Welcome to Misty Meadows Wellspring
We are a living learning ecosystem for children of all ages, pioneering what lies beyond mainstream education.
Wellspring is an invitation into a learning paradigm that is rooted in trust in each person’s natural capacity for self-assembly of their own understanding and knowledge. Ours is a way of life that nurtures intrinsic curiosity, honours individuality, respects collective intelligence, and cultivates wisdom and self-actualisation.
Our Story
Misty Meadows Wellspring (formerly Misty Meadows School) was founded in 2012 by Cassie Janisch, with the vision of creating a learning environment that mimics a natural ecosystem to optimise each child’s natural learning processes.
Here, we hold one guiding question at our centre:
Humans are designed to learn continuously; what happens when we radically trust this design?
For over a decade, this question has shaped what we do.
From the beginning, when Misty Meadows was only a few children of kindergarten age, the foundation of the ecosystem is the understanding that learning is meaning-making that is deeply personal. It is a complex, adaptive, emergent process that unfolds in a non-linear way, and happens in response to one’s environment.
Misty Meadows Wellspring represents a collective act of reorientation: away from control, competition and disconnection, and toward relationship, trust and the joy of shared thriving.
Self as Source
In our learning ecosystem, children are at the centre of their own learning journeys, developing understanding through self-chosen activity and reflection.
Meaning-Making Together
Peers of all ages, genders and races are valued collaborators in each child’s self-assembly of their own understanding. Adults are co-researchers and mentors, not authorities.
Tools of Our Time
All of the tools of our culture (including technology) are recognised and valued as natural learning resources for children.
Nature as Teacher
Our beautiful physical environment plays an invaluable teaching role – the natural world is a child’s best teacher.
Learning is a Living System
Like the ecosystems that sustain us, learning at Wellspring is adaptive, interconnected, and ever-evolving. Each part influences the whole, and the whole, in turn, shapes each part.
Collective Intelligence
Each person and element forms an integral part of our collective field of intelligence to support, challenge and expand children continuously. What emerges is always greater than the sum of its parts.
Our People
Adults as Co-Researchers & Companions
Learning in our ecosystem is facilitated by a core group of of adults who are present in the space each day, and function as co-researchers, companions and mentors. The role of the adults is not to “teach” children, but to cultivate and maintain the conditions for their natural intelligence to flourish: connection, presence, diversity, and depth of engagement.
Cassie Janisch
Tammy Percival
Ian Rayner
Lee Flint
Trish Gatland
Sybil le Clus
Kate Fleet
Lungi Ziqubu
Nomvula Ntombela
Ros Janisch
Ashleigh Rose Hall
Kaley Symons
Our Place
Misty Meadows farm is the home and heart of the Wellspring learning ecosystem — a living landscape where education and ecology are inseparable. The land itself is one of our greatest teachers: its forests, fields, gardens, and changing seasons reveal how all living systems learn — through relationship, adaptation, and renewal.
The farm is cared for, and in turn cares for us, through a small community of households who share in its daily rhythms. From this shared work comes the simple abundance of milk, butter, cheese, eggs, fruit, and vegetables — nourishment that flows naturally into the life of the Wellspring community.
For the children, this environment offers a richness of possibility: learning unfolds through direct experience with the living world.
