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WELCOME TO FALCONS

an Integralis Learning Community

The Falcons Consortium consists of an in-person Falcons class in Sedgwick, Maine, an online Falcons class for students from a wide range of locations, plus tutoring and homeschool consulting students who join our community in other ways. A student newspaper serves to keep the community connected across all platforms. Occasional smaller groups form for extra-curricular tutoring or group lessons. The Falcons classes form the backbone of the community, consisting of close-knit, multi-age groups of homeschool students who gather for two days a week to tackle interdisciplinary topics together. These groups provide practice learning independently in an intentional community setting. Our program follows the Integralis model, designed by Falcons headteacher Anna Logowitz, to enable students at multiple levels to engage in meaningful learning, side by side. Students can enroll in one class for two days a week, in both classes for four days a week, and/or for tutoring or other offerings to create the balance of freedom and instruction that best fits them.

About Falcons

In the FIC we believe that learning is living and vice versa, therefore the daily life of our classroom is calibrated to impart both the content and values we strive for in our students.

In-Person Falcons

Children begin their days, both in person and online, by participating in the jobs necessary to make the program run, including setting up the classroom, caring for the materials, assisting one another, and corresponding with visitors, volunteers, or absent students. This work builds ownership, teamwork, memory and spatial skills, and provides real-life context in which children can use and see the relevance of academic skills acquired in other aspects of the program.

After set up students spend much of the morning on “tasks,” skill-building assignments tailored to each individual’s learning levels. For older students, this often takes the form of a longer project through which they practice multiple skills, while younger students do shorter activities designed to build their confidence and enjoyment of learning before they enter into the sustained enthusiasm needed for longer projects.

The whole group gathers twice a day, once before lunch, and once after. The before lunch time, called Gathering, allows us a chance to reflect on and intentionally develop our classroom. Students identify difficulties they see or are having, and plot out community solutions, keeping our program ever-evolving and student designed. This also serves as a lived civics curriculum where students actively study the nature of living together in community via reflecting their own.

Most FIC sessions are also organized around an overarching interdisciplinary thematic, which students work on together in Afternoon Lesson. Past topics include Resources, Heroism, Rocks, and Living on the Earth. Students explore the ways in which these topics connect to both familiar and new skills and content and how to make their knowledge useful. A study of rocks, for instance, allows for an exploration of matter, Earth’s processes, classification, experimentation via the scientific method, and cycles.

The FIC uses an emergent curriculum, meaning that plans follow student needs and interests rather than the reverse. As such, our content evolves responsively, just as our classroom culture does, allowing us to keep it relevant and tailored to the group we have each session.

In Person Details:

In Person Falcons meets Wednesdays and Fridays in Sedgwick, Maine, from 9 am to 1 pm.

Tuition is $280/month, with discounts for siblings, for a ten month school year. Mid-year enrollments are welcome.

Meet Anna

Anna Logowitz first encountered progressive education as a student at the Cambridge School of Weston in 1999. She attended Bennington College, drawn by the school’s innovative childhood studies program, before transferring to Smith College to study the power of story to shape growth. She later earned a Master of the Arts in Teaching from Smith College.

Anna has worked in Waldorf, Montessori, therapeutic, distance education, and public school environments, and has also been involved with disability activism and creative accommodation. She is the founder of Integralis Education, and works for Oak Meadow Independent Learning. When not teaching (which is rare) Anna can often be found tinkering with sailboats or building realistic toy and puppets, projects that occasionally overlap with the FIC. The Falcons Integralis classroom is her favorite place to be, and nothing makes her happier than seeing children grow.

Meet Maisie

Maisie Smith came to Falcons as an intern in 2020, while still a senior at Smith College. Already passionate about progressive education, she was captivated by the Falcons culture; the focus on community, the attention to detail, and the extreme warmth and kindness of both teachers and students. After graduation in 2020 with a BA in Sociology and an unofficial focus on education, Maisie also graduated from intern to Falcons co-teacher, and worked to help steer the Falcons program through the pandemic. Maisie enjoys connecting with all Falcons students over their unique interests and curiosities, and encouraging them in creating the things they imagine.

Maisie is currently based in Chicago, IL, where she works as a Jewish enrichment after school teacher . She continues to be a part of the Falcons administration and curriculum planning team. She is also Editor In Chief of the Weekly Falcon, the Falcons student newspaper. In her free time, she loves to make art, read science and speculative fiction (her favorite author is currently Octavia Butler), dye her hair and spend time with her pets.