A unique educational experience is growing on Morrisville’s Brooklyn Street.
Lamoille Valley Farm and Forest School has just started sprouting but it’s already establishing itself as an alluring alternative to the relative confinements of traditional schooling for kids in kindergarten through fifth grade, offering specialized teaching tailored to each student’s needs with a healthy dose of practical outdoor learning.
The school is run by Gen Larocque, a Quebec native who came stateside with her family and, after a detour in Sacramento, ended up in Morrisville in 2022. She started the school out of necessity following the closure of Mountain River School.
Larocque sought an alternative to public school so that her child, who is diabetic, could receive a specialized education experience along with individualized care. When Mountain River School folded last year after declaring bankruptcy, she went ahead and decided to build a school from the ground up.
She brought in Bradleigh Olson, a former instructor at the Mountain River School with a master’s in teaching and experience in unique teaching environments.
With her septum ring, heavy earrings and infectious enthusiasm, Larocque looks the part of someone who emphasizes the importance of the great outdoors and free play to early learning, but she’s adamant about academic rigor as well.
“I wanted to have this balance of children who need to be in their bodies, and they need to be outside, and they need to breathe fresh air, especially post-pandemic,” Larocque said.
The school currently has a clutch of students, mostly boys and some of whom are home schooled part-time, who receive an individualized education in a one-room, mixed-ages schoolroom setting. An education consultant helped build the curriculum and students are tested to ensure they’re learning at the right pace.
The approach works for her own child, who she said excels at math but struggles with reading, while for other students it is the opposite. If a student advances ahead of their classmates, the school lets them advance at their own pace while keeping them among their age group, whereas a public school might awkwardly move them ahead into a group of older students.
Olson, who has taught for over a decade in public and private schools, called the farm and forest school the “ideal situation.”
“This is my thirteenth year of teaching, and I have never had a curriculum this strong,” she said, describing it as individualized, research based and in line with how “kids learn best for both reading and math.”
The one-room schoolhouse setting, Olson noted, created an ideal environment where the older kids help younger kids learn.
Inspired by her home country’s socialized approach to education and other industries, Larocque is working to develop her school while dreaming of making it more accessible, despite its inability to draw on public funds. She floated the idea of scholarships supported by local businesses and recently implemented a sliding scale and sibling discounts. The program can cost over $14,000 a year for full-time students whose parents make over $100,000 a year.
“It’s constantly something churning in my head: How do we make a school that’s a private school more accessible?” Larocque said.
The school hosts some events open to anyone in the community. A Sugaring Off open house is planned from 9 a.m. to noon on March 23, while a Free Forest Friday open house will be held from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on March 29.
On a recent temperate Friday, kids peeled around the sprawling yard that serves as the outdoor learning space for school.
The school dedicates the final day of each week to full outdoor learning and play, with these Forest Fridays meant to help keep kids focused during the week and meeting them — and their energy levels — where they’re at with educational and practical learning activities. Kids who aren’t regular students can attend them as well.
Chad Thompson, the school’s outdoor instructor and parent of attending students, stood over a group of boys sawing chunks from a maple log that would later be carved. Along with constructive skills, and safety with knives and other tools, the students at the school learn basic outdoor skills like wood carving, as evidenced by a pile of spoons.
“There are times that you’re doing some risky stuff, but these kids are learning it very slowly, how to do everything from the beginning and whittling to some of the more intricate spoon carving,” Thompson said. “It’s push-pull, they’re carving with the grain, they’re figuring out so much, and it’s totally empowering.”
Beneath a tent on the edge of the Lamoille River, one boy nonchalantly tended a fire while chipping away at a log of wood with an ax. Another group of kids scuttled in and out of a fort built from fir branches. Later, Larocque put on a sugaring clinic for students as they discussed the science of tree tapping.
When the boy whittling the log of wood switched to a knife, Larocque asked him to move the knife in a motion away from his body instead of toward it, and the boy did just that.
