Liberated Learners Fall 2009

FALL 2009

LIBERATEDLEARNERS

North Star enters its 14th year with over 45 members, more than half of whom are new this year.

In case you didn’t know, this is what our building looks like.

A new year is here

and it’s going to be awesome

By Ken Danford

Welcome to North Star’s 14th year of working with teens and families! We are entering this year with approximately 45 members, our largest opening roster ever! Our extended staff includes a fantastic range of expertise and wisdom, and we are impressed with the serious set of course offerings on our calendar.

Our first week has been filled with joy and enthusiasm.

The play and laughter has been matched with focus and seriousness of purpose. One would have to search long and hard to find another group of teens who were as happy for September to arrive as our current group of North Star members.

The summer brought a few improvements to North Star.

First, Associate Director Catherine Gobron spent countless hours on North Star’s new website, which launched in late August. The site is full of photos, essays, and even videos about North Star. The calendar of classes and activities is posted and kept up-to-date. If you have not yet visited this shining new aspect of North Star, please go to www.northstarteens.org and send us your feedback.

Together, Catherine and Outreach Director Sarah Reid have transformed the interior of North Star, finding and transporting all sorts of couches and chairs to upgrade our furniture. We appreciate the generosity of those who contributed to this effort, as do our members!

Finally, Sarah has asked to take on the design and publication of this newsletter. We know that many readers have wanted to hear more about the day-to-day learning and activities inside North Star. Sarah plans to share this news with you here and on our blog (northstarteens.org/ blog).

I hope you find the changes to Liberated Learners informative and inspirational.

The generosity of our readers and donors allows North Star to sustain its mission of working with all interested families regardless of their ability to pay the full membership fee. Your gifts matter, and so do your thoughts and questions.

Please keep in touch!

LIBERATEDLEARNERS FALL 2009

At the end of my first year in Hampshire College, I began to study alternative education practices, and on the advice of a few friends I checked out North Star.

The first class that I facilitated here was about starting and operating a record label, something that I had done when I left high school early in 2005. The experience I had during this class revolutionized the way I thought about pedagogy and learning.

Since then, I have returned to facilitate various classes and workshops on U.S. history and social justice issues. Now, I am in my last year at Hampshire, and I attribute the direction my life and studies have taken in large part to my extraordinary experience at North Star as a teacher and a learner.

-Brian Van Slyke

TEACHER

PROFILES

I retired from UMass as Research Professor of Astronomy several years ago. I enjoy teaching and sharing my excitement about astronomy, math, and physics.

This year I am teaching a course on Relativity, Gravity, and Black Holes. As a radio astronomer I have developed electronics and antennas to observe quasars and active galactic nuclei, which are powered by black holes.

Read Predmore

New Outreach Director!

Say hello to Sarah

By Sarah Reid

If you haven’t read North Star’s 7 Principles, I enthusiastically suggest that you do so as soon as possible. They can be found on our awesome new website. Number 4 is my favorite. It says: How people behave under one set of circumstances

of Directors recently (and briefly) before talking Ken into hiring me as the Outreach Director.

My main objective is to increase our presence and assumptions does not predict how they will behave under a very both in the Valley and nationally, such that our different set of circumstances and assumptions. enrollment doubles and

Having dropped out of my senior year in high school people want to give us lots of with a GPA of 1.6, I can’t think of a more true statement. I money so that we can meet went on to graduate from Smith College on a full scholarship, our budget and create a and I was on the dean’s list. Take that, High School! replicable model. If you

My relationship with North Star has been manyfold. I have ideas about how to go helped Ken run the program for a year (10 years ago when it about achieving either of was called Pathfinder) after Josh, the cofounder, took a leave to these objectives, please be at home with his new baby. My son joined North Star for contact me at part of 8th grade year two years ago and I served on the Board sarah@northstarteens.org.

