Hearthstone School: Educating kids on a road less traveled
By James P. Gannon
Tucked away on the lower level of a former country store and a converted barn is Rappahannock County’s most unusual school. It doesn’t use textbooks, gives no grades, and the average class size is four to five students. Its total enrollment from kindergarten through high school is only about 30 children.
Welcome to Hearthstone School, a decidedly unorthodox institution of hands-on learning, where children are as likely to spend time making soup, building an Indian teepee or doing organic gardening as they are reading a book or doing math. It is built on the idea of educating the hands, hearts and minds of children through creativity, co-operation and use of the arts.
Located in Sperryville along Route 211 near the entrance to Shenandoah National Park, Heathstone School is unobtrusive–almost invisible to the casual passer-by. Its lower-grade classrooms are housed in a converted barn hidden among trees along the Thornton River, while its middle and upper grades hold classes in the basement level of the former store building, reached by driving around back.
It’s quiet at Hearthstone School now, with children off on summer vacation and Director Jane Mullan working alone in her office in anticipation of opening the school in September for its 13th year. She is eager to show a visitor around, and to firmly dispute a recent rumor that the small school might be permanently closing.
Not so, says Mullan, who says classes will resume on Tuesday, Sept. 2, just after the Labor Day weekend. She’s anticipating an enrollment of around 30, possibly a few more–about the number that attended in the past year. “I think it will increase a little bit–we have a few new children,” she said.
Thirty students might be crowded into a single classroom in many public schools, but here the 30 range from pre-kindergartners to the 12th grade. Class sizes average about five students, and that normally includes two combined grades–such as first and second grade in one room, third and fourth in another, and so on.
Only about one-third of Hearthstone’ students come from Rappahannock County families, Mullan said, while in years past, half or more of the enrollment was from the county. The school draws from a six-county area, especially from Madison, Culpeper and Page counties.
Economics and changing demographics are behind the waning enrollment from Rappahannock. “A lot of young families can’t afford to live here in Rappahannock and also pay for private school,” Mullan observed. High housing prices and rents also mean “our teachers can’t afford to live here either,” in many cases.
Tuition at Hearthstone costs $7,650 per year for grades one through 12, with discounts given to families with more than one child in the school. For Pre-school and kindergarten children, the fee is $6,120 for four-day-a-week attendance.
As Mullan shows a visitor around the facilities, her running narrative builds a picture of a very different kind of school, which relies heavily on parent volunteers, donated labor and goods, constant fund-raising projects and other self-help to keep the unusual enterprise going year after year.
Showing off the library in the upper grades’ school, Mullan said, “Most everything here gets donated to us,” books, equipment, materials. “We have a lot of people in the area who give to us.” Down the hall there’s a small computer lab, with seven identical Dell desktop machines, “all donated by Sunnyside Farms when they closed down,” referring to the now-defunct business located in Washington and Sperryville.
“Every child at Hearthstone takes music,” Mullan continued, entering the music room with an upright piano, electronic keyboards, and a guitar hanging on the wall. First graders start playing recorders, then graduate to violin in third grade, and later can select their own instrument.
A crafts room is used for teaching woodworking, sewing and other crafts; an old-fashioned dark room is in the works for teaching film photography, in addition to the now-dominant digital photography.
Entering the lower school, Mullan shows off a large room full of playthings and small chairs and tables for nursery, kindergarten and primary grades. “This is where they kept the horses,” when the building was a barn, she laughs. Everything in the room is “natural,” she notes–no plastic toys or chairs, everything done in wood or natural fibers and fabrics.
There’s a little kitchen, too. “Kids bake and make soup, and they make crafts and do their own gardening,” Mullan explains. There’s a lot of hands-on creative learning at Hearthstone–part of a touchy-feely approach to education through experience that is integral to the Waldorf method that shapes Hearthstone’s curriculum and methods.
The Waldorf method of education was begun in Germany nearly 90 years ago when philosopher Rudolf Steiner opened the first Waldorf school, where art, music and handicrafts were as important as reading, writing and arithmetic. It was a radical departure from traditional schooling and it soon became popular in Europe and parts of North America.
Waldorf principles and practices shape the purposes and program of Hearthstone School, though Mullans said Hearthstone does not strictly follow the Waldorf method in all respects. Students do not receive grades on report cards, but “evaluations” are done three times a year and shared with parents in teacher-parent meetings.
“In Waldorf schools, we don’t use textbooks until high school,” the director said. “The children make their own books.” Each child starts with a blank lesson book, which is gradually filled in over time with stories, lessons, art work and other creativity arising from the classroom–giving each child his own unique “book” of what he or she has learned.
Hearthstone does not teach reading in the traditional way. “In the lower grades, there is a lot of story-telling,” said Mullan. “There is a lot of creativity, art, a lot of hands-on work….They learn to write before they read. There is quite a lot of writing, and from that, they just naturally learn to read.”
Hearthstone School was started in 1996, a successor to an earlier school, Spring Mountain School, begun by Mullan in Washington, VA. It has been at its Sperryville location since 2000. It operates as a “parent co-operative” in which all parents are required to work eight or more volunteer hours per month–doing maintenance, painting, cleaning or whatever needs done.
The school has no endowment fund, Mullan said, and relies on tuition, donations, volunteer work and frequent fund-raising activities and events to keep itself moving along its lesser-traveled road.
For more information on Hearthstone School, see its website, hearthstoneschool.org, or call Jane Mullan at (540) 987-9212.
-- James P. Gannon
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