Picture a greenhouse in early spring. Nothing inside it looks like much yet. But if you know what you’re looking at, you can already see it: the shape of what’s coming, folded up tight inside something small, waiting on nothing but time, warmth, and someone who won’t give up on it too soon.
I was about nine years old when I got my first real opportunity to care for children — sitting with my baby cousins while their mother caught up on housework. Later that summer I got my hands on a stack of outdated elementary teacher’s guides. Excited, I rushed home and lined up my dolls like a classroom full of kids eager to learn. I taught them lessons and sang songs, all summer long. I didn’t understand it then, but there was a calling on my life that I would often ignore. It was showing up in small ways throughout my childhood.
From there it never really stopped. Teaching Sunday school in my teens. Mentoring youth in my community. And over the last decade, homeschooling my own two children. What a joyful season, being able to have firsthand experience watching my kids discover life in their own unique way. It’s an honor I never expected homeschooling would give me. It was during these years that I truly started noticing what I couldn’t ignore: bright, capable children struggling inside classrooms that were never built to notice them — not because any teacher failed them, but because a system built for scale rarely has room for one child’s actual needs. Rest they weren’t getting. Nourishment their bodies were starving for. Structure nobody had time to give. I kept thinking: somebody should build something different. It’s part of why I chose to homeschool my own children in the first place — I wanted them to have a safe space to bloom, without having to fight for room to grow the way God intended.
A few years ago, a mom from my church began asking me an interesting question: “Have you ever considered opening a microschool?” My initial thought was “absolutely not.” I just couldn’t see how I fit into that role. My husband would often tell me, “The Lord is bringing these people before you because He wants you to do something about it.” I didn’t necessarily agree with him. At least not until the day I heard the Holy Spirit’s voice loud and clear. It rang out as clear as a bell. That day I understood that I was to build it.
The moment I heard it, memories from early childhood came rushing back — my great-grandmother’s voice, saying, “You will be a teacher one day, mark my words.” Alongside that memory was my mother’s own dream, one she’d carried quietly and never lived long enough to build — a small school of her own. Both of them had spoken something over me long before I was ready to hear it. I just needed the Holy Spirit to complete the sentences He had directed them to start.
This school is breathed from the heart of God for His people and for this generation. The word I received wasn’t vague — it was specific down to the shape of it: not just any school, but a hybrid one rooted partly at home and partly in the greenhouse we will build together.
So, I said yes. And when it came time to name what I was building, only one word fit: Greenhouse. Because a greenhouse doesn’t leave a seedling to the mercy of whatever the conditions are. It gives real sunlight and shelters it from the outside climate — the type of conditions that would break something that’s not quite ready to emerge. It keeps the soil warm. It lets a gardener tend closely, season by season, until what’s growing inside is strong enough for the whole world outside. That’s exactly the kind of intentional protection I wanted for my own children, and it’s exactly what I want for every child who walks through our doors: room to bloom, not rushed, not exposed before their roots are ready, just tended until they’re strong enough to become exactly who they were made to be.
What we’re building is bigger than any one subject. The Greenhouse School exists to cultivate the whole child — mind, body, and spirit — not as three separate boxes to check, but as one developing person, nourished in every part of who they are. Character. Spiritual growth, where children are free to grow in their faith and give voice to it, not tuck it away. Real skills for real life. Strong academics. And our hands-on food curriculum, where children grow it, cook it, and taste it, not just read about it in a chapter they’ll forget by June. None of these stands alone — it’s the weaving together that gives every child room to become exactly who God called them to be. And none of it happens in a vacuum: this is a partnership, family and school, cultivating each child side by side.
My great-grandmother spoke it. My mother dreamt it, and the Holy Spirit confirmed it. This is the work I was made to do, and as we open our doors, I’m doing it with everything I have — for them, for you, and for every child who walks through them.
Chanthany DericoFounder & Lead Cultivator, The Greenhouse School
About Chanthany
- 27 years of experience in childcare, across various roles
- 11 years as a homeschool parent to her own two children
- Servant leader with Sidewalk Sunday School
