Our Legacy

Becky Elder, Northfield amica scholae [friend of school] for 32 years, died on December 11, 2025 at home surrounded by family & friends. She's missed. Learn about her life and share your memories at
https://beckyelder2025.blogspot.com/

Since 1993, families and teachers have gathered here to learn together and to live out Psalm 139:

"Nascantur in Admiratione" — "Let them be born in wonder"

- learning to use the powerful and perennial pedagogical tools of the Trivium — grammar, logic and rhetoric — [experience wonder]

"Crescantur in officium et reverentiam" — "Let them grow in duty and reverence"

- studying the subjects and events of the past to grasp their calling in the present moment —[assume duty]
- understanding how and believing that ... ideas and actions [good or evil] executed in the past and possible in the present always make a difference [for good or evil] in the future — [embrace reverence]

open door and lock showing way into school

Beginnings
Northfield began in 1993, and for 25+ years functioned, as a standalone "school" with

direct control over the methods and subjects of education ... pedagogy and curriculum and
a "strong hand" in most of the multi-faceted relationships [aka the conduct] that formed between the various parties of interest ... administration, teachers, students and parents.

Discoveries
However, over time we began to see two things that repeatedly gave us pause to think:

families are the ecological unit through which human beings best realize their full potential and
depth of relationship is more important to learning than breadth of anything else.

Opportunities
And so, when COVID forced us to rethink schooling, we "found" what we now call cohorts ... small, autonomous micro schools that already existed within the Northfield community ... waiting to be acknowledged.

Each cohort is operated by a primary teacher and a group of families which grow together as they define and pursue their own educational constitutions ... with Northfield providing common rules for pedagogy, conduct and infrastructure sharing.

Northfield has now become a host of micro schools ... and more are forming as teachers and families gather together to "find" their own schools at Northfield. Come and see.

>> For more on cohorts ... COHORT Education Infrastructure