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Donna Barker
Matt Hern
Mary Leue
Deborah Meier
Lindsey Rogowski & Wesley
Moses Clark
Khalif Williams
 Donna Barker
Donna Barker has had multi-faceted careers which
includes having been a clinical therapist, an
organization change consultant, a researcher, a
community activist, and a small retail business
owner. Currently, in addition to some
organization and research consulting, she is a
social worker case manager coordinating services
for long term care clients and also Associate
Faculty at Royal Roads University in the M.A. in
Leadership program. She has a Master of Social
Work and an M.A. in Organizational Development.
Ms. Barker's interest in innovative learning
community began when, after becoming
increasingly rageful in regular school setting,
she attended a vibrant high school in the early
70's that featured individualized, self paced
learning. There were no bells or classrooms. She
credits this school (and the support of her
family) with setting her on the road to a
creative, joyful, and multi-faceted life.
Another flame was lit when she observed the
heartbreaking impact public school was having on
her two sons. She took them out of the regular
school system and enrolled them in schools that
were, or attempted to be , learner/child
centered and non-coercive. She has been a keen
observer of her own and other children in these
learning environments. Ms. Barker is currently
working on a Ph.D. from Fielding Graduate
University. She wants to share the findings of
her dissertation research which involves
in-depth interviews with alumni who, for
extended periods of time, attended a democratic,
non-coercive school and some who attended a
child centered, natural learning school. These
young people, now in their late twenties to
early thirties, reflect on their experiences in
the schools and the impact on their current
lives.
 Matt
Hern
Matt Hern lives in East Vancouver with his
partner and daughters. He runs the Purple
Thistle Centre (www.purplethistle.ca).
He holds a PhD. in Urban Studies and writes and
lectures widely. His books include the
collection Deschooling Our Lives (New
Society), Field Day: Getting Society Out of
School (New Star), and the new Watch
Yourself: Why Safer Isn’t Always Better
(New Star).
AERO offers Matt Hern's books, Field Day:
Getting Society Out of School and Watch
Yourself: Why Safer Isn't Always Better for
sale online at:
http://www.educationrevolution.org/products.html
 Mary Leue
In her eighty-eight years, Mary Leue, mother of
five, grandmother of fourteen, great-grandmother
of seven, has been a Maine farmer, registered
nurse, school founder, teacher, civil rights and
anti-war activist, lay midwife, 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 also 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 - and, as a publisher (Down-to-Earth
Books), has produced twenty-six books: nine
as author, two as contributing author and the
remaining fifteen as editor, eight of them on
the topic of education.
Mary found
The Free School in 1969 as a creative
response to the distress of her ten-year-old
son, who suffering badly in
Albany's
public school system, by allowing him to drop
out of his overcrowded class. Her (and his)
decision to create the school and locate it in
the inner city was influenced by the educational
philosophies of New England Transcendentalist
Bronson Alcott (father of Louisa May Alcott of
Little Women fame), Wilhelm Reich and A. S.
Neill, as well as the teachings of Mahatma
Gandhi and the father of spiritual anarchism,
Prince Pyotr Kropotkin.
Mary firmly believed that open, democratic
education should be available to the children of
the poor as well as to those of the middle and
upper classes. When she consulted with A.S.
Neill, founder of Summerhill, about such a
possibility, his response was pure Neill: "I
would think myself daft to try."
In 1969, Mary proceeded to gather an entire
group of "daft" individuals, most of whom are
still together in 2007, having joined her in her
vision of living and working in genuine
community in a post-industrial world. The school
they created and developed together as they went
along, learning from experience and adapting
their programs to the needs and enthusiasms of
the actual children who were members of the
school at any one time, is still staffed by a
group of self-chosen teachers who believe deeply
in what they are doing.
Mary left
Albany
in 1998 to move to her family's land in
Ashfield,
Massachusetts,
where she still lives today.
She has
been writing her memoirs, two volumes of which
have now been published, has created four
websites and been active in her desktop
publishing - in addition to her farm activities
of vegetable gardening, preserving the harvest
every autumn and maple sugaring in the spring.
AERO offers Mary Leue's books, Real Schools -
In Their Own Words, Real Teachers - Real
Teaching, and the Challenging the Giant 4-Volume
Set for
sale online at:
http://www.educationrevolution.org/products.html
 Deborah
Meier
Deborah Meier is currently on the faculty of
New York
University’s
Steinhardt School of Education, as senior
scholar and adjunct professor as well as Board
member and director of New Ventures at Mission
Hill, director and advisor to Forum for
Democracy and Education, and on the Board of The
Coalition of Essential Schools.
Meier has spent more than four decades working
in public education as a teacher, writer and
public advocate. She began her teaching career
as a kindergarten and headstart teacher in
Chicago,
Philadelphia
and
New York City
schools. She was the founder and
teacher-director of a network of highly
successful public elementary schools in
East Harlem.
In 1985 she founded Central Park East Secondary
School, a New York City public high school in
which more than 90% of the entering students
went on to college, mostly to 4-year schools.
