My Educational Autobiography

Background & Context

My mother and father’s families each possess a strong commitment to higher education, which I have now adopted as my own. My grandfathers on both sides held degrees for their professions, and it was “assumed” that all of their children and grandchildren would obtain at least a baccalaureate degree, regardless of gender or intended occupation.

While my immediate family (my parents and I) understand that formal higher education could be simply a means to an end, we consider learning, both formal and informal, to be a continual lifelong process that is pursued for the sheer enjoyment it offers and the enrichment it brings to our lives. For example, my great-uncle Len would not have been able to practice as a surgeon without formal education (attending medical school). Although Uncle Len received a terminal degree, and was very successful in his professional work life, he never stopped taking classes in a wide variety of areas that piqued his interest throughout his lifetime.

Both of my parents are scientists, entrepreneurs, artists, and educators, and I too strive to be a polymath, a maker, and a change-maker. They were very deliberate and intentional about planning and implementing my educational experience. Even before I was born, my parents committed to my homeschooling from birth through 12th grade. This translated to my education beginning on day one, and practically everything in our lives was (and still is) viewed as a learning opportunity.

Interestingly, I’m a first generation homeschooler — I am also the first and only member of my family to have been homeschooled. This caused quite a few raised eyebrows as all my grandparents expressed concern that my parents were performing a questionable “educational experiment” with me as the unfortunate test subject. As my grandparents lived out of state, this did not pose a day-to-day challenge, but when I did see them I was frequently verbally “drilled” to see if I was performing at what they considered to be an acceptable level. At some point, thankfully, they realized I was not only receiving an excellent education, but truly learning, and stopped trying (at least actively) to evaluate my performance.

As for my parent’s commitment to teaching me, my father was very involved in the experiential, hands-on part of my learning experience, while my mother had much more responsibility for my didactic learning. My dad’s life philosophy is to “fail forward” and he placed a great deal of emphasis on learning from our mistakes. While I am an enthusiastic fan of experiential learning, his fail forward philosophy is one I am still actively working to adopt. I understand it’s value, but accepting and learning from failure does not come easily to me. On the other hand, my mother was involved in planning and implementing all my pencil and paper (book) learning, and instilled in me a strong organizational mindset and other useful executive function skills along the way. These skills now come much more naturally to me and have served me well at WWC and will continue to be an asset in my future career.

By choosing to homeschool me, my parents precluded my attending the more conventional public and private school systems in Alamance County. I was homeschooled in grades K through 12, so as an only child this amounted to my having private tutors who molded my educational experiences based on my aptitude, interests, and specifically on my learning style. It turns out that rather than learning gradually, by climbing a slow and steady incline, I plod along a flat plateau for a while then “jump” up to the next plateau. Gaining the knowledge of “how” I best learn has helped me understand the pacing I needed to earn academic success in the more rigorous academic college setting.

My homeschool years consisted of being taught to mastery, not to test — which is one of the things I most appreciate about my at-home learning experience, and one of the things I do not admire about more conventional schooling. This turned out to be the perfect learning environment for me. Since I have a very strong family history of both ADHD and sensory processing challenges/gifts, my parents were able to adapt the curriculum to my “need” to both hyperfocus on a single subject and to wiz through other topics to avoid boredom. This personalized learning environment allowed for a deep dive into areas for which I expressed a strong passion (thus a full year of both Ancient Egypt then American Pioneers, and a lifetime of nature study), but once mastery was achieved, if I wasn’t that interested in a subject we quickly moved on.

Since my education focused on mastery rather than testing, and since my “time blindness” was uncovered early, the tests I did take were untimed. We focused on what was learned and how it was synthesized, rather than how quickly I could generate answers — again, something for which I remain grateful and incorporate into my own teaching pedagogy. In light of this, a customized curriculum was built from scratch for me each year, not from “canned or packaged” products, and always incorporated state standards and matched metrics for each grade level. My schooling went year round, with predetermined breaks for travel and holidays. We did not take off for the full summer, but usually traveled for a 10 day vacation in early July, and again at Thanksgiving. Stopping active learning for months at a time seems like a backward concept to me.

