Starting a School

I have been pretty quiet on this blog for a while, ever since I wrote one post about the conference I attended at the end of April. Well, here's what's going on. I'm starting a school! I can hardly believe it, and I wanted to make sure it wasn't just a pie in the sky thing, but it does seem to be real and not just a happy dream I've stumbled into.

At the conference I met and had lunch with several other youngish people, all interested in transforming education. One of them, a woman named Brooke, is in the early stages of starting a democratic school for self-directed learning. And she needs help. Since I've been fretting about, raging against, and generally questioning public education since I was 15, working on this project really is my dream job. In my life before I had a daughter, I was never satisfied with my career. I knew I wanted to be doing something related to education and that I had some pretty radical ideas about what was wrong with the system. My day jobs were always unrelated to my passion for education, and I ultimately decided to have children earlier in my timeline, and return to the education career later. I think I'm returning. As startling as it is, later seems to have arrived.

The school we're starting is very liberal. It will be a place where students don't have to do anything they don't want to do, which looks to many adults like a lot of wasted time. There's a method to the madness, however. When people are actually free to confront their own boredom, they have the space to learn who they are. When you are fully responsible for your own choices, you are able to learn from your mistakes without blaming another person for them.

If you're reading this and you're interested in helping with the school, please let me know. We're in the very early stages and actively looking for people who are interested in joining the team.