North Star provides an unconventional alternate answer, with a refreshing immediacy: “Shall we consider not going to school anymore?” In this issue, the families of Wren Williams, 17, and Dexter BabionePutnam, 15, explain how they accepted this idea in different ways. Wren’s family describe their sense of crisis regarding Wren’s experience in school, and how, as Wren’s father writes, “It was truly a leap of faith” to leave school. They learned about North Star in the midst of their challenging school situation, and Wren grabbed on to this lifeline. continued on page 2 4
Spring 2009
What can parents say when a child comes home from school frustrated day after day, month after month? What can they do when they see their child’s zest for life dissipate over time because he or she feels so completely drained by going to school every day? We all know the conventional answer: “I’m sorry you don’t like school. But you have to go. Maybe we can find a way to make things better.”
It is painful for me to read Wren’s story in which she describes feeling ostracized in school. During her year at North Star, Wren has shown herself to be a kind and gentle person. She always seems to be smiling, and she exudes a sense of warmth and an acceptance of those around her. It is unfathomable to me that she experienced her peer interaction in school in such a dreadful way. In this first year of homeschooling, Wren has made herself a fixture in North Star’s common room, where she is frequently drawing or folding paper cranes. Her smooth adjustment to North Star indicates a resilience inside of her that I find heartwarming. Her experience, and her willingness to describe it here, is a highlight of this year at North Star.—K.D.
Wren
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When I started at Amherst Regional High School (ARHS) in ninth grade, I learned that
In contrast, Dexter explains how he gradually became disillusioned with school, and how his mother kept suggesting he join North Star. “No!” was Dexter’s stubborn reply, as he insisted on continuing to tread water, growing more tired each month. Dexter finally chose to leave school under his own power, but it was hard for his parents to watch him struggle prior to his getting out. The path to homeschooling looks different for every family. Much of the process has to do with timing. The situation must be aligned so that teens and parents feel ready at the same moment to try something radically new. The stories in this issue provide some insight into the family dynamics and thinking that are involved in this decision. I hope that the essays here inspire other families to know that they have an option to do something more than make the best of a bad situation. We
continued on page 34 2
everyone already had a group of friends and I was not welcome. As time went on, it became clear that the school had decided my fate. I was the loner, the one whom no one paid any attention to. The year continued and I stopped caring about my schoolwork. I got fair grades by doing the minimum. When I got home I would zone out in front of the computer or just go to sleep, in an attempt to escape from my life or just from the emotional exhaustion caused by the anxiety of the day. Thinking about homework made me sick and irate; school made me silent and depressed. At the beginning of this school year, I returned to ARHS for 10th grade because I could not find a different place to go and we had not thought of North Star yet. This year was slightly different from 9th grade, but it was certainly not better. Now, on top of the social issues, there were academic problems. I had decided to really try hard at my classes, but it was a lot more challenging than I could handle. My teachers were upset that I was not finishing my work on time and they didn’t seem to care that I was trying as hard as I could. The depression that had settled in me the year before had disappeared over the summer, but entering the school again triggered both sadness and a new fear and anxiety. Not only was the work too hard for me, but I was also not at my best because of how fragile I had become, and because
of the constant fight that was going on in my mind and body between wanting to be perfect and not caring. I was only three weeks into the year and already behind in my work and terribly miserable. Then one day, I just couldn’t take it any more. I was in my room trying to work on homework with my mom when I snapped. I screamed and threw all my papers around and pushed a chair over and sobbed. I just couldn’t go back and I just couldn’t continue living in such torture. After I calmed down, I talked to my mom about what my options were. She came up with North Star; we had heard about North Star from a friend but never seriously considered it. One day later we scheduled a meeting with my dad and therapist to discuss starting at North