The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
12 — Wednesday, January 27, 2021
statement
N
EW HAMPSHIRE | Seven people,
clad in sleeping bags and down jack-
ets, are gathered in the tiny cabin
atop Mt. Cabot, an elevation of 4,170 feet. Outside,
the White Mountains roll for miles, sliding in ev-
ery direction after hours of rain. Inside, there’s one
picnic table, four large plywood bunks and clothes
drying on every available surface. The conversa-
tion drifts from directions to the nearest water
source to hypothermia to poetry. Each student was
instructed to bring a few poems, found in the camp
library, that address the concept of the unknown.
Four miles and three summits ago, the group
had camped at Unknown Pond. They’d spent the
evening reading short stories over the fire, fan-
ning it with a frisbee to ensure its smoky survival
in the damp forest. Now, the seven crowd around
the picnic table, journals open and headlamps on.
After someone pulls the instant hot pack from the
first aid kit so one student can warm his hands,
class begins.
Tonight, the students are far from Ann Arbor,
Mich., the quintessential college town home to
the University of Michigan, and instead are deep
in the New Hampshire wilderness. Sitting in this
cabin is a privilege. They submitted essays, sat for
interviews, paid tuition and drove across the coun-
try to be here. I suppose I should say “we” because
the student peeking out of a sleeping bag reading
poetry by David Budbill is me.
We were the 45th class spending our spring
semester on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee
for the New England Literature Program. The 40
of the 53 of us (40 students, 13 instructors) were
there to earn nine English credits in six weeks.
Former Facebook interns bunked with medical
school hopefuls and creative writing majors; the
instructors ranged from published authors to a
hairdresser, a law school applicant and an English
professor. We filled our days with Emerson and
Thoreau, Dickinson and Glück, Frost and Freder-
ick Douglass — and with scrubbing toilets, baking
bread, splitting wood, building fires, pitching tents,
skinny dipping and writing of this world we’d cre-
ated, our newfound love.
Absent from this world was any form of mod-
ern technology, recorded music, alcohol or com-
munication with the outside, other than through
letter writing. It might be odd, but the recipe
has proven successful and remained largely un-
changed for 45 years.
What is alternative education?
The term “alternative education,” which can be
“broadly
defined as educational activities that fall
outside the traditional K-12 curriculum” according
to National Center for Education Evaluation and
Regional Assistance, has typically been reserved
for students who are at risk of failing school: 35
states associate it with students who have behav-
ioral problems. While such programs, who focus
on the outdoors as a method of rehabilitation, ex-
ist, this reservation implies a correlation between
“alternative” and “problem” — that those who
don’t thrive in a traditional classroom are the issue,
instead of questioning how everyone could pos-
sibly succeed in the same classroom. But NELP
requires an entry fee, literally and figuratively,
and every admitted student counts themselves as
lucky.
So, there’s a huge spectrum of alternative edu-
cation, and the terminology can be confusing. But
as the definition explains, it can really be anything.
NELP is only one of the hundreds, maybe thou-
sands, of alternative education programs in the
United States, and it’s not even the only one at the
University of Michigan. The University also of-
fers Camp Davis, a geological station just outside
Jackson Hole, Wyo., and the Biological Station in
Pellston, Mich. Both programs provide Michigan
students a break from the traditional classroom
structure and pull them across the country to-
wards their subjects’ source: Walden pond for
Thoreau readers and the Teton peaks for geolo-
gists.
Camp Davis operates on a rolling basis, mean-
ing that classes drive out west from Ann Arbor
one at a time, and periodically leave camp for one
to three-day field trips into Yellowstone or City of
Rocks, Idaho. The professors, many of whom have
been making the trek for years, bring their fami-
lies and dogs, and every so often a graduate stu-
dent instructor’s significant other will turn up for
a weekend. One evening in July 2018, there were
over a hundred people — more than the mess hall
could hold — so the kitchen staff threw an outdoor
barbecue. A few weeks later, at the end of the sea-
son, only half of one class remained at the camp
(the other half had gone camping), so the kitchen
donned freshly-cleaned aprons and cooked a
three-course French dinner. Though the kitchen
staff was mostly U-M students looking for an ex-
cuse to live in the mountains (I know because I
worked there in 2017 and 2018), meal flexibility is
representative of the camp’s ethos.
The alternative education umbrella is wide.
At the Alzar School, high school sophomores and
juniors spend half their time at the Alzar cam-
pus in Cascade, Idaho and the rest in Patagonia,
Chile, kayaking, backpacking and skiing their way
through a fully accredited semester. Kristin Bierle
founded Alzar with her husband, Sean, in 2004.
The couple started out running one to three-week
programs in the U.S. and Chile as they worked to-
ward their vision.
