OPEN ROAD, 2013-2015

summary:

Open Road Learning Community for Teens was an unschooling program, using North Star’s structure and principles, which state that: (1) young people want to learn, (2) learning happens everywhere, (3) it is okay to leave school, (4) how people behave under one set of circumstances and assumptions does not predict how they will behave under different circumstances and assumptions, (5) structure communicates as powerfully as words, (6) as adults working with young people, we should strive to “make possible” rather than “make sure”, and (7) the best preparation for a meaningful and productive future is a meaningful and productive present.

“Unschooling” is a non-coercive style of homeschooling, where (typically) rather than have a set curriculum, the young person’s life is structured to include meaningful and self-directed opportunities for learning. Open Road provided an opportunity for unschooling teens to socialize, and explore topics of interest that they needed support with, or may otherwise not have had easy access to.

my role:

During my time at Open Road it was just the executive director/founder, myself, and one part-time programming facilitator. We operated out of an unschooling family’s detached garage, then out of a church basement, and provided 2x weekly programming for a group of middle and high school aged unschooling teens in the Portland area. No two days looked alike, depending on the interests of the group we would do anything from have a conversation about the prison industrial complex, to learn to make lasagna, to have workshops with guest artists, to just hang out and play music.

On the administrative end, I met on a regular, ongoing basis with the executive director to strategize how to grow and strengthen the program; and served on the board of directors. I also managed Open Road’s social media; and designed posters, brochures, and other take-aways for recruitment. Programmatically, I worked directly with youth through mentoring, workshop facilitation, and administrating intake interviews for new youth.

In the summer of 2014 I was solely responsible for building and executing a two-week summer program of workshops for Portland youth aged 10-18, with the goals of expanding Open Road’s outreach, and documenting the unique and innovative types of projects the program makes possible.

I left Open Road in 2015 to found Marrow, because they lost the capacity to continue to pay me; and because I felt I could do things more radically under my own leadership, to reach a larger and more diverse audience of youth (Open Road was small, and relatively expensive). I also had and continue to have complicated feelings about the unschooling community and the reality of how unschooling operates under capitalism——despite it seeming like a pretty utopian approach to autonomous youth education in theory. Many of the Open Road youth came to Marrow as both participants and as youth leaders.