Tal Birdsey

Starting this Fall:

Writing Tutorials with Tal Birdsey

Tal Birdsey offers individualized one-to-one writing tutorials for adolescents and adults.

Click here for information

Writing Tutorials with Tal

Spring, 2010

School Building

In the spring issue of Middlebury Magazine, writer Xander Manshel ‘09 introduced us to Tal Birdsey, a graduate of both the undergraduate College and the Bread Loaf School of English.

For the past nine years, Birdsey has led, taught, championed the little school that could—The North Branch School—in the mountainous enclave of Ripton, Vermont.

In his story, Xander captures perfectly not only what it’s like to be a middle schooler, but to be an adolescent at North Branch; in the process, he captures the essence of Tal Birdsey.

Here, listen to Xander talk to Tal—about his school, the state of secondary education, and what he’s trying to achieve in the mountains of Vermont.

http://middmag.com/2010/04/behind-the-scenes-the-writing-of-school-building/

December 27, 2009

Radical Innocence

David Moats wrote the following editorial in the Sunday, Dec. 27,
Rutland Herald and Barre-Montpelier Times Argus:

"One of the interesting books published in the last year tells the story of a teacher who founded a tiny independent school on a shoestring in the mountains of Ripton..."

(click on the link to read more)

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20091227/FEATURES15/912270351/1030/FEAT

November 17, 2009

Podcast: Tal Birdsey on the Charlie Dyer Show, KNews Radio, Palm Springs, CA

Weekdays, Charlie Dyer talks with interesting people about a variety of topics ranging from Workplace Issues to Personal Development, Science and Technology to Arts & Entertainment, Tranformative Stories to the Environment. WEDNESDAY: Tal Birdsey, author, A Room for Learning

     (Click the link to hear the interview)

http://podcasts.sixradiosites.com/knews/audio/kc112509.mp3

In the Montpelier Times-Argus November 15, 2009

A New School of Thought: Ripton Teacher Tal Birdsey Upends Convention

    "Some teachers expect students to sit quietly. Tal Birdsey encourages them to stand up and scream."

    "I want you to scream about the things that matter," he tells middle-schoolers. "You know, love, jealousy, self-doubt, joy, equality, betrayal, belief, desire, death, hope, good and evil, and everything in between."

   (click link to read more)

http://www.timesargus.com/article/20091115/FEATURES07/911150332/1016/FEATURES07

In Seven Days, November 4, 2009

The Art of Teaching Adolescents

"In some places, parents who don’t like the looks of the local public schools send their kids to established, private ones, or they homeschool. In Vermont, a third option is surprisingly popular: Starting your own."

   (click link to read more)

http://www.7dvt.com/2009art-teaching-adolescents

"Vermont Edition"—podcast on Vermont Public Radio

Tal Birdsey discusses an alternative approach to standardized education, small schools, and emotional openness in classrooms...

A Room for Learning: The Making of a School in Vermont 

Reviewed by Ron Miller in Education Revolution Magazine

St. Martin's Press, 2009 (www.stmartins.com) 

ISBN-10: 0312547307

"This is a beautifully written personal account of an alternative school for young adolescents in a small Vermont community. Tal Birdsey is an inspired teacher who reaches out to young people with humor, honesty and wisdom. He describes his students’ struggles and insecurities, often related to their public school experiences, and how they opened deeper dimensions of themselves in the caring, human-scale community they established together. The story is warm and moving; it evokes laughter and poignancy even as it embodies a brilliant critique of standardized schooling. It is no exaggeration to say that A Room for Learning takes an honored place in the alternative education literature with classics like Sylvia Ashton-Warner’s Teacher, George Dennison’s The Lives of Children, and Chris Mercogliano’s Making it Up as We Go Along. Like them, Birdsey shows exactly how authentic education, stripped of labels, methods, and standards, nourishes the minds and hearts of growing human beings."

A Room for Learning: The Making of a School in Vermont

 "In this stirring account of a teacher and his twelve students tucked away in the mountains of Vermont, educator Tal Birdsey fervently documents the founding year of his small junior high school with wit and humility. Part memoir, part meditation on the power of art and poetry, and part criticism of standardized education, A Room for Learning evokes a spirit of change, allowing adolescents a hand in their education. With no set curriculum and limited resources, the students delve deep into the poetry of Yeats and Bukowski, the music of Coltrane, and the emotional landscape of Elie Weisel’s Night. Isolated from mainstream culture and constantly on the brink of apathy, this diverse group of kids created a literary community that celebrated learning, and demonstrated how a classroom can be place of transformative power."

Booklist Review:

A Room For Learning: The Making of a School in Vermont.

Birdsey, Tal (Author)

Oct 2009. 288 p. St. Martin's, hardcover, $24.99. (9780312547301). 373.110092.

"Birdsey had been a stay-at-home dad for three years when he was approached to start an independent school in the small town of Ripton, Vermont. His 10 years of experience teaching seventh and eighth grade at an independent school in Atlanta gave him the kind of background his neighbors were looking for to extend the homeyness and free-spiritedness of the grade school into adolescence. Birdsey recounts the journey from that idea to the creation of a one-room school with twelve students from seventh through ninth grades. With an eclectic mix of personalities and skills, Birdsey’s students helped to guide the school year, exploring the music of Coltrane and the poetry of Frost and Stevens, the meaning of personal ethics and the mystery of science, and the typical adolescent angst of any school. In this absorbing and often-humorous account, Birdsey chronicles the growth of his students as well as his own personal development as together they searched for the real meaning of education and its power to transform the individual."

 "A ROOM FOR LEARNING is a great, great book, a marvelous depiction of the way it's 'spozed to be, of a school true to itself, of students true to themselves, all because of a great teacher and writer who risked it all to be true to himself. If Thoreau had started a school, this is the book he would have written."

  —Bernie Schein, author of If Holden Caulfield Were in My Classroom

Read More: Last Week at the North Branch School

 roomforlearning.blogspot.com

A Room for Learning: The Making of a School in Vermont can be ordered by contacting your local independent bookseller. Tal's favorite local bookstore is www.vermontbookshop.com

or at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com

Contact Tal Birdsey

tal.birdsey@gmail.com

North Branch School

roomforlearning.blogspot.com