Star. Directly after the session, I went to North Star to try it out. I must say that the moment I walked in the door was probably the best moment of my life. A North Star member came into the entryway at the same time as I was just standing awkwardly around with my parents. He saw me, and he waved, smiled, and said hello. It may seem entirely trivial, but no one had noticed me, let alone smiled, waved, and said hello to me, in more than a year. I had wondered many times before if it was too much to ask for an acknowledging smile. When Alex treated me like an equal and a respectable human being, I was astonished. I had forgotten what it was like to be respected, and it made me so happy that someone I didn’t even know thought I deserved such kindness. The rest of the day was just as splendid. I left the building feeling alive, well-liked, and sensible. After that day I knew it was the place for me. This year at North Star has been everything I hoped for, and more. I started off taking as many classes as I could manage and soon found this to be too many because of my newfound love of fiction writing and art. There aren’t enough hours in the day for all the things I want to do. I have started four stories and am still planning out a movie. I always enjoyed free writing in school but had very little chance to actually write. Once I started writing workshop at North Star I found that I love to write so much I can do it for hours at a time. I take a history class at North Star and I have been learning about Cambodia and soon Cuba. It is so relaxing to be able to study something you are
News and Notes The spring has seen three major events at North Star. First, Catherine Gobron led a group of ten on a service trip to Roatan, Honduras, where they built an underwater SCUBA trail around a section of the world’s second largest coral reef. The trip included a good deal of marine biology and also extensive consideration of the public policy issues involved in building an eco-tourism site. The participants have each written for the trip’s newsletter. Please contact Catherine if you would like to receive a copy.
continued on page 44
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paper cranes so I can cover my ceiling. I truly interested in have a balance of freedom and support and now I have the that allows me to control the amount of time to really work I take on, but I know I am not on dive deep into my own. The adults and the students at history, writing, North Star are very supportive of me and and art in just help me accomplish goals that I set for myself the ways I want. and provide opportunities that I can Instead of having choose to take on. At North Star, teachers to study ancient are available for one-on-one support. I work civilizations in with Susannah on essay writing and poetry. excruciating depth, I Essay writing has always been rather difficult can choose what time for me and it is incredibly period and event I want to helpful to have a learn about. I have wonderful tutor in the subject. discussions with Ellen, the history North Star is a class leader, about how the things wonderful community we are studying relate to the where people are always present day. When I don’t learning and unusual understand something, I can talk p Drawing By Wren to her about it in greater detail to get a better opportunities are just around the corner. Now that I have almost completed a full handle on it, because we have the time, patience, and enthusiasm needed to enjoy and learn the year of homeschooling, I am starting to look into material. When I was in school I hardly had time to the future at what will come next. This summer I rush through my subjects. Everything I did was just have many projects, including animating charcoal to get it over with. I really wanted to learn the drawings, making clothing, and looking for a job. history we were studying but I had so much other My plan for next year is to go to Greenfield work and so many things to remember that I Community College part-time and continue at North Star. I eventually want to take college couldn’t really get what I wanted from the class. North Star has enabled me to really learn courses in film, education, and art (plus a few the things I choose to study. In art I have been classes in business and auto mechanics). North Star has changed my life in the most practicing drawing and also plan to make 3,000 wonderful way possible. I enjoy life, and learn something every day. I have a whole community of friends, young and old. I am free to be myself, and I have the time, resources, and support I need to really accomplish my goals.t Liberated Learners Spring 2009
encourage you to share these stories with your friends and acquaintances who will benefit from learning about this option. We invite you to visit North Star during one of our new Open Houses on the first Friday of each month.
