An article about Not Back To School Camp was published in The Oregonian on Sunday, the 22nd of Sept., 2002. For some (very cool) pictures that Sol, the photographer, took you can take a look at http://community.nbtsc.org/~erek/sol/ Reply
The story is now online at http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/news/103243660562252.xml They keep stories in the public archives for 30 days. Reply
So What did you all think of the article? I personally thought that they made all of us to be a really cool dedicated interesting group of people. I also think that they made unschooling sound a lot more difficult that it actually is. Any thoughts? —Dysk Reply
man im really glad they took a positive angle on us, that was a really AWESOME article, tears in my eyes —Ben Reply
Is there anyway to see what pictures they used??? —Ruth Reply
actually, there is. lucky man that I am, I was still in oregon when I was published, and have an actual copy of the article. my scanner isn't hooked up at the moment, but when it is, I can scan the photos, and put them up somewhere. -Dan D Reply
Here follows the article Reply
09/22/02 Reply
By Inara Verzemnieks Reply
Eleven years ago, a former English teacher named Grace Llewellyn penned a how-to book with a provocative name and launched a quiet revolution. Reply
She called it The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education.
Over the years, dozens of teen-agers have followed her advice. Reply
Some people might call them dropouts. They prefer the term autodidacts.
They have decided to take charge of their own educations. And each year, as summer turns to fall, they gather in the woods outside the tiny town of Bridge, about 50 miles west of Roseburg, for an event they call Not Back to School Camp. Reply
While others their age bend over algebra and physics books, Not Back to School campers sit in the sun and write poetry, tinker on a truck or recite lines from A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Some have just left school. Others have never been. Reply
For many, it's a chance to meet the woman who wrote the book that they say changed their lives. For Llewellyn, it's a chance to see her vision come alive. Reply
Did your guidance counselor ever tell you to consider quitting school? . . . That legally you can find a way out of school, that once you're out you'll learn and grow better, faster and more naturally than you ever did in school, that there are zillions of alternatives, that you can quit school and still go to A Good College and even have a Real Life in the Suburbs if you so desire? Just in case your counselor never told you those things, I'm going to." — The Teenage Liberation Handbook.
Learning more naturally
Morning. Teens emerge from sleeping bags like cocoons. They shuffle down dirt paths to the dining hall for the daily meeting. It's up to you to create this place,
Llewellyn tells the 80 teens sitting before her, who've come to Oregon from all corners of the country — New York, Florida, California, Washington — to participate in the two-week gathering. Reply
A white sheet of paper with the day's schedule hangs from the dining hall door, and Llewellyn, a slight woman with coils of brown hair, walks over and reads it out loud: An introduction to music theory. A writing workshop. An acoustic jam in the meadow. A volleyball game. A hike. Swing dancing. A CD appreciation session. And how to replace a muffler. Or, help me fix my truck,
chimes in 18-year-old Ruth Stewart, from Colorado. Everyone laughs. Reply
At Not Back to School Camp, in its seventh year, no one is a passive participant. All activities are conceived of and led by the campers. By the end of the day, the schedule on the door resembles a work of modern art, with entries scratched off and new ones written over the scars. Each day, visions are born: Boggle tournaments, the art of Dumpster-diving, group hair-dyeing. Reply
For a teacher, something clicks The fields and outbuildings of the camp — which runs from the end of August to mid-September — are petri dishes for the kind of free-rein creativity, exploration and responsibility that Llewellyn, 38, who runs the camp, began advocating more than a decade ago. Reply
As a child growing up in Boise, Llewellyn loved to read and write and was a good student, but she never really enjoyed school, she says. She decided to become a teacher in order to make school more engaging and started keeping a notebook of all the things she would do differently. Reply
After graduating from Carleton College in Minnesota, Llewellyn worked at public and private schools in California, Idaho and Colorado, but her experiences left her frustrated. She happened across the works of John Holt, an early advocate of home-schooling, who argued that schools stifle children's innate desire to learn, that what children need is the freedom and support to follow their natural curiosity — not rigid curriculums — and they'll make life a classroom instead. He called it unschooling.
