When Emily Harding-Morick’s daughter had a terrible first two weeks of middle school in the fall of 2016, she looked for a way out.
Students sat at seats apart from one other in class, and they seldom had time to talk in between sessions. They had no time to locate a restroom as monitors escorted them around the hallways during breaks.
The mother remembered how unhappy she was.
Harding-Morick then gave Kenneth Danford a call.
Without wasting any time, the seasoned teacher informed her 13-year-old that yesterday might be her last day of classes.
Despite their shock, Danford insisted, “You don’t have to go back.”
That started a trip that has becoming more commonplace in this area: She joined North Star Teens after Harding-Morick dropped her kid from middle school. She spent a year there learning, unwinding, and mingling with a small group of teens who shared her interests under the direction of Danford, one of North Star’s co-founders. Her mother became its chair after joining its board.
For middle- and high-schoolers who know they no longer want to attend school but are unsure of what to do next, North Star is essentially a tiny, private homeschooling collective.
Models like North Stars may spread beyond the western Massachusetts Pioneer Valley as more families begin to doubt the importance of education and as states and the federal government provide taxpayer funds for alternative options. Danford is making efforts to duplicate it as it approaches three decades of operation.
The private, nonprofit facility—don’t call it a school—has been a haven for children who are fed up with the stress, loneliness, or bullying that comes with going to school for 29 years. Here, students regain their breath and get ready for life after graduation, whether it’s for a few months or a few years.
With 65 students enrolled, it provides small, individualized history, math, writing, and art lessons, as well as extracurricular activities including weekly hiking club outings and demanding, one-on-one tutoring. This year, three Dungeons & Dragons courses were created and taught by young people.
The so-called members can just show up and sit with friends, read a book, take the public bus into nearby Amherst, or just curl up with a bowl of ramen on the couch. All that is necessary are frequent consultations with families and a weekly check-in with an advisor.
However, such liberty is accompanied by a good measure of introspection. Members are frequently reminded by Danford that they are responsible for their own actions. Do you want this kind of life?
Since its establishment in 1996, North Star has maintained a low profile in the area, offering tuition that ranges from $10,000 a year to whatever a family can afford. After three moves since then, it finally settled in 2015 in a dilapidated two-story building on State Highway 116 that had previously been a Subway sandwich shop and a secondhand furniture business.
Similar to a gym, social club, or even a place of worship, North Star encourages but does not require attendance. Members are free to enroll in classes or not. No grades, no tests or transcripts, no roll call, and no diploma are present.
The majority of people who come here for safety have genuine reasons: they are on the autistic spectrum or have been bullied and are looking for a more intimate, quiet setting. Alternatively, they are LGBTQ and just don’t feel accepted at school.
Some of them are simply your nonconformist kids who think, “School?” and are skateboarders, poets, and musicians. Danford stated they roll their eyes. We usually don’t get your cheerleaders, football players, or students who want to be on the school team. However, we get all the kids they make fun of.
Marley Bernstein, 16, was bullied for years at a school that she claimed lacked the resources to prevent it. She therefore stopped going, missing sixty-four days this year and 120 last year.
She filed for a GED when she got to North Star in late May.
You are not required to glance over your shoulder every two minutes, so you can do pretty about anything you want.
One recent morning in the spacious common area, she remarked, “I feel better being here.” Sitting is pleasant. Without having to glance over your shoulder every two minutes, you are free to move around and do pretty much anything you want.
Asha Morbyrne and Tasha Harris, pals, talked nearby. When Tasha revealed that many people in this place are traumatized, her companion retorted, “Many people.” There is violence at middle school.
The 13-year-olds revealed that they are primarily here to spend time together, spending their days roughhousing in the dance studio upstairs and slurping ramen.
According to Asha, this is the only location where her friend group is active.
The same! Tasha said.
According to Danford, however, there is frequently a quiet purpose hidden beneath the seeming laziness. Tasha learned to swim and frequently goes on Thursday walks, while Asha created a short play last fall that she recently staged at a local theater.
Others show up as if prepared for anything. Last year, Joshua Wachtel, who started teaching at North Star in 2010, took his stepson Lysander Woodard with him because he wanted to do something different from sixth grade.
The twelve-year-old is experimenting with everything. He is receiving tutoring through Khan Academy and recently participated in a service learning trip to Washington, D.C. In addition to the three D&D lessons, he also attended an adult-led class on the canon.