Melinda, Wren’s Parent, writes: Children are shaped and molded by the environment that they grow up in and this creative, curious, loving child deserved better! North Star has offered Wren a supportive environment for discovery, both of herself and of her place in the world. Wren has the heart of an artist. She is a writer and a visual artist. It has been a joy to watch her develop skill and confidence in what she is so passionate about. Wren is also very
Second, North Star held its fifth annual Celebration of SelfDirected Learning on March 29th. Over 270 people joined us to honor our Self-Directed Learning Award recipient, Roget Lockard. His comments are included in this issue. The event raised over $30,000 to support North Star’s policy of working with all interested families, regardless of ability pay. We’d like to thank our brunch sponsors: Bueno Y Sano; Hungry Ghost Bread; Whole Foods; Greenfield Community College; Seeds Of Solidarity; and Holt Associates. Third, Sarah Reid has begun her work as fulltime Outreach Director. We now have an Open House the first Friday of each month. Sarah is setting up further informational meetings about North Star with many community members. Please let us know if you have people in mind who would be interested to learn more about North Star. Sarah is also taking over all of our publicity, advertising, and website production. Already, we can’t remember life without continued on page 54 4
keenly aware of her areas of struggle. She has sought out and been supported by one-to-one tutoring in essay writing and math at North Star. Socially, she feels at home with the other students and has developed some special friendships while being free to be her most authentic self. As a parent, I am aware of the incredible importance of relationships in adolescence. At North Star, Wren is in the company of young people who believe in themselves, who want to be a part of positive change in their world, and who prefer to create new paths rather than follow blindly. North Star guides them in reaching their potential and making their dreams become real.
Dan, Wren’s Parent, writes: I won’t even try to add to the story of how Wren ended up at North Star. She’s done such a beautiful job I can’t think of what more could be said. Except, perhaps, “Thank you, Alex. Bless you a thousand times over.” Now, seven months after that crisis in our family’s life, I still don’t know what alternative would even approach what North Star has done for Wren. The freedom to pursue her own interests at her own pace lifted a great weight from all of our shoulders. Short of my quitting my job and educating her myself, I don’t know what other option she had. It’s been a joy to watch her creativity and curiosity return. There’s no doubt that Wren is happy at North Star, and no doubt that in public school, she was not. But being happy is only part of what I hope for Wren. I must admit that I also hope Wren will achieve other things that are key to experiencing a life that is rich, rewarding, and always growing. I hope she will find a loving and meaningful relationship. I hope she will find independence. I hope she will feel confident and effective enough to see what can be better in the world and take action to make it so. For all this, I believe education and, especially, the drive and skills to educate herself, are fundamental. So, Ken heard a lot of questions from me as Wren got started at North Star about where it would all lead. I needed to reconcile North Star and its philosophy with my conceptions of the path to
an independent adulthood. Ken does a great job of teaching us the concept that a child’s natural desire to learn reappears once obstacles like school are out of the way. This makes sense and I can honestly say that I believe it, intellectually. But what really allowed me to come to peace with the North Star approach was when Ken finally helped me realize that the path would be different than mine was. He helped me see how a child could still make it to college and succeed without graduating from high school at age 18, or even graduating at all. I realized that I was projecting my own path – high school followed by college followed by employment in one’s field of education – upon the world. I had assumed that if someone couldn’t keep up at the same pace, they would simply fail. College wouldn’t be an option. It will be a different path. It may be a slower path, at a pace that’s right for Wren. But I see how it can still lead to all I hope for her. Not all kids who drop out of school necessarily end their education. Wren feels empowered by her decision to leave school. And she feels empowered by the joy she finds again in learning. I have faith in this power to help Wren push herself to continue to grow and learn. I have faith in this path. It’s one that I am not familiar with and, so, my confidence is truly a leap of faith, not a conviction based on experience. Of course, much in life requires of us these leaps. Especially with our children. North Star is the perfect fit for Wren and, I believe, is part of Wren’s journey to a rich and rewarding life.
Here is one very warm THANK YOU to the many people and organizations who have contributed to each of the items listed above. A trip to Honduras, an inspirational brunch, and a new staff position don’t happen for a program such as North Star without the involvement and generosity of numerous friends. We are grateful for our community.
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I enjoy wandering through the North Star common room and seeing what Dexter is doing each day. He is full of ideas, projects, and witty comments. In his second year at North Star, his intellectual curiosity has emerged fully intact, and he is a busy fellow. Dexter attends many classes and workshops at North Star, and he is also an active participant in the social scene. His reflection on his past two years reminds us that, for many teens, the first year of homeschooling is about emotional recovery and decompression from school, and the second is when academic inspiration is more likely to take hold.—K.D.
