About Us
Who We Are
We are a village of inspired parents, children, teachers, & community members united by a shared belief in the transformative power of nature & experiential learning. We want to take learning ‘back to the land’ & out into the community. We are a diverse & dedicated group of alternative educators, state credentialed teachers/administrators, artists, biologists, botanists, herbalists, grant writers, homesteaders, healers, lawyers, architects, engineers, & tradespersons. Many of us &/or our children are neurodivergent/have special needs that were not served well in the public school system. We want to create a learning ecosystem that uplifts and empowers us all as unique & whole human beings, each of whom have valuable gifts to contribute to the world.
Our Founder/Director: Cristan Norman
Hailing from a 1000-acre cattle ranch in Shingletown/Shasta County, it has long been Cristan’s dream to create a farm school. After graduating from the University of Puget Sound with a B.S. in Biology & Environmental Studies, Cristan worked as a field biologist & environmental educator as an Americorps Watershed Stewards fellow, a botanist, & fisheries biologist.
After being introduced to Montessori education, she decided to shift gears & go back to school to become a teacher. She received her Masters in Education as well as two AMS Montessori teaching credentials (primary & elementary) from St. Mary’s College of CA. She then went on to obtain her CA state Multiple Subjects teaching credential from CAL State Teach so that she could teach in public Montessori schools. Cristan also completed Tier 1 of her Administrative Credential when she was hired as the director/principal/mentor teacher of a small, rural public school that was on the brink of closure due to dwindling enrollment & transformed it to Montessori, increasing enrollment by 700%.
During her time in public schools, Cristan learned how to write grants and successfully received/implemented over $500,000 in grant funding, including a $90,000 grant that renovated the outdated, 60-year old school kitchen in order to create a student-run, farm-to-fork program with the school’s already flourishing garden/greenhouse. She also became certified in Project Wild, Project Wild Aquatic, Project Learning Tree, UCSC’s Life Lab School Garden curriculum, as well as attended the Forestry Institute for Teachers.
Since becoming a mother to a special needs child, Cristan has a new & ever-evolving perspective & understanding of what it means to truly serve the whole child. She is both humbled & inspired by the (often harrowing) lessons her motherhood journey has gifted her. Ever since learning about the original Montessori farm school (The Hershey School) during her Masters program, Cristan has wanted to start a holistic, alternative, and inclusive farm school. She was on the founding committee of Roots Farm School in Shasta County before moving to Siskiyou County. Once she arrived in Mt. Shasta, the stars started to align. Thanks to incredibly generous landowners/partners who shared the same vision of creating a farm school, her dream has finally become a reality.
Our Program
We offer a unique, unconventional learning experience as a homeschool co-op operating on nearly 100 acres that have the headwaters of a salmon-spawning river running through it, forests, native grasslands, garden, a huge barn, & an animal husbandry program with 11 goats. Our beautiful classroom is filled with Montessori & STEAM learning materials.
Children have the freedom to explore, discover, and freely choose how/what/when/where/with whom they would like to learn. All learning is hands-on, experiential, project/inquiry-based. We also often go out into the community to learn through service learning projects through partnerships we cultivate with agencies/tribes/businesses/organizations/other microschools/homeschool co-ops.