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This fall North Star began the year with sixty-five members, our largest opening-day membership ever.   The current teens are fully involved in our program: every activity and class on our calendar has plenty of participation, the weekly schedule contains over 70 one-on-one meetings between teens and adults, and our members are busy in the community with college classes, internships, and work.  The parents of these teens are present and helpful as well.  Our community is thriving.

Our success has generated some attention from others interested in our model.  This summer North Star hosted a replication workshop for educators called Start Right Now!  We described our approach to seven groups from Princeton, Miami, Foxboro, Montreal, Otttawa, the Bronx, and Westchester.  In the past few months, we’ve received inquiries about our program from educators in Portland,

Las Vegas, Denver, and Sydney, Australia!  We may have an opportunity to travel to Los Angeles in the coming year, as well.

The first project up and running this fall modeled after North Star is the Princeton Learning Cooperative, in Princeton, NJ.  Founded by disillusioned public school teacher Joel Hammon, the program is utilizing much of North Star’s rhetoric and systems.  Joel and his teens will be visiting North Star on November 21-22, and we encourage those of you interested in the replication process to make a point of stopping by to meet them.

Our efforts to share our model provide a serious opportunity for reflection and self-evaluation.  We know that North Star changes lives by providing an important option to teens and families who need something different from traditional schooling.  

However, which aspects of our structure are essential, and which may be tweaked by others?  What key skills must a core staff possess?  What content must a program provide to make this approach appealing to those who need it the most?  Is there a number of participants necessary for a critical mass?  And finally, looming over all of these questions is the concern of finances and salaries.  Can a founder establish a program and earn a living while doing so?

North Star has some wisdom to share on these topics.  I have begun spending some of my time every week discussing our model with those interested in replication. These conversations frequently involve other staff, members, and board members. We are energized by the possibilities, and we are all curious to see how we can contribute to spreading our approach to other communities.

Replicating North StarBy Ken Danford, Executive Director

Ken and teen members at the Parents Decide Conference in Marlborough, MA

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NORTH STAR SPONSORSWe are kicking off a new sponsorship campaign! When your policy is to work with every family regardless of their ability to pay you, you have to get creative about fundraising. We’re offering four levels of sponsorship to local businesses, all incredibly affordable, that offer a high visibility within our broad and mindful community. You’ll see their names in this newsletter from now on, and we hope that you’ll give them your business as they support our work. To become a sponsor email sarah@northstarteens.org.

NEW STAFF MEMBER JOINS NORTH STARJosh Wachtel is joining us on November 1st to start a part-time music program. Josh volunteered at North Star last year, teaching music and an interesting course called “Rebellions, Heresies, and Dreams.” Josh has a long history of working in alternative schools and educational programs.  He currently lives in Cummington and is a member of the band Radio Free Earth.

With his program he plans on focusing on two areas: organizing students who already play an instrument into a variety of small performing groups (to perform twice a year), and helping to coordinate students who want to learn and develop their playing.

NORTH STAR ALUMNI ON ALL SEVEN CONTINENTSIt’s official: North Star alumni have been to every one of the seven continents on planet Earth. Pretty awesome. Thanks go to Tim Dolan, featured in the spring 2011 issue of this newsletter, who is working in “the kitchen at the end of the world” at McMurdo Station, Antarctica.

You can follow his adventures at frozenukulele.wordpress.com and you should. They are kind of amazing.

NEWS & NOTES

ALUMNI CHECK IN

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?Where are you now? E-mail Sarah at sarah@northstarteens.org - like, seriously.

Kiva Singhmember from 1997 - 2001

Los Angeles, CA

Nathanael Miksismember from 1996 - 1999

San Francisco, CAAfter North Star, I went to Greenfield Community College for a year and then transferred to UMass Amherst, where I received my B.A. in economics and an M.S. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. In 2007 I started my career at ISO New England in Holyoke, MA. In 2010, I took a job in San Francisco, CA with Pacific Gas & Electric (a 106-year-old utility and the largest in CA), in their Energy Procurement group, where I now lead their Market Analysis team on an acting basis. I spend my time studying up on CA’s new greenhouse gas emissions cap-and-trade regulations, watching electricity and gas markets, hydrological conditions, and developing trends in renewables integration and regulatory and market rule changes.

