Before coming to Clark Street Community School, Natalie Krogul had some very specific ideas about what it meant to be college ready. “I needed to have this grade point average, and this many extracurriculars, and this score on this standardized test,” she recalls, “I just need to be ‘the best’ and that will make me college-ready.” Throughout her freshman year in a traditional high school, the stress of this self-imposed bar created a running thought pattern: maybe I should join another club, maybe I should take a harder class, maybe I am not doing enough. “It was a really stressful experience and wasn’t making me happy.”
Coming to Clark Street changed Natalie’s ideas about what it meant to be college-ready and what she wanted in her education, “The structure removes barriers to authentic learning. The lack of grades is something that scares people, but it actually allows you to learn more, to try things without a penalty of failure. If you try and you are not where you need to be, you just keep working on it.”
The structure and community at Clark Street supported Natalie in revising her definition of college-ready, “At CSCS, I was able to think about my future education in a way that would meet my needs. The narrative I had about college totally fell away and became something much more meaningful and authentic. For a long time I was worried about looking impressive to a college, but at a certain point I realized that I get to choose the college that is right for me; they need to impress me a little bit. I had developed a better sense of what I wanted from my education and a lot more confidence in myself.”
What was once a somewhat rigid list of must-do items became a highly personalized path to graduation and beyond, “There is so much power in being able to modify your own experience and having a sense of agency from a pretty young age. I was able to graduate and go on to college and into my working life able to articulate what I want to do, to learn, and know what kinds of experiences I want for myself. Having these experiences in high school was rigorous in a way that didn’t feel like checking the boxes.”
Looking back, Natalie describes CSCS as a place that “allows you to be naturally curious and push yourself at your own pace, which is both more comfortable and more meaningful.” While Clark Street is different from a traditional high school, Natalie reflects, “It allows for so many experiences that I wouldn’t have had in a traditional school. I look back and see so many things I did related to leadership, experiential learning, community learning - that were really self-motivated and I could not have had anywhere else.”
Natalie Krogull graduated from Clark Street Community School in 2016 and graduated from Knox College with a double major in Secondary Education and English with an emphasis on Creative Writing. Natalie is currently a Recruitment and Outreach Coordinator for the University of Wisconsin - Madison School of Pharmacy.