It started in a basement, 50 years ago.
An enthusiastic 29-year-old Merry Carmichael noticed the way her children, at the time ages 4 and 1 and 1/2, craved learning.
“I had a very loving babysitter for them, but I wanted more,” Carmichael recalls, 50 years later.
A public school teacher herself in Hope, Carmichael knew the importance of education. Having studied education, in college, she understood her children’s desire to gain knowledge.
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As she watched her own children grow to love learning, she said she knew she could offer them something special — something that a traditional learning environment could not.
‘It will work’
Aside from seeing that her own children wanted to learn to read and write as toddlers, Carmichael said there had to be a better way and she began searching for it.
Carmichael had studied Maria Montessori, an Italian physician and educator who believed in a method of education based on self-directed activity, hands-on learning and collaborative play, while earning her master’s degree at the Adler Institute in Chicago.
Different from a traditional public school, Montessori believed in following the lead of the child. If a child’s needs are met where they are, that child will progress at his or her own rate. The Montessori believed every child is capable of doing more than what is expected of a child at their age — opening a heavy door, washing their own dishes or setting the table.
“Every time we wait upon a child and do something for them, we’re depriving that child of a chance to learn to do it themselves,” Carmichael said.
“I came across Montessori and as I read it, I thought, ‘This is it. This is me. This is what I believe.’ Why do I believe it? It’s because I believe that every child can accomplish a great deal if given the chance. Every child loves to learn. A child doesn’t need to be prodded to learn. A child needs to be allowed the learn. The children learn by using materials that help them understand concepts.”
From there, ABC Learning Center was born.
“We started a school in my basement,” said Carmichael, now 79 years old. “We had a 40-by-40-foot room, and my husband (Tom Carmichael) put in tile on the floor, fixed up a new ceiling, made tables, chairs, paint easels and that enabled us to start ABC Learning Center.”
Carmichael resigned from her job as an elementary school teacher in Hope and held an open house for the new school she would lead in her own home. She still remembers her former boss telling her he would hold her position for her until the school year began.
“They told me I’d probably be back because this probably won’t work,” Carmichael said. “I said, ‘It will work.’ I had the open house the week before school began. When I had the open house, I had three times as many students as I had anticipated so I called him and said, ‘Yep, this is going to work.’”
From the beginning, 10 students ranging from 1 1/2 years old through kindergarten attended school in Carmichael’s basement on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings; 10 students attended on Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons; 10 students attended on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Two years later, the school had outgrown the basement and moved to the former Bakalar Air Force Base, now the Columbus Air Park, to a barracks building.
“The fire marshal was glad to have us out of the basement,” she said. “There, we started with 40 children in the morning and 40 in the afternoon, and I hired other teachers at that point. After six years, parents had been after me to start an elementary school.”
Parents of ABC-Stewart School students did a great deal to help Carmichael find and afford a building, and in 1977, the school moved into what was the World War II former Officers’ Club at Bakalar consisting of five barracks buildings.
Beginning June 1977, parents, teachers and Carmichael worked to get the building in shape to house a school, and by September 1977, ABC-Stewart School was ready to open and serve 2-year-olds, preschoolers, kindergartners and grades one through six.
In 1983, school leaders started to draft plans to build a new building. The blueprints were ready to go when Kent School, located four miles west of downtown Columbus on State Road 46, closed and became a vacant building.
“The board and I met several evenings to discuss which way to go — build or move,” Carmichael said. That year, Carmichael and the board decided to shift its operations to 6691 State Road 46 in Columbus, where the school remains today.
{span class=”x-el x-el-span c1-88 c1-89 c1-b c1-c c1-d c1-e c1-f c1-g x-d-ux”}The facility is a three-unit former public school building erected in the 1950s. It includes a gymnasium, well-equipped kitchen and fifteen large classrooms. Carmichael said the move was difficult initially because the classrooms were closed off from one another as opposed to the open classrooms that the school previously used in its former buildings.{/span}
They removed walls, installed new doorways between classrooms and improved the building to meet the needs of what became ABC-Stewart Montessori School, named after Carmichael’s parents.
Where she belonged
As a student in elementary school, Carmichael remembers having a “wonderful and loving” first- and second-grade teacher. After those two years, the teachers weren’t so nice.
“I used to sit there and think, ‘I’m going to be better than you are,’” Carmichael said. “I didn’t want to be called a teacher because I didn’t have a good connotation of teachers. It took me a while to know that’s what I wanted to do. As I went on in school and had other nice and kind teachers, gradually changed my mind. When I went into my first classroom, I knew that’s where I belonged.”
When Carmichael founded ABC-Stewart in 1979, she served as not only the director until 2009, but also as a teacher.
In 2009, Carmichael retired from the school after having been diagnosed with cancer and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, commonly known as COPD. She was put on oxygen for 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Uninterested in the oxygen, Carmichael found a way around it.
“I rode my bike 11 miles to school and 11 miles home with oxygen on my back and built up my lungs so I only use it at night now,” she said.
Carmichael hired Mike Gorday as the new director of the school. Gorday retired at the end of the 2018-19 school year, and Carmichael came back to help until a new director is hired.
“I’m enjoying every minute of it,” she said.
Keeping the momentum
It’s been 50 years since Merry and Tom Carmichael opened the doors of their home to 30 young children in 1969.
Today, the school serves about 200 children between 2 years old up to sixth grade. Outside the school, more than a dozen flags from different countries line the building, representing the nationalities of the students who attend ABC-Stewart School each year.
Just the other day, Carmichael thought about just how many students ABC-Stewart School has served since it opened.
“I think we’ve probably served a thousand, maybe more than that. Maybe 2,000,” Carmichael calculated in her head.
“It gives me a sense of satisfaction. This school wouldn’t be what it is without the help of a lot of parents who have given a lot of time and energy in many ways to help the school become what it is today and without the staff.”
She said there is no one best part — it’s a combination of things. “The joy on children’s faces as they accomplish and grow, the love the students and the parents and the teachers seem to have for the school, the belief in the school that the staff exhibits, the amount of time that parents volunteer to help in the school,” she said.
When ABC Learning Center first moved into the barracks building out of the basement in the early 70s, Carmichael was nine months pregnant with her son and standing on a ladder painting the walls of the building.
She remembers parents who came in to enroll their child and would see “this crazy lady.” That didn’t stop the parents from going back home to get their paint clothes and paint brushes and coming back with a grill to cook hamburgers and hot dogs.
“It became a family affair as everyone pitched in to help repair that building,” Carmichael said. “It’s been a family affair ever since.”
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”ABC-Stewart mission” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
"We seek to educate and prepare each child to make life’s journey as an independent responsible citizen of the world."
[sc:pullout-text-end][sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”About ABC-Stewart School” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
ABC-Stewart School is a Montessori-based education provider located at 6691 W. State Road 46, Columbus, that serves preschool, kindergarten and school-age children.
The school provides an environment for learning where children can develop independence, creativity, self-esteem, love for learning, as well as social and cognitive skills.
To learn more about ABC-Stewart School, including tuition and fees, visit abcstewart.org.
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"I came across Montessori and as I read it, I thought, ‘This is it. This is me. This is what I believe.’ Why do I believe it? It’s because I believe that every child can accomplish a great deal if given the chance. Every child loves to learn. A child doesn’t need to be prodded to learn. A child needs to be allowed the learn. The children learn by using materials that help them understand concepts." – Merry Carmichael, founder of ABC-Stewart School
[sc:pullout-text-end][sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”Celebrating 50 years” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
ABC-Stewart School is celebrating its 50th anniversary with an invitation-only event this evening. The event has reached capacity.
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