The annual Harvest Fair at Applewild School will be held on Saturday, October 15, from 10am to 4pm, rain or shine. This is a great family event to which the public is invited.  Some of the highlights will be the return of the Apple Pie contest and the opening of a time capsule from the 1970s.

Student judges will select the winners and slices of pie will be available for purchase when the judging is complete. Children can enjoy the indoor game room and crafts area plus the outdoor bouncers, the Pumpkin Decorating contest, and a wide variety of food for lunch or as a treat to take home.

Adults will want to check out the Basket Room raffles where the gym is full of a spectacular array of items from jewelry to electronics to toys to homemade furniture. For those interested in learning more about the school, tours will be available during the day.  Applewild School is an independent school for Kindergarten through eighth grade located at 120 Prospect St. in Fitchburg.  For more information, visit our website of call 978 342 6053.

The story below was written by Jay Shenk and was previously published in Community Vine.

I had many preconceptions about Applewild: I knew it was housed in a beautiful facility and I also expected rigorous academics, and I was right on both counts, although there is a lot more to the story.

Where I was off base however, was in my expectation of the school’s culture, and of its students. Quite frankly, I expected a bunch of rich kids in a boisterous atmosphere, more interested in the next ski trip to Switzerland than helping the community or studying. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

What I found was an entire school, from the Head of School, Chris Williamson, to the teachers, right through to the students themselves, all of who together form a true community that is dedicated to education and helping each student develop into a well rounded individual.

On one hand it was exciting to see children educated in this environment. On the other hand, I felt some sadness about it, as this is how students should be educated, but in today’s world of public education, this type of educational experience is far from the norm.

Applewild’s culture: This is what makes the school unique. The facilities are great, as is the staff, but it’s the culture that sets the school apart. The student teacher ratio is small, just 6 students per every 1 teacher, which allows the teachers to get to know each student individually, and it is that individual approach, along with the school’s core values that permeate the school and make it special.

The core values are worth listing, because from what I could tell from my brief visit, they are not just words on a plaque, but rather guides to almost everything done at the school. Those core values are Respect (I found it noteworthy this was listed first), Fair, Responsible, Compassionate, Cooperative, Honest, and Civic-minded. At various times during our tour individual students volunteered information about the school. Besides being knowledgeable, those students, many of whom were quite young, were well spoken and extremely respectful. It was something of a shocking experience.

Other aspects of the school’s culture I noticed were that all students are required to spend time helping others less fortunate than themselves, in their communities. It’s part of the curriculum. In the cafeteria, everyone eats family style, and there is an adult at every table. All announcements are made there, at lunch, rather than over a loud speaker, and there appears to be a good deal of give and take. At one point the students even seemed to be voting on something.

Another big part of the Applewild experience is involving the whole family in the student’s education, which dovetails with having ‘enrichment’ type classes that teach multiple skills at once. There is even a Grandparents Day held at Applewild. When it is time for parents to come to the school and see how their students are doing, there are conferences, but there are also opportunities for parents to see their students in action—for instance, the instrumental music students of various ages perform jazz. This is an example of how enrichment classes should work. The students are of course learning about music and how to play an instrument, but they are also learning the concept of fractions and percents—during the performances the teacher might say to them, “now we’ll do that tune 50% faster”. Then, because there are parents watching, the students also learn to play in front of an audience, in a non-threatening situation. One thing that was pointed out to me over and over was how much the older students mentor the younger students. That goes back to the school’s core values.

Academics: This is of course why children go to school, and here at Applewild it again wasn’t exactly what I expected. The academics are indeed rigorous, but they are also very well rounded and there is a great emphasis on accomplishing multiple goals in a class. The school day itself is longer than usual, probably more popular with parents that the students, running from 8:00am through 3:30pm.

What impressed me the most academically was the wide variety of class offerings—for instance, Applewild has a state-of-the-art woodshop, and all students learn woodworking. I really didn’t expect that at Applewild, yet it was the first thing seen upon entering the school—an entire room dedicated to displays of woodworking crafts by various students. Even here, multiple topics were interwoven.