LIBERATEDLEARNERS Fall 2009

SUPPORTING TEENAGERS: the role of adults at North Star

By Susannah Sheffer

When a family first joins North Star, often what is most striking is the list of things the staff does not do: decide what the teenage members should study or how they should spend their time, design a required curriculum, enforce compulsory attendance, give grades and diplomas. The absence of these functions may be attractive and even exhilarating to a family just coming out of a difficult school experience, but it can also be disorienting and confusing. If the adults at North Star aren’t engaged in these familiar schoolteacher functions, what are they doing?

Another way to think about this question is this: when we remove all those tasks that involve requiring, prescribing, making sure or trying to make sure that something happens, what’s left to fill the space between adult and teenager? Does the adult mostly just step back and leave the kids alone.

The idea that leaving kids alone is the only alternative to requiring kids to do things is, we would venture to say, one of the most common misconceptions about the self-directed learning option that North Star offers. In fact, adults at

North Star neither coerce teenagers nor leave them entirely alone. Instead, we provide support and involvement in myriad ways.

Adults on the North Star staff observe, listen to, think about, plan for, worry over, marvel at, and generally pay attention to our teenage members as they make the fascinating and complicated transition from one kind of life to another. We research opportunities for community involvement, track down the specific book or article or film or piece of music that we think will speak to one of the teens or several, meet regularly with members to problem-solve, brainstorm, encourage, sympathize, challenge, reassure.

We mediate conflicts, evaluate and re-evaluate and re-evaluate again how things are going for a particular teen, figure out ways to get over or under or around external and internal obstacles.

What this actually looks like in practice and detail with each teen and each family is a huge part of what we look forward to sharing with you over the course of the year.

Our Wish List • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

quality furniture IT assistance flat-screen monitor vacuum cleaner floor refinishing art supplies nice, big, dark rug polaroid camera video camera framing services indoor plants wooden bookcases come in and paint walls component cd player

FAN MAIL “It is so great to see that North Star is doing so well. I miss it terribly. The brick building you guys are now in is so beautiful!

What I witnessed and experienced at North Star, in my short time as a work-study student and board member, was so wonderful and inspiring!

I only wish I could move back to Massachusetts--for many reasons--to volunteer at North Star in order to get involved again in some way.

Rock Climbing

Every year, the Outdoor Leadership Program at Greenfield Community College offers us 4 guided trips including a Ropes Course, Whitewater Rafting, and Canoeing.

Again, I am so glad to see that you are flourishing. I have such fond memories of being there and still wear the ring that Ben Rosser [teen member] made.

Wishing you continued success!”

-Nancy Macdonald, former Umass student and work study staff member

LIBERATEDLEARNERS FALL 2009

North Star didn’t sound like something I was interested in.

Lucky for me I had the wrong idea entirely.

By Thomas, 15

Thomas Erwin is a poster child for the concept that some people just don’t need to go to school. At age fifteen, he is regretfully (for us) done with his time at North Star. Thomas has made this decision thoughtfully. He is currently taking a Japanese course at Amherst College, a Computer Music course at Hampshire College, playing music in a group, with a partner, and on his own. He spends a significant amount of time with his grandmother at her nursing home. He is, simply, too busy to spend any more time with us. In this essay, Thomas shares his recent schooling experiences and how he has carefully weighed each of his decisions about how and where to spend his time.

I admire Thomas’ adventurous spirit. He arrived at North Star wanting to travel, and since I have known him he has gone to Puerto Rico, Honduras, and Iceland. I also deeply respect his musical talents. One of my North Star highlights of the past few years was Thomas’ full-show improv accompaniment of a major North Star theater production. I look forward to every update I receive from Thomas about his current activities. -Ken Danford

I remember the first time I ever noticed North Star. It was in the summer of 2007. I saw a sign I didn’t recognize on the lawn of their new building. I asked my mom what North Star was, and she said she didn't really know. She had heard it was a center for kids who weren't going to school for various reasons, either because they were "too smart" or had various issues that kept them away from the outside world. I imagined a bunch of unfriendly bookworms huddled against a fireplace.

