The Earth is calling for a new kind of school.
Sonoma Earth School started as a vision of husband and wife, Tim and Leila Allen. Inspired by the nature school community, their own children’s educational needs, and their observations as lifelong educators, Tim and Leila established Sonoma Earth School as a new type of school, moving education into the future.
Our Mission is to educate through Nature.
The Earth is calling for a new kind of school. A deficient human relationship to nature has a growing, negative impact on the world, leading to detrimental effects on child development, and contributing to environmental degradation. At Sonoma Earth School, the relationship between students and the natural world is permeated with reverence and care, establishing an indispensable seed for the future.
With today’s broad developmental spans, traditional methods of uniformly instructing large groups of same-age students is leaving a growing population of learners’ needs unmet. Our small, mixed-age cohort offers students the benefit of a social learning context, while completely individualizing levels of challenge. Students build confidence based on their achievements and progress, rather than how they measure up to standardization.
The increasing trend to virtualize the learning process puts emphasis on information acquisition. While pieces are gained, the whole is forgotten. What brings today’s student the experience of meaning? Our students’ sense of resilience and meaning grows through the consistent relationship between caring adults and children. Academics integrated into the context of human relationship and nature create the foundation for deep, lifelong learning that serves the unique identity of each student.