This July, The Aurora School, part of the Arc of Loudoun, will celebrate its 18th anniversary – it’s 12th on the grounds of Paxton’s Leesburg campus. The school’s impetus were the needs, felt by the parents of three children with autism, that were not being met by either the Loudoun County school system or private institutions at the time. One of those parents was Jennifer Lassiter Smith, Aurora School’s first executive director.
Jennifer now heads INMED USA, whose mission is building pathways for economically vulnerable children and families to become self-reliant. In practice, that means helping families learn parenting skills, English or computer skills or offering other career-training assistance that will open up local job opportunities. The group’s Community Center in Sterling has become a resource hub for everything from COVID-19 testing to after-school academic enrichment to Zumba classes!
What’s become clear to Jennifer over the years, is that many students – not just those who may be developmentally disabled – learn differently than the way they’re often being taught. Such students benefit more from experiential, “project-based” education, and are ill-served by college prep courses where success is measured by test-taking. The individualized education that benefitted Jennifer’s daughter Katelyn, could help many more students, giving them opportunities to contribute to the world, she reasoned.
“This idea that college is the best path for everyone – we just don’t share that view,” Jennifer said. “People who are creative, who work with their hands, who have many other talents that are not conducive to taking tests are the workforce of tomorrow – our leaders and problem solvers. We want to nurture and support those teenagers as they forge their best possible future.”
Add to this mix INMED’s roots as an international humanitarian development organization which has fought poverty and hunger with innovative programs like aquaponics (plant and fish farming) and a global, virtual learning platform, and a new school concept emerges -- one with the promise of helping teenagers answer not only the question, “what do you want to be when you grow up,” but “which of the world’s problems will you help solve?”
The private school for middle- and high-school students now envisioned would be called the “Nexus School Loudoun.” Located on the Paxton Campus, the new school would house not only an aquaponics greenhouse – serving as a sustainable agriculture, horticultural, ecological, and earth science lab – but also facilities specializing in health and nutrition, mechanics and woodworking, business development and international studies.
In short, as her own daughter turns 26, Jennifer wants to offer every child the skills they need to make the world a better place.