by Ken Danford | Nov 1, 2020 | self-directed learning
Featured photo: North Star Alum Jonah Ferdman-Hayden (on right) installing solar panels on the North Star building. Two of my current projects, alumni research and North Star building improvements, collided this week in the form of Jonah Ferdman-Hayden. When the...
by Ken Danford | Oct 15, 2020 | Uncategorized
Somewhere on Long Island, a 14-year-old boy named Eli is concluding his last day of 9th grade online-school-at-home. He has been successfully resisting doing the assignments he considers meaningless, and the hours in front of the screen have felt like a waste of his...
by Ken Danford | Oct 1, 2020 | self-directed learning
The Glass Is Half-Full When I’m asked how North Star is coming along this fall, I struggle with starting with whether “the glass is half-full” or the “the glass is half-empty.” We have a lot of redeeming and inspiring moments each week, and I think we are making the...
by Ken Danford | Sep 16, 2020 | self-directed learning
(Here’s a “Happy Alumni Story.” I will have an update on North Star’s first month of the new academic year in the next installment, but it’s a bit too soon to summarize right now.) What happens to a boy who skips school and goes fishing all day? Not just one time as a...
by Ken Danford | Sep 1, 2020 | Uncategorized
I was just minding my own business doing some summer reading when the following passage jumped off the page at me, leaving me stunned contemplating the way history repeats itself with twists and complications. Guess what historical moment of potential long-term school...
by Ken Danford | Aug 1, 2020 | self-directed learning
At the end of my book Learning is Natural, School is Optional: the North Star approach to offering teens a head start on life, I shared my dream that current schools transform into the equivalent of community centers or community colleges, based on voluntary...
by Ken Danford | Jul 17, 2020 | self-directed learning
“Ken Danford left being a public school teacher decades ago because he realized that the model does not work for everyone. He never went back. But he’s never stopped teaching. Now, with public schools being pressured to reopen during a global pandemic, parents...
by Ken Danford | Jul 1, 2020 | Uncategorized
The rise of Black Lives Matter and the protests against police brutality this spring have led me to reconnect with a high school program I helped to start back in 1983, The Shaker Heights High School Student Group on Race Relations (SGORR.) This reconnection was also...
by Ken Danford | Jun 8, 2020 | self-directed learning
A few months ago, I took up my friend Blake Boles’ recommendation to read the 2019 book, Homeschooling: The History and Philosophy of a Controversial Practice, in which Shawn Peters and James Dwyer offer a detailed history of the modern homeschooling movement and then...