Didn't sound like something I was interested in.

Lucky for me I had the wrong idea entirely.

Middle school in Northampton for me was a non-experience. I had always excelled in every subject with hardly any effort, but was always bored.

I had a couple of friends outside of school I occasionally goofed off with, but had nothing in

common with my classmates. I had a vague interest in music, having taken a lot of lessons through the years, but never showed interest in developing any skills otherwise. Even with music I didn't really have my heart in it. Nothing that was offered in school seemed to be anything beyond a way to kill time. It became clear to me by the beginning of eighth grade that I should stop waiting for things to just magically improve, and see what I could do to break up the monotony.

I couldn't really think of any other school where I might be better off, and I felt stuck.

Nevertheless, I expressed my concerns to my parents, and we decided to explore my options.

North Star came up in the conversation, and I decided that despite my first impression, I should go see what it was like. I read The Teenage Liberation Handbook, had a meeting with Ken, and had my first day as a homeschooler shortly thereafter.

I was very excited at the prospect of having control over my schedule and trying something new.

Not having any responsibilities to do anything I deemed a waste of time was a great feeling.

However, I was at first skeptical of North Star's philosophy, and a bit overwhelmed. Reading descriptions of classes in the schedule that didn't appear to be academic in the traditional sense.

Seeing groups of kids hanging out, talking, reading, on the computer, etc. All just having a good time while every other teen in the country was "learning."

It initially seemed… askew, like these people were never going to grow up, or some equally ridiculous notion. After getting used to the new routine, familiarizing myself with the members and staff (almost all of whom were among the nicest, most interesting people I had ever met), my worries ceased and I felt at home.

I took part in any class that even remotely interested me, wanting to expand my horizons as much as possible. By March 2008, after an amazing trip to Puerto Rico led by Catherine Gobron, I realized how far I had come. I had several new close friends, all of whom I still keep up with regularly outside of North Star. I had upcoming music performances with the theater group and with Matt Merkel from the Electronic Music class to practice for. I volunteered with VFR and WMUA, two local radio stations. I had kept up with math, having worked on an Algebra I book at home, proving to myself I didn't need school to stay academically competent. Most importantly, I had something to look forward to every day, even when North Star wasn't open. I had a sure feeling that things would only continue to develop, and I would continue to make use of the opportunities I had as much as I could.

Having been on the waiting list for a couple of years, I started going to the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts school (PVPA) for 9th grade. After

North Star taught me that teenagers are people,

not just members of some artificial subclass.

By Sara Sullivan, Thomas’s mother and a proud North Star parent

The decision to take our son out of the public school system and enroll him in the program at North Star was not difficult. In fact, it was practically preordained. As early as preschool, Thomas was charting his own course. A kindergarten teacher recognized his unique qualities and pronounced him North Star material. I immediately shrugged off the suggestion. After all, his teacher was a little quirky, and wasn’t North Star some sort of weird Special Ed program that catered to a fringe population?

OVERHEARD: “I love my future!”

-teen member and no, we are not making this quote up

Years later, at the beginning of eighth grade, when Thomas’s patience and interest in the run-up to high school was waning, we (Thomas, my husband, and myself) had what could only be described as a family epiphany: Why should he, Thomas, have to spend an entire year waiting to become what he already was- a high school student? Immediately, we made an appointment with the guidance counselor.

Surely she would have some suggestions, some option.

But as we found out, junior high was what it was: Junior High. He would just have to wait…

Thomas was a straight-A student, didn’t have behavior issues - he just wanted more from his educational experience. Socially he had lost interest in his peers. He became increasingly bored and isolated.

And then came that little voice from the past – North Star.

What did we have to lose?

After our first interview with Ken I was a little less sure. The idea that Thomas’s education could take whatever form he wanted it to? What kind of radical thinking was that?!! What were we getting ourselves into?

