The Power of Anywhere Learning

When I worked in public education, I witnessed a lot of stress between young learners, basically because all those kids had to report to one place – a place called school. You had football jocks, science nerds, gay and straight kids, and a host of different racial and ethnic groups, all under one roof. We probably could have helped all these young learners see pathways toward understanding each other better, but time was dictated by the state and the district to work on reading and math abilities. Character development and building peer relationships were secondary.

But now it doesn’t have to be this way. Kids who want to learn together can – anywhere they choose.

This week The 74 reported on a learning organization that is thriving by offering space to kids who want to become smarter and stronger, but not necessarily in a large school environment:

“In the fall of 2016, as her daughter struggled through a disastrous first two weeks in middle school, Emily Harding-Morick searched for a way out.”

“In class, students sat in desks far apart from one another, with barely a moment to chat between periods. During breaks, monitors herded them through the halls with no time to find a bathroom.”

“’She was just so unhappy,’ the mother recalled.”

“That’s when Harding-Morick called Kenneth Danford.”

“The veteran educator wasted no time, telling her 13-year-old, ‘You know, yesterday could be your last day of school.’”

“They were stunned, but Danford persisted: ‘You don’t have to go back.’”

“That began a journey that has become increasingly routine in this region: Harding-Morick disenrolled her daughter from middle school and she joined North Star Teens. Guided by Danford, North Star’s co-founder, she spent a year there studying, relaxing and socializing with a small group of like-minded teenagers. Her mother joined its board, eventually becoming its chair.”

“At its most basic, North Star is a small, private homeschooling collective for middle- and high-schoolers who know they don’t want to go to school anymore, but aren’t sure what comes next.”

“As more families question the value of school – and as states and the federal government increasingly offer taxpayer dollars for other options – models like North Star’s could take root beyond western Massachusetts’ Pioneer Valley. As it nears three decades in operation, Danford is moving to replicate it.”

“For 29 years, the private, non-profit center – don’t call it a school – has been a refuge for kids who chafe at the stress, loneliness or bullying of school. They spend a few months or a few years here, catching their breath as they prepare for life after graduation.”

“With an enrollment of 65, it offers rigorous, one-on-one tutoring; small, personalized classes in history, math, writing and the arts, and extracurriculars like weekly hiking club excursions. This year, young people designed and taught three courses on Dungeons & Dragons.”

“Or ‘members,’ as they’re called, can simply show up and read a book, sit with friends, take the public bus into nearby Amherst or curl up on the couch with a bowl of ramen. All that’s required is a weekly check-in with an advisor and regular conferences with families.”

“But that freedom comes with a healthy dose of self-examination. Danford regularly reminds members, ‘You’re accountable to yourself. Is this the life you want?”

“With a tuition scale that slides from $10,000 annually down to whatever a family can afford, North Star has been a quiet presence in the region since its founding in 1996…”

“North Star functions like a gym, social club or even a religious institution: Attendance is encouraged but optional. Members can take classes or not. There are no grades, no transcripts or tests, no roll call and no diploma.”

“Most who seek refuge here have good reason: They’ve been bullied or they’re on the autism spectrum and seeking a smaller, calmer venue. Or they’re LGBTQ and simply don’t feel comfortable at school.”

“Some of them are just your non-conformist, skateboarder-poet-musician kids who think, ‘School?’ They roll their eyes,’ said Danford. ‘We tend not to get your football player, cheerleader, sports team kids who want to be popular in school. But we get all the kids they pick on.’”

…

“A powerfully built Gen Xer from Ohio, Danford got straight As in high school in Shaker Heights, a prosperous Cleveland suburb. He cut his teeth teaching social studies in public middle schools in the Washington, D.C. area and in Amherst, but soon grew weary of micromanagement from administrators.”

“He left to earn his master’s degree, and was considering leaving education altogether when he read Grace Llewelyn’s seminal 1991 guide The Teenage Liberation Handbook. Subtitled ‘How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education,’ it changed his thinking about student agency, offering a template for young people searching for a different kind of education outside of school, a strategy often called ‘unschooling.’”

“Most unschoolers were younger, returning to school by ninth grade. But to Danford, high school was where kids could benefit most from its freedom as they separate from parents and find themselves as individuals.”

“He essentially flipped the paradigm: ‘If you made it through elementary school, why don’t you quit while you’re ahead? Make it to sixth grade and then quit. Unschool the rest of the way.’”

“It helps that the state of Massachusetts takes a hands-off approach to homeschoolers and largely stops supervising them once they’re 16.”

“’You don’t like school?’ he tells prospective members, ‘Don’t go back. Don’t ever go back in the building. I help families write a homeschooling plan. Do it tonight, this week.’”

…

“A network of Liberated Learners centers, loosely affiliated with North Star, already boasts about a dozen locations worldwide. And Danford continues to offer the same message to weary young people who show up at his door.”

“’Just take the year, breathe, wonder what you should be doing,’ he said. ‘Meanwhile we’re gonna unlock the door and give you a couch – and we’ll be nice to you. Turns out that’s really healthy and responsible.’”

“While most mainstream educators would say letting young people ‘do nothing’ for a year is out of the question, he sees it differently: In the unschooling world, he said, ‘there’s no such thing as ‘doing nothing.’”

Dennis Littky, co-founder of The Met school in Providence, Rhode Island, once told me that they started that learning journey by asking a group of kids, mainly dropouts from the Providence public schools, what they wanted to learn. Some knew right away, but some took awhile to figure it out. But Dennis said by a week or two, all of those young learners were engaged in something they felt passionate about learning. To Littky, worries that young people will be disengaged because they don’t have a state-approved curriculum to work on was just nonsense. In fact, Littky witnessed the opposite – engagement came from personal passion, not state-endorsed curriculum.

Traditional schools are losing market share when it comes to student enrollment. Kids are going other places to learn. If the K-12 system wants to maintain their current market share, they would be smart to create the right structures for all kids to feel comfortable learning in. The days of expecting to jam a square peg into a round hole are probably over.

Til tomorrow. SVB