Our Family’s Story

We are Katy and Steve Kelly, co-founders of the first Acton Academy affiliate in Southwest Missouri and parents to two curious boys.  

We are an entrepreneurial, home educating + Montessori family that firmly believes in the self-directed, freedom-within-boundaries, exploratory nature of this early learning philosophy.  Unfortunately, most Montessori families are faced with a tough decision regarding education once their children reach elementary age.  Transitioning from a learning environment that fully trusts the child and encourages movement, independence, and curiosity into a conventional classroom setting can be a heartbreaking challenge.

We first learned about Acton Academy in 2017 after listening to an interview with Acton co-founders Jeff and Laura Sandefer about their “one room schoolhouse for the 21st century” located in Austin, TX. We couldn’t unlearn what we heard that day.

Click HERE to listen to what we call the podcast that changed everything!

We immediately dove into Laura Sandefer’s book, Courage to Grow: How Acton Academy Turns Learning Upside Down and took an inspirational family road trip to Austin, TX to see the main Acton Academy campus in person.

To us, it was abundantly clear: our children must have access to this type of learning environment!

Once our boys reached elementary age, we decided it was time to apply for and bring an Acton Academy to our Springfield, MO community. The learner-driven micro school movement is experiencing tremendous growth as one of the best options for preparing our young heroes for a rapidly changing educational and vocational landscape.

It’s clear parents in our community want something more for their children’s education: SW Missouri boasts the largest public school district in the state, is home to an abundance of private conventional institutions, hybrid learning academies, and homeschool coops - and yet more and more programs, schools and coops continue to launch each year.

If you’re here, we might have a few things in common.

We’d love to learn about you, your young hero, and why you feel that the Acton Academy model may be the best fit for your family. We invite you to browse our website, check out our parent resources, and connect with us below. We’d love to support you in your learning journey - wherever it may lead.

With gratitude,

The Kelly Family