One class, the fourth graders, made these very nice boxes from wood, but the boxes also involved electricity. There was a wire running from one terminal to another on top of the box, and then there was a third wire that was looped around the first wire. This was actually a game: if you could move the looped wire along the full length of the wire connecting the two terminals, you’d “win”. If you touched the two wires, a light bulb lit up. It was like a homemade version of that game “Operation”, so the project was fun, taught woodworking, accurate measurement, fractions, elementary electricity, and also created a game. Plus, parents and other family members could visit the school and see what their young students had accomplished.

Speaking of electricity, it was while speaking with the Head of School that a light bulb went off for me. As an independent school (and a full member of the NAIS—National Association of Independent Schools), Applewild is almost completely free of Federal regulations, including the much maligned “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) law and its close relative, the MCAS exams. Students at Applewild do not have to pass the MCAS exams, so there is no need to “teach to the test”, and unfortunately “no child left behind” tends to divert effort and funds to making sure no one fails, at the expense of honors classes and electives.

Too often “no child left behind” becomes “no child allowed to get ahead”. Applewild is free to develop their own teaching methodologies and curriculums, and they do this admirably.

Facilities: Applewild sits on 26 beautiful acres on the northern side of Fitchburg. It’s most known for its main building, the Crocker House, originally known as Applewild. The Crocker family bequeathed the house and lands to the school, and the Crocker family is still quite active in the school, with a member of the family sitting on the Board of Trustees.

There’s no doubt that the Crocker House is beautiful, but there is a lot more to the school, which now consists of 6 buildings, with a seventh, a new Dining Hall, soon to be built. The other buildings include classrooms, a performing arts theatre, the new woodworking building, and more. The main point here is that although the school is based in a beautiful old building, it also has many state-of-the-art features, including smart boards. Also, every student has access to a portable Apple computer. There are numerous athletic fields and a outdoor swimming pool for the summer program.

For those of you with an interest in history, there are numerous photos from the old Crocker family days hung in various halls and offices. There was one picture, taken from a low flying airplane, which showed that whole area of town prior to it being built up. The whole area surrounding Applewild was basically large estates, all with lots of land, which explains why there are currently huge old homes scattered about with no land to go with them. The houses were there first, the occupants moved away, and the land was subdivided.

Admissions and paying for Applewild: I went to my tour of Applewild wondering how this ‘great recession’ was affecting them. On the one hand people have less money these days, so I thought perhaps they would be losing students. The other side of the coin is that the public schools are going through such funding issues that I thought perhaps more students would be applying to Applewild. I still don’t know the exact answer to what is having more effect, but from my tour it seems that Applewild planned ahead for this economy, and that what they offer in terms of an education is, for some families, worth the sacrifice of paying for a private school.

Applewild still receives more applicants than it can accept, and keeps the number of students attending, in all grades, at about 206 students. They also are lucky enough to have a good endowment, and they do offer financial aid to many of the families whose children attend Applewild. This is done in utmost confidentiality—no one, including the teachers, has any idea which students at Applewild are receiving financial aid, and in reality it’s a large percentage of the students.

Applewild consists of two schools within a school—the lower school (Kindergarten to 5^th grade) and the upper school (6th to 9th grade, with 9th grade phased out after this year). Admissions tend to occur in Kindergarten and first grade, and then 5th and 6th grade, but every year new students join at every grade level. Students come to Applewild from many surrounding towns in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and bus service is provided from some locations. See the website for further details.

Applewild isn’t for everyone—the school simply isn’t equipped to handle certain types of behavioral or learning issues. However, it is perfect for students who will benefit from small class sizes, a wide range of course offerings, individual guidance, and the family atmosphere and core values found throughout the school.

This was brought home to me when we walked into the Upper School, and again the emotions were excitement at what Applewild offers combined with sadness at what has happened to many of our public schools. The first thing I saw in the Upper School was a Latin class. Latin, for which Oakmont was famous, has been phased out at Oakmont due to funding issues. To paraphrase the recently retired Art Teacher at Applewild, “every child should have the opportunity to attend a school like Applewild”. For some families, it’s really something to consider.

Click to read our story on Applewild Summer Camp