From age seven on, we fulfilled the NC state mandated end of grade (EOG) testing requirements using the complete battery CAT/5. This consisted of a full week of “fill in the bubble” tests, with a “move to the next grade family celebration” at the end of testing, kicking off our winter holiday festivities each year. Our end of grade testing was in mid November, and we lightened the course load at the beginning of each new grade, from Thanksgiving through New Year’s (which is also my birthday). I routinely achieved high nationally normed scores across the board, with the exception of spelling and basic arithmetic. Early on, we suspected that I have some form of dyscalculia. While I excelled at higher level mathematical concepts, I had (and still have) great difficulty with “simple” arithmetic. I have “number blindness” which continues to affect me in a variety of ways including being part of what makes me “time blind.”

Beyond the 3 Rs, my elementary, middle school, and high school experiences all included an abundance of hands-on participatory, engaged learning to accompany didactic teaching. My parents and my mentor placed a very strong focus on experiential learning and imaginative play. This included a seemingly never ending schedule of visits to museums and historic sites, live theater, musical performances, and author talks — for which I was extremely fortunate and remain highly appreciative.

My parents pursued enrolling me in a wide variety of group learning classes (academic and otherwise) from grades K through 12. These included Friday Enrichment through Chapel Hill Homeschool, musical theater, sewing, cooking, natural horsemanship, and fencing. The groups often spanned a wide age range, rather than placing me solely with grade-matched peers. I also routinely interacted and was friends with folks much younger and older than myself. Growing up I always said that my friends ranged from ages 5 to 95, and this still holds true.

Since my family lives in a forest, and are deeply in tune with how healthy nature based learning is, particularly for folks with ADHD, we deliberately limited screen time and included as much “in the green” time as possible. In addition to spending a great deal of time in my own heavily wooded backyard, this meant intentionally enrolling me in programs like Schoolhouse of Wonder, creating and leading the Nature School Co-op, and spending years doing nature study with my mentor on her bucolic rural land.

We live in Saxapahaw, a rural area in central North Carolina, but are only a stone’s throw from a handful of bustling towns and cities. Within a 60 minute driving radius are all the cultural and educational opportunities afforded by Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro, and Winston-Salem. Within 20 minutes are Graham, Burlington, Elon, and Chapel Hill.

As a high school Junior, when graduation started to come into focus, I actively expressed my concern over not feeling fully ready to begin college directly after high school. With the enthusiastic support of my parents, I took a gap year to pursue earning certification in environmental education (NCEE) and interpretive guide training (NAI). In retrospect, this was a fabulous decision that gave me the space to mature a bit more, while earning credentials that will serve me well in my career. It also provided me with the opportunity to participate in over four dozen seminars, workshops, and conferences, and thus experiencing a vast array of different teaching styles — many of which I look forward to incorporating in my future teaching endeavors.

Lifetime Overview

Birth — 3 y/o

Since I was homeschooled from the get go, I was not enrolled in any kind of pre-K program. If I had to choose one specific point in time to say, “This right here — this is when my education began,” it would most likely be the hiring of my childhood nanny and lifelong mentor Marj Marie. We first met when I was six months old, and it was love at first sight! With Marj, I spent endless hours immersed in imaginative play, exploring the great outdoors, and creating artistic “masterpieces” two to three days each week.

It was around the age of three and a half that my parents presented me with my first volunteer opportunity. At a fundraiser for the local Friends of the Library, my “job” was to hold the hand of tearful and sometimes shrieking children and coax them into sitting on the lap of a six foot tall, Clifford the Big Red Dog to have their photo snapped. This was the beginning of a lifetime of volunteer commitments.

4–6 y/o

During these years, my parents began actively homeschooling me, with a more formal customized curriculum that was planned each year to match NC state standards. Since I did not respond well to studying “traditional subjects” with Marj, I continued to pursue a more in depth nature study at her home (journaling, forming a collection of nature tidbits, and IDing every living thing we saw), and on our long rambling woods walks. Our nature walks continued throughout elementary, middle, and high school, and remain an important part of our visits even now.

This is the time during which I began participating in a weekly Friday School program through the Chapel Hill Homeschool community, that included primarily non-academic group classes and extended playtime with a playground full of children. Friday School is where I began my lifelong love affair with fiber arts, dance, and music. I was also enrolled at Schoolhouse of Wonder during these years; an outdoor enrichment program where I extended my deep dive into learning about the natural world.

7–9 y/o

My parents put reading first and agreed with the adage “first you learn to read and then you read to learn.” I was taught primarily using phonetic reading rather than sight words, so I would be able to decode new words on my own. Since I was initially a reluctant reader they had me tested by a reading specialist when I was 6 years old. She said my comprehension level was very high, and made certain my parents didn’t “correct” me when I often fluidly substituted appropriate synonyms while reading out loud. Although initially reluctant — my reading ability took off with high comprehension and speed, and I developed a passionate love of reading. One day I was sounding out words in a simple “Step Into Reading” book, and seemingly the next I was sailing through Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted — a full length novel. This is yet another illustration of my “jumping to the next plateau” learning style.

As an aside, we uncovered the reason for my initial reluctance some years later. As my parents had read aloud to me every day since I came home from the hospital, I was fearful that if I mastered reading on my own my parents would stop reading out loud to me. Turns out this was an unfounded fear.

10–12 y/o

To continue to incorporate an outdoor group learning experience, from middle through early high school my family hosted a full day homeschool Nature School Co-op at our home twice each month. Democratically as a group of parents and students, we selected the units we would cover each year. Each unit ran from a single day to, more often, two months or more (4 to 6 individual days), and were synchronized with what was seasonally appropriate and available. Nature School provided me with a concrete opportunity to research an assigned topic in depth, and then prepare and give verbal presentations to the group, which meant I had numerous opportunities to gain public speaking experience.

Our units were initially taught by parents, then eventually turned over to “us kids” to teach to each other, with parents in the role of mentor, for the last couple of years. We learned the basics of how to share a subject with a group of non-age matched students, since our participants ranged from first grade through high school — thus began my experience with and love of nonformal education. Nature School also validated for me the importance of hands-on participatory exploration to accompany didactic learning. Once I became a high school Junior, we changed the model back to an adult teaching one. We invited new younger students to join us, and I became the lead teacher of the program. I remain very appreciative of these early and consistent public speaking lessons learned, as I now do not “shake in my boots” when I give a presentation or speak in front of a group.

Age 11 was a big year for me as I enrolled in a handful of programs that would form significant parts of my middle/high school education and a big part of the rest of my life. I started volunteering with CLAWS NC, a wildlife rehabilitation group, began taking lessons in singing and musical theater, fencing, sewing and quilting classes, and began “formal” cooking training at C’est si Bon! Cooking School.

13–15 y/o

During this time I began volunteering with the Conservators’ Center, teaching Kitchen Capers cooking classes to teens at our local Arts Council, learning Parelli natural horsemanship, and working as a counselor in training at the fencing studio. This is also when I began the more regimented classes needed for high school — my high school class list is attached below as an addendum.

16–18 y/o

During this pivotal time I worked as a camp craft counselor, Environmental Science teaching assistant at UNC’s CCEE, and as lead intern at the cooking school. I began studying American Sign Language (ASL) and learning about Deaf and hard of hearing culture. I volunteered as an intern at Herb Haven, and was a docent at Duke Gardens Learning Laboratory (working with homeschoolers) and the NC Museum of Sciences Discovery Room (doing live animal programming). I earned certification from NOLS in Wilderness Medicine First Aid, NAI as a Certified Interpretive Guide, and my NC Environmental Educator certification. This was also the time when I graduated from both studying with Marj and from high school.

