Out of the Muck with Consent-based Learning

SPEAKERS

Ken Danford, Terri Novacek

Terri Novacek  00:07

Imagine a learning environment which offers freedom of movement, where everyone, participants and providers alike are listened to and respected. Where access to areas of personal interest and value make up the core of the learning plan. And a wide range of spaces for everything from quiet independent work to messy group work, allow freedom for learners to meet their own needs, and reach out for support as needed. Hello, I'm Terry Novacek. And this is the element is everything podcast where we discuss topics associated with finding your element, that place where interests and talents collide, to bring good things to yourself and others. We are all familiar with the traditional model of schooling in which all students follow the same curriculum within the same timeframe, mostly determined by a teacher who tells us what, when and how to learn. Some people believe that learning and education require force, compulsion and coercion at Elements schools, we don't believe that to be true. Today, we meet with Ken Danford, who doesn't believe that either. The title of his book learning is natural school is optional, pretty much says it all. Ken is the co founder of Northstar, a self directed Community Center for teens located in Massachusetts, where he and his team take the idea of self directed learning to a whole new level. North Star is not a public school, nor a charter school, nor even a private school. While it is not free like a public school, it is less expensive than private school tuition. The center offers support to teens who want a place to socialize, to collaborate on projects, and to meet with teachers and mentors. Let's dive in and learn more. Good morning, and thank you for making some time to meet with me, I'm really excited to share your program with our listeners. I've really enjoyed your book, I've listened to your TED Talk. I've of course, and I met you on your recent webinar. And we're very blessed here in California with our charter school system and the freedom that we can have by setting up schools as independent study and allowing the flexibility, much like what you guys do it at Northstar, we're all about, you know, students, and the adults finding their element being able to develop it, which is what North Star does as well. So I'm excited to swap stories here. And I was wondering if you would be willing to start with your story, where all this started for you.

Ken Danford  03:01

Sure, it started from a pretty conventional place of becoming a teacher because I like school well enough. And I wanted to make schools better. And I was going to become a public school reform fellow taught six years of public eighth grade US history, public school, in Washington, DC, and then up in Amherst, Massachusetts. And then I was enrolled in a doctorate program at UMass so that I could become a principal or superintendent or Secretary of Education to be for their school reformer. And I kind of hit the wall of deciding that there's, this is just not the right model. And, you know, that's pretty far into things to discover that as a teacher, what was okay for me as a kid is really not okay for most people. And it's, it's kind of unjust. And I really felt that the problem was compelling kids to do things they didn't really want to do. For the sake of whatever grade they chose to get on it. And, and threatening them if they chose not to participate at all. And it just began to feel, you know, to way too oppressive. For me to work in the in the school, you know, assigning kids tardiness, you know, detentions and hats and bathroom passes. And just you know, you must do my eighth grade US history because I know what's good for you and the other teachers know what's good for you, too. And if you don't do it, you'll be bad, and we will tell the world that you're bad, and then you'll be doomed. And then that was preposterous. Anyway, you know, that people who don't do well in school turned out fine. And well, we all I know that and so I began to question you know, what's the, what are we doing here? And why are we doing it this way? And, and the fact that the kids who didn't want to be in school often had activities outside of school they really loved and they wouldn't be sad when there were over, you know, theater and sports and music and other kinds of things that were really important to them that they chose. They weren't rooting for snow days on the things they loved. They just wanted to snow days and summer vacation from school. And from me, well, I don't want to be in a job like that. And then I decided that I couldn't necessarily change schools to be different. How do you make school more like camp? You know, well get rid of grades. pelicans, they don't have to come in five days a week on they can do it or not, you know, a week here, whatever you don't, you can't make school optional and independent classes are optional at school. And there's no real pathway to doing that, that I could see back then. And so I kind of gave up my dream of trying to make schools, more of the kind of places that I wanted to be in order to allow me to be in relationship with kids. By asking them, would you like to do this activity and have them only do their elective kinds of things, and so I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them. This is 1995. And I, a friend gave me a copy of grace, the Whelan's teenage liberation handbook, I learned about homeschooling for the first time really learn there was an unschooling approach, these kids could just start with their interests, start with their strengths. And it turns out that that's a really healthy thing to do. And I was kind of flabbergasted. And then I decided with my friend who gave me the book, Joshua Hornick, that we should quit our jobs and help all the school kids that were tormenting, live this lifestyle. So that's what I've been doing for the last 28 years is coaching kids who are in school to understand they have an option to not go into school whatsoever. Don't find at least bad school, just don't find any school, just stop going. And the sooner you stop going, the healthier you'll be. But maybe you need a community center and a supportive team and community in place to go during the day to make that a realistic opportunity for you. Right.

