Every so often, in the world of education, you stumble across a little coincidence so strange and delightful it makes you pause.
For me, it was the moment I discovered there were two influential women named Charlotte Mason—one a foundational thinker in education, the other a powerful patron behind some of the greatest voices of the Harlem Renaissance.
For a split second I wondered if they were the same woman.
They were not.
But their stories sat side by side in my mind, opening up a door I didn’t expect.
Charlotte Mason (the educator)
Charlotte Mason championed living books, nature study, and the beautiful art of notebooking. She believed children deserved meaningful ideas, not lifeless worksheets. She taught that education should be generous, literary, outdoorsy, real. She saw notebooks as places to collect a child’s thinking, their sketches, their words, their connections—little masterpieces in progress.
Her philosophy has found its way into our microschool in the most natural way. We read living books, we journal, we draw, we sketch, we reflect. And our notebooks, year after year, become treasured artifacts—perfect not because they’re neat, but because they’re honest.
Charlotte Osgood Mason (the patron)
And then there was Charlotte Osgood Mason, a white patron of the arts during the Harlem Renaissance—mentor, funder, and sometimes troublesome benefactor. She financially supported artists like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, helping to launch their careers. She was both enabler and gatekeeper, generous and controlling, a complicated figure in Black artistic history.
Two Charlottes.
One shaping education in England.
One shaping Black art in America.
No relation.
No overlap.
Just a curious, uncanny coincidence.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Where Their Worlds Meet
Both women—across oceans and decades—believed in the power of human expression.
They believed in telling stories.
They believed in preserving voice, thought, and observation.
They believed, in their own ways, in the importance of documenting life.
In our microschool, notebooking feels like a bridge between these worlds.
Our students collect their learning the way an artist collects sketches on the path to a masterpiece—raw, thoughtful, personal, joyful.
Pages filled with:
- science diagrams and messy labels
- sketches from our hikes
- reflections on living books
- story ideas
- field trip observations
- math thinking
- experiments
- the fingerprints of curiosity
These notebooks are our students’ Harlem Renaissance, their own burst of creativity and selfhood on the page.
Notebooking as a Microschool Masterpiece
At the end of the year, when we gather all our notebooks—fat with tape, glue, folds, and color—they feel like time capsules. Not perfect portfolios curated for someone else’s approval, but living records of real learning.
The handwriting shifts.
The drawings grow stronger.
The voice becomes clearer.
And the confidence becomes visible.
These notebooks are masterpieces because they are honest.
Masterpieces because they are unique.
Masterpieces because they were made with care, thought, and the slow, rich pace of real learning.
Why We Keep Doing This
Notebooking helps our students:
- slow down
- observe
- capture
- reflect
- create
- remember
It makes learning theirs.
Not borrowed, not hollow, not rushed.
And year after year, these books become joy-giving treasures—something our students will flip through years from now and say, “I remember who I was becoming.”
Two Charlottes.
Two very different legacies.
But in our little school, their shared thread of creativity, expression, and documentation lives on in the hands of our kids—one page at a time.