01
GO
We visit a place connected to the ideas we are studying.
Nashville, Tennessee · High-School Homeschool
Write Wild Child
Go.See.Write.
The world is our classroom. A field-based writing and humanities experience for high-school homeschool students in Nashville.
The idea
What if writing started with something worth writing about?
Instead of beginning with a blank page, students begin with an experience.
They listen to a book, essay, podcast, or other text connected to where we are going.
Then we go.
We explore a real place. We observe. We walk. We notice. We ask questions. We gather information. We look at the story, the history, the people, the environment, and even the economics behind what we are seeing.
Then we write.
ListenExploreNoticeQuestionCompareResearchWritePresent
Interdisciplinary by design
One experience. Multiple disciplines. One portfolio.
Write Wild Child is built around high-school English Language Arts while intentionally incorporating:
ELA
Literature
History
Geography
Economics
Personal Finance
Psychology
Sociology
Research
Public Speaking
Nature Study
Forest Therapy
Mindfulness
Visual Storytelling
Real experiences + meaningful academic work.
How it works
Seven moves. Every experience.
02
SEE
Students slow down, observe, and practice intentional noticing through outdoor and sensory-based activities.
04
THINK
We ask questions from multiple disciplines.
- What happened here?
- Why does it matter?
- How does this place affect people?
- What does the environment tell us?
- How does money move through this place or system?
- What do different perspectives reveal?
03
LISTEN
We begin with a book, audiobook, essay, podcast, videos, and curated texts that give context to the experience.
05
WRITE
Students move from short-answer writing to comparison, research, thesis development, longer-form work, and a final Lord’s Prayer creative writing project that will be published.
06
PRESENT
At the end of the season, students present what they discovered, developed, and learned.
07
CELEBRATE
Because every moment we have on this Earth is a gift. And we are lucky enough to be the screenwriter of the best movie we will ever experience.
What students will learn
Real skills, practiced in the field.
Throughout the season, students build a full writing toolkit, from quick responses to a polished piece of creative writing.
Each student works toward a final Lord’s Prayer creative writing project and presentation, drawing on everything they gathered throughout the season. Learn about the project →
- Short-form responses
- Evidence-based writing
- Compare-and-contrast
- Observation & descriptive writing
- Research & source evaluation
- Thesis development
- Long-form essay writing
- Editing & revision
- Public speaking
- Presentation skills
- Creative writing
The final project
The Lord’s Prayer Project
Many believe the Lord’s Prayer carries one of the highest vibrations on the planet. Even people who aren’t Christian will play it in a space to raise the vibration of the room.
When you consider the sections of the prayer, there are stanzas, and those stanzas relate to important principles for life.
- Forgiveness
- Gratitude
- Respect
- Connection
- Intentions
Everyone in life has stories that fall under these categories. In this program, we will collect these stories and publish them as a book. The Lord’s Prayer Project is an all-Nashville project: our students will be part of it alongside other Nashville groups, gathering stories across many communities and generations.
Each student works toward a final Lord’s Prayer creative writing project and presentation, drawing on everything they gathered throughout the season. Every student’s Lord’s Prayer project will be published.
The Fall Season
October 12 – December 11, 2026
The fall season includes:
4
Field experiences, each with forest therapy guide Georgia Bromehead
4
Writing labs
1
Final Lord’s Prayer creative writing project, published
1
Final presentation · Dec 4
★
End-of-Season Rush Party · Dec 11
★
A completed writing & learning portfolio
Oct 12
Season begins
We start listening, exploring, and gathering evidence.
Oct – Nov
Field experiences & writing labs
Trips across Tennessee and Kentucky, each paired with a writing lab.
Nov 20 – 29
Thanksgiving break
No required work, so families can enjoy the holiday together.
Dec 4
Final presentations
Students present their Lord’s Prayer creative writing projects and complete their portfolios.
Dec 11
End-of-Season Rush Party
We celebrate the season, the writing, and each other, and open the doors to friends who want to join next semester’s class.
what if…
What if writing felt like a field trip?
It is an opportunity for students to learn how to:
pay attention
ask better questions
think critically
connect ideas
develop an argument
communicate clearly
write about something real
Because life does not happen one subject at a time.
Neither should learning.
About
300speeches written a year
6books
6programs created a year
10+events a year as the creative mind behind them
About Catie
Anyone can read Catie Sullivan’s résumé and know she has never lived a 40-hour-workweek kind of life.
Since the 1990s, she has built a career around ideas, words, people, and breakthroughs — working behind the scenes with executives, authors, speakers, entrepreneurs, brands, and people whose names you would recognize.
If her computer could talk, it would have stories.
Catie has spent her career helping people take complicated ideas and turn them into something other people can understand, remember, and act on. She is a writer, ghostwriter, speechwriter, creative director, strategist, TEDx coach, producer, and lifelong pattern-watcher.
300speeches written a year6books6programs created a year10+events a year as the creative mind behind themShe is the creative director of a documentary on forest therapy filmed in South Korea, and has served as fractional communications director for international programs.
