Private Distance Learning and DaySchool
In two decades of running our school and camps, this is the most complete one-page description of the school we have ever posted.
Before applying to NOLI School Please read this page and the Wisdoms and Musing page for FAQs, articles on teaching, parenting, nature, and other topic written by our founders, mentors, and students. You may also want to check out our Facebook page and groups listed at the bottom of this page.
We are in the middle of a complete overhaul of the website; please check back in a few weeks for current photos, students’ art, and writing.
Please note: We typically only have openings for two or three new students each fall for both the distance learning and day students.
We believe that being well-educated is more than just being prepared for entering the workforce or college.
Our goal is to assist our students in raising their character, skills, and habits to their highest potential as: sons and daughters, brothers and sisters husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, and elders in our community.
To that end, every day, the students are given the time and resources to create the skills, habits, and mindset of the excellent character that statesmen and stateswomen must possess. It is the students responsibility to embody the gifts they are given.
Each day we maintain a balance in effort in our kinship and civic responsibilities, our health and fitness, our fiscal responsibility, our play, and our chosen vocation; none is ignored, and all are done under God to serve God. Nothing we teach is secular.
Today and every day, we use the time and resources that God has given us wisely and with gratitude.
We teach our students to ‘learn how to learn,’ pursue their dreams, and become prosperous adults adept at solving problems. However, our core mission is to craft the next generation of leaders, not politicians, but statesmen and stateswomen. We weave this thread into all NOLI Youth Programs, including our camps and school. Please note: our summer and winter camps can be stand-alone, but in our school, the quarterly camps are by necessity integrated, applying skills learned or introducing new topics. Distance learning students must attend these camps with the day students.
Our School is like No Other
We limit our classes to seven so each student has a voice and ample individual time with their mentors. But the difference does not stop there; what you envision a K-12 school should throw out the window. Former students have said, “it doesn’t feel like school, but hanging out with a large family doing cool things.” Post-grad students observing our teaching methods say, “It doesn’t look like secondary education but like a post-grads day.” “In a month’s time, these teens and preteens have experienced more time in nature than I did in my first year in my Nature Education M.S. program.” This is an education that is genuinely student goal and student-skill-centered. It is not the right school for all students. The successful candidate must be trusted to work independently and work as a team member. They must document their own goals and accomplishments. They must follow through with the guidance their mentor gives. We are not a school for students with special needs or behavior problems. That being said, we shore up weaknesses and build on strengths. Students work to earn mastery, not work to pass tests; work is not taken home. No worksheets, textbooks, grades, or transcripts. We do not hire credentialed teachers; too much of what a teacher is taught in their 5th-year program is of negative value in our setting. We hire masters in their subject area that have made a living in what they teach or genuinely have a lifelong passion for. You will find that our education is real and relevant to the student’s long-range goals and prepares them not just for their chosen profession but also to be good husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, and ethical and skilled leaders in their community.
Our Daily Routine
Our daily and weekly routines are what the great leaders of the U.S. did; they developed the habits of being prosperous, joyous, and elders in their community.
Before the sun breaks the horizon, the students separate out to be undisturbed and observe nature, then journal the experience. After an hour the students do chores and then gather for the morning general meeting.
Like American public students before 1963, our students start each morning with prayer and the Flag salute. We read some scripture and a U.S. Founding document or related. There are roughly 35,000 founding documents for our nation, and in those documents, there are roughly 3,500 direct quotes from the Bible. Most mornings, examples of how the Bible influenced the founding and framing of states’ constitutions, The Declaration, The Northwest Ordinance, The U.S. Constitution, The Federalist Papers, and Presidental inaugurations and farewell addresses, letters between each other, and more are shared. The other subjects taught throughout the day are not taught as secular; more on this later.
The students and staff share an oath to be responsible for their part of their NOLI Education.
For 180 days each school year, students take turns facilitating our school day by practicing The Standard Code of Parliamentary Procedure. Using the rules of parliamentary procedure becomes a habit running our meetings efficiently and developing logic and applying reasoning skills during our debates.
The students then share their daily nature journal in a group discussion; this time is spent learning zoology, botany, geology, and climatology. Each student maps their site, measures and records dry bulb and wet bulb temperatures, wind direction and wind speed, barometric pressure, the weight of wood samples, sun (or a moon) position and time at beginning and end, longitude and latitude, and species seen and heard as well as behavior. Given that data, they calculate relative humidity, fire danger, windchill, distance from previous nature sit, the relationship of sun and time, temp, date, and connection to animal and plant behavior. Can you see the value of this data over time? Can you see how this builds common sense? The students also write a narrative of what they saw. In time the students become skilled at painting a picture with their words, and they are all learning from each other.
We finish the morning with the students reading a passage from the books they read for pleasure that they want to emulate. This is written in cursive. Yes, our students learn to write in cursive as well as print. We want our students to read the Founding Documents in the script they were written in, and writing in script stimulates a different part of the brain than printing.
They follow up reading their passage by sharing the new lexicon words they pick up doing their reading. We do not assign books to read, though we do make suggestions based on the student’s interests. We require the books they read to add three new words to their lexicon daily. We don’t give word lists for the students to memorize, but we are all learning from each as we listen to and question each other.
That sums up the morning; in the afternoon, the students study vocational and avocational skills with the help of the mentor. This is a time for a lot of individual attention, and these studies are the vehicle to teach math, science, logic, reasoning, business, and problem-solving. There is no limit to the skills learned. More on this later.
Our Classroom
Our “classroom” is in quotes because it is not a building with desks and whiteboards or a lecture podium, but a mixed-aged group of students sitting around a campfire in the open or sheltered in a teepee, or just some tarps, shops, pastures, creeks, and wilderness. Our “classroom” procedure is more like what you would expect in a graduate school than in a standard K-12 setting. Students of mixed ages study in small discussion groups as well as in larger teams for special projects. They work one-on-one with their mentor or individually – choosing how they will be most productive.
Intense, focused learning is balanced with unstructured, unguided free time so that students have the opportunity to play, explore, or pursue other interests, such as music and art; there are no limitations.
We Create a Curriculum That’s Unique to Your Child?
Our number one core belief in teaching is that when a student is passionate about what they are learning and finds it relevant and authentic, the outcome will be good. With this in mind, we start the process by spending time with your child and getting to know them – discovering their aptitudes, goals, and interests. We also address their learning styles. Then, after reviewing this information, we custom-tailor a curriculum and lesson plans that build upon their strengths and shore up their weaknesses – while aggressively engaging their interests.
Each child’s curriculum is fluid, changing as the need arises, yet it has a well-defined structure for each day, week, and trimester. Coached by their mentors, each student creates short- and mid-range goals to help measure the progress toward their long-term goals. Written tests are typically not used at the end of a course of study. Instead, each student must demonstrate sufficient mastery of the skills as they progress while working with their mentor. Testing is a tool we only use if a student has a goal that requires them to pass a test, such as professional certifications or college placement.
How do we Motivate Kids?
Many parents of students in standard-modeled schools are frustrated by their child’s lack of motivation to study a particular subject and they don’t understand how we make this work; this is primarily due to a failure of the student to understand how the topic is relevant to their life. Parents will ask if grades are not hanging over kids how do you get them to learn math, reading, etcetera? We don’t teach the way it is don’t in the standard model school; we don’t teach algebra as a stand-alone subject that a year or more is dedicated to. We break algebra and other math and physics subjects into tools needed to solve problems that are pertinent to them.
Our solution is simple but effective.
All true motivation is self-motivation. We simply connect students to their passions and interests and use those as the vehicle to learn the fundamental skills of grammar, math, science, history, language, logic, and more.
For example:
The standard education model is to teach the answer to a question that the student did not ask.
We use daily life to apply skills as a group. We may be planning a road trip we must always calculate the time, fuel, and money needed to make the trip. When in the backcountry, students often see some feature in the landscape that is off the topo map. We will apply the law of sin and cosine to find the distance. Life is a word problem that the laws of math and science will solve.
Most of the boys (and some girls) in our schools are interested in shooting guns, and shooting both is the perfect vehicle for teaching measurement, physics, history, reading charts, and mental and physical discipline.
One day two preteen brothers ask, “Can we shoot the cowboy rifle?” They were referring to the lever action rifles we have for the students. I responded, “Sure, but we need to make ammo for it first. You ever make ammo?” The boys sadly said, “No.” Me: “Today is a good day to learn.” Over the next two weeks, the kids learned to measure decimal inches with a vernier caliper and vernier micrometer, measure weight in grains, read reloading tables, inspect brass cases, resize brass, the function of the case, primer, powder, and projectile, to assemble these with skill and care. It is a wow to shoot a lever action rifle, but a big wow to do it with the ammo they made. After they started shooting, they then learned about measuring the distance to the target, the velocity in feet/second, calculating the time necessary for their bullet to reach the target, the acceleration of gravity, the estimated drop of their bullet, and much more, all because they were asking. With the microscopes in the lab, they asked to look at the different powders, which led to asking why pistol powders looked like tiny washers and rifle powder like pencil lead, with started instruction in fire science and chemistry. Next, they asked questions about when the rifle and ammo were invented. That question led to questions about the presidents at the time, when cars were invented, the Indian wars, patents, and much more. The parents told me the boys started explaining in a western movie; it showed a rifle that had not been invented for the period of the film. At some point, most boys get interested in hunting which requires getting their Hunter Ed Card, which leads to the hands-on math of navigation, the taxonomy of animal i.d., anatomy and physiology of shot placement and animal processing, habitat management, and more. Most importantly, the students led the discussion and asked questions, not me.
Most kids love horses, and, like with firearms, the love for horses becomes the hands-on vehicle for math, science, and history skills and building responsibility, empathy, grit, strength, and agility.
Think about this, if a student has an interest in scuba diving, airplanes, and amateur radio, the student will have covered all the trigonometry on the SAT. There is little difference between us and how the Greatest Generation and before learned.
How do we Foster Good Habits?
The children who made up the “Greatest Generation” and earlier were expected to follow daily routines. They learned good habits by spending a lot of time working with their parents and elders – a style of learning that is largely gone. The truth is that successful people throughout history were known for their strong work habits. They practice managing time and structuring their days in pursuit of their dreams. Toni and I have spent years researching the habits of high-achieving people, and we apply these ‘best practices’ to the education of our students.
The most basic routines for children include daily chores. For example, younger children must make up their beds, get dressed, feed and water animals, and make their own lunch. In the evening, they may clean and put away dishes after dinner and organize their backpack for the next day. The age and responsibility of children doing chores correlate better with college and adulthood success than SAT scores.
We do not Give Daily Homework
The Greatest Generation and before were not given worksheets each evening; they had their evenings free to do chores for the family, spend time with family, and work on hobbies.
We are Not the School for Every Student
If you are still reading, you must still be interested in your child having a NOLI education. We are a school for kids that found the standard school put roadblocks before them from meeting their highest potential.
A NOLI education is pertinent to meeting a student’s long-term vocational goals, but not everything will be fun or easy, but in the end, it will be worth it. As I described before we teach the skills of financial and civic responsibility, being physically fit, developing physical and mental agility, logic, and reasoning.
Please understand we are not a school for students with behavior issues or learning disabilities and our students must understand that they are responsible for learning the material that the mentor gives them and documenting their own progress. Unfortunately, some kids do wash out mostly because the parents need to be more honest when filling out the application or the student needs to take their work seriously.