“It’s nice to be free,” Lysander added.
Danford exhorts both proponents and detractors to ignore the odd structure and focus on the goal. According to him, it isn’t frequent attendance or even belonging to the community. Taking charge of your life on your own is the reward.
Flipping the unschooling paradigm
Danford, an Ohio native with a strong build, got straight Like high school in the affluent Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights. He began his career as a social studies teacher at public middle schools in Amherst and the Washington, D.C., region, but he quickly became tired of administrators’ micromanagement.
After completing his master’s degree, he was contemplating quitting school completely when he came across Grace Llewelyn’s groundbreaking 1991 book, The Teenage Liberation Handbook. It altered his perspective on student agency and provided a model for young people looking for an alternative kind of education outside of school, a tactic known as “unschooling.” It was subtitled How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education.
You have to answer to yourself. Do you want this kind of life?
By the ninth grade, the majority of unschoolers had returned to school, having been younger. But to Danford, high school was where kids could benefit most from its freedom as they separate from parents and find themselves as individuals.
He essentially flipped the paradigm: If you made it through elementary school, why don t you quit while you re ahead? Reach the sixth grade and give up. Unschool the rest of the way.
It helps that the state of Massachusetts takes a hands-off approach to homeschoolers and largely stops supervising them once they re 16.
You don t like school? he tells prospective members, Don t go back. Don t ever go back in the building. Send someone in to get your books. I help families write a homeschooling plan. Do it tonight, this week.
I just could not stop crying.
For Trixie Lawless, enrolling in North Star was a no-brainer. Her mother had worked there as a teacher and knew its benefits. But she had to persuade her father.
By sophomore year, she d spent a lot of time skipping classes at her high school in Amherst. I enjoyed my day, she said, reading, writing short stories, taking in movies or museums.
I was like, I m homeschooling right now. If I just had a math tutor, I would be fine.
But skipping all those classes meant pointless makeup work and the black mark of unexcused absences. While it was mostly worth it, the prospect of another year in school eventually took a toll.
While visiting family last summer in Connecticut, she recalled, I just could not stop crying. Even for Trixie, this was a shock. She can usually hide her emotions, even when I m feeling really horrible. So when it got to that breaking point, where it was like, I can t even keep up with myself anymore, that was the first time I d ever really let it through.
Her father took notice. Trixie enrolled in the fall.
Having time to herself in a community of people who all want to be here, she said, is so much nicer. It definitely wouldn t be for everyone, but it has given me the space I knew I needed to feel better.
She s now studying for the GED with plans to start classes at Greenfield Community College in the fall. After a year at North Star, she s beginning to appreciate how different members experience the center.
It s about how you fill the space a lot of people here do that by playing video games and organizing D&D campaigns. She does it by oversubscribing to English and writing classes. It s a place for people who know what works for them.
Second-generation members
By now, the center has been around long enough that it s beginning to serve the children of its original members. One even teaches there: Aaron Damon-Rush arrived at North Star in 2011, when he was just 11, and stayed for seven years. He went on to attend nearby Hampshire College and returned in 2022 as alumni coordinator. Now 25, he teaches courses in film, game design and other disciplines.
At North Star, he took classes in psychology and criminal justice, learning about the morality of the death penalty and victims rights when he was just 12. That was a huge, mind-blowing experience for me, he said.
In lieu of finals and graduation, each member sits for a meeting with their parents and a handful of staffers where they review the year. They often find it s their best year of schooling, even though they re technically not in school. Parents speak tearfully of their kids opening up about classes for the first time, Danford said.
It is all fantastic, even the hard cases, he said.
As North Star nears its 30th anniversary, Danford, who s 59, is nearly two-thirds of the way through what he calls a 45-year plan: In the first 15 years, he built it; in the second, he worked to make it run increasingly without him. Now he s planning to step away so he can write, speak and consult with other educators who want to create something similar.
A network ofLiberated Learnerscenters, loosely affiliated with North Star, already boasts about a dozen locations worldwide. And Danford continues to offer the same message to weary young people who show up at his door.
Just take the year, breathe, wonder what you should be doing, he said. Meanwhile we re gonna unlock the door and give you a couch and we ll be nice to you. Turns out that s really healthy and responsible.
While most mainstream educators would say letting young people do nothing for a year is out of the question, he sees it differently: In the unschooling world, he said, there s no such thing as doing nothing.