But early on, she made herself one promise:
If she was willing to give that level of effort, creativity, and care to helping strangers have breakthroughs, she would give at least that much to her own children.
Catie has been homeschooling since 2012.
The same professionalism she brought to building books, speeches, companies, programs, and brands went into building an education around the two people who mattered most.
Her son is now attending the University of Lynchburg on academic scholarship.
And now her youngest — her baby blackbird — is a senior in high school.
This is the final year.
Since 2012, they have never spent time purely behind a desk. “Wouldn’t it be great if!” has been their motto since the beginning.
There have been no walls on their classroom.
Every lesson has been built on a project-based learning model.
- They have “Floated Like a Butterfly and Stung Like a Bee” to learn about bees, civil rights, sports, and speechwriting.
- They have lived like The Lorax in units on weather, the environment, music theory, and geometry.
- They have hopped into Minecraft to recreate the Founding Fathers’ TED Talks.
- They have adventured through Middle-earth and collected the legends of Native peoples the world over.
Lessons have been “played” with friends’ kids logging in and joining from California to Virginia to New Hampshire and everywhere in between. In the elementary years, they were called “Parties with a Purpose”: class size 12 (+ siblings, of course).
The scavenger-hunt approach to learning, with real results: well-rounded writers and orators.
So for this final year, the question got even bigger:
What if the world really could be our classroom?
Their ultimate senior-year dream is inspired by How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World: go places, meet people, experience things, learn how the world works — and write about it.
So this year, they are opening their classroom to a small group of other high-school homeschool students who want to:
Go. See. Do. Explore. Write. Thrive.
That became Write Wild Child.
Catie believes students learn differently when they have something real to think about.
So instead of beginning with a blank page, students begin with an experience.
They listen to literature and ideas. They travel. They walk outside. They observe. They interview. They study history, people, economics, culture, nature, and place. They learn how to ask better questions.
Then they learn how to turn what they have discovered into clear thinking and clear communication.
- Short responses become comparisons.
- Comparisons become arguments.
- Questions become research.
- Research becomes a thesis.
- And eventually, students stand up and present what they have learned.
Catie is a systems person. She has spent her life watching patterns and figuring out what makes communication work.
Those same principles matter in school.
And they may matter even more in an AI world.
AI can generate an answer remarkably quickly.
But a student still has to know what to ask.
They need to be able to think critically, recognize patterns, evaluate information, communicate clearly, and give a system enough context to produce something worthwhile.
In technology, there is an old principle:
Garbage in. Garbage out.
At Write Wild Child, we work on what goes in.
- Better observation.
- Better questions.
- Better thinking.
- Better words.
Because when young people learn how to think clearly and communicate what they mean, those skills go with them everywhere.
On every trip
Meet our Forest Therapy Guide, Georgia Bromehead
Georgia will join us on all four field experiences, leading forest therapy walks that help students slow down, notice, and truly arrive in the places we explore.
Georgia is Nashville’s first practicing certified Forest Therapy Guide with the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy, and has been guiding since 2019. She is also a licensed psychotherapist with a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling.
Her love of nature connection took root while she was teaching English in Japan, where forest bathing is part of everyday life. She brings an open heart, curiosity, and creativity to every walk.
Forest therapy is the perfect partner for writing: it turns “look around” into real, sensory observation, the raw material of every good sentence.
Mindfulness program
Meet our Mindfulness Guide, Aimée Donoho
Aimée leads our mindfulness program, giving students simple, practical tools to calm the mind, focus their attention, and bring a steadier, clearer self to every page they write.
A licensed behavior analyst and therapist on Hawaiʻi Island, Aimée integrates a background in cultural geography with a Master of Social Work (MSW). Through the Thrive First Initiative, she helps people reclaim well-being and reconnect with purpose.
She is also the host of The Ripple Effect podcast, built on her belief that when we take care of ourselves, the good ripples outward to everyone around us.
Mindfulness and writing go hand in hand: a quiet mind notices more, questions better, and finds the words that matter.
The Cohort
Intentionally small.
Write Wild Child is kept small so every student gets real attention in the field and on the page.
→Many of the reading materials are included.
→Students must be able to attend trips with their teen or arrange travel. Transportation is not provided.
→Travel will be planned to avoid traffic.
tuition
$254 / month
Three payments: October, November and December.
End-of-program fee: $115 per family, billed at the end of the program. It includes:
- The End-of-Season Rush Party, open to friends interested in next semester
- A Write Wild Child T-shirt
- Your student’s bound copy of the Lord’s Prayer book
- High-school students
- Field experiences in Tennessee & Kentucky
- 4 writing labs + final Lord’s Prayer creative writing project & presentation
- Your student’s Lord’s Prayer project, published
- Limited to 22 students
Interested?
Save your space.
Submitting the form expresses interest and gives you first access to enrollment details, field-trip locations, and the calendar.