Tim Dolan is working in that building right there in Antarctica

I'm living in a somewhat gentrified - yet hip - area of Los Angeles with an in-home studio primed for working in pajamas. I do freelance illustration, fine art and costuming. While most of my art is two-dimensional or wearable, I've recently been getting commissions for sculptural light installations, which I find an exciting change of pace.

You can check out my work at: www.kivasingh.com.

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This is my second year teaching at North Star; this year I have been tutoring in math and science, giving a couple of fiddle lessons, and leading the choir. I like to work within a variety of settings and subjects, but what I enjoy most about North Star is having the opportunity to work with students one on one.

I am currently a senior studying cognitive science at Hampshire College. My own education has taken a few non-traditional turns (for the better!), and so I feel committed to North Star's charge of supporting those who go out on their own unconventional limb.

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Dear Ken,I'm not sure if you remember me -- we met for a consultation in December of 2007 at North Star. I was 16 at the time, a junior in public high school in Eastern Massachusetts. Meeting with you played a major role in giving me the courage to leave school. Sometimes I close my eyes and think back to what might have happened had I never become an unschooler, and I get dizzy with deep gratitude for having landed on this path.

In the years since quitting school, life has presented so many abundant opportunities, challenges, connections, and downright beauty. I went to community college for a year before realizing that I didn't need any sort of institution to direct my education at all. After about a year of deschooling and finding my footing as a liberated learner, I took off traveling and have barely paused from it yet. I've crisscrossed the States multiple times, work-traded on organic farms all over, volunteered at a children's yoga center in Cusco, Peru, biked on ancient elephant tracks in southern Africa, interned at a birthing center on the Texas/Mexico border, crashed philosophy classes in France, skied the Alps, traced some family roots back to Ireland, and most recently, assisted at a high-volume maternity clinic in Kafountine, Senegal.

I cannot thank you enough for meeting with me, inspiring me, and empowering me to embark on this journey. Unschooling allowed me to clearly see who I am and how I desire to contribute to this fractured yet magnificent world of ours. Simply put, unschooling allowed me to be a human being again.

I remember walking out of North Star into the brisk December late-afternoon, with a copy of the Teenage Liberation Handbook in my hands and your inspiring words ringing in my ears. I hope that life is treating you well, and that the immeasurable gifts that you have given to young people are coming back to you in new and exciting ways!

Love and much gratitude,

FANMAIL

Sam Nordli (with colleague Ellen Morbyrne’s son Finn)

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A lifelong homeschooler finds North StarBy Liam Saito, current member

This isAdriana!

A visitor to North Star could easily overlook Liam Saito at first. Now age 14, he is quiet, unassuming, polite, and serious. He is usually busy attending classes. When he is in the common room, he calmly sits amid the swirling energy of other teens. He is often smiling. It is North Star’s good luck to be the place Liam has chosen to widen his already lovely and successful homeschooling world. His example of homeschooling is one that inspires my work and makes me want to shout about the glories and opportunities available through homeschooling.

My relationship with Liam is a genuine delight, and the extended relationship between the Saito family and North Star is one that I deeply value. I am glad to be a participant in and a witness to Liam’s growth. - Ken Danford

I was five when I officially started homeschooling. I never really knew why my parents chose homeschooling, so while writing this I asked them. They said that when I reached kindergarten age, they visited several schools and they didn't think that there was anything really wrong with them, but they didn't want me to be just another kid in a classroom of twenty-five.

The first year I homeschooled, I studied airplanes. I learned about how they worked and their history. I also learned how to read that year. At first my mom tried to teach me out of a book but eventually I ended up just teaching myself. In fourth grade I tried the Oak Meadow curriculum but hated it because of the amount of time it required and because it forced me to study things that I wasn't interested in. My homeschooling has always involved a lot of reading on my own, and it helps a lot that we live across the street from a library.

In addition to the things I did at home, because my father is Japanese, I have been going to Japanese school on Saturdays since pre-school. Amherst Japanese Language School is a weekly program mainly for kids who have at least one Japanese parent, or who are in the United States temporarily and want to keep up with kids their age in Japan. It’s three hours a week of Japanese reading, writing, and math, conducted completely in Japanese. It goes from pre-school through high school, September through June, and I am now studying at the seventh grade level.

