This article was published in the Oct. 1, 2009, edition of the Addison Independent with two photos by Trent Campbell.
“If what’s happening at school isn’t a story, it’s not good enough. What’s happening in school needs to be so good that it is a story, which is a high standard.”
— North Branch School founder Tal Birdsey
By JOHN FLOWERS
RIPTON — A decade ago, Tal Birdsey’s dream of establishing his own private school was mere Lego whimsy, fashioned out of the toy building blocks by his two young sons on their living room floor.
But a magical potion of hard work, negotiations, willpower and serendipity ultimately made the North Branch School a reality in 2001. It’s been a miraculous journey that Birdsey is now sharing with the world in his first book, “A Room for Learning.”
Released just this week, the book tenderly chronicles the birth of the North Branch School from far-fetched idea, to the harvesting of his first class of 10 students, to the search for a schoolhouse, to the excitement of seeing outside-the-box teaching yield positive results for children of diverse backgrounds and learning abilities.
“We said, ‘We’ll build it, and maybe they’ll come,’” Birdsey recalled of the planning stages for North Branch, which now serves 27 middle-schoolers in a converted farmhouse off the Lincoln Road in Ripton.
“Fortunately, they did come.”
Birdsey was a stay-at-home dad caring for his sons, Henry and Calder, when he began thinking about re-entering the workforce. He had previously taught for 10 years at the Paideia School, an independent school in Atlanta. He decided he wanted to return to the classroom — specifically, one of his own creation.
He drew up a list of 10 items essential for a school start-up: two classrooms, a bathroom, two tables, 12 chairs, $500 worth of books, a first-aid kit, paper and pencils, copy machine, plants and a cat.
“It was ludicrously bare, idealistically Spartan and absurdly naïve — the educational equivalent of going into the Alaskan wilderness with nothing but three sacks of rice and a shaker of salt,” Birdsey wrote.
But many fellow parents in Ripton and throughout the county embraced the concept of creating an alternative learning environment for young teens who simply did not “fit” into the traditional public school setting, Birdsey found. Going house by house, he was interviewed by prospective students and their parents about what he could offer.
“I spoke with half hope and small grains of confidence about a school that existed only in a brochure,” Birdsey said. “I had nothing to show, no proof or evidence, no quantitative measures of effectiveness, no testimonials from ecstatic parents. Driving around in my minivan with my two children, I felt more like an itinerant preacher or a bedraggled missionary speaking to doubters and the half curious.”
But Birdsey struck a chord, and soon got his minimum, inaugural incoming class of 10 students. The students ranged from very bright, precocious learners to less inquisitive introverts.
“Entrusting their children to the North Branch School, a school with no defined curriculum or structure, ‘charter’ school status or orthodoxy, at a precipitous moment when their children were entering the critical, tumultuous time of adolescence, could only be seen as an act of utter ineradicable faith,” Birdsey wrote of his students’ parents.
Only months removed from their targeted opening in 2001, organizers of the North Branch School finally located a rental home on the Lincoln Road in which they would operate. With the students’ help, they were able to get the building ready for occupancy that fall.
“I was afraid the first day that no one would show up,” Birdsey said. “I was amazed when they did.”
Birdsey and his colleagues proceeded to teach their young charges math, science, humanities, history and physical education, among other subjects. They did so using techniques that required the students to take ownership of their own education, using props, anecdotes, music and the great outdoors to impart lessons.
Students allowed Birdsey to use their real names in the book; all were given advance texts to verify accuracy.
“They loved it,” Birdsey said of the book, in an interview on Monday. He made six factual adjustments to the book based on feedback from students and their parents.
While the book is a celebration of educational possibilities in a rustic setting, the remoteness of the school building could not shield the students from the tragic realities of Sept. 11, 2001. The students piled into Birdsey’s minivan to listen to radio accounts of the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., as there was no radio in the school.
“I wanted them to be excited, to let themselves grow up and live,” Birdsey wrote. “But I never felt more isolated than I did then, sitting behind the steering wheel with my whole school in a rutted driveway, wondering if I’d ever want to let go of them at all.”
AUTHOR READING
An initial printing of 10,000 copies of “A Room for Learning” have been printed and will be sold at such locations as the Vermont Book Shop in Middlebury, where Birdsey is scheduled to conduct a reading and book signing on Friday, Oct. 9. from 6 to 7:30 p.m.
Birdsey explained the book represents five years of work, inspired from his regular e-mails to the school community and fond recollections.
“I just started jumping around, and any scene that was memorable … I would write it up,” Birdsey said. “I started to see they could be strung together in a story. That led me to see something that I think should be true about schools — if what’s happening at school isn’t a story, it’s not good enough. What’s happening in school needs to be so good that it is a story, which is a high standard.”
He spent summers, early mornings and weekends writing the 293-page book.
Asked what kind of readers are likely to gravitate toward his book, Birdsey said, “Parents with younger kids who are thinking about the kind of schools their children might one day attend; teachers who know how schools are run and how they might be run differently; and people who want to become teachers but who might be turned off by the narrowness of approaches that are out there.”
But the biggest payoff for Birdsey would be if a reader follows the same path he took a decade ago.
“The dream would be that someone who reads this book and says, ‘I’m starting a school,’” Birdsey said. “That would be the best.”
For more information about Birdsey’s book, log on to www.talbirdsey.com.
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