Dexter
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I was never fond of the idea of homeschooling and was under the false impression that all homeschoolers were weird hippie shut-ins. I went through elementary school in a structured school environment for eight years, and I was content with my belief that there was no other option. It was only after my first year in middle school that I was compelled to search for other options, but I’ll touch on that later. First let’s talk about my experience with the middle school. The summer after my sixth grade graduation my mother suggested I follow in my friend Jonah’s footsteps and go to North Star, or at the very least try homeschooling. I stubbornly refused. For the first trimester of middle school, school was tolerable. I did rather well, getting A’s and B’s. The second trimester was when things started to fall down. I began being very stressed about everything. In fact, this stress was so overwhelming that I gave up my hobby of drumming. The third trimester was the worst of all. My grades dropped from A’s and B’s to C’s and D’s. I was very bitter and irritable almost all of the time. My relationship with my family at the end of that year was stressed to the bursting point. That summer was when I decided to look for something different. I almost immediately shot down the idea of homeschooling. We then attended a trial week at an alternative school near Boston called Sudbury
Valley School. I felt it just was not right for me. Then my mom suggested we set up an interview with Ken. Right away I was enthralled by the concept of North Star. Ken explained to me that homeschooling did not have to be textbooks at home with my Mom. While I was at North Star I saw lots of teens socializing, learning, and having fun, all of which went completely against my prior ideas of homeschooling. After the meeting I knew this was the place I wanted to go. My first day at North Star was astounding. I never thought that there would be so many people like me in one place. I almost immediately fit into a crowd of people who still are my friends today. I started off that year not doing very much. I was in recovery from school, if you will. Later that year I really started to become self-motivated to do things. I recall one of my first experiences with classes at North Star was an evolutionary biology class taught by Bill Copeland. Also, I worked with another teen, Oliver Spiro, on some rather trivial intellectual pursuits. He still helps me out with math from time to time. Towards the end of the year North Star alumnus Matthew Weigang had an all-day Trigonometry and Calculus workshop. I think he was the person who single-handedly got me into math. The midpoint of the year was a highlight of my life. North Star conducts an Liberated Learners Spring 2009
her. Sarah is publishing a weekly blog describing some of the activities and highlights at North Star. You can read it at: http://northstarteens. wordpress.com
q North Star trip to Honduras
annual service trip, and last year it was to Vieques, Puerto Rico. We went there to work for the peace organization that, through nonviolent protest, kicked the U.S. Navy off their island. The Navy had been using it to test munitions. Last summer, I had another travel adventure. My family went to Mexico, where we visited ancient Aztec ruins. This school year is when my selfmotivation shifted into full gear. I started off with a bang, socializing with everyone and taking as many classes as I could. Also, Jonah is a chemistry whiz, and he inspired me to even greater heights of learning. This year I went to Bill’s class again. I also developed the same relationship with Read Predmore. He teaches the Euclidian geometry class, and will be tutoring me in physics and trigonometry. For the North Star trip this year the group went to Roatan, Honduras. While there we did some voluntary work for the local marine park. After returning, Jonah and I went to a five-hour seminar at UMass on material science. Now to speak of my plans for the future. Partly because of the trip to Honduras, this summer I plan to do some volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity. On the subject of short- to medium-term goals for next year: I want to take an engineering class at Greenfield Community College. My goals for next year also include getting my GED, mastering trigonometry, and getting my driver’s permit. My long-term goals are far more complex. My main one is to go to college. I would like to get my Bachelor’s, Master’s, and a PhD. The schools I have my eyes on are MIT and WPI (Worcester Polytechnic). The fields I want to pursue are: Mathematics, Chemistry, Computer Science, and Engineering. After two years at North Star, I no longer think of homeschoolers as weird. Instead, I think that people who willingly choose to go to school when they have the option of North Star are strange. It turns out my Mom was right after all.t
Michelle, Dexter’s Parent, writes:
When Dexter announced that he’d like to try homeschooling, I felt a huge sense of relief. His first year at the middle school was enough for both 6