In the first few years after I started homeschooling, I took

a number of classes through Pioneer Valley Homeshoolers Group. My education has been rounded out by choir, private violin lessons, and dance classes.

I started taking ballet when I was six years old. At first, my mom took me to a little kids' eurhythmics class at Pioneer Valley Ballet, and I loved it. I wanted to sign up again, but the class was cancelled because of low enrollment. There were openings in a pre-ballet class and my mom asked if I wanted to try that. I said, “Sure, why not?” and it turned out I really loved ballet too. I liked my teacher, so when he set up his own studio in Hadley, I followed him there. After a few years, he moved away and I changed schools to the Massachusetts Academy of Ballet in Holyoke. I've been there ever since. I now dance six days a week and next March I am participating in an international ballet competition called Youth America Grand Prix, which is a great opportunity to be seen by people in the industry and to dance with other dancers my own age from all over the world.

I turned twelve years old in 2009 and around that time I started to feel restless. I wanted to spend more time with kids my age, and more time away from my parents and three younger siblings. I applied to the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter School (PVPA) for seventh grade, but my number wasn't drawn in the admissions lottery.

I started going to North Star on a per-class basis. When I started, in my mind it was something to do until I got accepted into PVPA. The classes I took were Writing Workshop and Math Crew. Part way through the year, Math Crew changed days, so I decided to try Constitutional Law, which I ended up being really excited about. I thought the classes I was taking were really interesting, but since I was only there a few hours a week, I didn’t really get to know anybody. This felt all right to me, since I was still only twelve years old and just adjusting to belonging to a program like North Star.

In the fall of 2010, I was still on the waiting list at PVPA. My parents suggested that I go to North Star full-time. This I did, but I was still thinking of it as just a time-filler until my acceptance to PVPA. I thought I wanted a lot more structure in my life than I’d had up to that point. That year at North Star (which would have been 8th grade for me), I took Ancient Living Skills, Writing Workshop, Math Tutorial, a Goal-Setting Tutorial, Psychology, Social Issues, Meditation, Theater, Rebellions Heresies & Dreams, and Utopias (a lot of classes—I may be forgetting one or two!) I really enjoyed my classes and through them, especially through Theater, I started to feel more connected to North Star people. I acted in the North Star Festival of Short Theater, and that was a really great experience.

Partway through the year last year, I was feeling a lot more comfortable at North Star. I went and shadowed one of my friends at PVPA for a day. I came home that day exhausted and in a bad mood. I couldn’t imagine dealing with the stress of school every day. I started feeling worried

Photo: Ben Rosser

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As lifelong homeschoolers with a family of four very diverse learners, we have tried a lot of different approaches, and are, for the most part, pretty self-sufficient. Even though North Star is not primarily aimed at

families like ours that are already homeschooling, for our two older children, engagement with caring and interesting adults and teens at North Star adds an exciting and motivating dimension to their learning lives. One of the questions we are asked most is, “How long do you think you will homeschool them?” I always vaguely answered, “Maybe until junior high. Or high school. We’ll see.” Junior high was my own least favorite school experience, so I felt a little queasy as our son Liam approached 7th grade and started asking if we were really going to follow through and send him to school. I didn’t want his first experience with school to be as bad as mine in junior high, but I could sense the onset of a restlessness with our home routine, and an eagerness to have his own adventures. My experience with Liam as a learner was that he had no patience with following a plan that someone else thought was right for him. We’d had a rough time with purchased curricula—he was (and is) curious about many things, but he was most excited about learning when he picked out the books at the library himself. We had heard good things about Pioneer Valley

Performance Arts (PVPA), a charter school in the area. Because of Liam’s interest in music and dance, we thought it could be a good place for him, and were all impressed when we went to the open house. So we got him on the waiting list and started waiting, and in the meantime enrolled him at North Star, first for a few classes, then full-time. Although I was excited about all PVPA had to offer, it was a stretch to imagine that Liam would suddenly shift from rejecting all academic structure to happily embracing six years inside a school building. After a few months full-time at North Star during his 8th grade year, it was obvious from his excited reports at the end of the day that things were going well—but Liam maintained that he still wanted to go to PVPA when his lottery number was called. Yet during that waiting time, something changed in his perception of what he wanted. When the time came for him to make a decision about 9th grade and we told him it was fine with us for him to give up PVPA and stay at North Star, he jumped up and down and yelled. Riding bikes home from North Star one day last spring, Liam told me, “I have a great life.” We are so thankful that Liam has North Star, a place where he can learn in ways that excite him, have stimulating conversations with adults and teens he admires, and live his great life right now.P.S. I should also add that our second child, Evan, also was PVPA-bound and also got a low lottery number, and as of this fall is also, very happily, enrolled at North Star.

