When the World Was Too Much, She Found a Place That Wasn’t
A parent’s story of discovering a school built for kids who learn differently
This is simply our family’s experience as we head into Lucy’s graduation week. It isn’t sponsored or affiliated with Fusion in any way.
When Lucy needed to leave traditional school, I didn’t know what came next. I knew she needed flexibility. I knew she needed a place where the world being too much on a given day wasn’t a crisis. I knew she needed to be seen as a person before she was seen as a student. What I didn’t know was that a school built around exactly those things was already in Seattle, a few miles away, and we had just never heard of it.
That’s the thing about Fusion Academy that still catches me. It exists in over 80 cities. It’s fully accredited. Students graduate and go on to universities around the world. And most parents have no idea it’s there.
What Fusion Actually Is
Fusion Academy is a private middle and high school built entirely around one model: one student, one teacher, per class. Not tutoring on the side. Not a support program layered onto a traditional school. This is the school. Every class, every day, is 1-to-1.
Students can attend in person, online, or a mix of both. They can enroll mid-year. They can build a schedule that fits their life. And they get a progress report from every teacher, every school day.
The research behind the model is solid. Fusion students’ achievement scores grow 41% more in a school year than their national peers. Math scores grow twice as fast. But statistics only explain the mechanism. They don’t explain what it feels like to watch it work.
What Flexibility Actually Means
When I say Fusion offered flexibility, I don’t just mean Lucy could stay home on hard days without it derailing everything. That mattered enormously. But flexibility at Fusion runs deeper than the schedule.
It means that when Lucy wanted to take a cooking class, and one existed in the catalog but no one had taught it yet, her teacher Suzette said she would teach it for her.
It means that when a science teacher’s style wasn’t working for Lucy, she learns better through conversation than lecture, her math teacher Doug stepped in and taught the science class instead, the way she actually learns.
It means that when Lucy was struggling with a subject, no one moved on without her. And when she was ready to go faster, no one held her back.
The model creates the conditions. The people do the work.
The People
Lucy has had a lot of teachers over two years at Fusion Seattle. Most of them for a class or two. In that whole time, there has been exactly one teacher whose style just didn’t click with her. One. And even then, the school found a solution.
The ones who have shaped her, though, I want to name them.
Doug got Lucy excited about math for the first time in her life. She wasn’t originally enrolled in a math class that would count toward University of Washington admission. Doug believed she could do it. She did. She’s going to UW in the fall partly because of that.
Suzette taught Lucy ASL and gave her something she had struggled to find in language classes: confidence. Lucy has always found languages hard. Suzette found a way in. And then she offered to teach Lucy that cooking class, just because Lucy wanted to take it.
Morgan teaches Lucy English and history, and her approach is the opposite of surface level. When something catches Lucy’s interest, they go deeper. Morgan pushes her to think critically, to engage with ideas rather than just report on them. She also got Lucy excited to do presentations.
Sydnie, as Director of Student Life, showed up on the hard days. Not just for Lucy, but for me. She would follow up to check in, ask how Lucy was doing, make sure we knew someone was paying attention. That kind of care is not in a job description. It’s just who she is.
Vanessa joined this year as the Homework Cafe teacher and will be moving into the Director of Student Life role. Lucy adores her. Watching a school retain and grow people like this tells you something about the culture.
The leadership has been steady through real transition too. James Cardo was head of school when we started, and he was exceptional. When Gabriela Pennisi moved from Director of Education into the Head of School role, it was seamless. You felt the continuity.
What Lucy Built
Fusion runs an annual competition called the Limitless Innovation Scholarship, where students develop and present original ideas. Lucy entered both years.
Her first year, she designed a proposal for a dedicated quiet space for students feeling overwhelmed, grounded in what she had learned through DBT. She built something from her own experience, for the next kid who might need it.
Her second year, she proposed a peer mentoring program.
This year she presented her project to the school over lunch, including a full Q&A. That is not a small thing for any teenager. It is a particularly not small thing for a kid who struggled with the weight of the world.
When Jessica Isakow, Director of Student Services asked her, before her second year, whether she was sure she wanted to take more classes than she needed to graduate, Lucy said yes. She wanted to stay and learn everything she could. Jessica always found a way to make the classes she wanted happen.
The Part That Still Gets Me
Lucy is graduating this spring and heading to the University of Washington in the fall, with a math credit she didn’t expect to have and a belief in herself that is genuinely new.
A kid who needed an exit from traditional school ended up not wanting to leave this one.
A Note on Cost
Fusion is expensive, and we were fortunate to be able to afford it. I want to name that directly because I know how many families are in the same place we were in 2024, looking for something different, without the same options.
If cost is a barrier, two things worth knowing: the Fusion Scholarship Foundation provides need-based scholarships for students who would benefit from this model but lack the financial means to access it. And several states have education scholarship programs that Fusion accepts. It is worth asking your local campus what is available.
The model works. I wish it were accessible to every family that needs it.
If You Are Looking
If you are a parent reading this in the middle of a hard season, wondering if there is something different out there, there might be. It might already be in your city. They also have a completely online version, Global Online Academy
It was already in mine.
Alison + Lovelace + Lucy
So glad your daughter found a place to thrive! This was a great story to read this morning while waking up in my email!