History of Spring Hollow Community Learning Center
aka Spring Hollow Early Learning Center
Dr. Katherine Virginia Ratliff, Founder
In January of 1997, I went with my daughter and two year old granddaughter, Isabella, to The Family Center Preschool in St. Louis, Missouri. It was Isabella’s first school experience and unbeknown to me at the time, The Family Center was a school inspired by the Reggio Emilia Approach. Because of my knowledge and attraction to the Reggio Emilia Approach through texts I used in my college teaching, I recognized that The Family Center was a Reggio Emilia inspired school. The director confirmed my guess, and shared about upcoming conferences in St. Louis and Reggio Emilia if I wished to learn more.
The naming of the Diana School in Reggio Emilia as one of the top ten schools in the world in 1991 brought greater worldwide recognition to the approach. As I learned more about the approach to share with evolving teachers, I grew to believe that it validated everything I believed early childhood education should be. What I had read thus far, the Reggio Emilia Approach validated my training from Geoge Peabody Teacher’s College in the early seventies and my thirty year teaching career. My beliefs always seemed to conflict with the mainstream of education and it was a relief to finally discover an approach that validated my personal education philosophy.
I knew when I had to walk away prematurely from an early childhood program I began for expatriate families in Bangkok in 1981, I would begin a second school. When I saw this Reggio Emilia inspired school environment in St. Louis, I knew it was time to begin another school. I began the process of fulfilling this goal in Franklin Tennessee, the challenge was that I had no financial support to begin the school. I realized that the community swimming pool down the street from my home off Arno Road had a cement building with bathroom facilities. The building was only used for summer community activities when the pool was open. It was not in use nine months out of the year. I asked their board if it could be used as a preschool, they agreed to rent it to me for $500 a month with the understanding that I would vacate the building in the summer.
In preparation to begin a Reggio Emilia inspired school, I attended my first Reggio Emilia Conference in April of 1997 in St. Louis where Carlina Rinaldi was the keynote speaker. I hung on her every word and was never so inspired by a fellow educator, never so in agreement with every word she spoke. I felt like I had come home to a place where I could grow within the walls of support for how I believed we as teachers should “be” with children. Carlina’s words “It is all about relationships.” fit with my personal philosophy of the value of the social/emotional curriculum. My doctoral dissertation tested a program, entitled “The Green Circle,” a program to discuss feelings of personal inclusion and exclusion and acceptance of differences. The Green Circle has always been a prominent piece of my personal education philosophy and classroom teaching experiences. Green Circle has merged well with the Reggio Emilia Approach to create The Spring Hollow Approach.
In May of 1997, I attended the annual education ten day seminar in Reggio Emilia, Italy. I arrived a week before to take the time to explore this Italian town and engulf my self in its culture. Never have I had a more knowledge fulfilled three weeks. I gained strength in my endeavors to begin Spring Hollow when Bangkok was one of the places the Italians named among schools where their inspirations had spread. I sat in that audience of educators wondering if the school they were referring to was the school I began in 1981, and inquiring further, found out it was the same school. When I began this school in Bangkok, I knew nothing about the Reggio Emilia Approach but as the school grew after I left, the new director was inspired by the Reggio Emilia Approach. Since the Reggio Emilia Approach validated my personal philosophy, it was logical that the evolution of the Bangkok school I founded, known now as The Early Learning Center, found support and validation in the Reggio Emilia Approach.
I found great support to begin Spring Hollow from a colleague, chair of the Education Department at Belmont University. I was an adjunct professor at Belmont at this time. Earline had been a mentor of mine since the beginning of my education career, and supervised my student teaching experience. In the summer of 1997 she was teaching an education graduate class with five students and she offered to use the founding of Spring Hollow as their project. Among many other tasks to help found Spring Hollow, it was these students that created the name, “Spring Hollow Community Learning Center.” Spring Hollow Farm was the name my ex husband and I gave our property we lived on close by the original school. This name was given because the many underground springs on our farm and it was land that included a hollow, two large hills meeting to form a valley. Earline became the first board president of Spring Hollow.
With the help of five families who knew me through the Epworth Methodist Church Preschool where I had been a director, we began the process of preparing this simple cement structure into an environment for their children. With no heat, we covered the walls with metallic insulation foam boards. We lined the walls with metal shelving from Home Depot to openly display a rainbow of art materials from which children could choose to create their masterpieces. We got free carpet samples from Home Depot to line the old and cold linoleum covered cement floors of the building. We relied on a few space heaters to keep warm in the winter. To help bring up the temperature during the winter months, I would go to school around five and start a wood fire in the fire place and put it out before the day began.
Carlina’s story in one of her speeches made a strong impact on me. “All your house centers in your schools look alike, you must order from the same education catalog, put some of your own history in your schools.” Sitting in Reggio Emilia hearing these words, I thought of my home in Franklin as the antique capital of the world. So what I did not have in my own collection of supplies, I went antique shopping and found treasures that still live at Spring Hollow, an antique child size ice cream parlor set, a child size cast iron oven stove used as a model to sell the real stoves and an antique pie shelf.
In 2001, the necessity to move out every summer and the lack of heating for the building became too much of a challenge. I was able to financially support from personal funds a piece of property to house the school. It is the property where the school presently resides. I chose the property because it had two acres surrounding it with a small creek where children could experience creek walks. This property had been previously used as a community grocery store but was now an open shell. I hired an architect and together we designed this open shell into a beautiful space for children. The one thing I kept was the shelf the store had used as a bread shelf, now used to hold our Spring Hollow collage materials. This shelf surrounded by other carefully chosen materials inviting children to scaffold upon their interests creates our Spring Hollow Approach, the combination of the Reggio Emilia Approach and The Green Circle.