(Liam cont.) about my decision to pursue PVPA. Even though I had enjoyed parts of the day, I realized after seeing it up close that school wasn’t what I really wanted. I felt bad about disappointing people who had been excited about me going to PVPA, but my parents told me that they supported my decision and said that North Star was obviously the right place for me.

Now I am fourteen and in my second year full-time at North Star. A typical Monday schedule for me is something like this: I get up at 6:15 and start practicing the violin at 6:30 with my siblings and my uncle. At 7:30 I eat breakfast, do the laundry, and pack a lunch. At 8:15, my brother Evan (who also goes to North Star) and I leave the house, usually on bikes. We get to North Star and spend the day there. At 3:00 I clean North Star. At 4:00 I ride my bike to Northampton and get picked up by my carpool and driven to the ballet studio in Holyoke. There I have a 2-hour ballet class, followed by 30 minutes to an hour of private coaching for the competition. I get home at 8:45, eat supper, do some Japanese school homework, and try to

get to bed by 10:00. Other days are a variation of the same schedule, sometimes a little earlier or a little later. It sounds really full (and it is) but it is all things that I have chosen and enjoy.

This year so far, my classes at North Star have been Crew, Movement, Math Tutorial, Yoga, Herbalism, Theater,

Spanish Tutorial, Ancient Living Skills, and Concepts.

North Star has provided me with a routine and a schedule packed with lots of interesting classes and has exposed me to a lot of things that my parents would not have been able to teach me.

For the next two to three years, I will probably go year-by-year and wait and see what I want and need for

each year. At this point, I would like to pursue dance as a career and I’m going to try my best to achieve that goal. Often dance is a fairly short career, so after that I may want to try something more intellectual, but I still don’t really know for sure what I want to do yet. I love being at North Star because of the flexibility it gives my schedule and all the support I get to try new things.

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North Star has provided me with a routine and a schedule packed with lots of interesting classes and has exposed me to a lot of things that my parents would not have been able to teach me.

Finding the right fitBy Loran Deihl Saito, Liam’s mother, board member

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Each month, BORDC recognizes an individual who has done outstanding work in support of civil liberties and the rule of law by honoring that person with our Patriot Award. This month, we recognize Emily Odgers, a high school student and member of the Human Rights Commission of Northampton, MA, for her work protecting constitutional rights in her community.

The panel reviewing applications for membership on Northampton’s Human Rights Commission last year may at first have taken 15-year-old Emily Odgers’ application as a prank or an attempt to pad her college applications, but after meeting Emily, they knew she was serious.

Emily found middle school classes boring because they didn’t challenge her. So after her freshman year of high school, she sought a way to “do something to help people, instead of sitting around in a classroom all day.” Emily began unschooling, which is a homeschooling philosophy without grades, curriculum, or traditional

classroom instruction. Her exploration led Emily to become a member of North Star: Self-Directed Learning for Teens, which encourages young leaders “to leave school and get a real life.” According to Emily, “The people I met at North Star inspired me to dream big and fight for the things I believed in. Without them, I wouldn’t have become half the person I am today.”

This year, in her capacity as a member of the city Human Rights Commission, community activist, self-directed student, and BORDC volunteer, Emily championed a recently passed civil rights resolution rejecting local participation in the Secure Communities program. In addition to canvassing alongside other local campaign volunteers to promote civil rights and civil liberties, Emily has also begun writing for BORDC’s blog, and played a key role this summer in disseminating BORDC’s coalition letter opposing the extension of the FBI Director Mueller’s term to members of Congress.

North Star Alum Wins Patriot AwardNorth Star’s very own Emily Odgers recently won the Patriot Award from the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) in Northampton, MA and we couldn’t be more proud.