Terri Novacek  06:18

So can you tell us how No, excuse me how North Star works? What is North Star?

Ken Danford  06:24

Sure it's a it's a building I'm sitting in right now. And outside of Amherst, Massachusetts, and Sunderland to be precise. On a bus line on a major road, we have a standalone building with a yard and getting gum inside and outside. It's a community center that's open during the day. So everything's optional. The kids can come whenever they want, literally at any moment, they can come and go as they please, they can go for a walk, they can arrive at any time of the morning that can leave at anytime in the afternoon. They can come some days or not other days, they can come as much as they wish, just like you and I would use an adult community center or senior center. And when you're here the whole calendar of classes that meet on a weekly basis, once a week that all kinds of book groups and science and math and art and hikes and cooking and current events, all kinds of thing games, all kinds of things are organized and available and being offered. Kids can do them or not. There's no credits, there's no grades, there's no diplomas. There's a lot of one on one tutorials happening here. Kids want math or they want a Spanish lesson or guitar lesson or something of that sort. So a lot of one on one tutorials and every teen year as an advisor, they meet with once a week to discuss how life is going for them both at North Star and outside of North Star. What are their projects? how's that coming along? What are you reading? Where else do you go? And then like kids can just be here and socialize and do nothing like the adults at a senior center I picture somehow, you know, sitting around to chat and and so the idea is by creating the infrastructure that I think most people need to consider the possibility of living life without any school, you can really have a vital role for teens who want that lifestyle to pursue it. And so it's it's glorious.

Terri Novacek  08:06

Do you have a typical student that you attract?

Ken Danford  08:09

No, most of the kids more than half the kids come here and they're going to school every day and just kind of annoyed and bored and kind of Nonconformist, and wandering to devastate your old age 18. And they're, you know, your poets and your musicians and their artists tend to give, they go to school every day. But he didn't. Finally they you know, things get bad enough, they push hard enough and complain hard enough that they do find that there is another way and they call it Northstar the parents do and and I tell them, I don't have to go to school, it's fine. And then they stop going and do this alternative thing. Even if their siblings are still going to school, we get it we get maybe a third of our kids are coming with some kind of mental health, stress, anxiety, depression, eating issue, self harming issue, and they're not going to school. And it's a total disaster. We get another group of kids who were refusing to go to school, I wouldn't say they have any of those other prior mental health woes. They just think school is stupid and aren't impressed by the threat of detentions. And you know, they figure out if you get suspended, you don't have to go to school. Isn't that clever? And so we have our school refusal kids and I say, well, good for you, you win, you've proven the point. And I agree and I can win. You never have to come here either. But let me help you do this. From a sense of optimism and strength rather than anger and resistance like you You're correct. Let's let's channel this differently. And then we get some kids here. Because none of those things really apply their they just have they want to do school but they can't they're on the autism spectrum. Maybe somehow. They may have physical disorders, health woes, that makes school really hard, or whatever reasons learning differences they may have that whatever they're trying. They wish school would work but it's not not that angry about it, but it's kind of a waste of time.

Terri Novacek  09:50

Do you have any favorite stories as far as discourage teens that have come to you and after the pressure was taken off? Uh, they were really able to thrive.

