facilitating academic, creative & social experiences
for middle-school years
We are working towards finishing Spring 2025!
Information about 2025-2026 coming June 2025.
Homeschoolers
Expressing individuality, impacting others, and exploring community well-being through feedback circles.
We are a vibrant community of homeschooling families practicing kind relationships with our children and each other while engaging in holistic education in a non-conforming & unconventional setting for our children.
Our Pedagogy & Process
We support Youth-Led, Interest-Based Learning, with a keen awareness of Youth Rights, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity in our community by trusting and respecting the youth members of our society. We support the emergence of engaging activities that allow tweens & and teens to explore their interests and develop their interpersonal skills in a supportive environment. It is a mixed-age space to navigate oneself in relation to others often leading to friendships.
Our M/Tu/Th days are structured with easy in-flow connection time, 4 hours of various offerings, space for lunch and unstructured play, daily clean-up at closing, and a bi-weekly community meeting with leadership opportunities to surface gratitude, bring concerns, share reflections and brainstorm solutions for implementation. Offerings facilitated by Subject Matter Experts are planned for the semester based on current interests and Learning Goals. Thursdays provide opportunities for cooking and peer-led offerings bi-weekly, and afternoon offsite explorations.
Our pedagogy is enhanced by experience and informed by national organizations: ASDE, Agile Learning Center, and Liberated Learners.
Academics
Interest-Based
Dual Credit
Adults at HGEC work with youth members to provide guidance and resources to help them pursue their interests, develop the social-emotional interpersonal qualities necessary to navigate life's challenges, and appreciate the joys through kind and mindful observation, reflection, and presence at HGEC.
What's in a Name
Our name orients the compass of our collective to live, grow, and learn together.
Embodying Values
At Holistic Global Education Center, we value ahimsa (nonviolence), and compassion in our learning environment. We strive to create an atmosphere of kindness and mindfulness.
Our values anchor our environment to meet its purpose of providing an engaging and equitable learning experience. We believe that when we come together with respect and understanding, we can create a community that is truly remarkable in being an interdependent nurturing collective where parents support each other and care for all children, not just our own.
We have developed processes for conflict resolution, direct communication, feedback loops, and decision-making to support the integration of these values.
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Learning
We exist to explore the vastness of knowledge so we may grow in our intellect and wisdom.
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Authentic Connection
We provide an environment that supports heart connection through conversation.
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Safe Space
We aim to be a place that provides a physically and emotionally safe environment needed for our nervous systems to relax into learning.
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Soft Qualities
We believe in vulnerability, trust, courage, nonviolence. Away from socialization of scarcity, separation and powerlessness.
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Mindfulness
Awareness of moment-by-moment presence, processed in real time with curiousity, non-judgment and open-heartness.
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Play & Fun
We believe in the joy of playing and having fun in life. We include unstructured time during HGEC and families tend to gather at other times also.
CONFLICT EXPLORATION
Conflict is a natural part of relationships and communities. We use a consensus-building model of dialogue by noticing our reactions and feelings, using mindfulness to have awareness of our sensations, and nonviolent communication tools to engage in beneficial conversation towards healing, restoration, and reconciliation.
Feedback Options
Conflicts are either identified by simply being present to the exchanges during the day, during community meetings or folks identifying suggestions, compliments or concerns by dropping notes in a box.
The members prefer to have concerns between specific individuals be discussed in private with a facilitator. And a general (nonspecific) disclosure of challenges be shared at the so the community has awareness of challenges/ resolutions.
Community Meetings
Every two weeks we meet as a group to reflect and navigate our experience and impact in and of the community. The Community Master Board is led by volunteer youth members or in-house guest facilitators & culture holders.
HGEC's activism for social change can be seen in us lifting up and centering inquiries and interest from families historically marginalized or having suffered from the burden of cultural norms imposed by dominant systems.
We encourage folks that have been Othered (BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, Immigrants, and more), and their allies to join our vibrant and colorful community. Together, we enrich our collective with a mutually expansive relationship of heart & mind while weaving Belonging.