of us to realize that it was not the best habitat for him. North Star was the obvious choice. I signed him up without hesitation. After Dexter’s first day, he came home glowing. “Well,” he remarked casually, “Now I guess I’m friends with just about everybody there.” When he said that, I realized that he had made only one friend during his entire year at the middle school. Dexter spent most of his first year at North Star talking with his new friends, walking down to the pizza place, and playing foosball. I had read about the need for decompression for new homeschoolers, but I felt unsettled with all of this hanging around. I kept thinking that I should be doing more. I definitely thought that Dexter should be doing more! I thought I was pretty cool with the idea of self-directed learning, but where was the learning? Meanwhile, Dexter was growing happier and more confident each day. He was becoming downright delightful to have around the house. Adults were impressed whenever they met him. I knew something big and good was happening with Dexter, so I decided to back off on the academics. I figured that as long as he went to college, he would be okay. Dexter is now in his second year at North Star. I never would have predicted this a year ago, but he has become a serious and committed student of math and chemistry. I had to talk him out of taking summer classes at UMass (he’s only just turned fifteen!). During an organizational meeting for the spring trip to Honduras, one of the parents joked that the kids could attend an SAT prep class instead of doing all of the expected work to prepare for this trip. Dexter immediately piped up, “You can count me in!” He was being serious, ready to learn about Honduras and study for the SATs as well. He now loves learning, he knows what he’s interested in, and he’s committed to working hard. I am so grateful for the learning environment that North Star provides, because I know this would never have happened in school.
Acceptance remarks by Roget Lockard, M.Ed., this year’s recipient of the annual North Star Self-Directed Learning Award. March 29, 2009. I am deeply honored to be chosen to receive this award. I want to thank Jodi Lyn Cutler, who nominated me, the members of the North Star staff who selected me, and Susannah for her kind words of introduction. I confess that I felt an initial hesitancy when the notion was first proposed to me, for I imagined that the idea of “self-directed learning” implied a kind of clear, decisive, purposeful educational trajectory – and my story is anything but that. I was persuaded, though, that the kind of meandering journey that was mine for so many years is one of the profiles that fit the North Star mission. So I am here today to receive this award with gratitude, tell you my story in brief, share some key learnings that I have gleaned along my journey, and explain why I think North Star is deserving of our generous and enduring support. Born and raised in Iowa, I dropped out of high school in Des Moines a few months before I would have graduated, took a full-time job, and helped my parents pay to heat the large house 15 miles outside of town where they lived with my five younger siblings (I was living with a friend in Des Moines). The following autumn I moved to Chicago to be with my girlfriend who was going to school at the university there. I soon became involved in the peace, civil rights, and civil liberties movements that were just beginning to gain momentum then (Winter of ’59-’60), and became an organizer for, and eventually National Secretary of, the Student Peace Union. These activities eventually took me to New York City, where I had the great privilege of working with many of the movement luminaries of that period. So, while my contemporaries were attending colleges and universities, I was touring them as a speaker and organizer. (Indeed, my first visit to this area was an appearance at Smith College, organizing for a two-day peace demonstration at the White House in February of 1962. I was one of four organizers of that demonstration who met in the White House basement with three of President Kennedy’s top advisors. We offered them advice, which, regret-
7
tably, they declined to follow.) I next took a job in a printing shop to support my wife and young daughter – who, happily, survived my parenting to be with us here today. I spent the next dozen or so years alternating between blue-collar work, occasional free-lance writing, and various reform-related positions. Some of the latter involved alternative education programs, and I became involved with a consortium that was establishing one of the early “University Without Walls” (UWW) programs at Rutgers University. I was one of the participant/designers and, in order to register at Rutgers, needed to get a GED. This was the first and only time the absence of a high school diploma presented me with any kind of obstacle. By now we’re up to the early ‘70s, and, while still involved in the UWW program, I was hired for a summer job in New York City as assistant to the Director of Development at the then-recently-founded Environmental Defense Fund. At the end of