Colleen Hroncich
Candice Hilton had been a public school teacher for almost a decade, but was still excited when December rolled around. Christmas should be fun, she thought. It could be both educational and enjoyable. Then she saw the schedule. “17 days of testing,” she recalls. “We were going to be testing every single subject.” This included tests from the curriculum, the county, and the AIMS benchmarks, as well as preparing for state exams. “I had second graders,” she reiterates. “It was miserable.”
It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. “I’m not doing this anymore,” she decided. “There’s no need for this. This is not the way it should be.” She’d been saying for years there had to be something better. Her two older kids had gone through the system. “When you’re in the system, you just do it,” she admits. But her youngest daughter was struggling in kindergarten with speech and developmental delays. She’d get in trouble for saying “inappropriate words” when she literally couldn’t pronounce certain sounds. Not surprisingly, she would get upset and discouraged.
So Candice quit her job and decided to be a substitute teacher to see if things were better in other schools. “It was the same everywhere I went,” she says. “You talk to teachers that are miserable, students that are behind. I had a middle schooler who couldn’t spell “of.” I was seeing it everywhere.”
She didn’t want her daughter to continue in that system. Candice began researching about homeschool and what supports were out there for academics and enrichment. “In our area, there just wasn’t a lot. And what was there was very scattered or hit and miss,” she says. She spoke with some friends of hers, and they told her that if she started a microschool, they’d send their kids. She realized she was onto something.
With a roster of 12 students, Candice launched Hilton Horizons Academy in Kingsport, TN, in 2024. This year, she opened an additional site in Johnson City and has 39 students across the two locations. Currently, the Kingsport site offers K‑12 with two-day, three-day, and full-time options, while the Johnson City site offers K‑8 two days a week.
The pace at Hilton Horizons is very different from that at her former school. They have academics in the morning, starting with math, followed by a long snack break and playtime, and then reading. From noon to 1 p.m., there’s a social hour with lunch, board games, and outdoor recess. Afternoons bring enrichment, which has included volunteers from NASA, someone teaching them how to change oil in a car, and regular instructors who offer art, Spanish, and STEM.
“They get a lot of hands-on development,” Candice says. “We have 3D printers. We have robots. We built raised garden beds. We did gardening. We have hydroponics, so when gardening season is not available, then they can still utilize those aspects.”
They also have monthly themes that cover science and social studies. For STEMtober last fall, they focused on chemistry and ran many experiments. In September, they studied different countries with a special emphasis on irrigation, gardening, and caves. “So that started our gardening process. And then we actually took a field trip to Appalachian Caverns, and they got to learn about how the Native Americans spent time in the Appalachian Caverns,” Candice explains. “It made it more real-world for them, which I think is super, super important for kids.”
Students work at their ability level, not their age or grade. One sixth grader came in reading at a twelfth-grade level but with third-grade vocabulary. Candice learned he’d never held a dictionary or thesaurus and had never learned Greek and Latin roots. They taught him those skills, and by the next year, he tested at the twelfth-grade level across the board.
Families can choose their own curricula, and the Hilton Horizons team will support them with it. “One of the great things about being a certified teacher is that we have taught every curriculum under the sun, and we know how to utilize curriculums very quickly and easily. We can adapt on our feet,” says Candice.
The teachers pull students for one-on-one sessions when they see them struggling with something. They also do small groups throughout the day to practice various concepts. “With our littles, we might pull a group and practice letter sounds. And then our bigs might do creative writing. And then we’ll come back and do their independent work,” Candice describes. “It’s a very fluid program. It really, really does cover what the student needs.”
The behaviors that plagued public school classrooms aren’t a problem at Hilton Horizons because the environment supports their needs. Kids can sit on wobble stools or lie on the floor to work. They can use online programs or pencil and paper, depending on what works for them. “If there’s a kid that’s so advanced, they get their lessons done in 10 minutes, and they want to go read a novel, go do that. We’ll do a novel study. Let’s do creative writing. Let’s adapt to them,” says Candice.
The teachers who work for her—all former public school educators—agree that even the worst days at Hilton Horizons beat the best days in conventional schools. One retired and came back to work with her. They’re making less money than they would in public school, but they don’t care.
Starting next year, parents will be able to choose the hybrid option as homeschoolers or enroll as full-time students in a private school. Candice decided to get accredited through the Middle States Association so families can use Tennessee’s education savings account program. “That will help mostly give parents a choice because truly, some parents can’t afford tuition, and they’re stuck in the system, and they don’t have a way out,” she says.
For anyone considering something similar, Candice says, “Don’t second-guess yourself. Don’t overanalyze it. Go for it.” Starting out, she had plenty of doubts. “Am I doing the right thing? Is anybody going to want to do this? This is new in our area; is anybody going to understand what we’re doing?” She was walking away from a career she’d built over nearly a decade. But now? “I have zero regrets. I love every day of what I’m doing.”