The Fuller School of Apprenticeship (FSA) has an evolving history that is connected to my personal experience in education and the journey I took with my children. FSA was the school I intended for them, but it took their entire childhood for me to discover the best approach. May this story inspire you!
10-Minute Read
Growing up in Alachua County, I was one of many children left behind, falling through the cracks. No one knew I struggled with learning challenges, despite being an honor student. It doesn’t help to be well-behaved when you need assistance.
The school was aware that I had hearing and processing issues, as evidenced by my rapid speech and the referral to the speech program. Still, they never evaluated me beyond that. I excelled in math and had even skipped a grade, but struggled with language and processing. I understood very little in the classroom and, of course, did not realize this was a problem. I always just assumed it was easier to take my lessons home and read them to myself.
Today, this condition is referred to as auditory processing disorder or described as the “hearing deaf.” We are presumed unable to fully or appropriately process sound, which I later learned is a selective ability and a blessing in disguise. However, children and those trying to help are often unaware that the mind is a tool, and a healthy individual can activate it as needed. Nonetheless, these children may not have completely turned it on or are operating at a lower frequency, leaving most of their attention focused inward. I would guess this is also common in what people refer to as autism.
Not only does it make learning in a traditional classroom difficult, but these individuals often develop interesting communication styles. For instance, we don’t naturally adapt to or adopt the language patterns that most people are accustomed to hearing, which makes our communication very clear and direct, without all the fancy connecting and joining words that bring music and rhythm to writing, and, of course, make you sound more intelligent and convincing. Because if you can say “in contrast” or “in retrospect,” you must know something about a thing or two.
Simple and Direct
Being direct, for sure, was likely to get me into loads of trouble since I was unaware of the rhythm that my words seemed to lack. The concept of questions was also challenging for me to understand. They weren’t always phrased as tactfully as some would prefer. Unknowingly, carrying a loaded pistol, in a manner of speaking, led me to withdraw further and avoid asking questions altogether for fear that my innocent words might come off as too abrasive, which was the opposite of my character. Unfortunately, many mistakenly equate directness with rudeness.
Moreover, it took years of observation to understand phrases like “Yes, ma’am” or the questioning form of “ma’am?” Additionally, some poor kids got in trouble for saying “Yes, ma’am” because it all depended on tone, which I couldn’t always hear. I used to think, Please don’t call on me, or I would try to respond with just a smile and eye contact. Teachers would also say, “There are no dumb questions,” but my questions or statements seemed to fall into a completely different category. Nobody wants to hear, “Grandma is dead,” because she didn’t die; she passed. Living in a world that expected language to be submissive, indirect, and loaded with comforting euphemisms was tough.
Aside from a few remarkable teachers who captured my attention at Howard Bishop Middle School, Mr. Minter and Ms. Chris, my cherished science teachers, Ms. Masuda and Ms. McTureous, who taught me math, along with the infamous Ms. DiNegro, my arts and crafts teacher, I was largely self-taught because I was, in a sense, hearing impaired and tended to avoid asking questions. If I was going to learn something, it meant I had to figure it out myself. (I hated school, lol.) I didn’t say much and spent most of my time observing people and using my visual perception to understand the world. It felt a lot like living deaf-mute, which I referred to as living in a bubble that was only visible to me.
By the time I reached high school, I understood how the system functioned and had grown tired of the mess we call public education. “Read the text and answer the questions,” they say. I honestly felt it was a waste of time. By the summer of my sophomore year, I told my mother I wouldn’t be returning to high school and planned to homeschool myself. Now, this was in 1994; homeschooling wasn’t widely recognized outside of small Christian groups, and I didn’t know anyone who had been homeschooled.
