Alpha_Alternative_School_1972–2012-Yumpu

Jamie Leonard
“At ALPHA the students asked just as
many questions as the teachers.”
Given that so many of my devel op men tal years were spent at ALPHA,
there are many aspects of my expe ri ence that formed who I am and how
I look at the world. The sense of per sonal respon si bil ity and free dom to
explore what inter ested you—with direc tion of course—was both a ter rific
strength and (rarely) a bit of a weak ness. At ALPHA the stu dents asked just
as many ques tions as the teach ers. The teach ers usu ally sat at tables with
the stu dents, and took far more of a per sonal inter est in every stu dent
than in a main stream school. I sus pect the nature of the school itself drew
teach ers who wanted that inter ac tion. We were guided, occa sion ally led,
but often just let to run.
Jamie Leonard
ALPHA late 1970s to 1980s,
ages 4 – 13. Stud ied Journal
ism at Ryer son Uni versity.
Works in Infor ma tion
Technology/Server Sup port.
Rides, col lects, and writes
about motorcycles.
I remem ber a sci ence project—it was one of those light bulb moments where
you are work ing through things and all of a sud den a lit tle piece of the universe
clicks into place. An edu ca tion that makes you respon si ble for your
own learn ing process teaches you some thing very valu able: how to keep
learn ing, how to explore things that catch your inter est, and how to look at
the world as some thing of a mys tery to be explored.
You didn’t fall into the trap of con ven tion al ity in your think ing, and didn’t
develop the fear of try ing new things. Wood carv ing comes to mind; it isn’t
some thing I would have sought out, but I did try it and enjoyed the experi
ence. Mak ing wire frame plas ter ban dage sculp tures. Build ing a knight’s
suit of armor out of tape and found objects. Developing my own pho tos and
pho tog ra phy. I mean, how many kids those days would have had access to
a darkroom? Just being around par ents and stu dents who were fero ciously
cre ative was a good experience.
I remem ber spend ing a week on an ani mated clay ma tion film. I had a
news caster hav ing a bad day, hair piece falling off his head, papers get ting
blown away, falling over his desk, fol lowed by peo ple being chased by a
dinosaur—because a fly ing toupée just nat u rally leads to think ing about
dinosaurs of course.
I’ve always had an inter est in com put ers, which started at ALPHA with
the excit ing world of the Com modore PET. Amaz ing how a waver ing green
screen with 80 char ac ters in a row was filled with so much imag i na tion.
Now I work in IT/server sup port for a com pany that makes sen sors for
steel mills, in a range of build ings from oil soaked machine shops to clean
room labs with signs right out of a Bond movie—BEWARE OF LASER
being one example.
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