It’s nearly 7 o’clock on a Sunday evening when Jeff Bird starts the engine on a school bus parked in front of his sprawling Victorian house. A car rolls up and a teenage boy hops out, followed by other cars and more boys, who each wave goodbye to their rides and pile aboard the bus.
To the average observer, the scene is simple. But to those who know the story of Mr. Bird and his bus, the scene is rich with anomalies.
It is to this latter school that Mr. Bird and his busload of 18 boys are headed for another week of lessons, farm chores, and male bonding.
The boys whom Mr. Bird and his staff work with come from disadvantaged backgrounds—often single-parent homes with lower economic resources—but they’re also kids who want a better chance at life.
“It’s formational, not reformational,” Mr. Bird said. “We don’t want to get kids who’ve been dealing drugs and stuff,” although he acknowledges that some HFS students have engaged in such activities in the past.
How did Mr. Bird come up with the idea for a farm-based boarding school? “Well, I got it from God!” he said cheerfully. “I was up shoveling snow one morning and it was five in the morning, and I really hate shoveling.” But he then realized how the work ethic he’d learned on his childhood farm prepared him to press on even in a hated task.
“That’s what these inner-city boys need,” he thought. “They need to get out of the city and away from electronics and all the temptations and get on a farm so they can ... really learn how to work and be with nature and God.”
Farm Life
“It’s fun here,” 13-year-old Ismael said over the din of young men eating lunch in the “White Barn,” which doubles as a classroom and cafeteria. “You get to really bond with people here,” he said, explaining how he and the younger boys take classes in the morning while the older boys work, the two groups swapping places after lunch.Ismael has attended the school for two years now, coming after he saw his older brother go through the program. He hopes to stay at HFS until high school graduation, but he admits that at first, he got rather homesick being away from home five days a week. “Really the only reason I was homesick was ‘cause I was a mama’s boy,” he admits, explaining how his mom encouraged him to come, knowing the benefits it offered. Now he is the one who would definitely encourage other boys to join the crew at the school.
Chores
The boys also drive the tractor; tend, harvest, and put up the produce from the garden; help in the kitchen; clean their living quarters; work in the wood shop; and do any number of other needed tasks.But the least favorite chore on campus is cleaning out the pigpen. “Horrible. Horrible,” Ismael said with an involuntary shudder.
His face brightens when he talks about hunting, however, noting that he prefers bowhunting rather than using a gun because it’s a lot more challenging. He’s bagged two deer since coming to the school and enjoys hunting with Isaac, one of the older boys at the school who taught him the sport. “I probably only used my phone once this week,” Ismael said, indicating that the school’s limited phone use policy is not an issue with him.
It’s not so easy for others, though. “I need my phone,” 15-year-old Carl said.
Perhaps that’s one reason why Mr. Bird put him on salesman duty, working the phones to sell the grass-fed beef that the boys raise to help support the farm. Or perhaps it’s just because he can keep up the professional front better than the others, for his pal, the aforementioned 15-year-old Isaac, admits that he dissolved into giggles when trying salesman duty.
As a student who saw the other side, Carl now realizes how great life is on the farm, even though his initial introduction to the school was a rough one. “They were trying to help me the best they could, but I was just being so difficult, like not listening ... so I just left the school,” he said.
Farm Family
“Everybody here is mostly just like brothers,” Carl said. “What happens in a family—you get in fights, argue a lot—but no matter what, they’re still going to be friends the next day.”The other boys agree. Reminiscing about pranks they’ve pulled and activities they’ve done together, they grin, saying, “Yeah, we’re like brothers!”
That family-like feeling is exactly what Mr. Bird was aiming for when he founded the school. Family is something that many today give lip service to, he notes, particularly in the switch from the orphanage system to the foster care system. “Society has kinda frowned on the orphanage model,” he said, noting that this is why boarding schools like his are not that popular today in the Midwest.
“They [social services] want to have families living together, but the reality is, the family’s not together, the family’s falling apart more and more,” Mr. Bird said. “That’s why there’s so many problems with youth in the city.”
Unfortunately, many people don’t recognize this, even those who are directly in the fray, such as one public school superintendent he recently spoke with. When Mr. Bird asked him why conditions in today’s schools get worse and worse, the superintendent “really didn’t understand the underlying problem.”
Mr. Bird went on to explain to him that “it’s a deep, moral failure at the family level that is accelerating” throughout U.S. society at all levels. “Without addressing the root of the problem, you can’t do anything no matter how good of a technician you are, teacher you are, or curriculum you have,” Mr. Bird said.
Thus, the schools Mr. Bird has helped found seek to build up the family, re-incorporating this sidelined societal element back into students’ education. At Hope Academy, regular events seek to encourage and incorporate parents in the education process, giving them practical resources and partnerships to help them propel their children on to successful adulthood. And although the Hope Farm School boys are separated from their homes during the week—often sent by parents who know that getting them out of the city is the opportunity of a lifetime—the school’s staff works very hard to make the school environment like a family, complete with mixed ages, adult conversations, and family-style meal and activity sessions in order to create a home-like atmosphere.
“If you imagine a family with 18 boys in one house ... there’s always something happening,” Libby Bird, Hope Farm School’s lead teacher and Mr. Bird’s daughter, said, noting that life at the school is exhausting and constant but very rewarding.
“We keep the classes kind of short because they’re so off the wall, there’s just so much energy,” Ms. Bird said, explaining the flexibility she’s had to develop in teaching six grades of testosterone-fueled students who aren’t often at grade level. “On average, they come in two- to three-year levels behind to us—on average—a lot of them are actually coming in further behind.” Yet she’s seen boys consistently overcome this gap, catching up to grade level over time.
“It’s kind of like a blend of homeschooling, tutoring, and a one-room schoolhouse,” she said of the method she’s developed in the classroom.
Discipline and Love
Regarding discipline, Mr. Bird recounts his own small-town grade school in Iowa. “If you did anything in class, you got whacked!” he said. “Then you got your call home. ... man, you didn’t do that very often!”Corporal punishment is not a part of the schools that Mr. Bird is involved in, but he does make the point that “you have to have discipline in order to teach,” and because “the public school system’s hands are really tied ... it’s going to continue to get worse” in the regular education system.
“We do have discipline, and we do hold kids accountable,” Mr. Bird said.
“They’re sad if we have to say, ‘You’re out of control; we have to send you home,’” he continued, referring to the boys at Hope Farm School. “And they’ll all say, ‘Aw, I don’t care.’ They do. ... They want to be there at the farm.”
“The biggest thing we really need to do is to love them—that’s the main thing,” Mr. Bird said. “Love is more powerful than punishments anyway,” noting that these boys especially need the love and mentorship of mature godly men.
“We love the boys deeply as Christ loves us, and that wins them over and they love the Farm School, and they want to be at the Farm School.”
That love is clearly beginning to infuse the lives of the boys at Hope Farm School based on the responses of the donors and volunteers who visit.
“A lot of people come and they’re like, ‘Your kids are actually really nice, I was really surprised,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah! They’re awesome!’” Ms. Bird said. “They’re great guys, I just don’t think they’ve been given the chance.”
