New students join the Farm House program

The Kindle Farm school's "Farm House" program has had a great start to the 2021/22 school year, despite all the challenges COVID has continued to throw at us. The program saw 50% of the student body returning and 50% of new students moving up from lower grades. These new students have had to acclimate to new spaces, schedules, and many new faces on the Onyon campus.

As part of that "moving up" process, those students have had more vocational opportunities and the ability to experience afternoon activities with a broader population of students. In many ways, the Farmhouse Program is a transitional program that allows our students to begin the process of changing classes throughout the morning, exposure to a new and diverse curriculum, and a greater sense of responsibility around their choices. We continue the approach expressed in our mission statement of shedding old patterns and learning new and more age-appropriate processes that honor the young men our students are becoming.

Community events like our Annual Harvest Festival help some of those newer and younger students feel more a part of the community by being included not just by watching but also by participating, setting up, serving, preparing food, and helping clean up after the event was over. All this happened while still enjoying the entertainment and activities that were featured on that day. One of our main goals as a school is to "Meet Students Where They Are At." It also empowers their sense of community and pride in working towards more meaningful goals and experiences that impact more than themselves.

The Outback Program has recently restructured the class configuration to streamline student support and gain staff flexibility.  By reducing a four homeroom program to three homerooms and restricting new student intakes, we look to support healthy ratios and flexibility for staff outages due to COVID concerns.

We are so lucky to have a creative and flexible staff that can create a dynamic program.  We are poised to thrive during the darker months of winter.