Once in a great while, the hook for an article — that is, the thing that caught the journalist’s eye in the first place — winds up being the least compelling aspect of the entire story.
This does not mean that the hook in this case is any less cool. At a glance, what’s better than a private school in rural central Florida moving its campus seven miles to the site of the former Adventure Cove, a derelict miniature golf course?
Or that the school’s founder intends to preserve at least a couple of the holes for student recreation as well as on-campus festivals and fundraisers.
“You know, make a hole-in-one, win a car?” says Nicole Duslak, a former Orange County public school teacher and the dynamo founder behind CREATE Conservatory. Meaningful pause. Eyebrow raised. “Know anybody who’d like to donate a brand-new car?”
But it’s what CREATE does and has been doing with rousing success since opening to students in Leesburg (about an hour’s drive north of Disney World) in 2020 that steals this show: The K-8 nonprofit employs arts integration to teach STEM subjects. And it sounds like Leonardo da Vinci-level genius.
Ever get a song stuck in your head in an endless loop? Who hasn’t? Silly brains. But suppose instead of driving you batty, that annoying tune taught you the periodic table of the elements? Or the arrangement of bones in the human skeleton? Or the order of mathematic operations, so you no longer got stumped by your friends’ annoying what’s-the-answer posts?
“We hear a song at a wedding or in the elevator or a department store, and we pick it up without really trying,” Duslak said. “It’s still a part of us decades later. We all do that, so we’re teaching science that way, a way that it becomes part of our students.”
It’s not just singing — although the idea of a school as a real-life musical has its charms. CREATE introduces concepts through crafts, art, model-building, clay-molding, dancing, script- and narrative-writing, drafting graphic novels, and acting … to name a few of the school’s arts-immersive activities.
CREATE’s curriculum can’t be bought off the rack or downloaded from a website. Instead, Duslak and her staff of five are constantly writing it, and rewriting it, drawing inspiration from “Schoolhouse Rock!,” the Saturday morning series of short videos that musically covered themes including grammar, science, mathematics, history, and civics. (Admit it: You’re humming “Conjunction Junction” right now.)
Creativity rules the academic day. State standards ensure rigor.
Terri Harper, a mental health counselor and Duslak’s longtime friend, sends sons Levi, 10, and Landon, 8, to CREATE on a Florida Tax Credit Scholarship and a Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities. Both are administered by Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog. She is amazed and gratified by the changes in both.
“My kids, who have never really been too into art,” she says, “now they’re asking for sketch books and sketching pencils and things like that, because they’re discovering this whole different side of themselves. Wow. Yeah, it’s great, it’s really great.”
Kim Levine, a Leesburg-based partner with Core Legal Concepts — a graphic design shop for lawyers — became CREATE’s first corporate sponsor four years ago, well before the school opened its doors.
“She draws people in,” Levine says, “and I think that’s great. Maybe the parents feel that, or the perspective parents, when they go on a tour, and they meet Nicky and hear her talk.
“She’s got a ton of experience and assorted degrees, so she’s got credibility, but she’s so warm and loving, and she’s so committed to this idea.”
Meeting Duslak and a few of her key allies for the first time at a reception designed to recruit community and corporate support (Levine was the only visitor), it wasn’t long before Levine felt like a billionaire panelist on “Shark Tank” blown away by the contestant’s pitch. “I love this idea,” she said. “Let’s do something together.”
That something became two full scholarships, worth about $6,500 each — one named for Stuart Levine, Kim’s late husband — and graphic arts support from Core Legal.
“One of the first things I thought was, I wish I’d had the school when I was a kid,” Levine says, “because I needed that sort of simulation. … Yeah, I just love it. I just thought,” This is perfect, I want to be involved.”
Duslak’s methods may sound exotic. They certainly are mold-busting. But wait.
“The modern education system has told our bravest and most creative thinkers to sit down and be quiet,” Duslak said. “And that’s problematic, right? … I don’t want to sit still for eight hours a day in a desk, and I’m a fully grown adult who has complete control over my functioning.”
CREATE students do not sit at desks. Because there are no desks. Instead, there are beanbags and bounce-on exercise balls and couches and ample floor space. And windows. Oh, so many windows.
“Occasionally,” Duslak said, “I’ll have a kid out to go over and just stand and look out the window, and I’ll think, ‘There is no way they have any clue what’s going on right now.’ Then I’ll call on them and they’re right with me; they just have to move to think. … They just have to look at something else.”
This is no free-for-all, Duslak said. “It’s just about fostering an environment where kids can be themselves and we can honor everything about them that makes them, them.
“We have a lot of structure. … It’s about slow down and get to know them and appreciate them for who they are as people.”
If a chef’s proof is in the pudding, an educator’s proof is in the testing. And the CREATE Conservatory students are crushing it: Youngsters have arrived testing nearly two years behind grade level on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and finished their first academic year testing three years above grade level.
Area parents are taking note. From seven students when CREATE opened to 28 and a waiting list in two years is the stuff of dreams-in-the-making.
So, about the miniature golf course, the conversion and partial preservation of which brought Duslak to our attention. It’s not
exactly like a shut-down putt-putt course screams, Put a school here! There are bridges and boulders shaped from concrete, after all. And streams and a jungle temple that once had a waterfall running through it and a downed airplane stuck in one corner.
Those are a lot of attractive nuisances to demolish and haul away, at substantial expense, even with teams of volunteers swinging sledge hammers and loading wheelbarrows — $16,000 for the temple and airplane alone.
But Duslak had a best friend in her brother, David Slocum, a resort golf club professional who was working toward PGA status when he died in 2002.
“David has been and continues to be a huge motivator in my life, even though he’s not here anymore,” Duslak said. “So, when we found this property and when all this came to be, I just sort of felt like that was his way of being involved in the process.”
Preserving a hole or two will honor both Slocum and the happy memories of Adventure Cove nostalgics. “It’ll be sort of an homage to what the property was,” Duslak says.
The 2.5 acres will be nice for Duslak’s long-range plans. She hopes to add a high school, and a theater for performing arts. For the moment, however, she’s happy to be moving into the attractive Key West-style two-story bungalow that once housed the business’ offices, storage, and concessions. The plan is to be fully relocated after Thanksgiving break.
The going, just now, is financially difficult, as the early days often are for many startups and pioneering entrepreneurs. But Duslak is dug in.
“I will be the greeter person at Walmart on my nights and weekends, if that’s what I have to do,” she said, “because I will not let this fail.”
That’s the best hook of all.
