The Farm School at Home

Since we are in the process of getting registered with the Farm I thought I'd post some information about homeschooling in TN in general and The Farm in particular. TN has three different ways to register as a homeschooler. The first is with the local education agency and is really the simplest. Its free if you do it on time, and there's a minimum of requirements - attendance records, not exactly a stretch. That's been the plan for Mo, but there are complications with Rayan - those being that George has no high-school diploma, and he and I aren't married, so I'm not a "legal" guardian.

Option 2 is an "umbrella school" where basically a church provides the curriculum and we would follow it. Not for us, for obvious reasons. There are no Unitarian umbrella schools in TN, about the only "acceptable" option for us.

Option 3 is a variation on the umbrella school idea, where we would sign up with a "Private Church Related School" as a "satellite campus" - basically the school agrees to "hire" us as teachers and we become part of a private school. There are two of these that don't regulate what kind of curriculum we use, one requires a statement of Faith, the other a statement of Ethics, and we would, under other circumstances, go with that for conveniece. But now we don't have to!

The Farm in Summertown has been recognized by the state of TN as a bona-fide church related (option 3) school:

TheFarm School is operated by The Church of the Farm Religious Community andaccredited by the National Coalition of Alternative Community Schools(http://www.ncacs.org).

and has set up a satellite campus program. No statement of anything, just send money. Very American of them, but don't tell them I said so ;) We were a little concerned when we saw the first-draft registration form, since it asked about the education of the parents and all that stuff we were trying to get away from! I contacted the person who is handling the satellite campus stuff and she assured me that they would sort it all out in the name of providing support for alternative families and, oh, what was the expression she used, something about alternative education, or maybe anti-authoritarian education....whatever. What happened was the board realized they wanted to do less paperwork and dropped all the educational and marital requirements for "parents" and are re-doing the form. As I said, Very American - just send money!

Anyway, here's their high-fallutin' mission statement an' all:

Vision & Mission

We envision a world where all people live in peace and harmony with each other and our planet. We are committed to helping our students become leaders towards a peaceful, just and ecologically sustainable world. We seek to help our students manifest a peaceful and harmonious world.

Educational Philosophy

At The Farm School students learn as they apply basic skills and content to real-world problems with a focus on peace, equality and sustainability. We use responsive curriculum to connect what our students learn to their and our community's needs, interests, experiences and values.

The Farm School @ Home services

The Farm School is a community school and homeschool resource center. We are very excited to be able to offer an alternative for homeschool families that, for whatever reason, are not comfortable registering with their Local Educational Agency (LEA) or with a denominational Church Related School(CRS). We require no statement of faith and are not interested in mandating curriculum or any other decisions. We believe in responsive education matched to the needs, interests and experiences of individual children. And we believe that the adults best able to negotiate curriculum with children are the adults spending time with those children on a daily basis.