Tia Rendine, Creator and Founder has a long history as a teacher, literacy coach and mom.
As a mom of two she defines the pursuit and opening of this learning center as the blending of traditional and modern to create experiential and emergent learning for kids aged 3-10 years old.
Her personal story is both relatable and brave, and this next step is the realization of her going from teacher to mother, literacy coach to caregiver for her beloved father, and now, creator and founder of this new venture.
Tia started her professional career teaching kindergarten and grades 3-6 during which time she tried very hard to change the curriculum, make learning more individualized and provide support for kids who really needed it. She found success in changing the methods, the approaches, the philosophy and the pedagogy. Focusing on curriculum enhancements with Readers and Writers Workshops, giving students more choice in what they were reading and what THEY wanted to write about was her focus, all while continuing to meet standards. With all that, there were still blocks to her ability to change too much and so she turned the roadblock into an opportunity and earned her Master’s in Literacy.
“The idea was that if I got my Masters in Literacy, I could help kids that were really struggling, by intervening early and focusing on coaching teachers how to teach kids and how to implement literacy in a more meaningful way. I became a reading specialist and did a lot of work with literacy curriculums,” says Tia.
When Tia’s daughter was born, the idea of creating something new was also born. That’s when she started asking herself tough questions like: “am I going to go back to teaching public school? What program am I going to put her in? What does life look like for an educator with different views, who is also a mom?”
With COVID in the mix, things were changing rapidly and after looking at several programs, Tia realized that it was now or never and that while the other programs were fine, they just didn’t fit what she wanted for her daughter. She decided to create a program herself. After resigning from her public school job, she embarked on a path to blending momhood and her profession. She took the leap to creating her own school and doing what was best for her daughter.
The first version of Tia’s school started with ‘pods’ and introduced concepts like yoga (Tia is a certified Kid Yoga Trainer) music and a nature-based program. Suddenly, the demand was very high, especially in the midst of COVID, because kids were wearing masks, and everywhere there was fear, learning from home and not a lot of feeling of community.
The ‘pods’ really created a feeling of community, it became clear that’s what was missing, the roots of community, the traditional feeling of meeting and being together and of organic emergent learning. That’s when the first version of Tia’s dream was launched, with an incredible preschool teacher Ms. Laura and herself.
After four years of running a successful program with a curriculum based on the needs of the kids and their families, life happened and unexpectedly she became the caretaker to her father who had become very ill.
After he passed, she knew it was time to come back to the idea of blending personal and professional experiences.
Now, with a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old, she once again faced decisions about which program would best suit her kids. The younger one with some developmental delays and a genetic disorder, and the older one, who Tia felt had a strong foundation but would benefit from a program. She enrolled her daughter in a micro-school and focused on her son, starting a small program that would eventually be the foundation for her long-term vision of a different kind of learning experience.
Today, Tia leads a thriving community of like-minded families with kids aged 3-10 years old that carries with it roots of tradition and elements of an emergent curriculum where kids learn at their own pace and are encouraged to guide their experiential learning.
Tia continues to stay connected to education and goal setting by leading reading groups and creating individualized learning plans for the kids. In addition, she provides literacy instruction, guided reading and reading support several times per week.
“I’ve always wanted to live on a farm, continue as a teacher and bring the concepts of homesteading, caring for animals and other practical life skills to my kids, and now I am bringing all of that to the community and by blending elements of traditional and modern. I know that growing up, my father had to help ground me as I was navigating my bigger dreams, but I am sure he’s seeing my vision of how to merge my love of farm life with my experience as an educator and my position in life as a mom.” Tia