Ken Danford  10:02

That's, you know, the 100 stories I've taught, right. But just I think of two young 15 year old girls who were who I guess they came describing meltdowns over school stress in their bedrooms late at night, you know, just losing their minds with stress and not understanding the assignments and ripping their papers and coming to tears, just with the stress of trying and anxiety that they just don't know what to do when they can't do it. And this is terrible, and they're doing everything wrong, they're gonna have a terrible life because they're doomed. And, you know, they come out of school, and they come to a place where those expectations don't exist. And we say so. You know, you're interested in gardening and one went on to work for an organic food Association, and another one has gone into the field of social work. You know, that you they get out of school, they dabble at Northstar. They breathe. They they get engaged in some of our activities, they start doing community college at a certain age, they have jobs, one of these two was, was running a used clothing store and was like the main employee at 17, you know, opening and closing alone. You know, another one was working at Walmart and ended up becoming someone who was 1617 years old was closing and reconciling those seven cash registers every night at 10 o'clock at night. Like getting people out of the muck, and then saying, Alright, let's just dry off and rest and breathe for a minute. And then let's think about what you really might want to do is brilliant. One of our kids is now a fly fishing guide who charges for $250 a day to go to all the great local fishing spots. And you know, that's what he did when he was 14. You know, his mom was a nurse, she'd pack them with a sandwich, put them on a kayak off, he'd go out at some pond all day. The next day, he had a video camera on the back of his kayak and video all day, and the next day, he'd stay home and edit all the videos got a YouTube channel, got sponsors is the fishing guide. Now. We have kids who are college professors, we have people who are school superintendents, we have people who are city council members and get elected to these things. We have loads of librarians and we have loads of teachers bless the Northstar alums who go into schooling to become teachers. So they're everywhere, because at some point, what you do for high school just doesn't matter so much. And the sooner we can tell people, you know that when you're 23, what you did for high school, whether you went to a charter school, or regular public school, or private school or religious school, no homeschooled in some kind of familiar way or unfamiliar way. At some point, no one cares anymore. That was your adolescence. Did you like it? It wasn't good for you or not. And whatever worked or didn't work for you is fixable or not, you know, when you're 2120, or 30, or whatever, we're adults, we still have agency in our lives now to change what we don't like. And so the joy is just it's so immediate, I met a young woman yesterday morning for the first time, who was getting suspended from school because she figured out that was the best way to not go to school. And her mother wasn't really mad at her because to give us right to be angry about the things that were going on is, you know, 12 year old seventh grader who's just annoyed, it's that middle school, and he's getting suspended on purpose just not have to go. And, you know, today they're visiting here for the first day. And it's over. It's easy, right? It's like, you're right. That's a silly institution. It's too rigid. The people there behave badly. They're not nice to you, the other kids, I'm saying. And so you come here, and you pick and choose what room you want to be in with which kids, you go to the activities you want and suss out the adults here. And we're all gonna respect your choices. It's not that hard. And it turns out that she's having, you know, the best day of her life, right? I mean, I'm, I haven't heard that from her mouth. But I'm making that up right now. But she's having a grand time here. finding out who's who and what's what is this place real is like going to you know, Charlie, in the Chocolate Factory, except you're allowed to touch the chocolate. Right?

Terri Novacek  14:01

And so speaking of behavior, has behavior been a problem with the mix of teens coming in?

Ken Danford  14:09

No one. Yes. I mean, by and large, we're a volunteer organization, and people value what we're offering and they come up, they like us, and they're like this place. And you don't go to a place that you don't like, just to be annoying, like, adults don't really do that. For the most part. Free People don't really do that. Even annoying. Kids don't really do that. Now, there are some kids with social confusion or issues. And or sometimes they're immature, and they're there. They think everybody's not gonna like them. So they better behaved that way on purpose, to make sure everybody doesn't like them. We have kids who sit in our public room with friends and they want to talk about raunchy topics out loud and try to get the rest of us to listen to them be raunchy and we can tell them to stop it. On occasion, we have kids who can't manage a strong emotion and have outbursts and we have talked about. If someone's really annoying you there's some ways to handle it. And here's While we do it, and you can ask people to stop or whatnot, as long as people basically get the premise that in public spaces, there's a general, wide range of ways to respond when you're upset that are short of, you know, meanness and violence. Things are pretty good. I mean, 20 years have been two or three kids, we've had to ask not to come back, who wanted to come back. Usually, people who just don't want to be here will leave and not come back, because I think we're annoying and we do it all wrong, and they don't like a teen center. So that's fine and dandy. Everybody loves Northstar. But people don't come here to create trouble. And if they are, it's usually like 14 year old. Do they really mean it that I can do nothing there? I'm gonna do nothing. But I'm gonna do nothing in the most annoying way possible, and see what they say. And then we tell them, they can't do that. It's pretty trivial trouble.

