“I wish there’d been a place like this when I was in school.”

Liberty’s approach is simple.

We start with a young person’s strengths and interests to help them build a meaningful life and education.

Say hello to…

caring mentors
flexibility
interest-based learning
small, welcoming community

Say goodbye to…

homework overload
chasing grades
standardized curriculum
rigid rules

Is your child a square peg trying to fit into the round hole of traditional school?

Bright but bored in school? Learns differently? Struggles with social atmosphere? Anxiety?

Serious pursuit like dance or theater? Medical condition makes attending hard? Hates homework? Doesn’t want to sit and listen all day?

Liberty Learning Center was designed for you.

Talk with Troy to Learn More

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Mentoring relationships will be at the heart of Liberty. Each teen will be matched with a staff member who sets aside time to meet individually each week. It’s hard to overestimate the importance for young people to be heard and known and not just feel like a number. Having a caring, supportive and knowledgeable adult as an ally will help teens to make the most of their time at Liberty. Mentors will also help connect young people to the learning opportunities at Liberty, online and in the wider community. We’ll help them keep track of what they learn and the experiences they have for whatever next steps they are planning to take after Liberty. We know that parents will also have ongoing questions that we’ll be ready and eager to answer. What steps do we need to take to apply to college? How does a young person get working papers so they can get a job? Is a gap year a good idea? What is the process to get a driver’s license? We’ll schedule three routine family meetings throughout the year, but you’ll be able to get all the help and support you need with just a phone call or email to your child’s mentor.

The community at Liberty will be one of the highlights for many of our members. We’ll intentionally keep the community small, no more than 45 or so kids at full capacity with a staff mentor for every 10 kids. We want everyone’s voice to matter and not feel like they are just a cog in a machine. While not perfect, we will work very hard to keep the Liberty Learning Center community a welcoming and inclusive community where people are respected for who they are. For young people who are coming from a hard social situation in school, the friends and acceptance that they will find in the Liberty community will be the most valuable experience they have.

Many people are astounded by the huge number of opportunities there are for young people to learn independently of the conventional school system. Liberty Learning Center will act as both the provider and connector to this world of possibility. The classes and activities at Liberty will typically meet once a week for an hour, average between three and eight attendees, and cover the whole range of interests – everything from traditional subjects like algebra and writing to interest-specific subjects like learning Japanese or computer programming. Many of the learning opportunities at Liberty will be offered by our community volunteers. This will allow us to provide a huge diversity of offerings based on our members’ interests. Liberty will set aside Fridays for trips and special workshops. Often proposed and planned by members, trips can be anything from a simple nature hike, a tour of the capitol building, a trip to the ballpark to watch the I-Cubs, or taking a tour of a local business or manufacturer of some sort. Liberty will be a small community but there are many leadership opportunities. Our members will organize trips, lead the weekly all-group meeting, take on roles in the community like first-aid and safety manager, and even lead classes and offer one-on-one music lessons to other members.

Many parents worry that leaving conventional schools to use self-directed education will somehow limit the opportunities or choices their children have after they leave Liberty. Nothing could be further from the truth! Other centers in our Liberated Learners Network report that a large majority of members attend college after their time with the SDLC (Self-Directed Learning Center). Many people are surprised that teens who don’t attend school can go to college. Actually, the self-directed-education-to-college path is well established in the United States. There have been millions of young people who homeschooled or had other non-traditional schooling backgrounds who went to college. This is a routine application process for colleges and doesn’t disadvantage families who choose this educational route. Our mentors will help young people document the learning that they do and create a narrative transcript that translates that into a form colleges understand. Every young person who has attended our network SDLC’s that wanted to go to college has done so, and often to their first choice school. Entering the working or entrepreneurial world is the second most common next step for members moving on from a SDLC. Young people can use the flexibility and control offered by self-directed education to start learning the skills needed to be successful in a given career. The budding software designer can start coding and building products. The future carpenter can start informally apprenticing on jobs around town. The would-be salon owner can start doing their friends’ and families’ hair and makeup. Instead of squeezing your interests into “after-school” time, you can work on your interests as the main focus of your education. Finally, some members take time after SDLC to travel or do a gap year before heading to college or into the workforce. The big message is that anything teens can do by attending school, they can still do through self-directed education. Liberty Self-Directed Learning Center is here to help provide and connect young people to those opportunities.

One of the most unique aspects of Liberty is that many of the classes and tutorials will be led by community volunteers. We’ll ask members regularly if there is anything else that they’d like to work on or learn. From those requests, we’ll then search in the local community for someone who is willing to share their time and talents with a young person. Other existing centers in the Liberated Learners Network report they are constantly amazed at the talented and dedicated people they’re able to find or who find them. Liberty members will get to learn computer programming from actual computer programmers or people who have an incredible passion for it and want to share that with others; Spanish from native speakers; agriculture from farmers. Getting exposure to and making contacts with people who are active or retired in the fields teens are interested in is an incredibly valuable experience and can lead to many opportunities down the road.

Liberty’s K-5 and 6-12 programs will be open five days a week from 8:30 am to 3:30 pm. Liberty will run on a traditional academic calendar from Labor Day – Memorial Day.

We are committed to being an economically diverse community. A family’s ability to pay our full fee will never be the sole determining factor in the application process. We will offer need-based fee reductions when necessary and when we are able to do so. Liberty will cost $10,000 per year and will be prorated if someone joins mid-year. If Liberty seems like the best fit for your son or daughter, we encourage you to please be in touch regardless of finances.

Liberty will not provide transportation to or from the center, but we can work together and with other member families to find other creative solutions if transportation is an issue. We’ll be happy to help you brainstorm possibilities.

Liberty members are legally considered homeschoolers by the state of Iowa. Homeschooling does not mean that kids have to do “school” at home or that their parents have to teach them anything. It is simply the legal mechanism in the United States for families to have the freedom and flexibility to pursue their own education in a way that will work for them. The process for leaving school to use homeschooling is very straightforward and easy to do and our staff will help you navigate that aspect of self-directed education.