I think of Meghan asso direct, so talented,so purposeful, that Iwas a bit surprised toread her essay and bereminded of herhesitant beginning tohomeschooling.Meghan’s brother

Grant thrived at North Star, and at first I knewMeghan as Grant’s younger sister who was muchtoo focused and satisfied with school to ever wantto join North Star. As Grant moved on, andMeghan did join, Meghan clearly establishedherself as her own thoughtful and active person atNorth Star, and I have many fond memories of heryears with us. I appreciate the detail she hasoffered in this essay as she shares her experiencewith our current members. Meghan makes theprocess sound easy. Readers will appreciate thatwhen a teen is focused and talented and serious,the process works, even when it is not easy.—K.D.

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Meghan

In the previous issue ofLiberated Learners, tworecent alumni describedhow they have made thetransition from NorthStar to college. Now,two members furtheralong that path sharewhat they have encoun-tered. Meghan Wicks,19, has moved on fromour local communitycolleges to MaineCollege of Art. MatthewWeigang, 20, is now atWorcester PolytechnicInstitute. Both Meghanand Matthew providedetails about how theyhave made thesetransitions as home-schoolers withouttraditional diplomas,and they each add toour understanding ofhow smoothly thisprocess occurs. Thecontrasts in theirpersonal reflectionsabout homeschoolingare what interest me themost.

Meghan left a privateschool with sometrepidation, knowingthat she could havestayed and graduated,while Matthew leftpublic school feelingthat there was no wayhe could succeed insuch a traditionalsystem. Meghandescribes using home-schooling as a time forself-discovery, during

My path from North Star to present day has beenexciting, sometimes frustrating, but mostlyrewarding. I went to North Star starting in Fall2004 when I was fifteen, but I did so tentatively. Ikept myself enrolled under special circumstancesat Hartsbrook High School, although my vestedinterest in their particular model of learning wasminimal. They were very accommodating, if not alittle confused, about my arrangement but theyallowed me to take classes there on a part-timebasis. In retrospect, I think I was afraid of givingup the structure that high school offers, while at thesame time knowing that it was the completelywrong environment for me. My older brother,Grant, had gone to North Star before me, so I wentin with a basic knowledge of the philosophy, but Istill harbored this fear that if I committed myself tounschooling, I could permanently derail myself.

All apprehensions aside, I delved into mystudies at both Hartsbrook and at North Star. Iutilized North Star as best as I could and tookclasses like Literature, Creative Writing, Design, agreat class based around Naomi Klein’s book NoLogo, Social Issues, Digital Photography, and U.S.History. I dabbled in many other courses andexplored all kinds of outlets outside of the center,such as a library science internship at SpringfieldCollege, boxing classes at the YMCA, and evenjust sitting outside reading. During my first year atNorth Star, I read over 120 books! I also tookclasses at the Guild Art Centre, some of whichwere taught by North Star instructor Lea Donnan,who inspires me greatly. Gradually, I discoveredthat I was happiest creating, which evolved into therealization that I wanted to make art.

I went to classes at North Star for about ayear and a half, from September 2004 - December2005, still a little apprehensive about thepracticality of not attending high school. Icontinued to have dialogues with Ken and myparents about the future, fully aware of the need topursue higher education, eventually. I spent Fall2005 studying for my GED, getting tutored byKen, a pillar of patience, and studyingindependently out of a GED workbook from theNorth Star resource library. I took and passed thetest, and armed with my GED, symbolicallyproving that I was Done With High School (some-thing I had known for a while), I began taking

classes at Greenfield Community College inJanuary 2006.

Going back to school in this way was alittle intimidating at first. The transition from thecasual “easy-come-easy-go” atmosphere of NorthStar to the structure of college took a few deepbreaths and more than one pep talk. But once I gotover that initial anxiety, I entered into one of themost positive environments I have everexperienced. It was all the best things about NorthStar (the freedoms, the responsibility, the support)and all the things I liked about high school (thereliability of routine, the structure of expectationsand accountability). The fact that I was onlysixteen didn’t matter because I was used to takingon greater responsibility and have always had ahuge sense of independence and self-motivation,something going to North Star really elicited in me.

