When I arrived at the preprimary campus of Clear Spring School, I was escaping the expectations of the world and seeking to find meaning in what I was doing. Way back in the distant past of 1999, I was a recent college graduate living in Eureka Springs. I found a few odd jobs in town: the New Orleans Hotel front desk, occasional Chelsea’s pub bouncer, and hostess at Sparky’s, to name but a few.
For me, school was an irrelevant and loathsome obstacle that had interfered with my life. I had attended four years of college in Houston and earned a BS in Environmental Studies. Being young and naive, I wanted to save the world, which meant to me protecting the natural environment and saving the animals. But out of college, I did not find that dream job in the “world-saving” Department of Global Advancement or Peace Studies. It seemed that I could either stay in school and study about how things could or should be, or join the rat race and get “a real job,” abandoning any hope that I could change things.
Out of frustration and a desire to use my brain, I signed up to be a substitute teacher. I thought my call was to the local public school, but it turned out I had reached Charla Destry at the preprimary of Clear Spring. She hired me to assist her with the afterschool program.
My time with Charla taught me about the joy of learning and revealed that school could actually be fun. I watched her listen to her students and use real language to decode their thoughts and feelings, help them solve their own problems, and take ownership of their behavior. It didn’t feel like school at all.
Noting that I had a degree in science, Jerry RunnerSmith asked me if I could tutor two students in pre-algebra. Why not? I could give that a try; I mean, I had passed college calculus, barely.
My two students blossomed into five, and we met at a picnic table in Harmon Park. I told them to grab a math book from their classroom, and we could figure out something. Two years later I was the math and science teacher for grades five through eight at CSS. This was my backward and reluctant entry into the world of teaching and learning. Fortunately, Clear Spring School was small and founded around the concepts of experiential learning and educating the whole child.
It was through teaching in this creative and supportive environment that I learned through some amazing mentors how alternative theories of education and whole child development could be made to work. We spent time getting to know our students and designing curricula that emerged from their own interests and developmental needs. This place felt right. I felt that I was able to revert to my own schooling and discover experiences that I had missed.
After five years of working at CSS, I had come to realize that although I felt what we were doing worked, I did not know why. I lacked the academic background in progressive education, and I needed theoretical knowledge with which to confront distressed parents and conflicted teachers. Distressed parents wanted reassurance that this warm and fuzzy education that their child received would still prepare them to compete with children from more traditional educational backgrounds when it came to entering college programs. Conflicted teachers wanted the programs to be stated and the school philosophy to match the expectations laid out in the scope and sequence of the curriculum. As a teacher, I know the struggle of facing a parent in a conference who wants to know why we are not teaching their child the basic facts needed to succeed in life, yet that is exactly what we do! Apart from the evidence of generations of high-achieving past students, Clear Spring has always struggled to articulate why what we do works so well. This also means there have been times when the staff has questioned the methods, especially when it came to secondary education.
For me and the students I worked with, I wanted to know what it is about progressive education that makes it a better way to learn. So, I pursued my MA in Education through Goddard College in Vermont—progressive education for creative minds—which allowed me to conduct action research while teaching in the classroom. In this way I was also living the mission of CSS. It had become part of me. I wanted to learn more, do more, and be more. My main research at this time related to student engagement and creating environments that stimulated curiosity, grit, and perseverance.
This was a magical time for me and my students. We traveled together, questioned together, and grew together. My class motivated me to be the best version of myself, and when I asked them, “What would you do if you knew you wouldn’t fail?” I asked myself that question too. It brought me back to my original naiveté and world-saving aspirations. I realized that education was the way in which I could “save the world,” but I wanted to understand the state of education across the world. So off I went.
It was Phyllis Poe who pushed me out that door. She did not hold me back or urge me to stay, but she challenged me to take what I had learned from Clear Spring and continue on my educational journey. I went to South Korea first, where I taught English to Korean elementary and middle school students, and then to Korean college students. This gave me access to my first teacher training programs, EPIK (English Program in Korea), who hired me to help train foreign teachers who were entering Korea. I taught skills in classroom management and intercultural communication.
From there I gained entry to the ELF (English Language Fellowship) program that is run jointly by the US Department of State and Georgetown University. This placed me in Uganda, where I stayed for two years. Here I was teaching mostly at the university level and helping the US Embassy and the Uganda National English Language Teachers’ Association to plan and run workshops across the country. After this I was ready to pull all my experiences together and make a plan to improve the quality of education across the globe.
Off to New Zealand I trotted, because they were reported to have the most progressive stance of education. I enrolled at the University of Canterbury to pursue my PhD in Education. My research “learning about 21st-century skills and progressive education through practitioner research” brought me right back to Clear Spring School. It turns out we have been practicing cutting-edge educational theory for almost fifty years. We have been quietly doing what the world is looking for throughout our whole existence. It turns out that connecting students to their learning is the most important step in motivating the learning process.
So now I’m back. I returned as head of school in July 2019 and it has been an adventurous few years since then. I feel I am in the right place at the right time. Clear Spring School is poised to lead schools into a new era, helping to answer the questions of what schools should look like and how to best prepare students to engage in the world around them. These years have challenged us to our core. Brought to the forefront are those large questions about the purpose of education and the design of schools. Educators and parents are impatient to see schools do a better job preparing and supporting students.
At Clear Spring School, we have not always done it perfectly but we have done it consistently, meeting students where they are, responding to their needs and the needs of our community. We have pushed students to take risks, travel outside their perceived limitations and explore the possibilities of the world around them. We daily embrace our mission statement: Together, all at Clear Spring School promote a lifelong love of learning through a hands-on and hearts-engaged educational environment. It has certainly become central to my life, and I pledge to continue to live the mission and to inspire others so that they too believe that they can save the world. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have an army of naive world-saving envoys charging boldly into the future to make it a better place for all of us?