The CMI tribute

Biography

Nicolle is the Executive Director and Founder of Gillingham Charter School, the first public, non-sectarian Charlotte Mason school in the United States. Aiming to offer Mason’s free liberal arts relational education to all, including impoverished students, Gillingham opened nearly 15 years ago in the anthracite coal region in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, and currently serves 250 young persons aged 5-18 years. Over 70% of the students are on free and reduced lunches. Gillingham is accredited by the Charlotte Mason Institute, and the Gillingham Foundation offers consulting to educators and school starters as they follow their dreams of offering a relational education. Nicolle has been teaching students, training teachers and leading learning organizations in public, private and home schools since 1992. She has a bachelors in Elementary Education and discovered the ideas of Charlotte Mason in 2001. After serving in two Mason schools, she earned her master’s degree in Educational Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania to lead a Charlotte Mason public school.

A Letter from Carroll Smith, Founder of CMI

Each year now the Institute aims to recognize someone who has made a substantial contribution to the Charlotte Mason Educational Movement. It isn't really an award. It is a way of saying thank you for hard work and dedication to the education of our children. So I want to tell you a story about this year's contributor to the Charlotte Mason Educational Movement…

I think it was around 2008 or 2009. I was sitting in my office at Gardner-Webb University, probably grading papers or reading for a class discussion. The phone rang and I answered as usual. There was a young female voice on the other end, and she introduced herself as Nicolle Hutchinson.

"What about those children who have no access to Mason?"

Now, before I continue with this story, I must remind you of why I started this Institute. It goes back to verses in Luke 4:16–19 that I was reading at the time.

"And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and he went to the synagogue, as his custom was, on the sabbath day. And he stood up to read; and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written, 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.'"

Those words have been swimming in my head ever since I had any conception of starting the Institute. Words like "the poor," "release to the captives," "recovering of sight to the blind," and "liberty [to] those who are oppressed." They continue to ring in my head even today.

The poor. What about those children who have no access to Mason? Life circumstances don't allow such a rich, beautiful, and necessary education to reach them. How is it that we are to be witnesses to the ends of the earth and go to mission fields far away, when right under our noses are children who are starving both physically and spiritually — and I include education in the spiritual as well as the physical realm of life?

So on the other end of the phone I heard these words: "Do you think Mason's work can be used in government charter schools?" I almost jumped up and did a dance. I think I said something like, "Absolutely!"

She said, "Well, I want to start a Charlotte Mason charter school here in Pottsville, PA."

It wasn't until later that I realized the significance of starting one there. Pottsville is a coal-mining town that has diminished significantly over the years, leaving a great deal of poverty and hopelessness. Now, that was only the beginning. The journey of starting a charter school has involved much pain and suffering: bullying from the local government schools, refusal to renew the charter, intimidation. She has had the police called on her. Finding teachers and other staff has in itself created untold stress. It has not been an easy journey, and the price has been high.

But today there exists in Pottsville, PA, a fabulous Charlotte Mason charter school where children can get a Mason education without cost. Those poor children whom the world can so easily forget have the opportunity of a rich, delightful, relational education. All because Nicolle Hutchinson has been willing to pay the price that the local community dishes out. She has been a fearless Mason advocate and even more – she has been a fearless advocate for children!

"She has been a fearless Mason advocate and even more – she has been a fearless advocate for children!"

Additional Remarks by Kerri Forney, Executive Director of CMI

That letter from Carroll tells you what Nicolle and her team have done. As we honor her, I want to add one thing the letter doesn't say — because Nicolle's question – "Can Mason’s work be used in government or charter schools?" – was not new. Charlotte Mason herself had answered it, a hundred and twelve years ago, also in a mining village.

For decades Mason's methods had flourished — but almost entirely among the children of educated parents. Then in 1914, through the efforts of Mrs. Francis Steinthal, whom Mason called "the happy instigator of the movement in Council Schools," the great experiment began: her full, generous curriculum was set before the children of an ordinary government school in Drighlington, a mining village in Yorkshire. Not a private school. Not a privileged school. Miners' children, in a public school. Would a liberal education "work" for them?

"It may be that the souls of all children are waiting for the call of knowledge to awaken them to delightful living."
~Charlotte Mason

In 1922, at the end of her life, Mason sat down to write what she herself called "probably the last preface I shall be called upon to write." And of everything she might have chosen to say in that final preface, she chose to open with those children. "Eight years ago," she wrote, "the 'soul' of a class of children in a mining village school awoke simultaneously at this magic touch and has remained awake." And then she said this:

"We know that religion can awaken souls, that love makes a new man, that the call of a vocation may do it, and in the age of the Renaissance, men's souls, the general soul, awoke to knowledge: but this appeal rarely reaches the modern soul; and, notwithstanding the pleasantness attending lessons and marks in all our schools, I believe the ardour for knowledge in the children of this mining village is a phenomenon that indicates new possibilities. Already many thousands of the children of the Empire had experienced this intellectual conversion, but they were the children of educated persons. To find that the children of a mining population were equally responsive seemed to open a new hope for the world. It may be that the souls of all children are waiting for the call of knowledge to awaken them to delightful living."

A new hope for the world. That is what Charlotte Mason saw in a mining village. That is why she put on the title page of that final book the words "A Liberal Education for All."

So when Nicolle called and asked whether Mason's work could be used in a government charter school in Pottsville, Pennsylvania — a coal town — she was not proposing something novel. She was picking up the very experiment on which Charlotte Mason staked her final hope, in the very kind of place where Mason proved it. Drighlington answered the question in 1914. Nicolle Hutchinson has answered it again in Pottsville, PA. The souls of all children are waiting for the call of knowledge — and Nicolle, at great cost, has answered with Gillingham Charter School.

Nicolle, we are so thankful and grateful to God for leading, sustaining, and providing for you and Gillingham from the first call to Carroll many years ago until today. We look forward to hearing of how he will continue to do so in the days ahead. THANK YOU for all your dedicated and persevering work for the children’s sake!

"Drighlington answered the question in 1914. Nicolle Hutchinson has answered it again in Pottsville, PA. The souls of all children are waiting for the call of knowledge — and Nicolle, at great cost, has answered with Gillingham Charter School."

(Quotations from Charlotte M. Mason, An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education, Preface, 1925.)