Nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains only a few miles past the site of the Foxfield Race Track is the Free Union Country School. Inside the log-cabin structures where classes are held, first-graders count down until the 100th day of school, fourth- and fifth-graders use the back cover of used books as canvases in art class, second- and third-graders compose creative math stories using number combinations that add up to 100, and preschoolers play on the playground. Though students are engaging in a wide variety of activities inside the classrooms and amid the oaks and pines, there is one universal feeling at Free Union Country School: the excitement of both students and teachers.
The Free Union Country School was founded in 1984 by a group of parents with the vision of starting a community school. The school began as a one room log-cabin schoolhouse with only 11 students, and the parents' commitment and hard work got the school up and running. The founding parents built the original structure and even "brought the Kleenex, the snacks and the toilet paper," said Carolyn Lawlor, director of the Free Union Country School.
Just as parents were an integral part of the Free Union Country School from its inception, their continued involvement in the community is part of what makes the school unique.
"The reason many parents choose this school is because they want to be actively involved in their children's education," Lawlor said.
Free Union parents participate in their children's education in varied ways such as actively helping in classrooms, mending books and driving students on field trips. Education School Prof. Eric Bredo and previous parent of a Free Union School student, used to tutor at the school.
"Working as an aide in the classroom, you get a sense of what it is like for your children to be in school," Bredo said.
This sort of enthusiastic involvement that is characteristic of the parents at Free Union leads to a "real community feel," according to Leah Montgomery, one of the fourth- and fifth-grade teachers.
Parents have such an effect on the Free Union community that when a student is accepted into the school, "it is more like signing on a family than an individual student," Lawlor said. "I know every child in this school, their parents, their siblings and probably their dog, and I love the sense of knowing the whole family."
A good measure of this relationship can be seen when students are dropped off in the morning. The parents are free to -- and often do -- come inside to drink coffee with teachers, Bredo said.
"It's not just haul and drop," he added.
The school day also begins with other community building activities. Every morning features a meeting designed to foster a sense of community within the school. At this gathering, students dream up different ways, including "pinky shakes," to greet their fellow teachers and classmates. This creative welcoming activity makes sure everyone knows each other and "feels connected," Lawlor said.
The morning meeting is a hallmark of the social curriculum that the Free Union School considers an integral part of students' education. At Free Union, students' social and emotional development is not seen as distinct from or less important than academic advancement. As a result, students at Free Union are given more time outside than at most other elementary schools. Students spend hours each day on the playground, the soccer field, the nature trail or elsewhere on the school's five-acre plot, and it is during this unmediated time outside of the classroom that they are encouraged to grow socially, rather than academically.
"A different kind of learning takes place on the playground," Lawlor said. "The children try out different personas and learn that they can't always be the leader, but sometimes must be the follower."
First-grade teacher McKenzie Inigo said these activities during which students are not "shadowed" teaches children to resolve conflict and gives them the confidence they will need in the real world to be able to solve problems.
A school "could just care about kids academically, but the truth is that if you aren't feeling emotionally secure or socially accepted, your energy is going to that anxiety and not to academics," Lawlor said.
Like the learning that takes place outside of the classroom, the academic learning at Free Union is cooperative, interactive and hands-on. Rooted in the progressive education tradition, Free Union makes an effort to provide its students with "experiential active learning," Lawlor said.
According to Inigo, academics at Free Union are cooperative and not a "quiet, sit-in-your-seat kind of learning." Exemplary of this active learning is the "Blubber Experiment" Inigo conducted with her first-grade class. During their unit on penguins, her students participated in an experiment to feel the insulating effects of penguins' blubber. The students first dipped a bare hand in a bucket of ice water, then dipped a hand covered in food shortening, which provides the same effects as blubber, in ice water to feel the difference.This method, Inigo said, ensures that the students remember the material being taught.
The Free Union Country School does not abide by the Standards of Learning requirements other Virginia public schools must follow, so there is a great deal of flexibility in the curriculum that allows for "student-derived interest," said John Fisher, a fourth- and fifth-grade teacher. Teachers are able to deviate from lesson plans to better address the students' academic interests.
Flora, an elephant sponsored by Inigo's class, is a living example of how much room for creativity and coopewrative learning the adaptable curriculum allows. Inigo's first-graders were especially interested in the elephant, so rather than move on as planned to a different unit, she was able to spend extra time with her class baking cookies to raise money to feed Flora for a week.
At Free Union Country School, "it is not about making the teachers look good but [ensuring that] the kids look good," Bredo said.
The community's commitment to the emotional and social growth as well as the intellectual curiosity of each individual student makes this philosophy evident each and every day at the school. Whether feeding an elephant or simulating blubber, Free Union teachers believe interactive and student-inspired activities create an eagerness to learn and warmth within the community.
Comparing Free Union with other public schools, Montgomery said "everyone, teachers and students alike, laugh and smile more, There's so much more joy here, and you can feel it."
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