Commentary

By Pat Montgomery, Founder Editor’s Note: Earlier this month, we lost a dear member of our school community. Billie Fahrner was a Clonlara School parent, staff member, and board member. She is remembered and celebrated here by Founder Pat Montgomery, her colleague and friend. I met Billie Fahrner in 1965 when I taught her brother […]

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 [...]

By Bev Munday, Director of Education Alfie Kohn, education theorist and author of The Homework Myth, has described homework as “a case of all pain and no gain” and said, “The disadvantages of homework are clear to everyone: exhaustion, frustration, loss of time to pursue other interests, and often diminution of interest in learning.” Like […]

By Chandra Montgomery Nicol, Executive Director What does it take to create a space for learning like Clonlara School’s campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan? That’s a question often asked by our colleagues in Clonlara’s 11 international offices and affiliates for which I have no set answer. I don’t know of an exact science for determining […]

By Stefanie Weyand,  Campus Teacher (Olders, Grades 9–12) and Clonlara Graduate  A paradigm shift is happening in the United States. Americans are beginning to doubt the Prussian style of education that has been the common way of teaching our children. Brought to us by Horace Mann, who could have only dreamed of advancements like the internet, [...]