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Something clicked for Llewellyn. Reply
She started to catalog her skills and expertise and realized she had acquired most of them through real-life experience. She thought of interests, such as ballet, that she had pushed aside because school took too much time. Reply
All that time I'd wasted sitting and staring out windows, when I could have been out traveling, learning, growing, living,
she wrote in the handbook. Reply
And that's when things got subversive. Reply
The teacher decided she was going to teach kids how to leave school. She quit her teaching job, moved to Eugene and wrote with a sort of reckless passion.
She was 26. Reply
Freedom and responsibility In the book, she offered tips on how teens could study math and science and art and English on their own; how they could go on to college without going to high school, if that's what they wanted; how they could find a meaningful job, internship or apprenticeship. Reply
It was never about telling kids to drop out and do nothing, she says. Instead, she wrote the book to tell them they had another option if they didn't feel like school worked for them. Reply
But it requires tremendous dedication and discipline to assume the responsibility that is normally entrusted to schools. If they decide to go this route, teens have to look for their own teachers and seek out classes if they can't learn something on their own. They have to think hard about what interests them and research the skills they need to accomplish it, so that they can make sure to take the necessary steps. Reply
The more responsibility we each take for own lives, the better,
says Llewellyn, who now lives in Oakland, Calif., in an apartment overflowing with books. She belly dances weekly at a Moroccan restaurant and continues to write — she recently co-authored a book aimed at parents with kids in school, about how they can help them get the best possible education within the system. Reply
I'm not as attached to the belief that your situation makes or breaks you as I was 10 years ago,
she says. I now feel whatever your situation is, you can make it work for you.
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Over the years, the self-published TLH, as it is known among its fans, has sold about 30,000 copies, an underground phenomenon that continues to spread by word of mouth, even as Llewellyn tries not to be permanently defined by it. I love that book and am happy that I had the opportunity to write it,
she says on her Web site. But I don't, anymore, even remember everything I said in it.
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Paths to the camp Tricina Elliker, who lives in Eugene, found Llewellyn's book in her school library, she says, sitting in the grass at camp. She was a freshman at the time, miserable and frustrated,
she says. She hid Jane Eyre
inside her textbooks and read during class. I hated the place.
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She devoured TLH in three days, then told her mom she wasn't going back to school. That was two years ago. Soon, Elliker, 17, will head to The Evergreen State College in Olympia. Reply
Not everyone is at camp because of Llewellyn's book. Some were raised by parents who discovered John Holt's writings, as Llewellyn did, and they've unschooled
from the start. Some were excellent students who felt school moved too slowly for them. Reply
Others, like Evan Wright, 22, from California, who attended the first Not Back to School Camp and has returned as a staffer, felt overwhelmed by people telling me, not in so many words but by implication, that I was stupid and wouldn't amount to anything,
he says. Reply
All have come for the opportunity to hang out with other young people who've decided that they don't have to follow a traditional educational path in order to have a fulfilling life. And for two weeks, they live in a world where that's the norm. Reply
Their world is populated with aspiring artists and musicians and writers and scientists and nurses. Fiona Robinson, 15, from Minnesota, volunteers weekly at a pediatric cancer unit. Victor Lane, a 17-year-old from Davis, Calif., teaches fencing at a local academy. Erek Dyskant, 16, an aspiring biologist from New York, hopped on a plane for San Francisco as soon as camp ended to begin a two-month internship at a wildlife museum. Dyskant, unschooled his whole life, has his eye on Brown University, has taken college classes and sought out mentors to help him master the necessary material. Reply
They meet teens who are going on to college without having finished high school and teens who have produced their own albums. One 17-year-old camper from New York has written a play that will be produced by a professional theater company and landed a job at a local improv group down the street from where she lives. Another volunteers for her local fire department. Reply
There are nightly talent shows, and, toward the end of camp, an unschool prom, where everyone dances. Reply
It's not about what grade you're in, or how old you are,
says Abbi Miller, 17, from Kansas City, Mo. Instead, the kids at camp say, they get to define themselves. Reply
Inara Verzemnieks: 503-221-8201; inarav at newsdotoregoniandotcom Reply
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