Alternative Education Resource Organization

Vanessa Barrat & BethAnn Berliner

Vanessa Barrat is an economist and senior researcher at WestEd. She is a quantitative analyst whose current research aims to improve preK-12 education practice and policy. Her areas of expertise include dropout and reenrollment issues, independent study as an alternative to the traditional high school, and the educational and developmental needs of children in the child welfare system.

BethAnn Berliner is a project director and senior researcher at WestEd. She is a qualitative analyst whose current research and technical assistance focus on strengthening school and community efforts for student success. Her areas of expertise include alternative pathways to meet high school completion and college eligibility requirements and program design and implementation to improve the academic, developmental, and behavioral outcomes for high-risk adolescents.

Carla Bergman & Youth from Purple Thistle Centre

Carla Bergman is the co-founder and editor of rain.(www.rainzine.org). Rain (a zine) is for all ages, both as readers and contributors. The rain collective is made up of mostly youth. Carla set out to do rain in order to bring together her two worlds of academia and working with youth, but more importantly to support youth to become cultural producers rather than just consumers. Carla lives in East Vancouver and is a mentor at The Purple Thistle Center. She is also a social activist and a parent to two unschoolers.

Meghan Carrico

Meghan Carrico has been a teacher at Windsor House school for the last 20 years, she was a student there as a child, and now has two of her children attending the school. She currently holds the position of Department Head and teacher of Shared Leadership and Co-operative Learning.

Dennis Charles

Dennis Charles runs the Fourth Wave Institute in Sudbury, Massachusetts. The Fourth Wave Institute runs programs for young people who want to build a career that is personally meaningful. Dennis has been a teacher, coach and mentor for over twenty years. Dennis has been involved in Alternative Education for a number of years, and his own children attend Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts

Kenneth Danford

Kenneth Danford is the co-founder and Executive Director of North Star: Self-Directed Learning for Teens in Hadley, MA. Prior to establishing North Star in 1996, Kenneth taught in the Amherst, MA public schools and the Prince George’s County, MD public schools, as an 8th grade U.S. History teacher in both systems. As a student, Kenneth excelled in high school and college, and would not have chosen homeschooling had the option been presented to him. He anticipated a career in public education until he became disillusioned with the system due to his teaching experiences.

Franzi Florack

Franzi Florack is German born language teacher, outreach ambassador and film graduate, currently studying for her teaching degree at the University of Cambridge in the UK. She loves traveling, ballet, making cakes and spending time with the people close to her. As an education revolutionist, she is very interested in bringing the international alternative education community closer together. You can reach her at F.Florack@gmail.com or read about her adventures in education and abroad in her blog trulyeuropean.blogspot.com.

Tim Graves

Tim Graves is a veteran early childhood educator and father of two adult children. During his career, he has served children directly through full-time work in early childhood programs as both a teacher and a director for eighteen years, spent fifteen years teaching early childhood courses on a full- and part-time basis at several community colleges, as well as working with families of children with developmental delays in an early intervention system. Tim provides training and consultation services through Training Wheels. Tim is currently studying for the ministry at Lexington Theological Seminary.

IDEA - Dana Bennis & Scott Nine

IDEA - Institute for Democratic Education in America
Scott Nine is a dynamic public speaker who enjoys teaching and learning about leadership, social justice, community organizing, educational reform, personal growth, and getting along with one another. He is co-founder and outgoing Executive Director of The Village Free School in Portland, Oregon. He has a Masters Degree in Social Work from Arizona State University and served briefly on the faculty of the School of Social Work at Portland State University. Raised by two public school educators, Scott fell in love with his unschooled wife Hollie while growing up in Apache Junction, Arizona. Scott is a founding board member of the Institute for Democratic Education in America and provides leadership for their national organizing efforts. Dana Bennis
Dana Bennis has been deeply involved in the growing network of democratic education practitioners and supporters since 2001, dedicating his time to researching, teaching, and advocating for education that meaningfully involves young people in their education. As co-founder and Executive Director of IDEA, the Institute for Democratic Education in America, Dana leads the organization’s effort to build national credibility for democratic education and catalyze educational change grounded in democratic values and human rights. Dana earned a Masters Degree in Education from Vermont College of Union Institute and University, has published articles in various education journals, and is the co-editor with Isaac Graves of The Directory of Democratic Education. He lives in Tarrytown, New York with his wife and fellow educator, Julie Hill.

Khotso Khabele

Khotso Khabele grew up in Lesotho, Southern Africa and moved to the United States at age 12. He graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in Economics. After college, he began a career in education as a high school science teacher. After teaching for a few years, he founded the Khabele School. As Director, he has is responsible for designing the educational methodology, overseeing the curriculum, managing the faculty, creating the student, teacher and parent training programs, and ensuring that the mission of Khabele is being fulfilled. He has led the school from nine students and a $110,000 budget to approximately 200 students and a $2.5 million budget, with a 5 building campus in downtown Austin, Texas. He is currently pursing a doctorate in Human and Organizational Development.

Moya Khabele

Moya Khabele graduated from The University of Texas with a BBA in International Business and Spanish Language. She began her career in education as a high school Spanish teacher and eventually helped to found the Khabele School. At Khabele she am responsible for marketing, recruiting, admissions, public relations, program management, and fundraising. She spearheaded the State accreditation process, oversaw the acquisition and remodeling of all four school buildings and the studio, managed all of the finance and certain operations, as well as exceeded our Annual Fund goals for the last two years. She is also an active member of The Association of Fundraising Professionals and a visiting accreditation team member for the Texas Alliance of Accredited Private Schools.