“When we sat down looking at the school,
and what we need, what we wanted education
to mean, we saw tremendous opportunities for
growth and leadership development at the inter-
section of really engaging academics with cultural
exchange,” Bierle said in a phone interview with
The Daily.
The school typically has 40 students per se-
mester, many of whom haven’t spent much time in
the outdoors (in fact, all three programs don’t em-
phasize previous outdoor experience upon entry,
though enthusiasm for leaving your comfort zone
is a requirement). Alzar instructors teach the regu-
lar high school classes — honors and Advanced
Placement math, science, English, Spanish and
history — but are also leading expeditions, travel-
ing internationally with the students and pairing
the outdoors with the class material to teach lead-
ership skills.
“We’re not an organization where you’re go-
ing to have someone with a Ph.D. in physics from
Harvard, who has been teaching the AP physics
class for 25 years,” Bierle said. “I think that’s a tre-
mendous educator, and there’s tons of space in the
educational landscape for that educator to exist
and it’s really important, but for our model, that’s
not where our power comes from.”
Her ideology is echoed in most alternative edu-
cation programs, but specifically at Deep Springs
College, which calls itself a “unique institution of
higher learning.” L.L. Nunn, an electricity mogul
turned philanthropist and education experiment-
er, founded the school in 1917 around three pillars:
academics, manual labor and student self-govern-
ment. Total student enrollment caps out at
30
, and
the school isolates itself in Deep Springs Valley,
Calif.
There is no set form for what an educator looks
like. Kristin Fisher, who led the Unknown Pond
trip, has taught at NELP for the past five years and,
like most of the instructors, is a program alum her-
self. She’s been in almost every kind of classroom
throughout her teaching career.
“When I’m planning a class, especially when
we’re outside, I’m planning for a five-hour chunk
of time. And I have to scout where we’re going and
I have to know about the weather and I have to
make sure that students are prepared with gear,”
Fisher said in an Ann Arbor coffee shop, in Febru-
ary of 2020. “This is stuff that I don’t need to do in a
classroom. I’m taking care of bodies. And in a class-
room, I’m taking care of minds a little bit more.”
But what does it
look l
ike?
T
he NCEE’s study found four criteria
to measure alternative education pro-
grams by: “whom the program serves,
where the program operates, what the program
offers, and how the program is structured.” Be-
tween Camp Davis, Deep Springs College, Alzar
School and NELP
, there were a few important
similarities: Class sizes are small and instructor-to-
student ratios are high. They’re structured more
like a community than a classroom, and the goal
is to offer more than educational learning. They’re
selective, and students
want
to be there.
***
U.S. Highway 191 winds its way north through
the rolling Gros Ventre wilderness, toward Jack-
son and the sharp peaks of the Teton range. It’s
punctuated by turn-offs to ranches with names
like Bourbon Whiskey, Broken Arrow and Spot-
ted Horse. Like NELP
, the trip to Hoback, Wyo-
ming begins in a U-M van, five students each.
Camp Davis’ driveway is signaled by its hanging
wooden sign, emblazoned with the University’s
block ‘M,’ but anyone will tell you it’s the large
metal moose, property of Bourbon Whiskey, that
declares the geology students have made it. From
above, the driveway looks like someone draped a
ribbon across the land. It’s a full mile of packed dirt
and gravel road with a 15 mph speed limit. On the
group’s third day of driving west, a caravan of tired
strangers inches their way toward Mt. Anne and
the small camp tucked in at the base.
Even though all four programs are housed in
the realm of alternative education, they operate
differently. Camp Davis, Alzar and Deep Springs
have campuses designed for educational use,
meaning they have classrooms, labs and comput-
ers for some lessons. The rest take place wherever
the instructors deem appropriate. At Alzar, that
means anything from English class on the banks
of the Payette River, though an empty classroom is
nearby, to learning about environmental steward-
ship in the woods with a drill in hand. Camp Davis
students chatter about their upcoming Yellow-
stone trip over the morning’s scrambled eggs and
bacon. An hour later, they’re running across the
driveway, towing tents and hiking boots and the
occasional floatie for relaxing after class.
Unlike the other three, NELP doesn’t have a
permanent space. All of its materials — tents and
camping equipment, kitchen utensils and hun-
dreds of books for the camp library among other
things — are packed into a shipping container for
the winter. All 53 members of the community par-
ticipate in Work Day, where the camp transforms
into a working, educational space. In my six weeks
there, I attended class on three different docks, in
the woods, in a tent on a backpacking trip, in the
camp kitchen and taught my optional, student-led
elective class in a treehouse.
All four programs also emphasize isolation.
Though Camp Kabeyun had perfect cell service
and sat only a few miles from two towns, NELP’s
world rarely extended beyond the camp’s grounds.
