By Daphne Jackson
When Sarah Southwell started teaching her children at home, she didn’t plan to create a supplementary school for other homeschool families, she just wanted to give her children more educational options.
Southwell said she started homeschooling her children as a method of alternative education to help her son, who was diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder.
Around 2012, she and her husband Tim decided to start ABC Acres, a permaculture farm focused on education. The building that now houses Riverstone School, 1093 Sleeping Child Road, just south of Hamilton, was built by ABC Acres as a place for the Southwell children to learn, whether with their mother or with a teacher she considered hiring if homeschooling didn’t work out.
Southwell said, despite her initial concerns, homeschooling was a positive experience for her family. Though she enjoyed her success, she felt dissatisfied with her ability to teach extracurricular classes like art or music, which spurred the idea of Riverstone School.
“I realized that if we have this structure, why wouldn’t we invite other people to have their kids come here?” she said. “So if I’m going to have someone come in and do an extracurricular class for my kids, like art or music, why wouldn’t I see if anybody else wants to send their kids here too?”
Southwell started Riverstone in the fall of 2014 as an LLC with just her own children in mind. At that time, she had been using the building where Riverstone classes occur as a place to go and teach her own children, but she opened it to other students as well.
After a round of success, the school restructured during the spring of 2015, and reopened as a 501c3 nonprofit organization in the fall of 2015, which Southwell said allows Riverstone to receive donations, offer more classes and keep the price low. “What’s happened through all this is that I’ve actually ended up having to homeschool at home come this spring session,” she said. “Because the school is becoming so successful on its own, and I’m realizing the benefit of this space is to use it for the community. We want to get in and be a benefit to as many families and people and children as possible.”
This semester the school offers music, art, Spanish and theater classes for children between six and 12, as well as cooking and creative writing classes for older students between nine and 14.
“We chose to target homeschoolers because I believe very firmly in the right to homeschool,” Southwell said. “I am a proponent of homeschooling. If it fits you, you should try it, because your children may benefit from it, and so may you. I benefitted greatly from it. My well of patience dug much deeper than I thought it could ever go, and I’ve really grown and become a better person from teaching my children.”
Southwell said Riverstone may offer certain classes for older students during afterschool hours, which would open the class to non-homeschool students as well.
“Creative writing is one that we were thinking we would offer after school, but we’re open to suggestions for what people want, what they need, what they’d be interested in,” she said. “We would love to benefit not just the homeschool group, but all children in the valley, so if we could offer some things for people after school, that would be great too.”
No matter how much the school grows, Southwell said class sizes will remain at a maximum size of 12 students, so teachers aren’t overloaded, and can give students their full attention.
As the school has grown, Southwell said she has appreciated the ability to step back from the direct role she played in the school’s first year. During that time, she said, she did everything from administrative work to cooking the lunch to marketing.
“I was trying to wear too many hats, and things didn’t get done well,” she said. “When you try and separate yourself too much, then each one gets a little bit, instead of devoting a lot of energy to that and it needed more attention.”
For this school year, she hired an administrative assistant and a cook, and has taken a less active role in the school.
Sarah Lloyd, administrative assistant and theater teacher at Riverstone, has taught at several levels, including as a collegiate adjunct. As a theater artist, she said she enjoys the focus on creativity at the school.
Crystal Lee Jessop, the new cooking class instructor and a mother of three Riverstone students, said her children are thriving at the school so far.
“They love Miss Sarah Lloyd, who’s the main teacher. She’s here all the time, during all of the classes,” she said. “She’s there as my assistant during the cooking class, she’s there as the assistant for all of the classes, but she also teaches a theater class. My kids were like ‘Mom, she’s just like Miss Honey from Matilda, she’s so sweet and nice!’”
Jessop teaches the children how to cook with some dietary restrictions. Everything served or cooked at the school is dairy-free, gluten-free, non-GMO and organic.
“There are challenges, but because in today’s day and age there are so many recipes that are gluten-free and have those restrictions, and then I cook that way at my house anyway because my daughter Savannah is gluten-free and she and my son are also sugar-free,” she said. “So I’m used to having restrictions, or having to double up on things that I make.”
Southwell said she places a good deal of importance on the food served in the school, and she offers the lunches inexpensively because she believes it is important for children to have nourishment.
“I think they need whole, good food to be as creative and energetic about learning as possible,” she said. “The food, what we feed ourselves, really decides how we respond to things, so I offer the food really cheap, because I’d really like the kids to come and eat here.”
Southwell said Riverstone emphasizes the fact that it is neutral in regard to religion, and not associated with any particular belief system.
“We do not talk about faith, we do not have a religious orientation, but we do believe faith is important,” Southwell said. “We also believe that that is to be talked about at home. We do not believe an educational facility should push their beliefs. One of the biggest things we feel here at the school is that this should be a safe place for everyone.”
Jessop said the school follows a philosophy similar to that of a Waldorf school, which encourages the children to be creative. She said the smaller number of students and the increased amount of teacher attention gives the school a homey environment.
Southwell said she considers the school to be tighter-knit than most other schools.
“Around here, you don’t work for us, you don’t work for the kids, we’re a family,” she said. “And that’s the wonderful thing about keeping it a small class size as well, that we’ll never lose that feeling of being a family. There are underlying tenets that we have in our philosophy of our school that are paramount to humanity, and one of them is the fact that we are all connected, and we should take care of one another.”
More information about Riverstone School is available on the website: riverstoneschoolmt.org.