I went to GCC for Fine Arts, part-time atfirst, and their program was a great resource forme. I learned about technique and craft, my ownartistic process, and how to talk about art. I alsotook classes in all kinds of other areas, like socialsciences, English, and surprisingly, business. Artand business are two things that one wouldn’tsuspect to go hand-in-hand, but I found a greatsynergy in the two. Through a professor at GCC Istarted a web marketing internship with thecollege, meaning I interviewed various professors,researched various programs and clubs within theschool, and wrote articles highlighting the school’s

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which she realized herpassion for art anddesire to pursue her tal-ents in school. Matthewdescribes being bornwith a love of planes,and using homeschool-ing as a time to pursueseriously this long-anticipated goal offlying. Meghan’s use oftime since leavingschool has beenindustrious, to put itmildly, while Matthewhas had to confront andovercome hischallenges to complet-ing the projects hebegins. Meghan is anartist; Matthew is asoldier.

But these contrastsrecede in my mind as Iconsider their stories.Meghan and Matthewrepresent two teens whofelt stalled in school.With support andpatience and love fromtheir parents, they pro-ceeded through lateadolescence with NorthStar. Both Megan andMatthew used NorthStar as a learning andsocial opportunity, andboth maintain friend-ships today from theirNorth Star experience.Both express a sense ofconnection to ourprogram and a sense ofbeing alumni thatmatters to them. Bothused our area’s local

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strengths. It’s something that I would never havepredicted I'd do, but enjoyed greatly.

The amount of time I was spending inclasses was hardly enough to contain myenthusiasm for having my own life. I got mydriver’s license, secured a great job at anindependent bookstore in Southampton, and ran inseveral 5-kilometer races over the course of 2007.I also applied for a grant being offered out of GCCand used the money I was awarded to go toMontserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA for amonth-long summer intensive art program. Iwanted to test the waters to see if art wassomething I could see myself transferring intoschool for, away from my family. It turned out itwas. I discovered I wanted to do printmaking,something they didn’t offer at GCC, but I did alittle research and found that the neighboringHolyoke Community College did, so I took theplunge and took a semester of classes on the otherside of the “tofu curtain.” Their art department isfull of wonderful, invested people and talentedpassionate students, and opened me up to a reallydiverse group of people and some of my closestfriends. It also affirmed for me, once again, that Iwanted to be an artist and to go to art school.

The next few months were all aboutapplications and portfolio building. Applying tocollege was painless, and the admissionscounselors were more interested and open aboutmy educational journey than I could have hoped. Ididn’t take my SATs and I didn’t need to because Ihad a respectable collection of college creditsunder my belt. In this way, I think I had an easiertime transferring into schools than any of my highschool counterparts did, and by taking courses atcommunity college I saved a lot of money. Iapplied to three colleges and was accepted to allthree, and eventually decided on Maine College ofArt in Portland, Maine. I was awarded a $12,000Presidential Scholarship and couldn’t be morepleased with my choice of school. At 19, I wasgoing to be a second-semester sophomore with twoand a half years of college experience under mybelt and a concrete idea of what makes me happy.

My plans for the future include taking asemester of “domestic mobility” to travel toBrooklyn, NY to attend Pratt Institute to use theirprintmaking facilities mercilessly and get a slice ofthe Big Apple, as well as working on a collection

of altered books and creating a website thatcan market my work and eventually take ona life of its own. Art and creative problemsolving are definitely where I see myselfheading as far as a career is concerned. It’shard the conceptualize life after college, butPortland is a great city for the arts, and I have ahuge spot in my heart for the Pioneer Valley, sowho knows where I’ll end up next.

Looking back on my experiences withschool, homeschooling, and college, I couldn’thave done it better if I had planned it day by day. Idon’t know that there is one sure-fire formula forlearning, but I know that North Star offers optionsnowhere else can. I know that I was drawn to NorthStar because I knew I was not enjoying learninglike I should have been. I knew that I had aninternal freedom to break off from the standardassembly-line education. Giving teenagers thischoice is revolutionary to some, and I was veryfortunate to have such brave parents and such abold older brother, who were open to such anunorthodox approach to education. My time atNorth Star turned my life in a completely differentdirection and gave me space for self-discovery, andI am utterly thankful that such a place exists. t

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community colleges toexperiment with return-ing to a traditionalclassroom and foundthe experiment success-ful. Finally , both feel athome in their currentfour-year college situa-tions. (And, for those ofyou concerned with theprocess, note that eachis on grade level orahead of their agepeers, and that eachmentions receivingmajor scholarshipsrecognizing theirachievements.)