During this period she founded a local Coalition
center, which networked approximately fifty
small Coalition-style K-12 schools in the city.
Between 1992-96 she also served as co-director
of a project (Coalition Campus Project) that
successfully redesigned the reform of two large
failing city high schools, and created a dozen
new small Coalition schools. She was an
advisor to New York City’s Annenberg Challenge
and Senior Fellow at the Annenberg Institute at
Brown University from 1995-1997.
From 1997 to 2005 she was the founder and
principal of the
Mission
Hill
School
a K-8 Boston Public Pilot school serving 180
children in the Roxbury community.
The schools she has helped create serve
predominantly low-income African-American and
Latino students, and include a typical range of
students in terms of academic skills, special
needs, etc. There are no entrance requirements.
These schools are considered exemplars of reform
nationally and affiliates of the national
Coalition of Essential Schools founded by Dr.
Ted Sizer and currently led by Lewis Cohen.
A learning theorist, she encourages new
approaches that enhance democracy and equity in
public education. Meier is on the editorial
board of Dissent magazine, The Nation and the
Harvard Education Letter. She is a Board member
of the Educational Alliance, the Association of
Union Democracy, Educators for Social
Responsibility, the Panasonic Foundation, and a
founding member of the National Board of
Professional Teaching Standards, the North
Dakota Study Group on Evaluation and the Forum
for Democracy and Education, among others.
Meier was born
April 6, 1931
in
New York City;
she attended
Antioch
College
(1949-51) and received an MA in History from the
University of
Chicago
(1955). She has received honorary degrees from
Bank Street College of Education, Brown, Bard,
Clark,
Teachers College of Columbia University,
Dartmouth,
Harvard,
Hebrew
Union
College,
Hofstra, The New School,
Lesley
College,
SUNY Albany, UMASS Lowell, and Yale. She was a
recipient of the prestigious MacArthur
Fellowship in 1987.
Her
books, The
Power of Their Ideas, Lessons to America from a
Small School in Harlem (1995),
Will Standards
Save Public Education (2000),
In Schools We
Trust (2002),
Keeping School,
with Ted and Nancy Sizer (2004) and
Many
Children Left Behind (2004) are all
published by Beacon Press.
AERO offers all of Deborah Meier's books (above) for
sale online at:
http://www.educationrevolution.org/products.html
Lindsey Rogowski & Wesley Moses Clark
Lindsey's bio coming soon!
Wesley was born and raised in Albany, NY and has
been attending The Free School and now Harriet
Tubman since the ripe young age of two. Wesley
has had two incredible internships during his
time at Harriet Tubman which has covered working
with a certified computer tech and repair
company and working at a materials science
research and testing facility. Wesley also
spends his time attending U.S. History, Debate,
Vocabulary Development (where Scrabble is used
as the primary instruction tool), Criminal
Justice, Physical Education, Photography,
Computer, Creative Writing classes. Wesley
is currently planning to pursue gaming design at
a higher education institute.
 Khalif Williams
Khalif Williams is the
Executive Director of the Institute for Humane
Education (IHE) and has been instrumental in
leading IHE to its current success. Since
joining IHE in 2002, Khalif has grown their
programs, honed IHE’s vision and built its
organizational structure to embrace cooperative,
collaborative ideals which has attracted a
growing staff of dedicated, experienced
professionals from around the country.
Since 1996 IHE has trained hundreds of humane
educators reaching tens of thousands of learners
of all ages. They have touched hundreds of
thousands of people and communities worldwide
through their certificate and degree programs,
workshops, presentations, publications and
website.
IHE students and graduates are integrating
humane education through the curricula they
teach in public and private schools, using
humane education as the foundational context in
home schooling and alternative education
settings, implementing new humane education
programs in high schools, introducing humane
education to pre-school children, teaching
semester- and year-long middle and high school
courses, advising environmental, social justice,
and animal protection student clubs, and
promoting humane education at conferences in the
US and abroad.
In 1994, Khalif began working for racial equity
in higher education by helping establish a
minority mentoring/college preparatory program
at his university that is still in successful
operation. In 1996 he earned his B.A. in
Philosophy from Roger Williams University. He
has served as a highly respected counselor and
crisis interventionist at a residential
treatment facility for mentally ill, emotionally
disturbed adolescent boys, and also spent
several years working for an urban
homeless/runaway shelter for teens, which
provided care for more than 300 young people a
year.
Through his work with young people and as an
advocate for the humane treatment of animals,
Khalif developed and conducted dozens of highly
successful humane education programs for all
ages on issues ranging from the environment to
domestic violence; and from consumerism and the
media to factory farming.
Khalif’s expanding view of humane issues and
deepening dedication to education drew him to an
IHE workshop in 2001. He was so inspired by
IHE’s philosophy and approach, he decided to
make humane education his life’s work.
2009 Keynote Speakers (bios coming
soon!):
Patch Adams
Ira Shor
Don "Four Arrows" Jacobs
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