Wildwood Acres Farm and Forest School

Wildwood Acres Farm and Forest School began as a sole proprietorship in 2013. At this time we operated solely as an agriculture and equestrian summer camp. In 2020,  as an entirely outdoor program, we saw significant (190%) growth. As our summer season came to a close, our community members expressed an intense need for programming to remain open, as our program had become the first balance of remote working and learning challenges for our population. The request was so large, that we put together a team and cultivated Wildwood Acres Farm and Forest School. Within a year, it was clear that our growth potential would be sustainable, and that we would need to file for S-Corp status.  At this time, our team of educators grew to include a total of 4 team members, and I was able to step fully into the role of a director.
Again our community sounded the call, and expressed a considerable need for the addition of a preschool program. We worked with EEC over the course of may months to become the first fully outdoor licensed preschool in the state of Massachusetts. We now network with upcoming programs to help expand similar offerings across the state. Our team grew again to include 2 licensed preschool staff. 
In the Fall of 2021, Wildwood served 57 enrolled placements within our program. We saw our largest  and most cohesive community to date, and we began to expand to offer adult workshops, a resource lending library, mentoring, academic consultations and livestock  breeding programs which supported our community's homesteading goals. 
In the Winter of 2022, we began to see repercussions of the economic slide. Our community is compromised of homesteading families, who most often are living on one income, or one and a partial income. As the world " came back online" from the pandemic and remote learning/ working conditions tapered to more traditional circumstances, our families struggled to meet educational needs and income needs simultaneously. While the world at large struggled uniformly to adapt to pandemic conditions in 2020, the homeschooling community was the first and hardest hit in the post pandemic adaptations, and often was less visible to policy or supportive resource offerings. Over the next year we lost 80% of our community. Upon exit interviews with families we came to an even stronger realization that if we hoped to respond to our community's needs, becoming a private school and managing academics would be crucial for us. We worked diligently over the next 8 months to create powerful and sustainable solutions to this end. We have now partnered with Oak Meadow curriculum, the first homeschool curriculum to receive accreditation, out of Vermont. We have received approval from the local school board to become a private school. We have sourced funding for a new building, which will ensure our capacity to deliver academics to all sensorally-diverse learners. However, the approval we sought took 7 months from initial request to present, to the time that our actual presentation was scheduled. Due to this deficit, we missed a considerable window in advertisement and enrollment. Our Marketing team  stressed the importance of catching the typical January-March window when most private school families seek and make plans for the upcoming academic year. Despite continual efforts to meet with the school board, we received no response from November through April.  Once we were able to present our program for consideration, we received approval within 10 days: a true testament to the strength and value of our program.
Wildwood Acres Farm and Forest School is founded in two depthful and rich ethos': Forest School, and Sustainable Agricultural.  Forest School has existed in the UK since the 1970's, and is now well integrated into their public school system. There is substantial research which supports the inclusion of Forest School Ethos in  education. Students  gain benefit to their central nervous system, general health and wellness. Open ended exploration fosters a lifelong love of learning, and an enthusiasm for education that remains well into adulthood. Regular integration into our natural environments also fosters a deeper connection, value, and reciprocity which will be unquantifiable in their impact toward the new paradigms facing our upcoming generations.
Contrastly, Our agricultural component supports  informed practices in food development, reciprocity with livestock, sustainable practices in animal husbandry and farming, and encourages " big ideas" to face the issues of today's farming.
Our founder and director, Marcie Fusco, has  completed extensive undergrad work in Early Childhood Education, Psychology, and Business, and holds a BA in Psychology. She is near completion towards a MA in Organizational leadership. Her 20+ year career  has been spent working with children in educational environments. She  has worked with infants through high school students, and in both Private and Public sectors. She began as an educator and quickly found a strength in special needs and behavioral consultation. Before founding Wildwood, she worked as a consultant in a local school district training staff, developing classroom management strategies, writing IEPS, offering ongoing supports to teachers, managing parent communication, child advocacy, and rewriting policy on access to supports that highlighted function and fluidity for students to gain support as well as gain independence. She worked closely with specialists in the fields of OT, SLP, and school counselors'. She gained a therapeutic riding license in 2012 and became an instructor for students of many abilities. Additionally, she is a certified yoga instructor, and has since attended and taught many workshops and clinics for traditional skills such as basket weaving, fiber arts, milking and cheese making, equine training programs, therapeutic animal experiences, foraging hikes, and sustainable soil/ gardening practices. Marcie is also a member for a local business development association, and helps to bring forth real world challenges facing entrepreneurs. This program is the culmination of her experiential and academic knowledge which best support well-being in childhood education.

Throughout our development, our largest issue has been accessibility for families. We have recently worked with voucher programs, sought partners in offering scholarships, and sought  support for business development through local agencies. We have worked with, and at times, helped to rewrite policy in order to better meet the needs of our young generations in this changing world. We believe in our mission. we are backed by research in the fields of Early Childhood Development, Psychology, and Behavior. We are well rooted in ethos that have successfully improved education and overall childhood experience, thus improving mental health, for over 50 years in other countries.  Outdoor Education, and Educational Alternatives, are movements which are currently sweeping our nation as more professionals grow to understand their potential impact. Industries that support his change are struggling to develop policies to support their growth. We seek financial support in order to sustain our costs in this transition year, and offer scholarships to improve accessibility to our community.  In turn, we are working tirelessly to create a model that others can use as a precedent and expand from, allowing families to gain the support they need to strike a different home-life balance and ultimately support a necessary shift in  our population's mental health, agricultural sustainability, and global cultural shifts. This change is needed. It is impactful. it is dynamic in the solutions it can offer to our changing world. The movements behind this paradigm shift are steeped in reconnection to our earth, each other, and ourselves, however, if these educational alternatives and outdoor education  that are sweeping our nation are going to maintain footholds within our culture, we need to develop financial solutions that bridge the gap between likeminded program entrepreneurs who are building these programs, and families who wish desperately to access them. Help us create a model that supports this bridge, and the changes our world so desperately needs.