For the last two years, my always homeschooled adolescent has attended a Montessori junior high school that has expanded my (very critical of traditional education) heart and mind into believing that it is possible for a learning community that identifies as a school to be genuinely nourishing the well-being of young people.

We stepped onto this path as an experience and experiment, guarded and doubtful, but are emerging on the other side with more hard-earned trust and hope than I could have imagined possible.

As we transition out of our time in this community, I’m reflecting on what ingredients made this experience feel nourishing and taste sweet. I’m sharing with you as a way of calling in more of these qualities, so that an experience like ours becomes accessible to more families.

Environment

In contrast to the traditional institutional, alternative corporate, or private religious settings of other schools, the natural and homey environment of this school has soul. Set in a forest with salmon-filled creeks and eagle-nested evergreens, an old farmhouse is the heart of each day’s gathering.

This harmonious balance of wild and cozy creates a sanctuary for both outdoor exploration and indoor investigation. The purposeful setting feels like a peace-minded community with roots, where integral and reciprocal connection to place breathes life into the curriculum, holistic in an evolutionary way. Moss and math, friend and fire are all balanced in an educational ecosystem.

Respect

The top-down power hierarchy that is fundamental to most educational institutions is oppressive of children in myriad harmful ways. I will spare you a deconstruction of childism in this post, but suffice to say, I’m allergic (as should be anyone who hopes for a world not structured by dominance and oppression).

The quality of connection between adults and adolescents here is made of curiosity, collaboration, and support. There is a genuine care and allyship that is steadfastly strength-based. Young community members are honored as leaders in their own lives and learning journeys (parent-teacher-student conferences are spaces held for adolescent-led reflection, insight, and self-advocacy). Teachers bring their whole authentic selves into their roles and relationships within the learning community, which brings along with it a role modeling of the on-going vulnerable and brave work of showing up with attunement, openness, and humility.

Inclusivity

My child’s beautiful divergent mind is accommodated and valued to an extent I have not witnessed in a formal educational setting in nearly three decades of seeking, researching, and advocating for successful inclusivity. The teachers in this program don’t simply tolerate extra support needs, they design each child’s educational experience, their connection point to the cooperative group learning, around their personal zones of genius. They bring the shared curriculum to each child in their native cognitive language. It’s an inspiring microcosm of harmonious diversity, each member of the learning community growing in ways that are both personally meaningful and collectively nutritive.

For my child’s assessment this week, they joined a teacher on a walk through the forest, discussing:

• What patterns throughout history mimic today’s political/social environment?
• What do you know about inequality?
• How do you take your educational privilege and use it for bettering the world?
• What is justice, and where do you want to see more justice?

He joined my dyslexic ADHDer where their genius lives, consolidating learning in a way that my child’s brain will integrate—through engaging and interactive connection, discussion, and application. It’s about connecting and expanding a child’s web of understanding and world view instead of simply memorizing and regurgitating (then promptly forgetting) arbitrary, disjointed pieces of information. This is the kind of education that is based on what humans actually need, how people actually learn, and how communities actually sustain.

They also provide for extra support needs in ways that can significantly elevate a neurodivergent child’s ability to participate to their fullest potential and in the fullness of the learning experience on offer. They’re not just willing to accommodate, they’re wanting to support each child’s thriving. My adolescent self-advocates for and celebrates utilizing the speech-to-text technology and one-on-one tutoring support their experience in this program supported them in learning that they can go so much farther when they receive.

The staff are the bridge between top-down standards and bottom-up needs. No child is left stranded, unable to reach the other side. And no parent is expected to lay themselves down in service of spanning the gap.

Flexibility

The embodied flexibility, both personally within each adult community member but also systemically within the program as a whole, is remarkable. It’s as though the institution itself embodies a growth mindset. Each individual student’s perspectives, needs, and requests are welcomed, valued, and incorporated. It’s as if they get that the most valuable part of this experience is actually empowering a child to understand themselves—how they learn, how they connect to the whole, how to honor what they need.

I entered this experiment fully armed for the advocacy battle that every parent of a neurodivergent child faces within systems characterized by rigidity, but have been met with nothing but willingness, ability, and enthusiasm for the process of expansion inherent in holding space for diversity. I’ve found no adversaries here, only joyful partnership. I’m wasting no energy breaking down doors; they’re holding them open or even creating new doorways where none previously existed.

While this program is not pedagogically self-directed learning, their flexibility allows for ample self-direction. The learning invitations are rich in critical thinking and interdisciplinary integration, creating a lot of room for interpretation and space for personalization. In a cycle themed around power, my kiddo centered their essay around Aristotle, weaving history, science, philosophy, and so much more together in a playful exploration of power through the lens of their interest in ancient philosophers. When a mud pit formed on the trail, my child was encouraged in researching, modeling, and building a bridge. Things can be dropped, added, and interpreted in unique ways with this inherent flexibility.

Community

This school is a learning “community,” that echoes the spirit of what our ancestral DNA craves. Adult community members serve as guides to a small group of adolescents who are supported in developing a cooperative and comprehensive community experience that is rooted in empathy. Size and philosophy come together here to form something special.

But the young people are not isolated from the broader community that surrounds them. One of my many reasons for homeschooling was that my children got to spend their childhoods connected with and integrated meaningfully into the real world. This program incorporates frequent “field trips” (22 this year, to be exact), from mentorship with a horse dentist at a local farm to an international trip planned, budgeted, and booked by the adolescents. My son had an internship at a local non-profit organization responsible for community engagement and activities in our historic waterfront district (in which he helped with the design of a scavenger hunt for an upcoming educational event). When learning about local indigenous history, they visited sites and artifacts of significance and were guided on a tour by a tribal member. They get lived experience of how their smaller learning community is interconnected with broader communities.

Cons

Cost: Private school tuition is expensive. The income I earn as a therapist seeing clients during their school hours goes entirely toward paying for them to attend the school. I see and support the ways in which this non-profit program utilizes every dollar. This does feel like the accurate and appropriate cost of the experience we are receiving. I feel an abundance of gratitude for the ability to access this special resource in my community and I feel the discomfort of this privilege that so many other families cannot access. My ideal community care model of social governance would provide for this kind of educational offering, but that’s not the system in which we’re currently living. Until then, my understanding is that they do offer scholarships and financial aid.

High School: This sweet junior high program ends after 8th grade, at which point students must transition to alternative pathways for completing their education.

Ideally, this school would extend to offering 9th and 10th grade, which would create a complete pathway from infancy to college (bridging into the Running Start program, which provides for a fully funded high school diploma and associates degree at the community college for 11th and 12th graders, with guaranteed transfer to the in-state universities). When I shared this need and proposed this request, the powers-that-be (warm, wonderful, and wise administrators) extended that invaluable flexibility and are all in on exploring how to make this happen for the future.

Since I mentioned that this program’s offerings do begin in infancy, I feel compelled to add the disclaimer that while I whole-heartedly endorse their junior high program, I have no experience with their younger age offerings, which are housed on a completely different campus.

Altogether

I’m walking away from our experience at Harbor Montessori Junior High with a newfound trust and hope, feeling supported and inspired, with an adolescent who has grown in innumerable and meaningful ways. I feel lighter, as though maybe I don’t have to carry all the weight alone. As a long-time, counter-cultural parent and educator, I’m grateful for this connection and this experience. May we all be so inspired as to call into education purposeful environment, genuine respect, enthusiastic inclusivity, permeating flexibility, and connected community. Our experiment was a success.