“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”
Kevin Kearney
I'm a multidisciplinary educator focused on middle and high school. Creating this school feels like the natural path for my interests and skill set. I’ve always loved teaching, and I’ve taught, off and on, my whole life – from teaching improv to college kids, working at public high schools, leading a department and creating new electives at a private K-12 school, developing a new program of study from scratch at an Arts Charter school, or teaching and learning alongside my own children.
But I haven’t spent my whole career in the classroom. As a custom carpenter and handyman I’ve spent time working in many trades, and have developed a keen regard for the importance of practical household skills. As a life-long outdoor enthusiast, I’ve spent time exploring the rich natural habitats of our area and developed a reverence for the psychological value of simple exposure to forests, rivers, and the remaining wild places we have left.
“Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace.”
“I don’t want to believe. I want to know. ”
My Work in Traditional Schools…
Teaching within the district has been great, and allowed me to deliver some important, if narrow, skills to a large population. However, I find that the number of students and the speed of the daily schedule just doesn’t allow me to deliver to most kids those high-quality, broad-based educational insights that students can readily achieve with more personal attention and a flexible, responsive schedule. Also, as a generalist, I get bored being pigeon-holed into a single subject and frustrated by the compartmentalized quality of larger institutions.
Having the same educator taking an interdisciplinary journey with the student allows for richer, deeper intellectual connections to be made across content areas. This approach imbues the material with more significance because the student discovers concepts on their own, thereby creating meaning (and thus making the insights more memorable and useful).
Background
I earned my BA from Northwestern University in 2006 after graduating from Pine Ridge High School here in Volusia County in 2002. I have been fortunate to be able to teach many different subjects, but I readily acknowledge areas where I’m deficient and students will need outside assistance (calculus and French, for example...). Some of the classes I’ve taught include: High School level English Language Arts for honors, intensive, and mixed grades; Drama I-IV; Poetry; Wilderness Survival; Middle School level ELA, Reading, Journalism, Science, and Technical Theater. I also directed and taught long form improv to undergraduates for several years at Northwestern University and Stetson University.
“Education is our only political safety. Outside of this ark all is deluge.”
Meeting the Times
Finally, as the political winds continue to shift, I want to provide a space free from increasing government overreach – there are no banned books here, history is not whitewashed or subverted; there are no posters of the 10 commandments, and personal identities are not denied or oppressed. We are explicitly secular and atheist-friendly.