Terri Novacek  15:49

Right? And so is it okay to come and do nothing.

Ken Danford  15:54

It's okay to come and do nothing. Because there's no such thing as doing nothing these kids are finding out, you know, they're trying to make friends. They're being out of their house, they're finding out what will happen if they just mind their own business, and what's the boundary of not bothering other people and being ignored and left alone. And, and I think that's really healthy. And then there's a space where if you do that in tandem with other people in a way that is like, being loud or leaving trash all over the place or insistent everybody else pay attention to you by doing attention seeking behaviors that we're gonna ask you to stop. And so it's not it's not very complicated. It's just, it takes attention. And so we do that. Yeah. You know, it's not it's not really not that complicated. It's at the beginning of the year. Right now, we've had, we've had a couple of issues. In fact, we have a couple of live issues at Northstar right now. So it's, it can be a challenge. But I mean, we have 60 kids, and I'm talking about four or five kids who just really want to find out, what's our boundary with them? And how are we going to kick them out? And how badly can they behave? Or what will be the trigger? When we finally tell them, they're gonna have to leave? And then they don't really want to leave? And then they cry, but then, you know, oh, I found out that's the boundary. Right? Some of them have to find that out. Yeah.

Terri Novacek  17:08

So you mentioned that you do workshops, classes, I know you have guest speakers how how do you determine your schedule?

Ken Danford  17:15

Mostly, there's, there's staff here, the core staff are all people who serve as advisors the mostly two or three days a week, someone was there four days a week, most stores closed on Wednesdays, by the way, we try to tell kids that as a alternative to school, they can't come here five days a week and be that passive, about just turning their lives over to another institution instead, so that kids can come here up to four days a week, and most staff work here two or three days a week, a couple or four days a week. But we're all advisors, in addition to meeting with kids privately, we're not you know about their lives. We each teach 234 classes a week. And usually it comes from our own core guide of what we feel like doing, whether that's a history class, or a book group, or a writing thing, or a science or a math thing, or theater or band or some kind of art. There's a class now called Smash art. There's a cooking lunch class, there's a desserts class, there's a bread, baking glass, you know, some of the a lot of music. But there's a decent amount of math, there's three or four math groups on our calendar, weekly calendar. There's quite a few science things. There's gardening, there's physical science, the it mostly coming from people, people's thoughts of what would I like to share? What was my favorite class ever? What I want to practice, and then sometimes kids put glasses on for each other, the kids create their own classes that they want to teach or run. Sometimes parents volunteers show up and say, you know, I have this financial literacy for youth project that I do. Professionally, can I come to a couple sessions at Northstar? So we get adult volunteers. But it usually comes from the from the people offering what they want to offer. Sometimes, you know, kids will request something and we try to make it happen that's largely happened recently, with something like American Sign Language we push to find someone or find creative class because there was some requests for it that wasn't being fulfilled. But generally, we don't sit around and ask kids, what do you think you want to learn? Because kids don't know how to ask for the weird stuff that adults want to share. You know, there's a fella here doing a meteorology class that kids wouldn't have thought to ask for meteorology. So it's just fine to have the adults come up with things they love that they want to share right now and see how it goes with kids.

Terri Novacek  19:23

What are your hours of operation? I know it's four days a week, but

Ken Danford  19:26

yeah, 830 to four, and then four to five. Everybody. We don't have a custodian is cleaning our from four to five and everybody's supposed to stay once a week and help clean. So from four o'clock is every leaving except the cleaning team. And you know, 830 is the earliest sometimes 815 Someone's here unlocking the door for early critters,

Terri Novacek  19:46

but if they're coming they don't have to be there at 830 Like

Ken Danford  19:50

usually from eight to nine. It's it's me as me and like one other kid who got dropped off by a working parent or had to take a bus in or whatever, you know. It's 915 to 10 o'clock before it gets kind of crowded. Okay. And by about 230 or three a lot of people have gone and you know, it's it varies on the day.