Ultimately, what movesme the most is the senseof self-awareness andmaturity that Meghanand Matthew eachpossess. They steppedout of the system, facedthat moment of infinitepossibility, and foundtheir way. For our newmembers who wonderhow this choice is goingto turn out, and for yousupporters and donorswho still wonder some-times how it can all betrue, I can say that it isMeghan, Matthew, andthe rest of our alumniwho serve as the sourceof our confidence andinspiration.

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News and Notes

As of February 1, 2009,North Star welcomes itsfirst Outreach Director,Sarah Reid. Our statedgoal is to double themembership of NorthStar over the next twoyears. Over the pasttwelve years, because oflimitations on our time,we have implementedonly a tiny fraction ofour ideas on how toconnect with the widercommunity and spreadawareness of NorthStar’s approach. Sarahwill work full-time onthese projects.

For the fourth year,Catherine Gobron isorganizing a community service tripduring our Marchvacation. This year tenNorth Star travelers willhead to Honduras tohelp save the secondlargest coral reefsystem in the world.The group is currentlydoing SCUBAtrainingtogether, and duringthe week in Hondurasthey will dive andcollect data for a parkdoing importantresearch.

North Star’s fifthannual Celebration ofSelf-Directed Learningwill be held on Sunday,March 29th at

Matthew may be atcollege in Worcester,but he is still involvedat North Star. Duringhis college breaks, hereturns to teachworkshops on mathematics, physics,

and aerospace topics. He is currently organizing aNorth Star visit to and tour of WorcesterPolytechnic Institute. Matthew’s perseverance overthe past five years makes his current status incollege and in ROTC especially satisfying for me. Iappreciate the opportunity to be involved in bothhis earlier struggles and his current stable andhappy life. He is emerging as a leader on hiscollege campus, and when he returns to North Star,he is strong role model for our current members.While I generally do not urge teens to join themilitary, I honestly couldn’t be happier forMatthew. His desire to explain his history anddetail the process that brought him where he istoday shows through in his thoughtful essay.

—K.D.

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Avast and give me yer ears! In 2006 I wrote forLiberated Learners as a then-current North Starmember and part-time student at HolyokeCommunity College. Since then I've certainly hadno lack of unusual experiences but I have not failedto realize key steps in achieving my own long-standing aspirations post North Star. Today I'm asophomore at Worcester Polytechnic Institutestudying Aerospace Engineering and a Cadet ThirdClass in the U.S. Air Force Reserve Officer

Training Corps. A radical secondary education inno way hindered my entry into higher educationand a military career, and, for me, North Star wasinstrumental in helping me keep my sanity andbuild a respectable academic portfolio during atime I resisted a system I could not operate in.

What has college been like for anunschooler? As a homeschooling student, I readilytook advantage of the absence of a drowningtorrent homework by becoming very involved withcommunity organizations: I studied martial arts atSpirit of the Heart in Northampton, trained in theCivil Air Patrol with the Franklin County CadetSquadron, hung out at North Star, and ran aninternet forum. With community involvementtaking such a prominent role in my social diet I wasquick to replicate this environment for myself incollege. The result has, I feel, come to define myexperience as an undergraduate student andparticularly what kind of experience I'm havingspecifically because of my unschoolingbackground.

My biggest extra-curricular commitmentnow is my training in Air Force ROTC. Aircraft,military combat aircraft in particular, have been anintense and passionate interest of mine ever since Ifirst saw one as a kid. I was born to fly in andinfluence the Air Force and this mission has beenwith me throughout my life regardless of any of mytroubles with conventional education. Myparticipation in ROTC is now the final step inachieving that felt mission; following mygraduation from WPI I will receive a commissionto 2nd Lieutenant in the United States Air Forceand enter active duty service. The training I gothrough in preparation for my commission is cool

Matthew

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and exciting: I study aerospace history, practiceleadership hands-on in a cadet run wing, and pushmyself in physical training. With the Air Force'snew emphasis on expeditionary skills, I am beingfamiliarized with common weapons systems,learning how to operate on and commandfireteams, how to execute convoy operations, andmore.

