Co-working meets co-learning

Workspace helps to promote personal and professional opportunities for parents while supporting their children.

At first glance, Workspace looks like any other work environment. Nestled in a business park in Bethel, Connecticut, the entrance to the red, barn-like building opens up to a bright lobby with offices, cabins, lounges, studios, and a kitchen. It does not take long for visitors to realize that the workspace is used here as a verb and not as a noun, and that this area is much more than a shared office. Work is something that families do to tailor work and education in their own way while in fellowship with others. Workspace Education combines collaboration and learning together with a prevailing entrepreneurial spirit and is one of the most innovative K-12 learning models.

Workspace fills a gap for its founder Cath Fraise. When she founded the center in 2016, Fraise envisioned a dynamic space where parents can work, children can learn, companies can grow, and the community can thrive - all in a collaborative, multi-generational environment. "At first I wanted to build a school, but I wanted everyone to be able to afford it," she says.

I also wanted to start social entrepreneurs and have a space where everyone works and starts small businesses.

A trained Montessori educator teaching at public schools in Australia, Fraise spent the last decade providing project-based home tuition with her two children, who are now 20 and 16 years old, while providing support to their parents who support their own pursue their own career goals and entrepreneurial aspirations.

A concierge model

Workspace is working on a concierge model for learning and working. In addition to a one-time upfront fee of $ 1,500 for 10 hours of parenting and onboarding, parents pay $ 3,500 per year and child (with sibling discount). With this combined fee, they get access to shared office space, Wi-Fi, and business support six days a week as they work with Workspace employees and education specialists to create a learning plan for their child that comes to Workspace every day.

Affordable costs provide parents and their children with full support and access to all Workspace amenities and offerings, including the art studios, music room, research labs, gym, woodshop and maker-space. "Families say Workspace is as good for their parents as it is for the kids," says Fraise.

However, some of Workspace's 80 families benefit from additional services such as tutoring and weekly classes offered by external educators.

For example, some families use a popular workspace math tutor, a former Morgan Stanley employee who charges $ 50 per child for seven weeks of weekly one-hour math lessons. Another popular lab class taught by Yale-trained PhD students. Scholars, families will cost $ 1,200 a year for two hours of lab work and lessons a week. There is also an Acton Academy on-site ($ 6,800 / year for full-time enrollment) if parents want an option for early school leaving. 

According to Fraise, most parents do not pay for additional donation programs, relying instead on the robust resources and supportive environment that Workspace provides to each of its members. "Families say Workspace is as good for their parents as it is for the kids," says Fraise. "We are an interdependent community that unites to give the children in the building the best possible education."

Working and learning together

The supportive learning and working community has drawn Melanie Ryan to Workspace. Her eleven-year-old son Justin spent his early elementary years in a private Montessori school and then went to public school where he had problems. "The teacher was incredible," says Ryan, "but he has some special needs, such as attention deficits, and he is a very physically active, athletic boy, so he sat seven hours a day and did not have many options." does not suit him. "

His mother says that Justin, who had previously been a happy, agreeable child, had a serious school-related trauma and loathed herself. He says, "I'm stupid." Ryan, a psychotherapist who's been in private practice for over 15 years, knew she needed to do something to address her child's emotional burden. She removed Justin from the public school in December 2018 and registered him as a homeschooler in her native New York.

 It was a big jump. "My husband and I own the largest holistic health center in the Hudson Valley, where I see clients during the week and teach classes on the weekends," says Ryan, who was not sure how she would manage to work full-time while she supervised the health of her son education. "I had a lot on my plate," she adds.

Reforbes, in touch with tomorrow

Then Ryan heard from a friend of Workspace and decided to take the 45-minute drive to Connecticut to visit him. "I knew immediately, that was it," she says. "As soon as we arrived, Justin was greeted by a boy he would shadow for the day, and then he was gone for hours. I could not bring him to leave! "Now Ryan spends three days a week at Workspace, making Therapy calls via Skype to clients around the world, directing her team of practitioners and taking care of marketing and advertising their business, while Justin attends classes in math, reading and learning creative writing, studio art and cartoon, woodworking, science, law and government. While Ryan sees clients on site one day a week, her husband goes to Workspace, where he runs a football club for Justin and his colleagues between his own meetings and customer work. On Thursdays Justin meets his mother and father in her clinic.

Workspace helps to promote personal and professional opportunities for parents while supporting their children. Ryan has started seeing a few clients during the week in Workspace's private offices, offering classes for members and the larger community. She also participates in a digital photography course on Workspace, helping her rejoin a long ignored passion. "It's really a village," she says about Workspace.

As a working parent and entrepreneur, I can really rely on my co-parents who I work with here. When I need time to leave Workspace for a meeting, I can easily ask another parent to keep an eye on Justin, and I do the same for them.

This is a feature that has encouraged single parents to join Workspace.

Incubation of young entrepreneurs

Parents are not the only ones doing business at Workspace. Brady Knuff and Forrest Anderson both left their respective high schools after their junior year to devote their time to building a business. The duo, who are virtually enrolled in the North Atlantic Regional High School, a private program for non-traditional students in Maine, receives an accredited high school diploma and spends the last year on entrepreneurial endeavors.

"My experiences with Workspace are a bit different from those of others, because I do not take classes here," says Knuff. "I use it as an incubator for my business." These young entrepreneurs are using Workspace's technology and business support resources such as video editing equipment and access to ongoing support to expand their emerging real estate marketing company Blukite.