A New Home for Our Neurodivergent Microschool in Bryn Mawr

For the past few years, Fáilte has been held together by something you can’t see on a floor plan: the deep trust between kids, families, and the adults who care about them. Our little school has grown from a tiny experiment, to a microschool, into a nonprofit community for neurodivergent learners who don’t quite fit traditional classrooms—and in our last space, we were officially maxed out.

Today, I finally get to share the news I’ve been hinting at for months:

St. Luke United Methodist Church, Bryn Mawr, PA

Fáilte has moved to Bryn Mawr, PA!

We have been welcomed into the hall at St. Luke United Methodist Church on Montgomery Avenue. This space gives us what we’ve needed for a long time: room for our kids to stretch out as they get bigger, room to move and regulate, and room to welcome more students and staff into our community over time.

We’re opening four new student spaces for next year and will be paying close attention to how our group feels as we add those children and the staff who will support them. Growth will be real, but it will also be gentle and intentional—just like everything else we do here.

A Secular School, Aligned Missions

One of the most meaningful parts of this move is who we’re sharing space with.

Our new home in Lurwick Hall

St. Luke has launched a neurodivergent ministry and is actively working to support parishioners with neurodivergent children. Their leadership is asking questions that sound very familiar to us: How do we make our community truly accessible? How do we honor different sensory needs and communication styles? How do we make sure families who don’t fit the “standard” mold know they still belong?

Our program will remain fully secular. That isn’t changing.

At the same time, our mission—to create a safe, flexible environment for diverse learners, to honor sensory needs and nervous systems, to prioritize relationship over compliance—aligns beautifully with what this church is building within its own community. Their desire to make sure neurodivergent kids (and their parents) feel “there is a place for you here” fits perfectly with Fáilte, whose very name means welcome and joy.

It feels less like “renting a room” and more like a partnership of values, even as we remain separate in role and identity.

A Neurodivergent Friendly Microschool in Walkable Bryn Mawr

Our new Bryn Mawr location doesn’t just give us more indoor space; it opens up an entire neighborhood to our kids.

From our new home, we can walk to:

• The park, for unhurried outdoor play, movement, and nature time

• Ice cream (the kids’ instant favorite, of course)

• The grocery store, for real‑world math, reading, and life skills

• The library, for quiet corners, research adventures, and book‑obsessed kids

• Local colleges and other community spots we’re only just beginning to discover

Our exploration has just begun, but I can already see how our daily rhythm will stretch and soften in the best way. Instead of “field trips” being rare and highly planned, walking out into the community can become a normal part of how we learn.

Working on executive functioning and planning? Let’s plan a meal, make a grocery list, walk to the store, and cook it! (Did I mention the new space has a large kitchen!)

Building confidence and independence? A trip to the library or a nearby campus becomes part of the week instead of a once‑a‑year event.

This move turns “the world is our classroom” from a nice idea into something we can actually live, day after day.

Room to Grow, Slowly and Intentionally

In our last space, we had reached our limit. Every new inquiry from a family meant doing the emotional math of: “Is there any way we can fit one more?” And often the answer had to be no, even when we wanted it to be yes.

This new hall changes that.

We’re not suddenly becoming a big school. Fáilte will always be a microschool—a small, relationship‑based community where kids are known deeply and supported as individuals. But now, we’re no longer boxed in by our square footage.

• We can open four new student spaces for next year and see how the group feels as it grows.

• We can invite additional staff members who bring new skills, perspectives, and capacity.

• We can adjust and iterate, instead of feeling stuck and squeezed.

The space itself needs work, and that’s actually one of the reasons it feels so right. We get to shape it intentionally—for sensory needs, for movement, for quiet, for connection. I can already picture where the cozy reading corners will go, where we’ll build a movement and sensory zone, and where big tables will hold projects, handwork, art, and all the things that make our days feel alive.

Thank You for Your Patience

If you’ve emailed or messaged me in the last few months and heard…silence, or a much slower reply than usual, this move is a big part of why.

There has been so much happening behind the scenes—legal work, nonprofit details, logistics, visits, conversations, and countless “can we make this work?” meetings. While I was holding all of that, my inbox sometimes had to wait.

I want to say directly:

Thank you for your patience with me.

Thank you for your grace when I was behind.

Thank you for trusting that if I was quiet, it wasn’t because I didn’t care—it was because I was building the next step for our kids.

This announcement belongs to all of us, not just to me. You’ve helped shape Fáilte from the beginning simply by believing that your child deserved more than “just getting through the day.”

What’s Next: Open Houses and More

Over the coming weeks, we’ll share:

• Dates for Open House events at the new Bryn Mawr space

• Opportunities to see the hall, imagine it with us, and ask questions

• More details about enrollment for next year, including those newly opened spaces

• Ways our community can help us shape and warm the space (yes, there will be many ways to help if you’ve been wanting to)

Through all of this, our core remains the same:

• Still secular

• Still focused on neurodivergent and twice‑exceptional learners

• Still a gentle, relationship‑based, trauma‑informed environment where school is designed around kids’ nervous systems—not the other way around

Now we simply have a home that lets us say “yes” to more children and families who have been asking for a place like this.

I can’t wait to walk into this new chapter with you.