My own entry into a military career hasbeen largely uninhibited by, what was for me, achaotic secondary education. Grades, transcripts,and curricula are only used when evaluating anofficer candidate for a scholarship award prior toparticipation in the program and do not have abearing on general acceptance into ROTC, forwhich only a GED and enrollment in an undergrad-uate program is required. Further, after you beginto participating in ROTC only your performance incollege academics and the ROTC program is usedused to evaluate you. I received a 3-year $9,000/yrscholarship based solely on my academicperformance during my WPI freshman year. Myuncompetitiveness for a 4-year scholarship hasbeen the only closed door I have ever facedbecause of my unschooling background and eventhis could have been remedied by careful recordsand transcripts of my independent studies.

Another very large part of my life rightnow is my work as a martial arts instructor. Whileliving in the Northampton area I spent five yearstraining at Spirit of the Heart in Pukulan CimindieTulen, an exotic and compassionate Indonesianmartial arts style. When I came to WPI I startedteaching my own lessons on the campus throughWPI's Society of Martial Artists. This was the firsttime Spirit of the Heart's style and culture has everbeen taught outside of the Pioneer Valley. A yearlater and I now have a small community of regularstudents, I teach seven hours of classes a week, andI remain the sole instructor at WPI. Much to mysurprise I even found myself serving as thepresident of WPI's Society of Martial Artists beforethe end of my freshman year!

Of course, this degree of communityinvolvement acts as a double-edged sword. As anunschooler, an intimate association withcommunity organizations and military trainingprograms, combined with the training andexpertise gained from them, naturally set me up tobe a student leader on my campus. But assumingthis much responsibility while simultaneously

losing control over the scope of my educationalcommitment put me in a position where academicsuccess was challenging. I feel that unschoolerscontain a surprising capacity for competitiveperformance in higher education and, although myoverall academic performance has been aboveaverage, my marks have been a very strange mix ofsuccesses in challenging situations and failure withcourses known for being easy. When I have troublewith academics it's a different kind of trouble thanwhat my peers will have, and I suspect mydifficulty's origins stem largely from what movedme to leave public education and join North Star.

But where would I be if I had stayed inpublic education? Probably not at an engineeringschool. A key advantage of unschooling is that itlets college admissions staff give you the benefit ofthe doubt. I don't mean to suggest students shoulduse this to take advantage of admissions staff, but Ido feel that a lot of very bad grades and wastedtime from four years of disillusioned high schooldrudgery can do real damage. While I brieflyattended high school I quite seriously regardedgrades as a "function of obedience," and althoughthis may have even been true for somebody whodidn't need all of that homework to learn, it wouldn't have impressed any universities. Learningand acting on my own crafted me into more thanwhat public education is capable of producing andthe excellent marks from study at HCC gave me allof the proof of competence I needed to enter WPI.North Star helped give my self-directed educationlegitimacy in the eyes of reviewing admissionsstaff and, in linking me with HCC, put me in aposition to realize higher education. t

the Log Cabin inHolyoke. This year’srecipient of our Self-Directed LearningAward is RogetLockard, a family andaddictions therapist.Please note that thisevent is moving fromJune to March thisyear. Please contactKen in the comingweeks if you would liketo attend thisspectacular event.

Meanwhile, the dailylife at North Star iswonderful. We havewelcomed a number ofnew members duringJanuary; our extendedstaff is inspiring; thecalendar is full offascinating andunusual activities; ourindividual work withmembers is detailed andproductive; the generalatmosphere is friendlyand welcoming. Onerecent highlight: wehosted an InaugurationCelebration on January20th, and our event wasincluded in the DailyHampshire Gazette’scoverage of that day!

As always we aregrateful for yourongoing financialsupport. Even in thesedifficult times, theresponse to oursolicitations has beengenerous andconsistent. Thank you.

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⊳ North Star teens learnSCUBA in preparation for

their trip to Honduras.

135 Russell Street (Route 9)Hadley MA 01035

413. 582.0193 or 582.0262www.northstarteens.org

Help support

North Star

Contributions like yourshelp fund our operatingcosts. We rely on dona-tions to generate memberscholarships, staffsalaries, and improve-ments to our space andresources. Please help uscontinue to grow.

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Contribution:

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North Star is a project ofLearning Alternatives, Inc, anon-profit corporation underMassachusetts Law andSection 501(c)(3) of theInternal Revenue Code.

Contributions to North Star aretax-deductible.

Thanks for yourgenerosity.

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