SPRING 2011
LIBERATEDLEARNERS
The North Star board and staff celebrated our founders, Josh Hornick and Ken Danford, at our 7th annual Celebration of Self-Directed Learning Brunch, and thanked them for 15 years of faithful, diligent, and exciting work!
15 years and it never gets old By Ken Danford, Executive Director
On the very last day of regular classes this year, I had the experience of seeing North Star through the eyes of a visiting 13-year-old girl. To me, the visit became a microcosm of the great year we have had. Before their visit, the girl’s father had told me over the phone that she had stopped going to seventh grade this year due to bullying. At 2:00 pm on our last Friday of the year, she walked in the front door and was warmly acknowledged by a group of maybe six girls happily on their way outside. We looked in the common room and saw another dozen teens and staff involved in a mixture of conversation, play, reading, and working. We wandered into the piano room and smelled the evidence of the cooking class that had just made lunch there. A few people still had music going and hula hoops circling. We headed upstairs and saw a tutorial on the landing, another tutorial in the library, and a teen quietly reading. The
classroom was empty, but the circle of chairs hinted that something interesting might have happened recently. (I think our visitor was confused by the absence of desks!) In our art room, eight teens were discussing something with Josh Wachtel, who has been running a yearlong class called Rebellions, Heresies, and Dreams. In the small conference room, another half-dozen teens were actively engaged in a Spoken Word workshop led by a new volunteer, Jeff. By the time we sat in my office, the girl’s eyes were saucers. She listened attentively for perhaps half an hour as I did my best to explain our program to her and her father. As we finished, I learned that a teen-organized Photography Show was about to begin in our basement, complete with mounted photos, lights, and snacks. The visitors and I clambered down the steps and found at least thirty people, including some parents, gathered to admire the selected photos. Some were
blowing bubbles and dancing. Indeed it was a genuine show, thanks to organizers Eli, Abbey, Jesse, and Mau. Our young visitor must have thought she was either in Candyland or the Twilight Zone. So many happy, busy, interesting people! She was ready to tell her father to leave her right then for the remainder of the afternoon. As I write, she’s planning to visit next week for our end-of-the-year teen presentations. I told our staff, “It was one of those ‘you can see her life changing by the second’ sort of visits.” For me, this story epitomizes how much North Star has grown. Our larger size, our range of teens and staff, our overall energy mean that even on a sunny afternoon, on our final regular day, there was so much going on inside our building. I know we’ve never had such a final day before. Many, many people contributed to that setting, and I certainly enjoyed leading the tour and seeing its impact on one visiting family.
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