Dear Compass Families,
We have had such a positive start to the year, and I wanted to take a moment to share some of the exciting things happening behind the scenes at Compass. We welcomed several wonderful new team members this year, and our opening team planning sessions gave us an opportunity to begin the year feeling organized, aligned, and excited about where we are headed.
One of the most exciting things for me this year has been seeing how comfortable our learning style is beginning to feel. We have been using many of Oak Meadow’s materials and approaches for several years now, and we are reaching a point where we can confidently make them our own—shaping them around our unique philosophy, our children, and the incredible opportunities available to us here on the farm. We are not simply following a curriculum; we are learning how to use it as a framework while creating an educational experience that is distinctly Compass.
This Is a Homeschool Cooperative
At our first Parent Planning Committee meeting last Wednesday, September 23, one of the questions from a parent that came up was, “How can we take some of the load off of the Compass team?”
I loved this question because – well, we have quite a load on us right now – but, it also gets right to the heart of what a homeschool cooperative is.
Growing a homeschool cooperative is not a small project, and every successful educational community I have ever heard about has involved significant parent participation, especially in its early years. We want our parents to be part of shaping Compass—not simply recipients of the program we provide. All Compass team members are parents ourselves, and we are here creating this for our children.
That is why these Parent Planning Meetings are so important. We want you to tell us what your vision is, what you want for your children, what you think we are doing well, and where you see opportunities for us to improve. And we want you to get involved.
One challenge that naturally occurs when an organization is growing is a “bottleneck”—when too many decisions, responsibilities, and tasks still have to pass through the founder or director because systems have not yet been developed to make delegation possible.
Tory and I have spent much of the past year working diligently to change that. My Type A personality makes this a slow process, but we are getting somewhere good!
We are creating systems and structures that will allow us to delegate more effectively and give more members of our community meaningful opportunities to contribute. But, being a school-type community, parent involvement is essential. If there’s something you want to see happen, let us know and we will see how we can support it! An example is that Mom’s Gatherings and the Parent Planning Meetings are parent-inspired, and parent-run.
The Work You Don’t Always See
I shared with parents at our meeting that I have a very big vision for where this homeschool cooperative can eventually go. Right now, however, a tremendous amount of our work is happening behind the scenes to make sure that future growth is solid.
Over the past year, we have been developing team trainings and creating templates and training materials that can be used with future team members. We are developing safety protocols, hiring and onboarding systems, risk-management procedures, and systems for working with both new team members and parent volunteers on campus.
We are also building systems for enrollment and registration, permissions, curriculum planning, event promotion and production, event rentals, and much more.
We have also discovered just how much ongoing campus maintenance is required to keep a place like this functioning well. Honestly, the weight of it is crushing at times. Our wear and tear on the campus is apparent. This is clearly going to be an ongoing need, and we are beginning to envision a dedicated volunteer team focused specifically on helping care for our campus.
None of these things are necessarily exciting enough to announce in a newsletter, but they are incredibly important. They are the infrastructure that will allow us to grow without constantly feeling like we are trying to hold everything together with our hands.
So even if you don’t hear us talking constantly about the big future vision, please know that we are building toward it. And we need everyone’s support, whenever and however you are able to give it.
Building a Foundation for the Future
The Henleys have been incredibly generous and gracious in allowing us to begin this homeschool cooperative here on their farm, and we are deeply grateful for the opportunity to grow in such a beautiful and special place.
At the same time, we are always keeping an eye toward the future and asking ourselves where Compass might eventually land. Perhaps that will be a permanent home of our own, or perhaps our future will include several different locations around Albemarle County as we continue to grow. We don’t have to know exactly what that will look like yet. What we do know is that we want to be prepared when the right opportunity presents itself.
One of the things on my mind this year is fundraising. Regardless of what our future location looks like, we want to build a strong financial cushion that gives our homeschool cooperative the flexibility to grow when the right opportunities arise.
