Commentary

By Inês Peceguina, Guest Author One of Clonlara School’s most fundamental beliefs is that children learn best when their interests guide their activities. Thus, for a student to learn a subject at a deeper level, they must be actively engaged in the learning process. However, a recent Harvard University study suggests that many students do […]

By Clonlara School We’ve said it before, and it bears repeating: “Not enough can be said about the importance of play.” In fact, play is so important that we have always made time for it at Clonlara School, even when the trend in traditional education has been toward limiting and structuring students’ playtime. Free and unstructured […]

By Carrie Lafferty, Off-Campus Program Advisor When I think back on the days before we adopted our son, I was filled with fear. Would he be healthy? Would we like each other? Would he want to be a part of our family? Would I be able to give him all that he needed? Fast forward […]

By Melissa Lefevre, Online Program Teacher The benefits of homeschooling and distance learning extend beyond taking ownership over your own education; they allow you to cultivate a healthy lifestyle. Students in Clonlara’s Off-Campus and Online Programs have the flexibility to schedule learning around their needs, but even with this flexibility, it can still be difficult to […]

By Chandra Montgomery Nicol, Executive Director As many of you may know, my mother, Pat Montgomery, founded Clonlara School. She envisioned a place where kids could learn in an environment that allowed them to make their own choices and pursue their curiosity and creativity. Clonlara’s Campus Program still provides such a model, in which students […]

By Clonlara School On September 20, 2018, Clonlara School hosted Blake Boles for his talk titled, “Yes, you can quit traditional high school and everything will be okay!” Blake shared his personal education journey and passion for self-directed learning with the school community, and inspired the audience with accounts of teens who, like many Clonlara students, […]

By Clonlara School Editor’s Note: This article was adapted from Clonlara School’s Off-Campus Program Education Guide, which our homeschooling families receive upon enrollment. Clonlara School was founded on the belief that “living is learning” and that most everything a child does involves learning of one sort or another. Students do not need to be reading […]

By Michele Collett, Director of Finance and Clonlara School Parent Over the last couple of years, I have witnessed very successful students from traditional high schools flounder in their first semester at college. They attended the lectures, took notes, and read the assignments but still flunked the tests. What could cause the class valedictorian, drum […]

By Emily Fitzgerald, Guest Author The phrase “teachable moment” is often thrown around and generally refers to an everyday situation from which a learning opportunity arises—usually involving some sort of lesson taught to a young person by an adult. An argument over a pencil can become a teachable moment about how to resolve conflicts or […]

By Barbara Robertson, Clonlara School Parent At a recent conference in Philadelphia, I attended a session that suggested most neo-intensive care unit (NICU) environments are not developmentally appropriate for premature babies. That is not to say the care these units provide is not critical, but that in many cases the environment is not optimal to [...]