How I Started The Sycamore School
By: Karyn Ewart | Head of School & Founder
I created The Sycamore School because:
- I saw a need in the community, and
- I was ready for a work/life challenge.
I’ve always been goal-driven. I knew I wanted to be a clinical psychologist when I was in middle school. After college, I had it all mapped out – grad school, marriage, kids, and a thriving clinical practice. I also loved being in schools and teaching. So I took a year to work in a school to make sure I didn’t want to go the teacher route (I didn’t). There didn’t seem to be much growth in that, or so I was told. I could be a classroom teacher or a resource teacher, and that was about it. I went to grad school and earned my PhD in clinical psychology with a focus on children and families. I was trained as a play therapist and worked as an ABA therapist and literacy tutor.
My first job after my post-doc internship was at a school. I led individual and group therapy sessions in a school setting. This combined my desires to be a play therapist and a teacher. However, I quickly discovered that I didn’t love seeing client after client. I liked variety: lead a couple of groups, run some professional workshops, and put out fires. I thrived on the unexpected. So I jumped into administration and became a clinical director, overseeing clinicians while also conducting some individual and group therapy. I worked at several schools that were specifically for youth with special needs – autism, ADHD, language-based learning disabilities, etc.
I found myself at 40 thinking, I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish, now what? I really didn’t want to go into private practice. I had been a clinical director and even head of school at an area private school. As clinical director, I visited other private schools in the area and started noticing aspects that appealed to me. I started thinking what it would be like to create a school that included all the features I felt were important.
One of my former educational directors asked if I wanted to open a school with her. At first, I said, give me a few years – I thought I’d want to wait until my kids were out of the house. However, six months after she posed that question, I was in.
I quit my job and dedicated two years to creating The Sycamore School. I partnered with a retired teacher and a current teacher. At one point, the retired teacher gracefully bowed out, recognizing that it was more work than she wanted to commit to. The rub was, I knew how to run a school that existed. What I needed help with was how to start a business. So I leveraged my personal and professional contacts and found that I was rich in resources…if not start up money. I learned how to pick a business model, write up a business plan, start a nonprofit, fundraise, and do some grass-roots marketing.
I met with everyone and anyone who would meet with me: people in the educational field, small business owners, consultants, bankers, accountants, and nonprofit leaders. I worked with Arlington’s BizLaunch program and received advice from retired business leaders. I found myself a broker and started looking at sites for a school. I knew that we’d need an urban model school because while Arlington is rich in resources, space is at a premium. We would utilize the community around us to augment student learning. I’d worked in some flexible school spaces before, so the prospect of putting a school in a strip mall or office building was more exciting than daunting.
I started holding parent interest meetings in my home. I asked professional colleagues to give talks on different aspects of parenting at our local library and plugged the school at the end of the talk. I hosted information sessions at a church loft, where board members and prospective staff led hands-on activities with prospective students while I spoke with the parents.
The plan began to come together. My mantra was to take on one challenge at a time. For some reason, I had an overwhelming sense that this would all work out. The journey was not without bumps or challenges. Six weeks before we were due to open, the county let me know that I was NOT grandfathered in for my use permit (which I was told by the county and my landlord) but needed to go through that process. The building I chose for the school lent me their lawyers, and we worked with the county to push through that work permit.
In the fall of 2017, I opened The Sycamore School. We were located on the third floor of an office building tucked behind a Holiday Inn in the Ballston area of Virginia. We utilized local parks for our movement activities and hopped on the metro to explore museums downtown. We started with four staff and 14 students. The quote on the back of our TSS t-shirts was from Charles Schultz: Try not to have a good time…this is supposed to be educational.
The rest is history.
You Might Be Interested In…
Posted in: