Starwalkers

It wasn’t always that way. When I was young, I loved school. It felt like home to me. I was a good student, and so in school I got a lot of praise and attention, and I would get more praise at home for doing well in school. Of course, I went to college and became a teacher.

I liked teaching at first, liked it a lot. I continued to get attention. I was the center of attention. I was in control.

And then two things happened, almost simultaneously. My young husband died in a car accident. And I read a little book about teaching by Sylvia Ashton Warner called Teacher. What I learned from my husband’s death was that being good and behaving did not guarantee that everything would go well in my life. I then decided that I would just be who I was, be more honest, be more authentic. Stop trying to please everyone. I noticed that people liked me or not, and I could not control this. I could only be who I was. But first I had to figure out who that was. I am still working on this.

Ashton Warner’s book changed my teaching, and my learning, forever. Changed my notions of what learning is, what teaching is, what are important for us to teach and to learn, what should be the role of the teacher, what should be the relationship between the teacher and learner. I have been in trouble as a teacher ever since I read that book and started applying, and living, the principles that she captures there. I have been fired from positions, and, as Rose Ann talks about in her bio, the school that she and I founded closed—our charter contract was not renewed by the local district– because I have continued to live and teach according to these principles.

What is this powerful principle? It is very simple, and yet profound. Children, all learners, are human, and the process by which we learn is human—a deeply complex, mysterious, neurologically entwined, biologically rich, long, in fact, never-ending process. Schools have tried to simplify, codify, mechanize, formulize, encapsulate, commodify, standardize something that is wonderfully human, resulting in great harm.

As I have gotten older, I have felt liberated. I’m more likely to say what I think. I also have felt the freedom to create something new, in this case, Starwalkers. I no longer feel obligated to work within a conventional system, although it may mean times of uncertainty or even isolation.

As we ask participants of Starwalkers to set out with deep intention on your spiritual paths, I too am on a spiritual journey. For me it has been like shedding skin, the many layers of convention and safety that have prevented deep feelings and presence in the world. I would not ask anyone to face anything that I have not asked myself to face. We face these challenges together in Starwalkers.

I have led a blessed life. My first husband died when our son was six months old. In two years I married again, a man who shares my values and supports my endeavors. He himself is an activist and has worked all his life to bring more justice into the world by developing housing for low income and homeless people. I now have three grown children who I cherish and who have enriched my life.