Staff Bios
2010 bios coming in the spring...
who's on staff
You'll find descriptions on our five bio pages of most of the 2009 staff. A few people still aren't 100% confirmed, and things sometimes shift a little during the summer so there may be changes, but here's what it's looking like so far.
Grace wrote or revised some of the bios, so anything that sounds arrogant is probably her fault.
photo of Grace, Frankie, and Maya by Gayatri Janine Banks, NBTSC 2006
Director
Grace Llewellyn, 45
Eugene, Oregon
Grace is most well known for her book, The Teenage Liberation Handbook: how to quit school and get a real life and education. She's also the co-author and/or editor of 3 other books, most recently Guerrilla Learning: how to give your kids a real education with or without school*. A former school teacher, Grace founded NBTSC in 1996. Since 1991, she has been involved in the un/homeschooling movement in numerous ways--she has spoken at conferences, directed a resource center, and produced a mail order book catalog for unschoolers.
In her other life, Grace loves to dance. She performs bellydance weekly at Cafe Maroc, a North African restaurant in Eugene, and also for occasional festivals, parties, and other events. Though not as obsessed with Argentine tango as a couple years back, she still makes it to a practica or milonga (tango dance party) once a week or so. And she is particularly excited about the fact that she's in a training program with her mentors Vinn Marti and Zuza Engler, learning to teach an ecstatic dance practice called Soul Motion.
Grace's more official bio is here, links to interviews with and articles about her are here, and her rarely-updated personal website is here.
At camp, Grace's intention is to connect with, and enjoy, every single camper and every single staff person. Some sessions that works out, and other sessions tedious disciplinary necessities and other stuff gets in the way, but she still usually knows everybody's name by the second or third night. Another important part of her role is to pay attention to the overall tone and energy of each camp session, and to do what she can (with help from campers and staff) to keep things harmonious and inspiring. She also tries to keep her eyes on every aspect of camp to make sure things are going OK or, preferably, much better than OK. And she spends a lot of time making notes for meetings with individual people and groups, and runs daily staff meetings, and all-camp morning meeting and evening meeting. And deals with discipline issues when they come up. Her workshops usually focus on dance, various aspects of writing and publishing, and goal setting and issues related to unschooling.
During the year, she reflects on the larger purpose, direction, and vision of NBTSC; communicates with campers and parents; reviews feedback from campers, staff, and parents; plans and implements major and minor changes and experiments for the coming camp year; hires staff; inspects all the previous year's camp expenses and sets a budget for the coming year; updates all written camp materials, policies, and such; and works closely with the administrative goddesses to make sure everything that needs to get done gets done. And, she updates this website from time to time.
Unschooling history: It took her a while to figure it out. First she went to school, and college, and taught school. Then she started to think there must be a better way, investigated, discovered John Holt, and that was the beginning of the end. Or the beginning of the beginning.
Camp history: Grace holds the one and only near-perfect attendance award. (She missed part of Vermont in 2007 and 2008 due to her Soul Motion teacher training.) She has always directed, and often taken an advisee group too.
*The other author of Guerrilla Learning is Amy Silver, who advised at NBTSC one year, and is the mother of one of our campers, and is also the mother of advisor Carsie Blanton, and is the stepmom of advisor Amos Blanton--and is also an amazing songwriter...
Admin goddesses
Sarabeth Matilsky, 29
Ithaca, New York
Year-round office goddess and east coast liaison
Sarabeth joined us as our East Coast liaison in 2004, and now operates the year round NBTSC office for both Oregon and Vermont. She has fabulous organizational skills, and is a delightful person for campers and parents to be in contact with prior to camp.
In 1996, Sarabeth came to the first-ever NBTSC as a sixteen-year-old camper. Growing up in suburban New Jersey in the eighties, there wasn't a whole lot of support for unschooling, and she was blown away by her NBTSC experience. She decided to do something BIG with her own life, and in 1997 she rode her bicycle 4500 miles across the country to camp (solo except for the great folks she met along the way).
Fast forward to 2009: Sarabeth lives in Ithaca, NY with her most excellent husband (whom she met on that fateful bike trip so long ago!), and their two boys, Ben Starling and Jem Reed (both born at home on, respectively, 1/10/04 and 8/5/07). Some of Sarabeth's many interests (most of which she will resume participation in once both children start sleeping through the night): hosting dinner parties, playing piano, discovering and listening to music by independent and wonderful artists, cooking and baking, doing pilates, writing, and wholistic health and nutrition.
Sarabeth and Jeff's latest adventures include raising "diaper-free" babies, moving to Ithaca, NY so that Sarabeth could cook at the famous Moosewood Restaurant, more recently moving to EcoVillage at Ithaca, a cohousing community just outside of town, and undertaking their first whole-family bicycle trip.