the summer the position was made permanent, and I was given added responsibilities as Director of Public Information. Skipping ahead, in 1979 I was hired as a counselor at the detoxification center in Springfield, MA, where I became Director of Counseling Services ten months later. While working there I earned a B.A. degree with a double major (Ed. & Psych.) at a UWW program in CT, which was awarded two days before my 40th birthday. Then graduate school at UMass, earning my M.Ed. in Counseling Psychology in 1985. But wait – what’s with this “skipping ahead”? What happened to the UWW program at Rutgers? And how, after all my switching hither and yon, did I come to settle on a career in addictions treatment? Well, what you’ve heard so far is the “cleaned up” version of my story. It’s all true, but a few details, and one key fact, have been glossed over. For one thing, while it’s true that I contributed to my family’s heating bills after leaving school, that wasn’t what prompted my leaving. The immediate precipitant of my dropping out was an accident I had while driving a friend’s car, resulting in a debt to him of $500 (over $3500 in today’s money). Further, I was a lowachieving student and glad to be out of high school. I was encouraged to go to night school, attended Liberated Learners Spring 2009
q North Star Brunch
one class which I found mind-numbingly easy – and never returned. I don’t really know why. But drinking probably had something to do with it, for it was around that time that I learned the first of two transformative lessons that have shaped my life’s path, with alcohol as a compelling tutor. The lesson was this: “Life works best if I’m in control – if I’m in the driver’s seat.” Drinking alcohol, I discovered, gave me the power to dramatically transform how I experienced myself, and the world around me. As the first part of an anonymous poem has it, “alcohol gave me wings to fly.” This experience, of being able to reshape my reality at will, was the lure that enticed me into my alcoholism. Some fifteen years later I began to learn the second life-transforming lesson, which, remarkably, is an exact contradiction of the first. This lesson might read: “Actually, life works best if I’m not in the driver’s seat; if I focus not on controlling results, but on seeing to it that my goals, and my effort, have integrity.” Now, here is an interesting fact: the moment you embrace the first lesson – that control is the best path to fulfillment – life begins to present you with clues that point to the second lesson – that surrendering control is actually the best orientation. So, if life began almost immediately to present me with evidence pointing to this second and perfectly contradictory lesson, why did it take me fifteen years to learn it? Because, as the Greek slave-philosopher Epictetus put it, “It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows.” Notoriously, addicts have the ability to deny that they have a problem, in the midst of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Behind my shield of denial I was resolutely unavailable to learn from the evidence life was piling up at my doorstep. But finally, one August day in 1973, the evidence became overwhelming. It was an inescapable fact that my way wasn’t working; that my “control” strategy was utterly bankrupt, and that my wonderful tool of alcohol had become my worst enemy. It was rather like experiencing a biographical Mount St. Helens. One day I appeared, on the surface, to have a viable albeit problematic life going for myself; the next day the landscape of my life had been blown to 8
smithereens, and I was incapable of doing anything at all useful for myself. I had reached the end of the poem I mentioned earlier, which goes, in full – “Alcohol gave me wings to fly – then it took away the sky!” Within days I lost my job, my marriage disintegrated, and my academic program fell by the wayside. At this point grace intervened. A dear friend found a “drunk farm” for me in Western CT, and drove me up there. During the nineteen days I was there the thrust of my life profoundly shifted. I began to learn the art of sobriety – the art of living a life which is based not on control, but on striving for personal discovery and integrity, in a community of like-minded persons. Wait a minute. Does that remind us of anything? Changing the words ever so little can give us this phrase: “A learning environment based not on control, but on promoting and enabling personal discovery and integrity, in a community of like-minded persons.” This sounds to me very much like North Star, and I think this is not mere coincidence. The philosophical premises of AA, the fellowship which has made sobriety a viable option for millions of addicts since its birth in 1935, correspond intimately with the principles which, as I understand, have shaped the development of North Star. I believe this is because the problem engaged by Bill and Bob, the co-founders of AA, is essentially the same problem that provoked Ken and Joshua to found North Star; the ill-founded but compelling belief that control is the road to fulfillment. In one of my favorite quotes Rainer Maria Rilke asserts that: “My blood is alive with many voices, telling me I am made of longing.” Addiction, sobriety, and the human hunger for learning, are all about longing. As Rilke suggests, it is in striving to fulfill our longings that we shape our identity – that we plumb the depths of our being. So when strategies of control offer themselves as shortcuts to fulfillment, whether they be mood-altering chemicals, militarism, or MCAS, it is only human to rise to the bait. As our bourgeoning technologies have granted us ever more potent options to exercise control, addiction, always a presence in human experience, has become a global force. The addictive perspective distorts and corrupts not
