Baby goats, a sunset lantern walk, and over 119 years of hands-on learning: Fairhope’s Organic School opens its campus to the community November 7th
FAIRHOPE, Ala. (Oct. 14, 2026) Last year, as a 5-year-old kindergartner, Lindsay Jackowiak’s son
wanted nothing to do with reading or writing. He couldn’t sit still at a desk and told his mother he didn’t like learning.
This fall, he came home from his new school and announced that he and his friends had built a power
plant on the playground. Then he sat down with pen and paper, sounded out every word, and wrote a
work schedule: the days of the week, his friends’ names, and every job title.
Nobody assigned it. He just needed it done. “I was blown away, ” said Jackowiak, who moved back to her hometown in Baldwin County this year. “The kid who refused to write is now writing because he wants to. He’s so sad when there’s a school break.”
He’s not the only one. After moving to Alabama, Tommi Sue Celli wanted to find a school where her son would feel connected, supported, and excited about learning. At the Fairhope Organic School, she found just that. “He absolutely loves going to school now, ” Celli said.
“He even told me he wants to stay at the Organic School all the way through college.
This school is the Marietta Johnson School of Organic Education, and what these families are seeing is exactly what its founder had in mind 119 years ago.
In 1907, Marietta Johnson opened a school in Fairhope with six students and a bold idea: children learn best when they’re allowed to be children. No grades. No tests. Learning by building, creating, and
spending real time outdoors. Philosopher John Dewey traveled to Fairhope to see it for himself and called it “a decided success. ” Artists and thinkers moved to town just to enroll their children, helping turn a small utopian colony on Mobile Bay into the creative, independent-minded city Fairhope remains to this day. Today the Fairhope Organic School serves young learners from pre-K through second grade, with a low student-to-teacher ratio and a plan to grow the school alongside its students.
