Tennessee Nature Academy Puts Down Roots in Cane Ridge

Jay Renfro (front row on the left in a hat) and supporters of the Tennessee Nature Academy at Wednesday’s groundbreaking ceremony (Photo by Sky Arnold)

Erin Powell says her son’s education really took a downturn in the second grade.

That’s when the COVID pandemic hit, and like many students across the country, she says Sayer Brumfield struggled to learn outside of his classroom.

Erin Powell (left) and her son Sayer Brumfield (right) (Photo by Sky Arnold)

“He suffered a lot of learning loss during that time when everything switched to being virtual, and in Virginia, the public schools at least, never went back to textbooks,” said Powell. “It was all Chromebooks, and that was just not the way that my son learned.”

Powell says everything changed, thanks to a Google search of “alternative schools in Nashville.” At the time, Powell owned a Hand and Stone spa location in Virginia and was considering opening a location in the Nashville area.

While searching for schools in Middle Tennessee, she came across the Tennessee Nature Academy.

“So I just made a phone call to the phone number listed on the website and (school founder) Jay (Renfro) picked up,” said Powell. “Anybody who knows Jay knows how passionate he is. His magnetic personality just (shined) through over the phone, and I’m like, man, I gotta meet this guy.”

Powell made the trip to Nashville and was quickly sold on the Tennessee Nature Academy and the idea of moving her family to Nashville.

Nature-Based Education a Good Fit

Brumfield was part of the public charter school’s initial sixth grade class, and his mother says his reading grew from the 21st percentile when he arrived to the 73rd percentile at the end of his first semester.

“This alternative form of education, the care and compassion, the small classroom sizes, learning in nature,” said Powell. “They get a lot of choice with the books that they read. They do independent reading time where the whole school sits and reads for 30 minutes. It’s really just opened his eyes to how fun education can be.”

Renfro says Sayer is exactly the kind of kid the Tennessee Nature Academy is designed for.

He came up with the idea to open the school a decade ago when he took a group of kids camping while working for a charter school.

 “That was the first time I saw that we needed nature-based programming. Not just as something we did once a year or that some kids got to do, but that every kid got to do every day,” said Renfro.

“Risky Play” Encouraged

The Tennessee Public Charter School Commission approved Renfro’s concept in 2022, and the school opened to an initial class of fifth and sixth-graders the following year. Renfro says what makes the eventual fifth through twelfth-grade school different is that it truly values the health and happiness of students and encourages what he calls “risky (not dangerous) play.”

“So kids are getting dirty. Kids are using shovels, they’re climbing trees, they’re running through the woods. They’re building forts. All those sorts of things are something that most schools don’t let the kids do, but that’s inherent to what we do,” said Renfro.  “Our academics, we want kids to be learning about things that matter, some things that are integrated to the real world and integrated to future careers or job placement. It’s not just a tagline, but they’re really getting that real-world experience.”

Construction work on the land near the Carothers Farm neighborhood (Photo by Sky Arnold)

Planting Seeds in South Davidson County

Recently, school leaders received a major land donation that will help expand that experience. Regent Homes and the McGowan Family Foundation donated 23 wooded acres to the school near the Carothers Farm neighborhood in south Davidson County.

The Tennessee Nature Academy held a groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday for the new school building that will open on the land next year.

“That’s really unheard of in the charter school sector and has been an absolute game changer and catalyst to getting us to a future campus in our fourth year,” said Renfro of the land donation. “To have our permanent site built out, that’s far more aggressive of a timeline than I ever imagined.”

Brumfield will be entering the ninth-grade when the new school building opens, and his class will be the academy’s first to graduate. He says the nature-based education he’s receiving here has not only been a breath of fresh air, but it’s also made learning fun.

 “It’s very like hands-on. Teachers, they just don’t give you a computer and say do this for an hour and a half. They’re always with you. They help you every time, and there’s always breaks after you do a class so it’s very easy to like, decompress and be able to like get back into your mindset for school,” said Brumfield. “And it’s just a super fun environment.”