Measuring North Star’s impact on the broader world is hard; how do you quantify and account for the ripples that inevitably come from our program? Emily’s involvement with the BORDC is an accomplishment to cherish for us, as her involvement with the group is directly linked to her involvement with us. Her ability to manage her time and schedule, her interests and passions, and bring her talents to an organization like theirs is made possible by being a member here.

Excerpt from the BORDC newsletter announcing the award:

North Star Players Do It Again This past June the North Star Players, our resident theatre troupe, produced a highly successful run of their original play Persephone, inspired by the Greek myth and written by long-time NS Theatre director Ellen Morbyrne (and co-directed by Ellen and her co-teacher Nia Steiner).

The 19 actors took over the entire first floor of our building, transforming each space into a unique performance environment through which audiences journeyed over the course of the play. Over 250 audience members came to the nine performances, laughing and crying and thunderously applauding. Hurray for our very own excellent performing arts program!

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Every morning, Ken Danford heads out for another day of helping kids to leave school in order to build a better life. He is not alone. Fellow North Star staff and members help him every day by advising teens and sharing their stories about their lives without school. Members and staff provide a welcoming atmosphere that allows people from all different walks of life to join in this process of leaving school to create a better life.

North Star now has another partner in helping kids to direct their own learning. The Princeton Learning Cooperative (PLC) is the first running replica of the North Star model so far. Based in Princeton, New Jersey, PLC is following North Star’s mission to provide kids a way to opt out of school and become self-directed learners.

Joel Hammon, the co-founder, established a consulting relationship with Ken a few years ago to aid him in creating a not-school.

“It was like a revelation,” said Joel of his discovery of North Star. “I really jumped right up and down.”

Joel taught in both public and private school settings for over ten years. In 2000, he read The Teenage Liberation Handbook; however, he was not disillusioned enough to quit teaching in school just then. That came a few years later, when Joel began to truly hate his job as a teacher.

“I found that being a teacher was like being a prison guard,” he said, “always making kids do what they didn’t want to do.”

Joel reread the Handbook and discovered the small passage on North Star (then called Pathfinder). He realized: “That’s how I want to work with kids.”

Joel did some research online and found North Star in 2007. He contacted Ken and shared his admiration of the North Star model and his desire to create his own center. The two started exchanging numerous

emails and phone calls, Ken acting as a guide who laid out all the issues of starting a business and their possible solutions.

Joel was sold on the North Star model. He had no desire to start an alternative, private, or free school. “The same issues will be there,” he said. He would still be acting like the prison guard, forcing kids to do things they didn’t want to do. He wanted both himself and kids to be there on a “mutually volunteer basis.”

Joel found a partner in Paul Scutt, a retired school teacher and beekeeper. The two opened

PLC in 2010, with Joel balancing running the organization with continuing to teach in his public school position.

This year, Joel is finally free of school teaching. PLC has close to ten students and is aiming to have 15 by the end of the year. As at North Star, every day is filled

with interesting classes and tutorials such as Arabic, Human Rights, and Chemistry.

Joel’s long-term goal for PLC echoes Ken’s for North Star: to have this type of model available countrywide. Joel admits that home/unschooling is not for everyone, but “it should at least be an option,” he said.

Other promising replicas of the North Star model are in the works in Florida and Quebec, but PLC is the furthest along in its development and will provide other interested groups with inspiration and trailblazing.

To learn more about the Princeton Learning Cooperative visit: PrincetonLearningCooperative.org

The Princeton Learning Cooperative gets up and runningBy Emily Odgers, alum

Joel Hammon

“I found that being a teacher was like being a prison guard, always making kids do what they didn’t want to do.”

“ -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path...and leave a trail.”

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HELP SUPPORT NORTH STARWe’ve been changing lives for 16 years! We are committed to our policy of making membership available to any family, regardless of their ability to pay our full fee.  North Star receives NO state or institutional funding.  Individual donations help keep our doors open to any interested family.

North Star is a project of Learning Alternatives, Inc., a non-profit corporation under Massachusetts Law and Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

Contributions to North Star are tax-deductible.

Thank you for your generosity!

Please mail your donation to:North Star 135 Russell St.Hadley, MA 01035

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"I'm the happiest I've been around other people.  I wake up in the morning and I can't wait to come here."

- current member