Terri Novacek  20:09

So how many years have you been in operation?

20:11

This is our year 28.

Terri Novacek  20:13

Wow, congratulations. Have you had any pushback from the public education or any education system or the community?

Ken Danford  20:23

No, just in my mind, you know, especially the first 10 years, I was waiting for the phone to ring. Um, no. In fact, people tend to respect us and refer kids to us, though, quietly. Lots of therapists refer people to us, a family, you know, they their school family, and they are applying for homeschooling for the first time and I'm coaching them through that process. It's a very perfunctory process. And I've never had any pushback from a school saying that we can't approve this family. What are you talking about? You're trying to get the wrong people. This is ridiculous, like never. And then the fact that we run as an open place where kids can hang out and come and go as they please and not doing the things are not a school. We get fear from parents, we get people who say that's not going to be for my kid and they hang up and they don't want to come here, but not a legal kind of you want to be shut down or or, you know, anti Norstar pushback. The fears have been all over the map are the misconceptions. Like you know, we're just for homeschoolers, or people are already homeschooling, which we're decidedly not we do have a lot of existing homeschoolers now, more even so after the pandemic, but mostly, we've always been trying to support families who couldn't or wouldn't homeschool, very long to choose that approach after a schooling approach, right? So we're not for existing homeschoolers in the way that people think we might be. We're also not just for gifted kids, or super self directed kids already. We're not for troubled kid. We're from pretty normal run of the mill kids who don't like school and don't want to put up with it anymore. You're nonconformist kids. So there's that misconception. It's, and frankly, every neighbor has all business owners always ended up becoming a donor to our various fundraisers because they're amused and they like us, our kids. Our kids have gone on to all five local colleges. Amherst, Amherst, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Hampshire, UMass, the guidance counselor's, like us people know, you know, what, basically what it might mean, loads of our kids go to the community colleges, they love us, the local businesses, you know, that get our kids walking into the corner stores, you know, they're happy to see our kids during the day because they're reasonably well behaved. People like us, we're doing something a little bit odd. They don't people don't necessarily understand it. But there's not. No, there's no pushback.

Terri Novacek  22:35

That's great. I mean, you're definitely doing something of value. Do you? Do you find kids that come do it for a while? And go back?

Ken Danford  22:46

Yes. So I would say out of 60 kids, you can expect we can expect every year five will reenroll in a public school next year, you know, mostly kids aged out, and they age out of here at the top end at different ages. And often that's to full time community college or a full time four year college, having dabbled at community college already, some of them aged out into full time work, or travel or other, you know, 1817 year old opportunities that are kind of full time beyond this, this age phase that they've been in. But younger ones, especially, you know, seventh, and eighth graders decided they want to go to the VOC tech, they want to see what high school is all about. They want to be where the 500 kids are not the 50 or 60 kids. And so there's kids who always want to try school, they get into the lottery for the charter school and get a slot. And so you know, this doesn't always Northstars approach doesn't always resonate for everybody, and they think maybe I'd be better off going to school for high school and getting a regular transcript because I can't motivate myself well enough. So you know,

Terri Novacek  23:48

that's and they and they stay in school. Yeah, that's what you're Yes. Yeah. Well,

