Where: Prescott College
I was so lucky Prescott College happened to be in the same town as I was in. In 1979 I moved to Prescott as a junior in high school. I was pretty unhappy with school. I needed to get out and breathe. Prescott College offered me a different look of, “how to go to school.” It not only pushed me mentally and physically, but the whole of the experience was about community and deeply focused on “experience.” I needed serious experience.
When I started there were just under 100 students at PC and they had just regained their accreditation. I was one of the very few who lived in Prescott and then ended up going to school there. I loved the classes, the small groups with lots of conversation and, of course, no PowerPoints. They didn’t exist then… I needed to be a vital part of the event, of the experience, and as a member of a small group I was. I am lucky to have had that experience in my life.
Who: Jim Stuckey & Annabelle Nelson
I took a lot of courses about learning and teaching and most of them were taught by Jim Stuckey & Annabel Nelson. To this day they are people who I admire and love.
They are practitioners and dreamers. They were advocates for my desire to learn and grow and they stood by me through tough times and good times. They are roles models and I am still so inspired by the vision they have long shared around schooling, and commitment they have to the students for so many years.
The image below was taken 30 years after I was lucky enough to be in their classes as a twenty-something. 30 years. Wow.
How: That is a longer story. Through my two years at Yavapai College, I had wanted to be a psychologist like my mom. It did not take long at Prescott College to realize that there was a lot of psychology in being a teacher. And thinking back to my own experiences in school, I realized I might be able to change how some people experienced schooling if I became a teacher. So, I looked to be that.
I took all the usual “How to be a teacher” classes and got my teaching certificate. I also took a lot of classes on the edges of schooling. Courses like, Utopian Philosophies of Education, Alternative Methods in Higher Education, I even got to co-teach that class at a university in Kansas, and a class called Imagery in Learning. I got to work in local schools and I attended a number of national education conferences that placed me right next to some of the most creative and inspired educators I could imagine.
Later, I was able to create some pretty amazing opportunities for people.
