Breakwater School is an
independent
Independent or Independents may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups
* Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s
* Independ ...
, non-denominational,
co-educational school in
Portland, Maine.
The school currently enrolls up to 180 students from toddler through eighth grade. The sixth through eighth grade program is
experiential
Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these conscious processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience involv ...
and
integrative, consisting of a series of 6 to 7 week projects completed over the course of the school year.
Breakwater was founded as a day care center, named Playtime Haven, by Frank and El Costa in 1956 after their son recovered from a serious illness. As it grew, it moved to a series of different locations in
South Portland and
Cape Elizabeth
Cape Elizabeth is a town in Cumberland County, Maine, United States. The town is part of the Portland– South Portland–Biddeford, Maine, metropolitan statistical area. As of the 2020 census, Cape Elizabeth had a population of 9,535. ...
, until 1982 when it purchased its current location in Portland. Since then, the school has also been given a 21-acre nature preserve in nearby
Cumberland
Cumberland ( ) is a historic county in the far North West England. It covers part of the Lake District as well as the north Pennines and Solway Firth coast. Cumberland had an administrative function from the 12th century until 1974. From 19 ...
which it uses regularly for field trips as part of the school's Science curriculum.
The Executive Director is David Sullivan, previously a Teaching Principal at the Brooklin School in
Brooklin, Maine, and the Academic Director is Maggie Lyon.
Private elementary schools in Maine
Private middle schools in Maine
Schools in Portland, Maine
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