Ken Danford  23:53

and well, and some of them attribute doing well in high school to having had a year or two out of school. And there's like thank you, Northstar, I needed that break, I needed that thing. And during the middle school years, I didn't really wanna do that for high school. But it was essential to me then. And I'm really grateful to you now. And I consider myself an alum of Northstar all even though I went to high school to say nice things about us, but it wasn't the thing they wanted to do. So yes, that happens. But I'm talking sometimes. And then also, there's people again, we have no admissions. We welcome everybody, we turn nobody away from money, we turn nobody away for being a hard case. And so I mean, if we were trying to, you know, get 100% long term retention, we'd do a different strategy by welcoming everybody. There's a certain number of kids who are here for three months and out, you know, these are kids with much larger woes than school versus homeschooling. And this is just one blip of a stop on their adolescent trail of 17 school programs or things right. And so I don't take that on the chin. I'm like, glad to know them. I'm glad to offer them this option. Sometimes we're a pleasant place for a few months to a year or two, but sometimes people just not able to sustain that kind of stability. And so they come in they go. But, you know, that's again, that's, that's not many. But that's some of our population. But my own kids chose to go to school, they didn't come to Northstar. And a lot of staff gets have kids who choose to go to school and a lot of the kids here have brothers and sisters who choose to go to school. So, you know, we're we're pro choosing school, we're just anti, you must go to school or die. Fury.

Terri Novacek  25:27

Right. Well, and I remember the term first time I'd heard it, but in your book, consent based writing,

Ken Danford  25:34

right? I love that. Yeah, that one of the people who uses that is Blake Bowles. Are you familiar with his books? And I'm not sure where we both picked it up from comes out of other kinds of you know, in the night in the in the modern era of, you know, sexual relations. And it seems like that should be appropriate for asking people would you like to take this class? Do you want to learn this from me or not? Do you want me to teach this thing to you is this a skill that you want to get, and if you don't want it, I'm not going to try to make you get it and then give you a bad grade for not doing it. Like that just seems hurtful. It's not the life interaction that I want with kids. And but that's what school is, we accept that as normal. And I'm not against by the way, I'm not against parents requiring activities for their kids. To some extent, sometimes parents do know better that their kids are avoiding all books all the time. And someone should take away their phone and have them read for half hour a night or something. Like I'm not I'm not against parenting decisions. But I Northstar is more like a YMCA or gym or the library and you don't have librarians telling you which books you must sign out. You can't take out any more Harry Potter books until you read some other literature first, that's enough for that genre for you. Right? Librarians would never do that, right? Or you've taken out too many videos, and not enough books, or audio books, but non reading books, what's wrong with you, right? And you wouldn't have your gym, desk, Id person checker yell at you for being late or not going not working out hard enough. Or they saw you with a Twinkie? You know, that's not what people do unless you hire them to be personal trainers. Right. And so that's what we're after that kind of relationship with kids, which has that kind of basic respect. And there's a different place with therapists, with doctors with parents, where, you know, kids can be told, you know, some of the things you're doing are really unhealthy and, and we're gonna make those observations and share our concerns with kids. We have these with the advisories and we can pipe up but just on a more minute to minute or class by class basis. We're not we don't require things because we think that consent is the appropriate relationship.

Terri Novacek  27:41

Do a lot of them have trouble with it when they first come? They're like this, this for real? What's the catch?

Ken Danford  27:48

Yes. I mean, it's not trouble. It was the first day they're like, I'm going to the bathroom. And I'm like, Do you need help? Like, why are you telling me that right? And so you know, I'm gonna sit outside, I was gonna go to the writing workshop, I told my mom, I was gonna go to the writing workshop. But now I'm with this friend, and we're gonna go, you know, talk some more, I'm not going to go to writing workshop today. I'm like, Okay, thank you for telling me. And, you know, you might tell the writing workshop instructor who's expecting you. But that's or, you know, appreciate if you'd be honest with your mother, when you go home today that she's not diluted, that you made some other choice. But we don't, they don't know that. It's just a we don't consider that our domain.

Terri Novacek  28:28

So along those lines, then, as a parent, if I'm allowing my child to spend their time there, and I do believe that they're going to this writing workshop, yeah. Do you do find parents that get upset feeling like you should be reporting that to them?

