Eleanor Koenig describes herself as always having been “annoyingly independent”. In her freshman year at a traditional high school, Eleanor recalls looking at her schedule and realizing that she had, “...almost no freedom; I couldn’t even pick my own classes let alone create my own schedule.” Clark Street Community School provided a system with many more choices and independence.
At Clark Street, Eleanor found more than freedom - she built tools and skill sets that allowed her to navigate the responsibility of making her own decisions, “At Clark Street I learned time management - and really, self-management. This is something I have carried with me throughout my life. There are not the same kinds of syllabi, grades, deadlines that do the work of planning and organizing for you - you have to learn to do this for yourself. Taking ownership of this and building my skills helped me in college and in my working life. The system I designed to manage my learning at CSCS is still the system I use to manage my work and life today.”
Looking back, Eleanor values having had the opportunity to make decisions both about what she wanted to learn and how she wanted to learn, “It was helpful for me to have this freedom and responsibility before attending college where I had so many options and so many decisions to make.” The personalized and project-based design of Clark Street allowed Eleanor opportunities to try out things she wanted to learn about and determine what was interesting or important to her, “I got lots of opportunities to choose things I wanted to learn about and also see that if it wasn’t for me, that wasn’t the end of the world. I could still learn a lot from it.”
“Coming to Clark Street was extremely beneficial for me personally and academically,” Eleanor reflects. While not everyone might have the same independent spirit that motivates Eleanor, she believes that, “CSCS is a school for anybody and everybody. It is different, but that doesn’t mean you can’t thrive there. You are going to get different perspectives and opportunities than you would in a traditional school environment.”
Eleanor Koenig graduated from CSCS in 2016 and graduated from Beloit College with a BA in Anthropology. She is currently a manager of publisher relations for Macklin Educational Resources.