. I felt really at home here. We created our own little world because of Covid. I built really strong bonds with the families that year. It was an intense, but really nice year.”

She spent two years working with the two-year-olds, then three years with the three-year-olds. Last year, she took on a hybrid position as both lead teacher and Early Childhood Division Director.  

“It was nice to have that added component of the job,” she says. And this year, “having the opportunity to do that full time has been really amazing.”

Rachel still gets to teach the little ones, offering weekly outdoor education sessions. Her focus, though, is on "supporting the teachers, taking things off of their plates, and being a bridge between the teachers and the administration. I think that’s a really important element that was missing.” 

In shaping High Meadow’s Early Childhood program, Rachel focuses on approaches that “keep kids curious, asking questions, and wondering. I believe strongly in following their lead: What are they interested in? What direction can we take that in? How can we dive deeper into their interests so they’re excited to be here every day? I also want them to recognize that they are part of this big wonderful community.”

This “emergent curriculum” approach has led to some exciting and in-depth studies. For example, one year, parents were discussing their children's excitement when packages would arrive at their homes. “We started talking about the mail,” Rachel says, “and ended up spending months exploring where mail comes from, how it’s processed, and how you receive it.

“We sent messages through social media and received mail from all over the world. We sent mail to ourselves at home. We went to the post office and bought stamps. We had a mailbox outside the classroom and wrote back and forth with our buddies. They were so excited about every part of it.”

Another bright spot for Rachel is the Buddies program, which pairs younger and older grades over the course of the year. “For the little ones, it’s a time to be with older kids, to learn how to play; older kids slow down and remember what it was like to be this young, how fun it is to just be outside on the quad.”

As she looks to the future, Rachel is focused on expanding opportunities for intentional outdoor learning, as well as more open-ended play. She imagines developing outdoor classroom spaces “to be able to spend all day outside and still do the lessons we need to do.” She’s also working toward “inviting parents into the classrooms more to see all the cool stuff that the kids have been working on.”

“The world is a challenging place right now,” Rachel acknowledges. “As a small progressive school, we’re figuring out how to keep this idyllic childhood while also making sure our older students are aware and supported in preparing for the world as it is.”