When you’re lost you don’t need somebody to find you, You need somebody to be lost with you.* Venturing into the unfamiliar terrain of relinquishing control, we become strangers in a strange land. In allowing ourselves to be lost together, we find that the questions are actually more interesting, and more rewarding, than the answers. Rather than following “rules,” we discover trustworthy guidelines that we share with one another. In a moment I will share with you three guidelines that have, over the years, proven most useful to me, by way of closing these already over-lengthy remarks. But first, there is the matter 9
of urging your support for North Star. I have compared North Star to Alcoholics Anonymous, because they both achieve their remarkably effective results through abandoning the strategy of control. As I mentioned earlier, there are millions of addicts who owe their lives and their sanity to this fellowship. But the number of people who have become sober through direct involvement in the 12-step fellowships grossly understates the full significance of this movement, whose radical healing influence has resonated throughout the world. North Star, whose “Seven Principles” remind me not only of AA, but of the essence of Buddhism, of Taoism, of Tai Chi, is, in the manner of these traditions, teaching by example. This example is priceless and potent, and could not possibly be more timely. Every dollar of money, every minute of volunteer time that we contribute to this revolutionary learning community will multiply and extend out into the world beyond our ability to trace, and in ways that we can only approximately imagine. One thing I'm sure of, though, is this. Learning how to learn is an indispensable part of what is required, if we are to turn the tide toward the more hopeful possibilities of these transformative times. Please join me in brightening the North Star beacon. We cannot know all those who will be touched by that guiding light; we can be sure that that guidance will be trustworthy. Now, as promised, here are the three guidelines that have proven trustworthy for me over the years. They can be summed up in seven words: Liberated Learners Spring 2009
merely our educational institutions and policies, but our entire social, cultural, and intellectual matrix, putting our economic and environmental well-being in such dire jeopardy that we endanger our survival as a civilization; quite possibly even as a species. One could easily think, then, with the stakes being this great, that we must come up with grand and heroic plans. But the lessons of sobriety point us in the opposite direction. If I had to define sobriety with one word, that word would be “humility.” Humility is about being right-sized; neither more nor less. And humility is about being teachable – meaning, to recall Epictetus’ earlier admonition, that we need to let ourselves know that we don’t know, if we hope to be able to learn. A dear friend and brilliant teacher of mine, who happens to be in the room here with us today, unfailingly calls those of us under his instruction “fellow students.” He declines to elevate himself above those who turn to him for learning, insisting that we are jointly discovering pieces of larger truths that we will, in any case, never entirely grasp. Another dear and wise friend of mine is here as well. I have learned deeply from him; and I have learned as well from his son, though I never met him. Before he left this life while still in his teens, Ozzie Klate composed a body of writing of penetrating astuteness. And there is one line of his that I turn to again and again, not so much because it shines light into the darkness, but because it makes the darkness habitable.
1) Surrender control. 2) Accept responsibility. 3) Practice indiscriminate compassion. These are, I believe, in perfect harmony with the principles and practices that inform the North Star program. Thanks, again, to the staff and parents of North Star for this extraordinary honor, and as well to the many friends and family – teachers all in my life – who have joined me here today. You are a wonderful bunch of people, and I am so grateful that we can be lost together. * From “The Gulf Between Us,” in Even On the Wind, Selected Poems by Ozzie Klate
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Liberated Learners: Produced by Ken Danford
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