Santa Fe Dual Enrollment
I headed to the downtown library. It was my chance to research homeschooling options. Remember, this was pre-Internet. The librarian in the children’s section walked me over to a large filing cabinet, saying, “Here’s the homeschooling department.” Extra-large plastic zip bags and manila folders were filled with resources and materials from small grassroots groups in town. I found a number and called one of the contacts. The mom who took my call agreed with my frustrations and understood I wanted something different. However, she felt it was too late for me to follow the homeschool path. She mentioned that most homeschoolers try to get their children into public high school because it was challenging to attend college without an official high school diploma at the time. She recommended I consider the high school dual enrollment program at Santa Fe Community College.
The very next day, I caught a ride to the college and expressed my interest in their program. Without a parent by my side, they replied, “If you want to sign up today, go upstairs, take the placement test, come back, and we’ll help you select your classes.”
I had no idea what I was getting into. The girl everyone picked on for reading too fast or too slow—because I couldn’t track sound—somehow scored college-level on the reading portion of the placement test, perhaps due to my habit of intensely studying my lessons at home. However, I had to take prep math and English at Santa Fe. I didn’t know what that meant to the general population, and it didn’t matter to me either way because I was 16 and in college! I was free!
Something felt different about the environment and the approach to teaching: I was finally able to understand what was being taught. There were no distractions, and I excelled. At the time, I didn’t realize that the brain was a tool and that I had the choice to turn it on and off. I’m sure this shift in my ability to process information was closely related to feeling comfortable in my surroundings. I felt safe and was ready to start actively engaging with my mind.
After my first semester, I quickly discovered a path to obtaining an A.A. degree, which Santa Fe did not promote to high school students then. Perhaps they did not believe we had the discipline to achieve this. I informed the program director, who also served as the guidance counselor, that I wanted to take a full college load and did not wish to take any additional high school classes. She was hesitant, but for some reason, she chose to believe in me as I showed her the almond-colored checklist for the A.A. degree that I had found in the college admissions office upstairs. In the 90s, dual enrollment was primarily a dropout prevention option. Many students who signed up for the program struggled emotionally, faced problems at home, and needed a safe space to “stretch out in the grass” outside of traditional high school. With that, I could respect her hesitation.
In 1996, I was one of three students in Alachua County Schools to graduate from both high school and Santa Fe Community College with an A.A. degree. I started from the bottom, working through their preparatory program and attending both summer sessions. I still don’t know how I managed to do it. Honestly, I earned that A.A. degree as a byproduct of my ambition. Santa Fe was some of the best years of my life. I was free to learn without pressure and pursue my interests.
Teaching in the Public Schools
Early in my career, I taught middle school special education for self-contained students in grades six through eight with varying exceptionalities, including learning and behavioral challenges. Later, I worked as a school-based case manager, serving the same population of children. (Please do not seek comfort in the fact that I worked in public schools to alleviate any discomfort you may feel about trying something new. What TCS offers does not align with the methods I was trained to use in the classroom. It only means I have a good eye for identifying children who need options.)
Homeschooling My Children
After having my own children, I felt uncertain about the direction to take for their education, but I was confident that if given the choice, I wouldn’t enroll them in a public middle school.
His beautiful main lesson book.
I began homeschooling my children and noticed that my oldest was just as unique as I am, which prompted me to reflect on the saying, “The fruit doesn’t fall too far from the tree.” At the age of five, this boy would draw aerial maps of our town that were so precise, a visitor could use them to navigate. I looked at him with a questioning side-eye, wondering how he could visualize an entire city when he had never been in an airplane and could barely see out the window while riding in the car. He was unusual, and I felt immense pride in him. I discovered that homeschooling is beneficial for children and allows parents to gain a deeper understanding of their children’s educational needs.
As the year progressed, I began to ditch the textbooks and transitioned away from doing school at home. I started truly homeschooling, which many people now refer to as unschooling. Children learn best by pursuing their interests, and my son developed a love for writing as early as age five. He started making books and writing about everything. It got to the point that our little author couldn’t leave the house without one of his homemade books.
He always had a pad of paper to capture his thoughts.
