No Great Bear from Great Barrington

I'm in Massachusetts on a last minute trip for the Fairbanks School District as a liaison for a UAF science grant. I'm at Bard College at Simon's Rock, observing an Early College Program for kids ages 15-19. Essentially, here is a college curriculum being offered to kids who still have a zest for life and are unaware or don't care about political and personal ramifications for speaking their mind. The program is great- staffed with altruistic college level professors using a college curricula with lots of literacy enriched ideas. This training will result in some serious planning with the BioPrep team and maybe even roll over into some long term planning on how to keep gifted students in school.

Some of the activities that I have enjoyed are: attending "As You Like It" at Shakespeare & Co in Lenox, Massachusetts, attending a lecture by Shaitai Hartman on her book, "Lose Your Mother", eating lunch with very smart students, attending classes and discussions on integrating literacy, walks in woods of maple trees and watching the Olympics on TV.

NY weather has been great except for a serious thunderstorm the other night. I started walking home from the college the other night after the lecture. Unfortunately, it was really dark out which surprised me. In Alaska, summer warmth means midnight sun. In spite of it, I started to walk. The narrow road and lack of street lights rather spooked me and the cars whizzing by convinced me to accept a ride from my comrades . It turned out to be a good idea anyway because of the torrential downpour shortly afterwards.


Simon's Rock College is beautiful and well designed. It has very few students of color (except international) and at $25,000 per semester, is out of reach for many families. In spite of the reassurance of staff and students that financial aid packages are generous, most of the kids are brilliant, rich, female and serious about learning. It's a teacher dream come true. My own children may have thrived in this very enriched environment, graduating with a bachelor's degree at age 20. But then again, we were fishing. And traveling. And hobnobbing with the less fortunate, less brilliant and less privileged.