The current Lupine School (preschool and kindergarten) and the upcoming Lupine Community School (elementary level) both focus on inclusive, place-based education. Our classes spend large portions of time outdoors, noticing, interacting with, and entering into a relationship with the world around us. Academic subjects are not taught in isolation, and instead are taught in the interconnected way they occur in the real world.

 

Our nature-based school is focused on cultivating creative, compassionate, critical thinkers in order to meet the needs of a changing world. This is known as a “solutionary mindset.” The goal is to teach and foster the growth of the whole child. Children are our youngest citizens, and should be treated as such to help them become active and engaged participants in society.

 

Both at the preschool and the elementary levels, our mission is to lay the foundation for a generation to grow up prepared to deal with the unique challenges they will be expected to solve in the future.

 

One of our goals is to help raise children who recognize we must coexist, not only with each other but with the animals around us and the planet we inhabit. We encourage children to ask big questions, allowing them to have a voice and to know that their voice matters. We give children the opportunity to continually find joy in learning and enter into deeper study of the things that matter to them. We have found that engaged children not only learn more, but also retain the lessons being taught.

 

A core goal of the Lupine Community School is to have a diverse student body that can be inclusive of differing needs and give children the opportunity to thrive, feel valued, and be successful in their learning journey.

 

Our students will also learn communication skills and compassion for others through direct guidance and learn to intersect those skills with academics and environmental stewardship.

 

The Lupine Community School will be located on a working farm, similar to the current location of the Lupine School. Currently, on a typical day, we spend more time outside than inside. We explore and engage with the nature around us and visit with the animals on the farm. This environment allows us to guide the children by using the concept of humane education. We approach teaching in a way that draws connections between human rights, animal protection, environmental sustainability, and global equity.

 

The elementary school will take these foundations and continue them at a higher level. We will have mixed-age classrooms and spend a large amount of time outside, noticing what the children gravitate towards and creating projects and multifaceted learning opportunities surrounding these interests. Standard academic subjects will be woven into these projects. Our work at the school is rooted in research-driven “best practices” for education.

 

There is simply not another school, especially at the elementary level, doing the same thing as Lupine, most notably the farm/nature component combined with a project-based, emergent approach. This approach is able to be inclusive of a range of different children and their unique learning needs.

 

Families at the Lupine School love the atmosphere, as well as the frequent feedback from and interaction with teachers about the details of the childrens’ learning adventures and their personal growth. Family members of Lupine School students often say how excited they are about the results they see from their child’s exposure to joyful educational experiences. When surveying families, the refrain heard most often is, “We can’t find anything else like this anywhere in the area. We want our child to continue this experience into elementary school!”