Part of my approach involved minimal correction of his grammar and spelling. I just wanted him to enjoy writing, unlike my own experience in primary school, which felt forced. We also encouraged him to read for fun, and he took that to heart. Sometimes, he would spend the entire day reading. Even though I could see that his approach to learning was effective, I still struggled to grant him this freedom because I had been conditioned to believe that students needed to cover multiple subjects each day. No matter how hard I tried to maintain a schedule, it never succeeded, and he was content with that, having spent most of his time outside playing in the bushes and building forts.
The only thing that could have improved homeschooling was access to a community, which we occasionally discovered over the years.
Self-Directed School vs. Public Education
At the age of 10, we enrolled him in a free-school summer camp (not to be confused with tuition-free) where the kids could choose any program they wanted to join. Most of the boys ran off to play soccer or got dirty playing in the mud with the chickens. Still, my son decided he was going to Book Publishing, where no one showed up but him. I said, “Gabriel, this is summer camp; who goes to book publishing?”
He had a great deal of fun working one-on-one with a lovely, older, retired teacher who was passionate about writing. At the end of the week, he came home with a book titled Tornado of Smoke. Just before leaving the school, the teacher pulled me aside and asked if I had read his book. I said, “No, Gabriel writes hundreds of books; I can’t possibly read them all.” She replied lovingly, “You should read this one because it could be a movie.” Later that evening, I read the book and was amazed by how he could give voice to so many different characters. It was like trying to keep up with Little Women. I couldn’t fathom how he could write so well. It was so good that I didn’t believe he wrote the book himself. I asked when he originally wrote the book, and he said, “I wrote it when I was six years old in New Hampshire.” Then, I asked him to show me the original copy. I was dumbfounded. I read the now-dingy little book that was hand-sewn at the seams to bind the papers, and it was written on line-free paper in the penmanship of a six-year-old: messy, with terrible spelling, no proper punctuation or capitalization, but it was the same story. The teacher had only helped him with editing.
I discovered that day that my son was a gifted writer. Interestingly, there is no standardized tool to measure giftedness in writing, as education typically focuses on grammar and sentence structure. From the age of five, he was a storyteller and screenwriter. Nothing in my so-called understanding of grammar could match his skills, and I could only imagine how the public school system would have stifled his creativity, as he was terrible at spelling and didn’t find grammar all that important back then.
That same year, I enrolled Gabriel in public 5th grade, where he lasted only 28 days. Within a week, they called to express concern that my son was severely behind. After all, he didn’t seem to know his multiplication tables, but he certainly looked adorable with those little nerdy glasses. When asked a simple 1’s timetable question on the spot, he couldn’t answer. They thought for sure they had found a homeschooled student whose momma thought she knew something about education. It seemed they enjoyed calling out my son.
He came home that day feeling ashamed because he hadn’t met the standard. They refused to believe my report that he knew all of his tables. Ultimately, if you can’t recite it back, you don’t know the material, right? He said, “Mom, I was so stressed I didn’t hear what she was saying. I know ten times one is ten, but it just wasn’t coming out of me.” I could see that Gabriel had processing issues, but it was too late in the game to start the 504 process because a professional had never evaluated him. He was normal at home, working at his own pace, but in public school, he was now considered slow. It just didn’t seem fair.
I told my husband I was pulling Gabriel from the school because no child should be failed for learning. In the meantime, I took him for a psychological evaluation, which showed that he was brilliant! He had abnormally high fluid reasoning skills and spatial intelligence, which explained why he could draw portraits and aerial shots of our town at such a young age, and why he was so funny, preferring adult humor and conversation. Yet he had a very weak memory and a processing speed slower than a turtle. That, coupled with the stress of the classroom, caused Gabriel to always be a few steps behind, especially in math, because you need a good memory to retain concepts and formulas and a quick processing speed to appear intelligent. The evaluation helped me understand why he could only hold small bits of information when asked to complete a task or return after being sent to find something. With all this information in hand, I realized he only had a “disability” as long as he was within the school’s four walls.