Gilles Laverdure

Gilles Laverdure has been a curriculum advisor for a School Board near Montreal, Quebec for the last 12 years. His career has been twofold: 16 years as a geophysical engineer and 18 years in K-12 education as a math specialist. He is responsible for the implementation of new math programs in schools as well as for teachers’ training. His professional interests include Constructivism, Multiple Intelligences, Philosophy for Children and Authentic Assessment. He gave several workshops at conferences, among them the 4th European Summer University in History and Epistemology in Mathematics Education held in Uppsala, Sweden in 2004. Gilles and his wife would like to open an alternative elementary school in their region. A school that would be Nature-based, democratic and focused on the global development of the child.

Mary Leue

Mary Leue, at ninety-years-old, is a mother of five, grandmother of fourteen, great-grandmother of eight. She has been a Maine farmer, registered nurse, teacher, civil rights and anti-war activist, lay midwife, school founder, leader in both alternative education and natural childbirth movements, therapist, community organizer, editor, writer, desktop publisher and bookseller. She has published a number of articles in national and international journals of education and psychotherapy, including the Journal of Orgonomy, Energy and Character, and Holistic Education Review. She has contributed writings to SKOLE; the Journal of Alternative Education, which she created and edited from 1985 to 1998, and The Journal of Family Life, which she co-created in 1995 and co-edited until her retirement in 1998. As a publisher at Down-to-Earth Books, Leue has produced twenty-seven books—ten as author, five as contributing author, and the remaining seventeen as editor, eight of them on the topic of education. In 1969, Mary founded The Free School in Albany, NY which has since inspired the creation of countless schools worldwide.

Kirsten Olson

Kirsten Olson, Ed.D. is an educational consultant, writer and researcher. She is principal of Old Sow Consulting, in Brookline, MA and author of the acclaimed Wounded By School: Recapturing the Joy in Learning and Standing Up to Old School Culture (2009) and Schools As Colonizers (2008). She is currently writing a book on mindfulness, attention, and pleasure in learning.

Deb O'Rourke

Writer and artist Deb O’Rourke joined the free school movement as a teenager in 1968, and resolved to send her child (if she ever had one) to a school like Summerhill. When her son turned four in 1985, she discovered that a rare public school that had been influenced by A. S. Neill existed only a few blocks from her workplace. She was an active volunteer parent at ALPHA for ten years until 1995, and joined the school as its volunteer coordinator in 2004, the same year she retired from visual art and entered graduate school. Her Masters thesis is an exploration of the history of ALPHA and its relationship to the bureaucracies that both support and challenge its existence.

Bill Rossi

Author of the recently published mentoring and creative teaching guide Venturing Together, Bill graduated from Berklee College of Music and has taught and played professionally for decades. Bill has developed a specific and unique strengths-based educational approach; for over 15 years he has directed a nonprofit to demonstrate this approach; he recently completed a turnkey system to facilitate national program replication.

Jon Scott

Jon Scott attended the Ferrer Modern School in Stelton, NJ from 1934 to 1946 (age two to fourteen). The family moved to a subsistence farm in Columbia County, NY. After attending a public high school there in Hilsdale, NY he attended Cornell University graduating with a BS in Biochemistry in 1954. He was for three years a pilot in the U.S. Air Force, traveled for seven monthes in Europe and worked for a food research laboratory in Tarrytown, NY. After obtaining a PhD in Meteorology in 1964 Jon was on the faculty of Atmospheric Science at the University at Albany for 35 years. He is retired and is the Secretary/Treasurer of the Friends of the Modern School.

Eric & Dorothy Smoot

Eric Smoot
A Certified Identity Theft Risk Management Specialist, Received Training: Street Survival (Caliber Press) and Violent Crime Task Force training, Customer Service Skills training, Field Training Officer Training (IPTM), How to deal with angry/emotional people, Cultural Diversity Training "Train the Trainer" (Department Of Justice), Community Conference on Hate Crimes, Ohio Criminal Gang Law Training "Train the Trainers" (Attorney General’s Anti-Gang Unit) Street Gang Training (California Gang Investigators Association), Ohio Violence Prevention Process (Ohio Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services) Ohio Peace Officer Basic Training Program (Instructor training by McCaffery Testing Inc), Creative Strategies for Reaching Students with Anger Problems (Developmental Resources Inc.), Officer D.A.R.E. training, Bully Prevention Symposium (Ohio Commission on Dispute Resolution and Conflict Management). 30 year veteran of the Police Officer with the Cincinnati Police Department, field training officer, Gang Intelligence Coordinator, and Gang Expert and Drug Abuse Resistance Education Officer.

Dorothy P. Smoot
Is currently a Facilitator for the Ohio Violence Prevention Process. She is the retired former CEO of the Cincinnati’s Citizen’s Committee on Youth, a 50 year old not-for-profit social service organization that focused on youth development of youth between the ages of 5 and 21. She is a Certified Violence Prevention Specialist for the Ohio Department of Drugs and Alcohol Services with over 20 years of violence prevention facilitation for both adults and youth. Mrs. Smoot has a Bachelors Degree in Criminal Justice from the University of Cincinnati; a Master’s of Science in Criminal Justice from Xavier University and is a Certified Family Therapist

Laurie Spigel

Laurie Spigel is a leading member of the NYC homeschooling community, where she works as a teacher, advisor, guide, and mentor. Her recent book, Education Uncensored, chronicles her life as the daughter of a noteworthy professor of education and, later, as a homeschooling parent of two sons. Education Uncensored is full of practical advice for every parent and teacher. Learn more about Laurie at her website, HomeschoolNYC.com.