Jessica Plance

Eli and Isaac Deaver spend their mornings exploring the meadow and the creek by their house. When they see a bird they don&#8217;t recognize, they rush inside to look it up in a book. Nature is the foundation of their education – unstructured learning through the exploration of life, supplemented with home schooling with their grandmother.
The boys spend about three hours a day, five days a week studying with their grandmother, Judy Poulette, 62, a retired school teacher and principal. Their parents also teach Eli, 10, and Isaac, 8, less formally. Their mother, Laura Poulette, works with the boys on their homework. She and her husband, Strider Deaver, who is a state forest ranger, teach lessons from nature and the family&#8217;s homestead. The family is part of a secular home-school co-op in Berea, made up of multiple families.
“Home schooling is pretty relaxed,” Laura says.
Laura and Strider have spent the last two and a half years building a home for their family in a meadow given to them by Strider’s grandmother, who lives up the road. During construction, they live in a two-bedroom cottage with no running water or indoor plumbing. The family gathers rainwater for washing dishes and showering. The Striders buy water for cooking and drinking. A battery-powered camping shower is hidden behind a sheet in the kitchen.
“It’s been kind of a fun experience, but we&#8217;re all looking forward to having our own space,” says Laura. The family hopes to move into the new home by Christmas.
Laura is working toward making her family self-sufficient. She cares for a vegetable garden, two meat pigs and some chickens. Laura constantly researches and learns new ways to be self sufficient, then uses what she learns to teach her children about the earth.

Home-schooling 24-7