Privilege & Criticality

Throughout my education, I was well aware of the fact that my parent’s ability to commit to homeschooling placed me squarely in the lap of white privilege. During my elementary and middle school years they worked together in their boutique biotech consulting business which offered them both the flexibility and a high enough per hour pay level to work fewer hours, the balance of which were then devoted to my education.

While at home (and at Marj’s) my class consisted of one white student and three white upper middle class teachers. When I participated in “outside” classes (both academic and nonacademic) my instructors were predominately white, as were the students, with the occasional BIPOC classmate. My parents actively discussed their concern over this lack of racial and ethnic diversity in my immediate sphere. In an effort to counterbalance this deficiency, both my parents were quiet intentional about getting me into spaces where I could interact with all different kinds of people (gay, pagan, disabled, elderly, etc.). They (and I) consider everyone with whom we cross paths to be a teacher in some sense of the word, and being at WWC, with students from so many different backgrounds and from around the world, has further ingrained this belief. I love celebrating our differences and learning from my classmates.

However, in sharp contrast with what many of my classmates (both current and throughout my school years) have experienced, I have never truly felt marginalized. Though I check a number of boxes that could set me apart as “other,” being homeschooled, pagan, LGBTQIA+, and neurodivergent, did not affect my life in the same way it has many who are members of those communities. I am highly aware that my privilege has given me access, a stage, a mic, and a boom box, and it is my intention and goal to share this access to the best of my abilities.

My parents have both been involved in the genesis of several nonprofits, and served on multiple Boards. They reinforced throughout my life that giving back to our community was not optional and provided exceptional opportunities for community involvement at each grade level, beginning when I was three years old. They integrated both volunteer and work experiences into our daily/weekly lifestyle, just as they did with learning. So from my perspective, volunteering and working in social change programs was and still is synonymous with my lifelong education.

ADDENDUM — High School Classes

English

Literature & Composition 1–4

• Newbery Medal Winners
• Fantasy/Science Fiction
• Dystopian Fiction & Mythology
• Jane Austen & Shakespeare Comedies

Journalism

How to Read A Book — Jonathan Adler workshop

Mathematics

Pre-Algebra

Algebra 1

Algebra 2

Geometry

History

Ancient History & Archeology, including a Survey of Ancient Egypt: Culture & Mythology

World History

US History, Civics & Economics

Geography

Science

Biology, AP

Chemistry

Physics

Environmental & Earth Science

Fine Art

Fiber Arts — quilting, felting, weaving, knitting & spinning

Voice

Foreign Language

American Sign Language — Introduction & Conversational

Health & Safety

American Red Cross & American Heart Association, basic/advanced first aid & CPR

Rape Aggression Defense Systems Self Defense (R.A.D)

B.R.A.K.E.S. Defensive Driving Course

Fitness/PE

Fencing

Archery

Paddling

Advanced Studies in Marketing

Graphic Design

Micro business — InJEANious Designs NC

Electives

Photography

Psychology

Ancient Writing

• Egyptian Hieroglyphs
• Mayan Glyphs
• Nordic Runes
• History of Writing

Homesteading Skills

• Blacksmithing
• Edible Gardening
• Wildcrafting & Herb Study (including an internship at Herb Haven)
• Raising Laying Hens
• Beekeeping — through state association of Bee Keepers
• Cooking
• Sewing — clothing & home accessories

Portfolio Projects

Leadership of service projects, including:

• Operation Gulfport
• Alamance Reads
• Children’s Museum of Alamance County
• Burlington Farmers’ Market

Teens & 20s Times-News student correspondent articles

Co-Director — Homeschool College Fair

Teen Cooking Classes — taught through Alamance Arts Council

Grow Academy Camp — founder and instructor

NC Environmental Educator Certification

Acting Workshops

High School Classes