MIDDLETOWN, N.Y.—About two years into teaching English at the Northern Academy in Middletown, New York, Michael Fitzgerald was given an opportunity to start an elementary school, in his own model.
At the time, principal Marilyn Torley was planning an expansion of the highly rated private academy to include elementary grades, and she turned to Fitzgerald and his wife for help.
Before moving to New York, the couple had spent a decade homeschooling their four children in Idaho out of a passion to provide the best education they could as parents.
In the tolerant climate of Idaho, they had almost free rein to test homeschooling curriculums of all kinds while expanding their self-study to the beginning of time and across cultures.
Over the years, they absorbed the best ideas to form a unique model, Fitzgerald said.
“If I was to say, what is our model? Well, there are a lot of ways I could put it, and one of the ways that make sense to people is that we are Confucian and Socratic,” Fitzgerald told The Epoch Times.
Last fall, the Northern Schoolhouse was born out of that model.
Fitzgerald is the principal of the schoolhouse, and his wife, Katherine Fitzgerald, is the instructional coordinator.
An Idaho Experiment
When their first child was born in Boise, Idaho, about 12 years ago, the Fitzgeralds just knew that public education wasn’t the right choice for their family.
Katherine Fitzgerald grew up a gifted child, always feeling a big gap, intellectually and creatively, between herself and her peers in public schools.
Fitzgerald, a public school English teacher at the time, also knew the one-size-fits-all approach wouldn’t allow for the individualized attention he wanted for his child.
So, they decided to try homeschooling.
With few regulations in place limiting education choices, Idaho boasts one of the most robust and diverse homeschooling communities in the country.
“There are thousands of families using every type of methodology: secular, religious, or no schooling at all that you just take life lessons as they come,” Katherine Fitzgerald said. “We got to taste many methodologies and were on a journey that entire decade.”
In the meantime, the couple also went back to the peak times in different cultures for education ideas, such as the Renaissance Era in the West and the Tang Dynasty in the East.
They went even further back to Socrates and Confucius.
“All these ancients wrote education manuals,” Katherine Fitzgerald said. “What education is, what to teach, how to teach, and how to connect with children—it is all in there, and it is beautifully laid out.”
Through their self-study, they identified four primary subjects out of past elite educations: classics, poetry, logic, and ethics, and adapted them to fit modern society.
“Life is not as it was in the past. Although good moral standards are more or less the same, the applications are much different at times,” Katherine Fitzgerald said. “So, we try to reconcile these ancient practices in the modern setting.”
And they developed a teaching style that’s instructor-led yet student-centered.
“Kids are invited into the really rich content, but it is always directed by the teacher,” Fitzgerald said. “And you have to hit a child at his level and bring him up, and that’s what allows them to advance so fast.”
After teaching public school, Fitzgerald accepted a teaching post at an elite private school.
While his wife was experimenting with different methodologies with their children at home, Fitzgerald would test them in a small classroom setting at the school.
His English class got so popular that sometimes students had to be turned away, he said.
Northern Schoolhouse
About a year after the couple moved to New York, they were given an opportunity to build a schoolhouse at Northern Academy. And they took it.“We wanted to start a school for a long time, my wife and I,” Fitzgerald said. “We are so lucky that people at the Academy trust and support us. We are standing on their shoulders.”
The schoolhouse currently has 24 students between six and 11 years old, divided into two classrooms, each with two teachers handling almost all subjects.
Classical literature, nature, and traditional arts are the three pillars of the curriculum.
Students get to learn Shakespeare verses in grade one, and the math books they use date back to as early as the 1800s—and they’re hard.
Chinese and French language classes are offered, plus a little Latin and Greek.
The highly challenging curriculum is meant to train the students to be “fearless learners,” a quality that will benefit them for the rest of their lives, Fitzgerald said.
Even with the rich content, the teaching style of the school accommodates learners of all levels and types, Katherine Fitzgerald added.
One student was deemed learning disabled at a public school and is doing just fine at the schoolhouse, she said.
When it comes to nature, the students go on field trips almost every week and are encouraged to learn about the world through direct observation.
And arts of traditional aesthetics are promoted at the school, a taste also reflected in the interior design and decorations of the classrooms and library.
Aside from knowledge, the schoolhouse puts an equal focus on ethics and good morals.
“If something isn’t right, such as teasing going on among students, we will stop everything we are doing, pull the whole school together, and have a conversation,” Fitzgerald said. “Because it is about their character. We want them to be selfless contributors.”
Though it’s a schoolhouse, the couple cultivates it as a large family.
They cap the class size at twelve students to allow for closer relationships between teachers and students and encourage parents to befriend each other for activities outside the schoolhouse.
“Culture comes first, and ours is the culture of family,” Fitzgerald said.
Jenna Maggiolo, a Montgomery native and a University of Kentucky graduate, worked at the Northern Schoolhouse summer camp last year and loved the school model, especially the outdoor and hands-on components.
Last fall, she decided to stay on to become a lead teacher of the lower class.
“[They] have picked the best of the best education and made this school with it. They put all into the school, and this is their creation,” Maggiolo said. “I am so happy that I am a part of watching the Northern Academy as a whole grow.”
