At the Verdi EcoSchool, digging for worms is a math lesson.
Growing plants teaches entrepreneurship. And feeding the chickens? Well, that’s just plain fun.
The private, nonprofit school for kids up to eighth grade opened in 2017 with a focus on project-based learning, real-world skills, sustainability and the environment.
Students, many of whom live beachside, spend most of their day outside.
“Exploration should happen from the minute they enter education until they leave it as an adult,” school founder Ayana Verdi said during a recent tour of the “schoolhouse,” an older home on Highland Avenue in the Eau Gallie Arts District.
Ayana and her husband, John Verdi, started the school after being frustrated with educational choices for their own two children, 8-year-old Giovanni and 4-year-old Annabella.
John Verdi is a survivor of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As a New York City police officer, he was a first responder at the Twin Towers.
“It would take all day to explain my experience” on that day, Verdi said. “But I will say that when I was laying under a car and praying to survive, I said to the man upstairs ‘I promise to do something great.’”
He retired from the police department after 9/11. He and Ayana later married and had their first child. They moved to New Zealand, where Ayana attended veterinary school.
When they returned to the U.S. and moved to New Jersey, Ayana Verdi said she was struck by the lack of innovation in traditional public schools.
Ayana asked teachers and other parents about alternatives to the traditional school day structure.
“They all just said, ‘This is the way it is,’” she said.
They tried public school, and homeschooling. They moved to Miami, and then Brevard County, where they were attracted by the robust homeschool population. They had a house in Viera because, Ayana Verdi said, “that’s where everyone told us we had to live.”
But they wanted more. The Verdis were searching for a community to put down roots and launch a new mission in life.
Then they discovered the Eau Gallie Arts District, where they began to spend much of their time. They learned about education and building a community by doing their own research. John Verdi says talking to people in the community, something he did regularly as a police officer, was key.
“I was always ‘that cop,’” he said, engaging with citizens and neighborhoods.
The EcoSchool’s first “classroom” was a half-acre plot donated by the Yoga Garden on Pineapple Avenue, which the school still uses. They organized a community action day on Sept. 11, 2016, where they planted 15 trees to mark the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
The Verdis soon bought the property where the schoolhouse now sits, and they moved to the neighborhood as well.
Today the EcoSchool has 60 students, four full-time teachers and 10 specialists who teach things like music and martial arts. Tuition is $8,755 a year.
Ayana Verdi runs the school as a full-time volunteer. Neither she nor her husband draw a salary.
They remain active in the community, too. John Verdi runs a weekly storytime at nearby Anaya Coffee. The school cohosts the weekly FleaGAD market on the first Saturday of every month. They also do salsa nights in the Yoga Garden and other activities. They are working with local chefs and NASA on a project to grow food that could be used in space or on other planets.
While the EcoSchool draws from curriculums like Waldorf and Montessori, it’s not affiliated with any particular teaching philosophy or organization. The school’s teachers create learning plans each year, based on the needs and interests of each child.
“We don’t use a canned curriculum,” Ayana Verdi said. “What our educators focus a lot on is meeting the child where they are.”
Several of the teachers have backgrounds in science and the environment. One is an entomologist. Another holds a doctorate degree in physics and space sciences. Another is an herbalist. There is also a staff permaculture expert, who specializes in sustainable and self-sufficient agriculture.
Younger kids focus on play as well as things like introduction to letters and numbers.
“It’s really about making a connection as early as possible with their environment,” Ayana Verdi said. “Kids who love nature and love their environment grow to be good stewards of that.”
As the students get older they focus more on traditional subjects, but in a nontraditional way.
Lucy Pruss, a Satellite Beach resident who sends her two sons Ayrton, age 6, and Jenson, 4, to the school, cited the math lesson where Ayrton and other kids dug for worms, measured and weighed them as an example of why her family loves the EcoSchool.
“The teachers are allowed to think outside the box, they don’t have requirements, and they are allowed to do what the kids need,” Pruss said.
Like the Verdis and others, Pruss also tried traditional public school. Ayrton is autistic and his service dog, Biscotti, goes to school with him every day.
“This is the only school that really saw Biscotti as a tool,” she said.
The third- through eighth-graders spend a lot of time at the Yoga Garden, focusing on math, science and environmental studies.
“We’re not asking them to regurgitate for a test,” Ayana Verdi said. “We’re asking them to really authentically apply what they learn.”
Parents have asked them to expand to include high school students. Ayana Verdi said she is in discussions with Eastern Florida State College to possibly offer dual enrollment. The Verdis would also like to create apprenticeship programs with local businesses and tradespeople.
They believe kids should be better prepared to enter the world as adults.
“We just want all children, and our own children, to know the world is open,” John Verdi said.
