At EPIC, our aim is not to recreate school in nature. In blended programs such as ours, it is the parents’ responsibility to teach their children at home and to document key learning highlights online. The in-person class time is intended as enrichment with a focus on connection, community, social-emotional growth and nature exploration. Of course, in many blended programs, the class time is usually one or two days a week and we have stretched that to three days, but the same principles still apply.
EPIC is a blended OL program. Blended or hybrid means that part of the children’s week is spent at EPIC with our teachers and forest mentors and part of the week is spent at home and in community.
The BC Ministry of Education recently renamed Distributed Learning (DL) as Online Learning (OL). EPIC is in partnership with Navigate-NIDES, and more specifically, their OL program Heartwood Learning Community (HLC), which is part of the Comox Valley School District. As such, EPIC students are enrolled in a BC Ministry of Education supported public school alternative. This partnership helps EPIC to remain affordable by covering some of our operating costs. It also means that all EPIC learners are enrolled in Heartwood Learning Community and that our BC-certified teachers are also the children’s HLC teachers and oversee and respond to the learning highlights shared online.
At the beginning of each school year, a personalized Student Learning Plan (SLP) will be created by the HLC teacher with input from families and is a part of the requirement for Heartwood’s contract for the ministry. Then throughout the year, parents will report on highlights of their child’s learning through a simple online platform.
Although being in partnership with Navigate-NIDES does limit us in some ways, it’s worth it as it allows us to provide additional programming and support to students and to provide a low student-teacher ratio, while also allowing us to keep our operating costs down, therefore keeping our fees more affordable.
Structure at EPIC looks different than in a classroom. We have rhythms and routines that create a container of care and community for the children. From our morning welcome circle to our end of day tea ceremonies, and the workshops and free play time in between, we remain open to discovery and to engaging in teachable moments as they arise.
The lessons and activities that the teachers plan and prepare need to be suitable for children of different ages and of varying academic abilities. In order to be engaging and to lead to further learning in an organic and authentic way, these activities may or may not fit neatly into a prescribed curriculum.
We also understand that the same approach won’t work for every family and the way we do things at EPIC means we can accommodate families with a wide variety of homelearning approaches.
While many of the Ministry of Education’s prescribed curricular competencies are covered at EPIC, it is not feasible to cover all of them and even if it were, parents still need to report their child’s learning in the various subject areas online because of the way online programs like Heartwood work.
There are many ways to successfully home-educate and no one “right” way. Your task as a homelearning parent is to figure out the way that is best suited to your child and your family. The great thing about homelearning is that you have the freedom to help your children develop at the pace that is right for them and this also gives you the time and freedom to explore homelearning options and find what suits your family best. Your homelearning journey will be unique to your family and what feels right one year might not feel right the following year! It’s certainly more of a journey than a destination. At EPIC, our BC-certified teachers are experienced in guiding homelearning families towards resources that may be a good fit. We also have veteran homelearning and unschooling parents on the board of directors and will plan to have a parent meeting each year that is devoted to discussion about unschooling and educational philosophies. You may also wish to check out our resources page.
- connection to self, nature and community
- curiosity about the natural world
- physical health, resilience and dexterity
- social and emotional learning
- creativity and problem solving
- self-awareness and self-care
- place-based learning and environmentalism
- teamwork and leadership
- and so much more!
Rather than drawing on one specific educational philosophy, we value the fact that our teachers and forest mentors have experience in many different philosophies, therefore creating an approach that’s more diverse and enriching. As such, our educators are inspired by educational philosophies such as 8 Shields, Waldorf, unschooling, bioregionalism, First Peoples Principles of Learning, etc., without being limited to just one approach.
In short, our philosophy is to teach our children how to take care of themselves, others and the earth. Therefore, we value nature-based learning as a way to foster connection to and stewardship of the land and attachment-based connection methods to foster connection with self and others.
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