"The way it is isn't the way it has to be." -Falcons Student 

Our History

 

Falcons began in 2016 as a tiny group of six students in Northampton, MA whose families banded together to hire a teacher. They rented a piano practice room in the local music school (small enough that many students enjoyed working under the piano) gathered some basic materials (including five pounds of dried beans which likely became the most frequently-counted legumes of the face of the earth as students conscripted them for math) and Falcons was born! 

From the very beginning students made most of their own tools, and nearly all of our traditions. Many of the aspects of Falcons classes today - Problem of the Day, Jobs, Gathering, Tasks, Complement Circle - and innumerable classroom objects began with that first class. Within a year the group had doubled in number and age range, and, now run by the teachers, began taking on bigger projects like The Play, building a scale dollhouse of the classroom, creating democratic decision-making systems, and filling the class library with books written, illustrated, and bound by students. 

When the pandemic hit, Falcons moved online with everyone else, but it had two unusual advantages. The first was a head teacher who had already worked for years with Oak Meadow Distance Learning and knew that learning without a classroom could be beautiful, and the second was students already so used to building our class together that it made it easy to say “Ok team. How do we want to do this?” Again, the students created our traditions, and their own tools and learning spaces, hypothesizing and testing methods to make online learning exhilarating and comfortable and to bring what they loved best from Falcons into the new format so successfully that the Online Class continues to thrive today. 

When Anna moved to Maine, she joined forces with three intrepid preteens and their families to create the Sedgwick class, reviving the traditions (and unpacking the objects) built in Northampton, and creating a new branch of the community, which, together with the Online Class, student newspaper, Parent Community, and ever-changing student-created clubs form what the students call “The Falconsverse.” 

We hope you enjoy exploring our world: all that you will hear about was made by students with love and passed down for future students to enjoy. Welcome!