My Observations of Self-Directed Schools
I took him back to the self-directed school, also known as a free school, and enrolled him in their program. Gabriel made friends easily and enjoyed participating in the student-led school meetings, where everyone—students, teachers, and parents—has a voice. He adapted to the school’s rhythm without difficulty because we followed a similar method at home. Students who were first educated in traditional schools sometimes took longer to adjust to freedom since they were accustomed to being told what to do every minute of the day. Over time, these students also stop seeking guidance and start making decisions on their own.
However, I had two main concerns regarding the free-school movement. First, the school attracted many families with children who struggled with behavioral issues that the school couldn’t manage. They welcomed all children without labels, which was considerate. Still, I noticed that many children might have been more appropriately placed in a therapeutic setting if they had been registered in a public school. These individuals had big hearts, yet unknowingly allowed their philosophy to overshadow the fact that they may be putting other children at risk.
My second observation was that the students were not coming in for math class, which made me curious about how they would transition to high school. I found it interesting that the teachers appreciated how our son, Gabriel, came in for math each day. “He was self-regulating,” they would say, and they began to view him as somewhat of a model student. Little did they know that I was at home threatening him: “If you don’t go to math, I will pull your butt out of this hippy school.” So, he gladly went to math each day and received one-on-one attention from the teacher because nobody else was showing up. It was as if they expected children to willingly eat their vegetables over a pack of cookies.
I wanted to embrace the democratic and free-school philosophy fully. However, one concern loomed large: I come from a community that still needs education to rise above the bottom rung of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and escape poverty. We can’t afford to take chances when there’s often only one opportunity to break free from deprivation. Who will fill in the gaps when Laquann decides to skip math? I also noticed that many families at the school who adhered to this philosophy had the financial means to hire tutors or possessed the skills to bridge those gaps, allowing their children to enjoy a fairy-tale-like childhood. However, I loved the freedom my boys had to learn without labels and pressure. With that, I was determined to establish a model that would enable less affluent children to also benefit from the freedom and experience the joy of learning that wealthier families can provide, without the risks of falling behind.
Final Verdict
When my oldest entered high school, having never taken a standardized test, I wasn’t concerned about how he’d measure up against his classmates. I registered him for regular classes since my primary goal was to help him adjust to his new environment. After his first nine weeks at Buchholz, his English teacher pulled him aside and said, “You should be in English Honors because you are such a great writer.” Then, they moved him up to all honors classes by mid-term. Then, his English Honors teacher said, “You would do well in the A.P. Capstone Program, which helps students develop strong research and writing skills.”
Gabriel, who played in the bushes until he was 14, demonstrated that the method had worked, as John Holt and many others had already noted. Sometimes, I wanted to inform his teachers that Gabriel was homeschooled and, more specifically, unschooled and did not participate in a formal English program with worksheets and red pens. He simply loved to read and write.
After two years of high school, he followed in my footsteps into the Santa Fe College Dual Enrollment Program, where he placed at the college level for both English and reading. Gabriel, too, was largely self-taught. The only credit I could take was serving as the best damn cheerleader to guide him in the right direction and not backing down when it came to math. And this year, as I launched the school, he graduated from high school with an A.A. degree!
Looking back, I wouldn’t change anything. I appreciate the self-directed model, but it wasn’t for everyone and was only successful when paired with a solid math and English program. As I used to tell my boys, “If you can read and write well, there’s nothing you can’t learn,” which has a lot to do with how a person is taught or whether they have someone looking out for them to ensure they have a solid educational foundation. Fuller School of Apprenticeship is a fantastic place to meet the needs of students who learn best when someone believes in them and they are never failed for learning.
Namaste,
Sher!
(Make sure you visit our homepage. Sit in stillness with your eyes closed for 15 minutes a day. I promise it will transform your life!)
