Community partnerships as a resource for students - and teachers
In Sallis, MS, E.P.I.C Academy offers not only education, but also hope for students grades K-12. In a small, one-room schoolhouse environment, ostracized and/or neglected students from a variety of educational backgrounds gather daily for school lessons, enrichment, field trips, and encouragement.
Co-founders Kenneth and Traciellya Nelson collectively share almost 25 years of experience in public education prior to launching E.P.I.C. A key focus area for the Nelsons is rebuilding students’ confidence academically, socially, and mentally. “Our students are not characterized by grade level but instead by achievement level en route to accomplish being ‘Future Leaders’,” they say. One pathway they offer to future leadership is the incorporation of STEM into all core areas of their curriculum; at E.P.I.C, the “E” in STEM stands for Economics.
During his time as a public school educator, Kenneth Nelson became acquainted with the Mississippi Council on Economic Education (MCEE), an affiliate of the national Council for Economic Education (CEE) that provides certifications and resources for economic education and financial literacy to K-12 instructors in all 50 states. Instructors then implement MCEE’s resources in their classrooms, engaging students through games structured to train them to think economically. When Kenneth transitioned to microschooling, he understood the value for students of MCEE’s resources, so he brought it with him.
Two of MCEE’s offerings, the Economics Challenge and Personal Finance Challenge, are in-person competitions in which students from different schools compete against each other. The top two teams from each competition go on to compete against each other in a televised quiz bowl.
“For a microschool, participation [in MCEE’s offerings] delivers high-impact learning, measurable outcomes, and statewide visibility without needing big infrastructure. We find that students from a microschool perform very well in these competitions as the school setting is more flexible, allowing time to focus on these real-world skills,” says MCEE President Selena Swartzfager.
The Nelsons have seen this evidenced in their own students. One high school student had lost confidence in his education. Because of pacing guide rigor in the mathematics curriculum, he was sinking behind more each day and began to consider dropping out of school. His mother enrolled him at E.P.I.C., and with time, his confidence began to return. He participated on the team that represented the school in MCEE’s Economics Challenge and finished second in the state in their division.
Another student, the Nelson’s 4th-grade daughter, represented the school as part of MCEE’s Education team in Tokyo, Japan. She was a panelist and presenter at the Junior Economic Forum in February of this year and was engaged in a student tour of the city and an elementary school in Kyoto.
“The Economics Challenge, Personal Finance Challenge, and Stock Market Game [an MCEE resource offered for classroom instruction] are designed to build real-world decision-makers—strengthening economic reasoning, money management, and investing skills—core to MCEE’s mission of economic and financial literacy for every Mississippi student,” says Swartzfager.
Partnering with MCEE to provide educational resources, experiences, opportunities, and growth for their students is one of the many ways the Nelsons pursue their mission of being a “non-traditional, transformational, enlightening educational organization that focuses on working together with the God-created extraordinary mind of a child through the process of awareness, expansion, and empowerment”. CEE resources are available in all 50 states, offering opportunities for educators to bring these resources to their classrooms.
Daniel Elliott, MCEE Chair-Elect and Rankin County President for Cadence Bank, says that “MCEE provides experts to train teachers in any educational setting, whether that be public, private, or microschools. The programs and certifications that they provide for teachers create the opportunity for teachers and students to become a cohort, with students learning as the teachers learn and both gaining confidence in this critical set of real-world skills.”
The Nelsons are pioneering education innovation in Sallis, MS, every day with a purpose that is central to all they do. When asked if they had advice for new microschool founders, they responded, “Know your why every morning and reflect on your why every night before going to bed. Plant your flag in implementing your strengths in the progress of the students in your environment… Be who you genuinely are and commit to not quit.”
“No educational setting is too small to benefit from these resources, which can scale up for large classroom environments or scale down to reach just a handful of students at a time - but every student deserves the opportunity to benefit from the lasting impact of financial literacy,” says Elliott. In their commitment to uniqueness and perseverance, the Nelsons have shown their students - and the microschooling sector - how to partner within the community to bring professional resources to the small-scale classroom for large-scale impact.
If you are a microschool leader who utilizes partnerships to better serve learners or you are a partner with resources available for microschools, we would love to know more! Please reach out to us at info@microschoolingcenter.org.