About Us

A Cause Beyond Oneself

Cow Hollow School was founded by parents who wanted to approach early childhood education a different way. Operating as a small program in Cow Hollow, Darcy was selected to guide CHS and its community and to create a model where teachers and parents partnered together. Under Darcy’s leadership, the school transformed into what it is a today – a place of research where educators and parents come together to think critically about how children learn.

The research conducted at CHS – such as photographs, videos, notes, and classroom observations – enables the faculty to have meaningful dialogues with the parent community and gives insight into topics such as developmental stages, parenting strategies, guiding age-appropriate social emotional learning, understanding changing behaviors and actions, and much more. However, CHS research over the years was never consolidated or organized and as a result, is vastly underutilized.

Meanwhile, interested parties seek out our school each year to understand how parents can be better parents, and teachers can be better teachers. Parents desire Mindful Parenting and classroom techniques to guide their children; educators inquire how the Guiding Principles are executed in the classroom. Recognizing this growing hunger for information and knowing the information resided at CHS, Darcy created “The Collaboratory.”

Darcy Campbell

Our Guiding Principles

• Every child is capable and competent.
• Children learn through play, investigation, inquiry and exploration.
• Children and adults learn and play in reciprocal relationships with peers, family members, and teachers.
• Teachers and parents recognize the many ways in which children approach learning and relationships, express themselves, and represent what they are coming to know.
• Process is valued, acknowledged, supported, nurtured and studied.
• Documentation of learning processes acts as memory, assessment, and advocacy.
• The indoor and outdoor environments, and natural spaces, transform, inform, and provoke thinking and learning.