The one-room schoolhouse here at our farm wasn’t supposed to happen—it was never a part of our plans. My wife Joey was going to educate our daughter Indiana. She would keep her under her wing and teach her the things we felt were important in an environment that would give her the best opportunity to be the best person she could grow up to be—Joey would homeschool her. But when she passed away in 2016, just after Indy turned two, we had to come up with another option. And so, instead of Indiana being homeschooled by her Mother… her Papa built a school for her at home.
It began with the vaguest of plans, really more of just a thought or an idea. What if we built a school here on the farm where Indiana could learn? And that thought was followed with even more: If we’re going to build one, what if it was a one-room schoolhouse like inLittle House on the Prairie?… And then, what if other children could come too?… What if they could be all different ages, with learning differences?… What if the kids had their own garden?… And a greenhouse?… Animals and chores?… And in time, these ideas blossomed into something even bigger: What if we could re-imagine what school is, where the outdoors, nature, and life, is the real classroom, where kids could learn to be the great teachers of themselves?
In the fall of 2017, the spot where the school is now was just an empty field where nothing was growing. A little hay, a lot of weeds, but that was about it. And then, one day, my brother-in-law Keith and I stood in the parking lot and imagined where a building might go. We pointed and walked around and measured, then we picked up a hammer and drove a stake in the ground. Within a few weeks, that stake was followed by shovels, then a backhoe that poured concrete footers for a foundation. On top of that foundation, a floor was laid. Then, when it came time to build the structure, we raised the schoolhouse walls over one weekend and hung the roof trusses in an old-fashioned barn-raisin’ style. Dozens of neighbors and friends all worked together while the wives and children supplied meals and drinks, much like the Amish have been doing in their communities for centuries.
By late the next summer, the schoolhouse was complete. That one building soon turned into two, then four, then its own little piece of heaven, right here on our little piece of heaven, where my pretty wife who now resides in Heaven can watch down, I believe, smiling on it all.
Now here it is five years later, and there is so much more growing in that spot than just hay. Every spring, all around the edges of the garden, there are flowers of all kinds along with blackberry and blueberry bushes. Inside the children’s raised beds are vegetables—broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts, beets, and carrots. In the greenhouse, there are seeds in trays that the kids have started, and in the little red brooder house by the playground, dozens of baby chicks that, in time, will become egg layers and meat birds. Next to the orchard, a big red livestock barn houses goats, pigs, peacocks, chickens, a turkey, and a donkey. And further back in the field, there are rotationally-grazed cows and more egg layers. When the bell rings at 8 a.m., they will be fed and moved as part of the children’s daily chores.
We started with less than a dozen preschoolers in the fall of 2018, including my little one. This past August, we started back to school with twelve children ranging from kindergarten to fifth grade, all learning together. More than anything, it is children who are growing here. Beautiful little people who will one day be adult men and women with children of their own. And our hope is that what they are learning here isn’t just going to help them get into college and a good job. We hope it will help them to find meaning in what they choose to do with their lives. In many ways, ours is like most schools. Our day starts around 8 a.m. and ends at 3. We have desks and chairs, books, lessons, and a chalkboard, but that is pretty much where the similarities end. Let me share a few examples of how we part ways with all public and most private schools.
We are fully inclusive. For us, that means that our children, though different from each other, all learn together. Over the last five years, they’ve been black and white and most colors in between, and all gifts from God. Some have Down syndrome; one has only one functioning arm; one has a heart monitor and a special dog that stays with him. And we have lots of typical kiddos too. All together. Learning and living from 8 ’til 3 every day, like a family.
Our children are multi-age. Our children learn from and with children of different ages, not just the ones in the same grade. Our age range this year is 5 to 10 years old, but we aren’t really concerned with grade levels or actually even grades on papers. We believe that our older kids have something important to offer our younger ones, and one day as natural attrition happens and a child or two moves on to a different town or school, our younger children will be older, and we’ll pick up some younger children that they will mentor.
Life is our main curriculum. We have children who learn at many different paces, and we try to adjust to their individual needs and learning styles. Besides the three R’s (reading, writing, and arithmetic), we also include all things rural, from raising animals and growing our own food to all sorts of homesteading and self-supportive life skills. We believe that children can learn something from everything. But it isn’t enough to teach them information. They need to know why they need to know the information. Our hope is that the children won’t just learn what they need to know to get out of school or go to college but what they need to know to live meaningful lives. And more than that, to be excited about learning and see lessons and value in all that life has to offer.
Everyone is a teacher. We have one full-time teacher at the school, along with a teacher’s assistant and a farmer who integrates the animals and farm into the kids’ daily curriculum. None of the staff have teaching certificates but believe instead that each was born to teach. Besides our teachers and daily curriculum, we bring other folks (young and elderly) in to share what they know with our kids. From fiddlers to firemen, soldiers to seamstresses, everyone has something valuable to share. As often as possible, we invite them to come teach our kids at the schoolhouse.
We call our school “the one-room schoolhouse the whole world can fit in,” and in a way, it truly is. We have always had a long waiting list of people wanting to attend the school and know that it would be easy to ‘scale up’ and add portables or other buildings, to add more kids, and impact more lives and families. But early on, we committed to taking our cues from the one room schoolhouses of the past, vowing to stay very small and serve the needs of our local community. This was partly to keep from losing the unique setting that we love so much. But it was also because we realized that although our physical footprint is very small, we can scale our impact digitally. Through the internet we have the opportunity to encourage and inspire countless children and families. There may be only a dozen children that go to school here, but the things we do and the stories that we share are impacting countless numbers of children and families all over the world. We are uniquely positioned to not only do school differently here at our homestead, but we are also good at filming and sharing the things we do with others. In turn, we can encourage others to re-imagine their lives and the education of their children.
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Rory Feek is a world-class storyteller, songwriter, filmmaker, and New York Times best-selling author. As a musical artist, Rory is one-half of the Grammy-award-winning duo, Joey+Rory. He and his wife, Joey, toured the world and sold nearly a million records, before her untimely passing in March 2016.