As a parent I’d never felt like this before. It was like working without a net, or swimming in the deep end. The possibilities were exhilarating yet, at the same time, terrifying. We kept pressing Ken to give us a curriculum, a plan, a structure - something we could identify as conventional. Paradoxically, while we struggled to make sense of North Star, Thomas thrived.

Margaret Mead famously pointed out that while most of us fall somewhere in the middle, the human experience stretches over a wide range. But society, and the education system in particular, doesn’t always provide for the outliers. Without realizing it, I had been conditioned to believe that those who didn’t conform to the conventions of our education system were somehow aberrant.

Slowly, I began to identify some of my preconceived notions, myths I had bought into: -Students who don’t fit in are doomed to fail, both academically and socially.

-Segregating students by age is normal.

-Students must go to four years of high school before proceeding to college.

-All colleges require SATs, GEDs, etc.

North Star taught me that teenagers are people, not just members of some artificial subclass, an invention of postwar society. And school really is optional, while learning is natural.

When other parents ask me what Thomas will end up doing with the rest of his life, I just say, “I don’t know, but I know it won’t be conventional!”

LIBERATEDLEARNERS FALL 2009

slowly realizing that the school was not what it was cracked up to be, at least in my eyes, and feeling like I was taking a step backward, I signed up for the liberated lifestyle again in the beginning of 2009. I had been unsure during this period of time about where I wanted to go, what I wanted to do, and how I wanted to go about it, and it helped to be back in the environment that had opened my eyes and given me so much inspiration previously. By February, North Star was again a regular part of my schedule.

After experimenting with different ideas, I organized my thoughts and made big plans for the future. I realized my musical passions lay in experimental electronic music (using a laptop and keyboard) and I am now currently realizing that dream of building a discography and finding an audience. I also wanted to start building skills that would have a value in the workplace (essentially as a back-up if music ceases to be my main interest), and settled on becoming fluent in Japanese. I eventually intend to combine that with a skill in business. Above all else, I wanted adventure and travel.

In June, my friend and North Star alumnus Ben Rosser and I went to Iceland for a month. Through couchsurfing, camping, and being frugal whenever else it was possible, we paid for the entire trip ourselves. It ended up being a very enriching, liberating, and fun experience. I plan to see a lot more of the world in the summers to come.

This coming September, which would be my sophomore year in high school, my schedule is going to be its busiest yet: Auditing a Japanese language course at Amherst College and a computer music class at Hampshire College, working on three different music projects (a live trio, soundscape recordings with Matt Merkel, and solo work), earning money from my family and perhaps additionally working at a local business, biking, climbing, friends, etc. If I have the time, I will continue to participate at North Star into 2010. I am very excited for the future, and definitely feel like I'm getting the most out of life. All of this was possible due to Ken, Catherine, and the rest of the staff working to keep something like this going. I hope people will continue to get as much out of it as I did.

LIBERATEDLEARNERS FALL 2009

News & Notes from around North Star • We have a fancy new website that we are very excited about. You can check it out at www.northstarteens.org.

While there, you can read our weekly blog which chronicles events past, present, and future.

• We just completed an alumni survey and found that 95.2% of respondents said that their experience at North Star was overwhelmingly positive or good and that over 55% have volunteered or worked at a nonprofit.

OPEN HOUSE & TOUR SCHEDULE 12-1pm

• Our survey also found that our alumni have travelled to over 50 countries on 6 continents collectively. Antarctica, here we come!

Sept 4, 11, 18, 25

• We are beginning to plan a big reunion for our 15th anniversary. Be on the lookout for a date soon!

Dec 4

• It’s safe to say that this fall has brought us one of the most diverse and incredible calendar of classes we’ve ever had; everything from the History of American Stand up Comedy to Relativity to Documentary Theory. If you are interested in adding to this list, please contact Catherine at catherine@northstarteens.org.

Liberated Learners is produced by Ken Danford, edited by Susannah Sheffer, and made pretty by Sarah Reid

Oct 2 Nov 6

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