Suzannah Kolbeck is the executive director of HoneyFern, Inc., a non-profit private school whose mission is to create a community that cultivates caring, intelligent and curious learners who indulge in deep thought, study and discussion, exploring what intrigues them in a way that is productive, responsive, creative and unique to them. HoneyFern specializes in curriculum design that considers the whole student - their interests, abilities and goals - and offers students the unique experience to guide thier own learning.
Suzannah has over a decade of experience in public schools, teaching and learning with gifted students. After becoming a VISTA volunteer implementing service-learning projects in Seattle public schools in 1997, Suzannah fell in love with teaching and earned her Master's degree in education at Antioch University Seattle. Suzannah taught in Seattle for three years at New Options Middle School (now Salmon Bay School), a public school that blocked and looped classes, emphasized community and offered experiential education in the form of twice-yearly, week-long tent-camping trips with 110 7th and 8th graders. A family crisis brought her to Georgia where she tried to continue the work of her first school, but it was not to be. No Child Left Behind and an increasing emphasis on testing forced Suzannah to step back and evaluate what it means to be a teacher and what education should be, and, upon reflection, she left public school to found HoneyFern, inspired by former mentors and a deep and abiding resolution to honor students and their thoughts, ideas and interests.
HoneyFern continues to evolve and adapt to the needs of its students; plans for the future include a graduation trip to Fiji (four years from now; save your money!), service learning projects in the community (from one-off volunteering to more extended projects), day trips to explore Georgia to learn from the source and much, much more. HoneyFern is now accredited through the Georgia Accrediting Commission; we welcome families of every stripe, from traditional families looking to move beyond public school to unschoolers moving back into more structured education and everyone in between. We are a secular private school that gains strength from our diversity and joy from our learning!
HoneyFern in based in Marietta, Georgia by way of Middletown, Maryland and Seattle, Washington.