Unschooling history: Sarabeth is the oldest of 5 sibs who have always unschooled. Having been at it for so long and in a very thoughtful, dedicated way (and written about and otherwise shared their experiences in numerous forums), the Matilskys have served as role models for many other unschoolers. Ben and Jem, like their mother, have been unschooling since birth.
Camp history: Camper in 1996 and 1997. Advisor 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 (Session 2 and 3), 2003 (Session 1 and 3) and 2004 (WV), logistics goddess in West Virginia 2004 and in Vermont 2006. Advisor in Vermont, 2008.
During the year, Sarabeth communicates with campers, parents, and staff, and processes all kinds of information related to them and to camp. Together with her husband Jeff Amaral, who is a Linux whiz, she translates NBTSC's forms and questionnaires into an online registration system that cuts down massively on the killing of trees and on the necessity of tedious re-typing of data. Sarabeth also pulls together gazillions of details ranging from workshop supplies to compiling directories to coordinating everybody's travel plans.
photo--Sarabeth and Ben at the prom, NBTSC Vermont 2006
Francisca (Frankie) Cruz, 21
San Francisco, California
Logistics Goddess at all camps, 2009
I quit school when I was 14, in my first semester of high school. Until then I had attended mostly alternative schools, ranging from Montessori to arts/math magnet schools, and I'd "homeschooled" for a year in second grade that mostly involved me telling my mom I wanted nothing to do with flash cards or handwriting lessons. After attending high school for a semester I realized it was doing more damage than good, and decided I'd rather stay home and sew, cook, write, and take pictures with my sister. Through the combined effort of my aunt, mother, grandmother, and myself, I stumbled upon Sudbury schools and Grace's Teenage Liberation Handbook. Beneath the worrying and slightly skeptical gaze of my family, and with the support of an anarchist community I had adopted in my hometown, I became a proud drop out.
In the seven years since, I began the creation of a pirate radio station, interned on an organic farm, traveled copiously around the United States (in my sturdy 15 year old car named Nito) and Puerto Rico, experienced life changing relationships, made art, learned to milk goats, flirted with college, worked fly rails in a theater, lurked around Los Angeles' Garment District, moved [what feels like] a few hundred times, and worked in a handful of restaurants. A couple years ago I moved into a collective house of folks who have all at one time or another staffed at NBTSC, worked at a Montessori school, learned a little about working lights at a live music venue, became heavily involved in a therapy technique called Re-Evaluation Counseling or Co-Counseling, worked as a permaculture landscaper, and spray painted everything I could get my hands on silver. Recently, I've been living with a group of close friends & unschoolers in San Francisco, and am considering the weighty decision of committing to studying medicine.
Camp History: camper 2003-2006, 2006 junior staff, dish queen, Logistics Goddess since 2007
Maya Toccata Lester, 28
Joshua Tree, California
2009 staff liaison
(photo by Maggie Levin, 2002)
Alas, Maya can't make it to camp this year, but she is our trusty behind-the-scenes staff coordinator and liaison. 
In her former life, Maya lived in Eugene and ran Grace's office (Not Back to School Camp, plus other stuff) for about 5 years. After camp in 2005 she and her husband Damian moved to Joshua Tree, California, where she now tries to stay hydrated while she rides her bike around the desert, and tends to her garden, fruit trees and cute chickens. She's passionate about growing, preparing and eating food, and sometimes does that for money. (As of this writing she hasn't found anyone to pay her for eating food, but folks seem to enjoy paying her to grow and cook it.) Mostly though she makes money by working in her local health food store.
Maya grew up in Vancouver, Canada and still loves rain very much. She's done some learning about counseling, conflict resolution, and general empowerment and loves those things too. She loves most things, actually.
unschooling history: Maya went to school until she was 13, when she read the Teenage Liberation Handbook and quit. She then proceeded to learn about hats, hardware stores, Anne Frank, traveling solo, rock climbing, newsletter editing, self defense, and life.
camp history: Maya came to camp for the first time in 1997, and has been present every year and almost every session since then. She came so many times, in fact, and was so cute and smart and nice and peaceful and competent that eventually Grace had no choice but to hire her as a junior staff person (in 2000) and then (later in 2000) as the year-round office manager and, starting in 2001, the logistics goddess of NBTSC. Grace finally realized at camp in 2004 that the term "logistics goddess" no longer fully reflected Maya's role at camp, and renamed her "assistant director." While she no longer runs the office or officially holds the AD title at every session she attends, Grace (and probably everyone else) often still thinks of her that way.
Next.....please choose a session, and enjoy meeting more of the NBTSC staff.
Contact the camp office.