Ken Danford  28:44

We do, we have three times a year, what we call support reports, where we write down what we're doing with kids, what kids are doing, when they're here, we have beginning middle end of the year meetings with parents. So in October, we've been doing all these meetings, we're sending out a first round of reports to people, it becomes transparent pretty quickly. Also, parents can call up and ask us if they feel like they don't have a handle on things. They want to know more. Every team has its advisor, and they parents can call that person. So it's pretty transparent, pretty quickly, not in the moment, not in the day, like your kids couldn't, you know, skipping the class, the way a public school would do it, or private would do it. But you know, within a matter of two weeks, you know, like it's coming out like your kids actually, you know, eaten a lot of potato chips and going for a lot of walks and not going to many classes. And then parents can make what they wanted that right and sometimes, all right, well, that's the phase we're in, you know, and if you know you're an adult who had a really rotten lousy job for a number of years, and you need a break before you start your new one, you might have a month or two in between things, or if you're retired, and from a long, hard job after many years, the first month might not be your most active new activity month. And so you take a kid out of school you want we want kids to be honest, we don't just own their choices and They say, you know, I really had a good time meeting all these new people, I couldn't believe I could just do that. And, you know, frankly, I think that hanging out and meeting kids is more important to me right now than going to every last conversation about, you know, current events in Gaza. Okay, I'll skip it this week. I've talked about the House Speaker One more time, you know, the kids are gonna be like, we don't care, or I do care. But I can use that information elsewhere. So trusting kids to make a choice for themselves about is the class valuable, and do I want to be part of it. And it's not flippant, I mean, if you're part of an ongoing class that you need to be present for every time, we don't endorse, skipping, right, some classes can be dropping, but some classes really are building things. And you don't want to be in a book group with people who randomly come as an adult, that would stink. And it's true for kids too. And so, you know, we try to have kids use some thoughtfulness and caution and commitment about their choices, and drop in class, they can take or leave. But again, it's more about the honesty, and that what you're doing at 1415 years old, is really not going to revolutionize your life. For the most part, you might find a new interest, you might make a new friend, but let's stop acting like every last class is the be all end all or that it's even automatically better to go to classes than to not go to classes, and having the maturity. And in fact, one of the behaviors you were asking before is, when kids sit around in a group in our common room, they really need to learn how to manage socializing in a public space, and what kind of topics are okay and what where that boundary is, is probably a more valuable lesson for them to get when they're getting resistance from other kids and adults than going into one more book group that they don't really care about. Anyway,

Terri Novacek  31:41

real world experience,

Ken Danford  31:43

it's, you have to get over the hump. First of all, realizing everything we've built up schools for it's kind of, you know, a pop balloon over here. And so if kids read books on their own grade, they read books in a book group rate, if they're reading fewer books, and kids in school read is okay. And the same kid probably weren't very much in school either. And by empowering them and respecting them in trusting them, they're gonna have a better attitude about themselves and their relationship with adults and relationships with the institution. And we're after a longer arc of maturity and self awareness and honesty, and being 17. With their head on

Terri Novacek  32:19

straight. They're still learning something somewhere. Well, yeah,

Ken Danford  32:22

I mean, we think living is learning, right, that they'll keep going world. So the John Holt side of things. So you know, once you once you're both in that side of things, along with the reduced fear that somehow being productive academically 15 years old is going to kill you. Then you can relax into what's the most interesting, meaningful life that my child's limiting can be living? Are they doing it? And if they're not, those are concerns, right, if your child was not declaring interests and taking risks, and doing new things, and you know, worrisome worry about that, too. But our role at Northstar is one of investigation and comment not one of making sure or enforcing can't enforce that people feel mastery. You must be good at something. Yeah, that would be crazy. Right? So we noticed that you haven't found it really care about that much disease? How's that for you? Is a different approach than then trying to make sure everybody turns out a certain thing?

Terri Novacek  33:22

Yeah. Oh, well, thank you again for your time. And, and the work that you do your your book is phenomenal. And I'll make sure that I put all that in our show notes so people can learn more bacha? dabble, breathe, get out of the muck. Are these terms speaking to you? How much time do you spend each day in the muck, a compulsory activity where someone else is telling you how, when and what to do, maybe even aside from being told, because I say so. You don't even know why you're doing it. Identify those areas where you feel you're wasting your time and energy. What is it about the activity that makes you feel that way? Maybe you just need a better understanding of the purpose behind it. Or maybe you're right, it really is a waste of time and energy. We all appreciate a level of autonomy, some more than others. Take inventory of your schedule. Make sure you have a good balance of autonomy, time to guide your own work and learning. Because after all, autonomy is key to finding your element.