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RadArtz Academy held an open house on Wednesday, May 14, inviting parents, guardians, and their children to visit the school’s new location , witness classes, talk to teachers, and meet the program’s Owner and Executive Director, teacher Casondra Radford.
RadArtz is a Black-owned, locally operated education nonprofit in Nicholasville offering homeschool students various classes and experiences, from writing, math, and history to science, art, and local field trips.
The academy started as a tutoring program. In August 2024, Radford started a three-day learning program. It has grown a lot since then. When the Journal interviewed her in February, Radford was grateful for the program housed by the Urban Village, a nonprofit community activity center. Todd Johns, Chief Executive Director of Revive Ministries housed at the Nicholasville Christian Church, invited RadArtz to use the space, since it wasn’t used during the daytime. RadArtz moved in right after Easter. Now, they have about six classrooms decorated with educational posters and photos of students.
In February, she had about three teachers: Rachel Taylor and Rachel Fleming Wetmore to teach science and art, respectively, and Matthew Burney teaching dance classes. Taylor is Radford’s assistant director with a background in early childhood education, special education, and family studies.
“She’s helped me build this program,” Radford said about Taylor. “She’s come alongside me, has been an ear and a voice. She’s given the kids the hands-on approach they need.” Although Radford is also a teacher, she said more of a behind-the-scenes administrative person. Taylor is “really great with the kids and getting down with them and doing the activities and helping them see and do hands-on things to see science come alive. I don’t like science, but my kids LOVE science, and all these kids do, thats why I was like ‘We have to have STEM, we have to have science in this program. What I’m not good at, others have come alongside and given their skills and talents, and it’s been a blessing.”
Now, Radford said, there are quite a few teachers. Rachel Taylor, Rachel Wetmore, Tori Johnson, Sadie Shelton, and Chansley Turner helped at the open house. In the Fall, they will be joined by Micah Bullock, Shauna Polley, Hannah May, and Gabriela Muniz. “Quite a few teachers are coming on, and to be honest, some of them just reached out to me and were like ‘Hey, I believe in what you’re doing and I want to partner alongside you.’ I said I don’t even know how many kids we’ll have, or who’s gonna be a paying child or not, and they were like ‘It doesn’t matter, I believe in the mission and I want to help.’ So, I’m so grateful to the people willing to come alongside me.”
Right now, RadArtz is teaching preschool through 10th grade, as those age groups have shown the most interest in the program. Instruction includes World History, Bible, Visual Arts, Dance, Science, Stem, Life Skills, Music/Drama, and English Language Arts, with a lunch break and outside time for each age group. Preschool through 10th graders are grouped into four age groups.
At the open house, there were four classes, with the kids moving to a new one every 30 minutes.
Tori Johnson, the program’s life skills teacher, was helping students make bookmarks. In this lesson, Johnson discussed the importance of books for education and recreation. “I never have enough bookmarks because I’m always reading more than one book at a time.” At the time, Johnson was working with the high schoolers. “With our high schoolers, they have classes and a book club. We let them explore their interests as a group and pick their books. We also take field trips to the library, where they can pick their books and learn about each other’s interests,” Johnson said.
To start the day, Rachel Wetmore worked with 4th and 5th graders on art. She taught them how to make foil impressions from cut-out drawings. After making the impressions, the kids decorated them to their hearts’ content.
Sadie Shelton was also working with older elementary school students on an engineering project. The kids crafted their own roller coasters with paper and tape, with the goal of a safe ending for the marbles or “people” on their roller coasters.
Chansley Turner was working with pre-schoolers on Bible studies. In this class, the students learned that “Jesus is our greatest treasure. I have the kids do a scavenger hunt, and then I have them just tell me what is a treasure from the Lord and what is a treasure from the world,” Turner said.
Normally, RadArtz students attend from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, with three classes a day. In August, the instruction days will stay the same, but the schedule will change. “We’ll be a lot different. Students will attend about 4-5 classes a day three times a week, with an art class every day including visual arts, dance, or musical theater. I’m so excited for all the classes we have, and we have some really neat people coming from different backgrounds to help teach for us, so it’ll be really fun,” Radford said. Students can also sign up for A La Carte Classes. 

To Radford, who has a background in Theater, Art is an essential element of education. “Just for these homeschool families to be able to have arts, it’s a huge outlet, it has been for me. I went to school for theater, and it’s been a great outlet to keep my drama on the stage. So, I want that for these kids cause many of them are coming from various backgrounds. About half of our students have been adopted from foster care, including one of my own. We have others who reached out because their kids are neurodivergent. They’re like ‘I see you have kids who are neurodivergent including one of my own so they’re like we want to be a part of that.’ So we are learning as we go, we have made mistakes along the way, and we’re seeing what works and what doesn’t. It’s like science! You just work through that hypothesis until you realize what the end results should be, and you rework!” Radford said.
Life skills are also a hugely important element of RadArtz Academy. “We realized that some of the kids struggle with handwriting, and we wondered, how did they get through four or five years at school and still have difficulties with handwriting?” Radford said that one of her teachers took the initiative to respond to this issue, bringing in handwriting sheets for students to work on for a few minutes daily. “We realized that life skills encompass so much. We have a parent who said, ‘Hey, I’ll come once a month and help with a cooking lesson,’ we have others who want to teach the kids how to change a tire. Life skills is gonna be an all-encompassing class.” Radford added that she’s had high schoolers ask RadArtz teachers to teach them how to do their taxes, which they will add to the high schoolers’ life skills class. She also wants to bring students into the community to learn the importance of volunteering.
RadArtz would love to have volunteers from the community come and help out, too. “We want our community to come and volunteer and be able to pour out into our students.”

To enroll in RadArtz for the fall, head to this signup form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc0qSb3DGOStfKVE9wIKKaFWMTZ_P4gKmax2E-xUWve7Qx2HQ/viewform. It can also be found on the RadArtz Academy Facebook page.