Just across Lake Winnipesaukee sat our flashing
green light of civilization, visible and audible all
hours of the day. We were self-isolating.
“
We value hard work and simple living at
NELP
,” the educational philosophy explains. “As a
way to build a solid foundation for our intellectual
explorations during the program, free of unneces-
sary distractions.” As it turns out, reading that sen-
tence and living it were two very different things.
During the seven-week academic semesters
at Deep Springs, no one is allowed
in or out of the
campus, except the student driver. Camp Davis
students are allowed to leave only on their off days
and at their professors’ discretion. NELP students
can drive into town once a week for supplies or
stop on the way back from a backpacking trip. Al-
zar students live and study on campuses on two
continents, but the focus rarely leaves those two
places unless it’s an expedition. And, of course,
physical isolation is just the first step. Such small,
remote communities are key to tight-knit, high-
functioning ones.
“You just have to have higher expectations of
your students. They’re embedded in it. They don’t
get to go home,” Fisher said. “And that’s a privilege.
That’s a privilege to be able to do without — some
people need to go home.”
During the last week of NELP
, I attended Maya
West’s class on Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” in
the art room. Maya has been teaching at NELP for
years and was probably in the double digits with
this text, but because this wasn’t a lecture, the les-
son changed every time. A handful of us sat on the
freshly stained porch, frustrated with each other
and with what felt like a book devoted to contra-
dictions. Across the camp, another instructor rang
the bell to signal that class was over, and the group
split off into different directions to unwind. Maya
and I walked to the kitchen together (for week five,
we both worked for the lunch crew).
“Honestly, where does Thoreau get off?” I
asked, exasperated. “He comes from a huge seat of
privilege to be able to refuse government services
on the grounds that he, himself, is in a position of
not needing it.”
Maya swung open the screen door as Sayali
Amin, a fellow student, walked in from the mess
hall. A rising junior in LSA who splits her time
between studying neuroscience, English and
working in The Daily’s newsroom, she’d taped the
NELP flyer to her refrigerator weeks before she
applied.
As we went through the walk-in fridge for
leftovers, heated-up stew and washed lettuce,
our frustration with Thoreau’s essays spilled over
into the cooking. We kept poking at his ideas, ask-
ing questions while chopping vegetables, until we
plated the food and I felt like I’d finally cracked
open the meaning of his writing.
“Learning never ended,” Amin said months lat-
er on the couches of The Daily newsroom. “Which
was really cool. It just kind of bled through ev-
ery part of your day, like into your meals and into
cooking and into cleaning and everything that I
really appreciated where it just never felt isolated.
It never felt super concentrated and it never felt
overwhelming.”
The emphasis on community in alternative
education landscapes is essential to the entire
operation. NELP and Deep Springs thrive on a
co-op style of living, where everyone contributes
and cultivates the living environment. At Deep
Springs, work shifts divide up the farm, ranch and
everyday chores. Each rotation typically lasts for
two months. “The labor pillar is valued most for
its pedagogical function,” the college explains. It’s
designed to harbor responsibility, trust, leadership,
and appreciation for everything in your commu-
nity. NELP conducts interviews during the appli-
cation process, but I didn’t realize until after that
it was mostly to see who would — and wouldn’t
—thrive in such a small community. There is no
invisible janitorial or kitchen staff to ensure camp
runs smoothly and food appears when the dinner
bell is rung.
“There’s an obvious necessity to the work we
do here,” Michael Leger, a 2016 Deep Springs
graduate, explained about the school. “Cows need
to be fed. The garbage needs to be taken out. Eggs
need to be rinsed so that they can be used for
breakfast. You need to take your responsibilities
seriously because there are immediate and urgent
consequences if you don’t do your job well.” These
programs are framed as educational experiences,
with the understanding that education doesn’t
come solely from classes.
At Deep Springs, current students choose the
next class, and about 200-300 people apply for
12-15 spots. After writing six essays and sitting for
interviews, a small portion of the pool spends a few
days at the school. They mimic Deep Springs life to
see if it’s the right fit for them. Maybe, more impor-
tantly, it’s a test to see if they’re the right fit for Deep
Springs. All of these programs assemble a class of
strangers, place them into an isolated area, add on
pressures like academics, a new environment and
shared responsibilities, then use whatever hap-
pens as teaching moments.
With that community comes redesigned rela-
tionships, specifically between students and teach-
ers. Sometimes, own the third day of a backpacking
trip, an instructor gets tired. They’re hungry, some-
one in the group twists their ankle and everyone’s
frustrated. The instructor is only human, and that’s
just as much of a learning opportunity as when a
professor lectures to a roomful of scribbling hands.
It’s just different material.
For the chance
of knowing
something
BY ANNIE KLUSENDORF, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
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