Waterhouse Guild began small—the seedling of an idea.

When my daughter turned 5, I knew we had to start imagining school and all that entails. Thing is, this was my baby, how could I possibly turn her over to the classroom?

After much counsel and deliberation, we decided our local public school was the best option for our dear child. And it was in many ways. Because our home is book-and-pencil rich, Hannah had been exploring the realm of reading and writing for some time, so Kindergarten was a delight.

She enjoyed her friends to no end. But by the first grade, I noticed she was beginning to show signs of disinterest when it came to the work she was being presented. My sweet inquisitive child? How was this possible?

What I realized right then and there is that the unfortunate thing for some children—and my bright precocious daughter fell into this category—is that the bell-curve nature of traditional classroom learning cannot always best serve individuality, cannot blossom individual genius.

What I was discovering is that traditional education, in its effort to serve an enormous diversity of children, has by default created a sterile, one-size-must-fit-all offering. This is not to say that traditional approaches to school don’t try to serve individuality. But how can they? It is a pretty massive endeavor.

This may not be a perfect analogy, but in thinking of the one-size-fits-all approach as something sterile, this got me to thinking that sterile environments are not natural. We are created, after all, to live with microbes. This is what makes our immunity strong.