Library of Congress grant funds community memory work
This year, Escuela del Sol Montessori + Harwood Art Center are engaging in an exciting centennial project, funded by the Library of Congress. For many years, the Library of Congress has offered grants to support teaching with primary sources, particularly with materials from LoC’s collection. Up until now, no one has used those funds to develop lessons for a Montessori classroom, and we saw a timely opportunity to commemorate a hundred years of Harwood School history, and to create models for other Montessori schools.
At Escuela, art is integral to the way we learn, and we have three talented community artists who will be working with our Art Studio guide, Ms. Christy, and the students, to interpret the primary sources, and to create works that will be the focus of our Encompass exhibition in spring 2026. Guides and students alike have been buzzing with ideas.
The first step in this yearlong process has been finding primary sources. We have enthusiastic community partners in the Albuquerque Museum, the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, the University of New Mexico Center for Southwest Research, and the Special Collections branch of the Albuquerque Library, who have found fascinating materials, and are supporting digitization efforts as well as research. However, the best resource of all are the Harwood Girls themselves, who convened at the school recently for a reunion.
The assembled Harwood Girls, who represented classes from the 1950s through the final graduating class of 1976, reminisced, toured the campus, and pored over old photographs to identify people and places. Many shared additional personal materials with us, such as yearbooks and scrapbooks, to add to our collection. The power of this community memory project was evident in the delight of the participants. One Girl wrote afterwards,
“I really enjoyed our conversation at the 100th anniversary of the Harwood building today!
Afterwards, as I thought about our talk, I came to the conclusion that the Montessori school is in a certain degree of harmony with the vision and mission that Reverend Thomas and Emily Harwood had when they founded the school.
Harwood was my home for five formative years, and the impact of those teachers and staff would be impossible to overstate. Over the years, I’ve shed buckets of tears at the memory of the closure and the loss that it represents, but hearing how your students return, and value what your Montessori school gave them, truly brightened my perspective.
Thank you for your time. You and your school have a new fan,
for whatever that’s worth…
Mali Dahl, Harwood Girls’ School’s last graduate.”
If you are an alumni of Harwood Girls School, we would love to hear from you! Please use the form on our website to get in touch!
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