Will Macfarlane was one of Camp Kaleidoscope's co-founders in 2006 and has taught hands-on science and computer programming in a variety of settings (homeschooling groups, after-school programs, an artist's collective).He interned at the Blue Mountain School, a democratically run, non-coercive school in Oregon, and is very interested in self-directed learning. During the non-summer months, he writes software for mos architects, and starts more projects than he finishes.
Katie Gradowski writes literary criticism and bakes bread. After a long flirtation with public radio, she spent last summer with the Prometheus Radio Project learning a little bit about advocacy and democratically run groups. She's halfway through a doctoral degree (in English) and very excited to help kids create documentary projects of their own. In her spare time, she teaches writing to freshmen, builds radios out of oatmeal boxes, turns milk into cheese, and fantasizes about making community a workable thing.
Mike Nagle is fascinated by how people learn and wants to build environments to help people learn better. Fundamentally, he thinks people learn best when they trust themselves above all else and are fully in control of their learning environment. He built Camp Kaleidoscope — a place where kids can build, make, and play as they wish — and is now working on building similar environments for adults: namely sprout! If he didn’t think learning was such an important thing to work on, and if our education system wasn’t in such vital need of repair and renewal, he would probably be a hardcore mathematician and a softcore DJ.
Terry Murray, “the Inventor-Mentor” , has been providing enrichment and mentoring programs in schools for 8 years. Recent school mentoring projects include hovercrafts, electric snow scooters, automated snowball and water ballon launchers, and remote controlled robotics. As an accomplished MIT trained inventor and mechanical engineer with 25 years of experience, Terry brings the experience of the real world into the exciting realm of kid invention.
Stevo Steinfeld first came to camp kaleidoscope in 2008, where he loved organizing art projects, baking bread, and hiking. He has been a private language tutor in English and French, a TA in university groups, an English teacher for public schools in France, and this spring is working with a conservation/education group based in Oregon, Northwest Youth Corps. This summer he hopes to teach plant identification skills, cooking, (and maybe some french lessons!), and explore knitting and weaving projects.
Rob Fishel is an accomplished musician, a versatile performer, conductor, arranger, and composer, and a patient and articulate teacher and learner. He's put his skills to use in various places around the Portland, OR music and theater scenes, works as a musical director and composer for a children's musical theater program every summer, and butters his bread as a church music director.