We are committed to keeping tuition as accessible as possible for families. The reality, however, is that maintaining an affordable tuition structure means we need to raise a significant amount of additional funding each year. This is why parent participation in our fundraising efforts is so important.
We recently sent out our fall volunteer sign-up sheet, which includes several opportunities for families to help us reach our fundraising goals. We are asking parents to join us at face-painting and product-sales tables during Henley Fest each Saturday in October, as well as helping us plan and set up for our Thanksgiving Festival fundraiser.
Please take a look at the volunteer sign-up and join us for a shift when you can! These seemingly small contributions from many families make a tremendous difference.
Looking Toward Our Future Home
I also shared with the parents at our meeting that our fundraising efforts this year will begin building toward a longer-term goal: having a substantial fund available that could potentially help us purchase land in the next couple of years.
The Henleys have been amazing hosts, and we are incredibly grateful for everything they have made possible for us. When the time eventually comes for Compass to move into a new location, however, I want our families to feel confident that we are not moving simply because we have outgrown what we have.
I have a deep sense of faith about the future of this homeschool cooperative. I believe that when the time comes, the next chapter will be just as inspiring—and perhaps even more so—than the beautiful space we have been given here. We don’t know exactly what that looks like yet, but we trust that we will recognize the right opportunity when it comes.
Curriculum Updates
We also spent some time talking about curriculum at our Parent Planning Meeting.
This year, we are developing curriculum calendars for each age group so that parents can have a clearer picture of what their children are learning and experiencing throughout the year. We are continuing to use the Oak Meadow progress checklists for language arts and math as a foundational guide, while reshaping the social studies, art and life skills curriculum to better reflect our values—including project-based, hands-on learning, and respect for the natural pace of each child’s development.
Priya, Vince, Molly, Casey and I are all working together to develop a parent-facing outline for our language arts curriculum. We hope to share this with families by midyear. This does not mean we aren’t already actively teaching language arts—it simply means we are still refining our approach before presenting the full scope and sequence to parents.
For our Honeybees (Kindergarten–1st Grade), we are focusing heavily on phonics and reviewing letter sounds at the beginning of the year, moving into word families and an introduction to vowels and consonants. Through book club with Ms. Priya, the children are experiencing wonderful literature, learning the parts of a story, and practicing their writing skills. During the second half of the year, there will be increased opportunities for one-on-one reading and writing practice with Vince and Priya.
Our Farmers and Silver Maples are being challenged with increasingly sophisticated writing projects that require more thought, strategy, and organization. We are working on spelling as they move beyond primarily phonetic spelling and begin learning the many patterns, rules, and exceptions of the English language. We will also begin focusing more intentionally on grammar around midyear.
Our Sprouts have been working on early language development, introductions to letters and sounds, and foundational literacy skills. We are also developing our own language arts curriculum for this age group, incorporating wonderful children’s literature and hands-on experiences.
Math
October will be our first concentrated month of math, and I am especially excited about what we have planned.
I will continue teaching math to Kindergarten and older students using a Waldorf-inspired approach that incorporates storytelling, imagination, and math gnomes. For our older children, we will be exploring angles, fractions, volume and area measurements, more complex equations, and other increasingly sophisticated mathematical concepts.
I am also working on a parent-facing outline for our math curriculum so that families can better understand not only what we are teaching, but why we are approaching math in this particular way. My goal is to have this available by midyear.
There is so much happening at Compass right now, and I am incredibly excited about the direction we are moving.
Thank you for trusting us with your children, for believing in this vision, and for being willing to roll up your sleeves and help us build it. A homeschool cooperative becomes something truly special when the families who are part of it feel ownership of the community—and that is exactly what I hope Compass will continue to become.
We are building something slowly, intentionally, and with a very long view. The foundation may not always be visible, but it is being laid every day.
I am so grateful that you are here with us for this chapter.
With gratitude,
Robin
Director, Compass Academy
The Compass Center Foundation
