Alum Champion's Learning Through Nature

When his older daughter, Grey, started kindergarten at their local elementary school, she had bigger class sizes and little outdoor play time. He and his wife, Abigail Jennings, questioned long days spent indoors and what they saw as a lack of flexibility in what and how kids learned.

So the couple and two other families created their own school.

In 2012, they started with 20 kindergarten and first graders in two rooms in a historic house. Today, Pioneer Springs Community School is a K–12 public charter school with nearly 600 students. This year marks the first with a 12th-grade class. 

The school incorporates nature into many areas of the curriculum. The campus is a certified Wildlife Habitat. They follow place-based learning, exploring areas such as conservation, climate change and community engagement.

Lewis and Jennings are active in historic preservation and serve on the board of the nearby Hugh Torance House and Store, North Carolina’s oldest standing store.

Pioneer Springs’ north Charlotte campus now includes two historic buildings restored as classroom space. Part of the school is located in the Croft Historic District, offering many opportunities to teach history. That includes research and lessons on the enslaved people whose labor and cultural contributions helped shape the area.

“We want to make sure that we’re telling everyone’s history, and that students are seeing that history as something real, and local, and connected to the present,” Lewis says. “School is a place for students to cultivate a love of learning and to start making a difference in their community.”

Aside from administrative duties, Lewis, a potter and musician who plays with the Charlotte-based Mike Strauss Band, teaches ceramics, and occasional music classes.

A Better Fit

Senior Christian Mayer likes Pioneer Springs’ welcoming community.

He’d attended regular public and charter schools in Charlotte. His last high school was too big for him; he does better with smaller class sizes.

“My teachers all know me here, and they all really care that I do well,” he says. “It’s not that teachers at my old school didn’t care, there was just so much other stuff going on all the time. It was a very different vibe.”

Mayer loves the emphasis on the outdoors. 

“I had an English exercise where I had to describe and draw a tree,” he says. “I love trees and nature. Fresh air gives you a fresh perspective.” 

Return to And Education for All: These public-school educators teach, lead, counsel, nurture, care.

This article was originally published in the Fall/Winter 2023 print issue of the Davidson Journal Magazine; for more, please see the Davidson Journal section of our website.