PEOPLE...

Alan P. Berger, Founder, Director, Advisor and Member of the Board of Trustees
Alan is the founder of Brooklyn Free School and has been its director for the past three years. Alan was a certified New York State and City high school teacher and administrator for seven years prior to starting BFS. He was one of the leaders of the effort to incorporate more true project-based and applied learning experiences into schools and was a member of the school's leadership team which operated on a consensus decisionmaking process.

Alan is totally committed to the democratic process of education and each child's innate ability to take control over their own learning and personal development. Previous to his experience with the Department of Education, he developed and ran tennis programs for children ages 5 – 12, coached junior varsity tennis teams and tutored Japanese citizens living in NYC in English. Alan has also worked in various management capacities in the cable television business. He holds a BA degree in sociology from Albany State University, an MBA in corporate finance from Pace University, and an SAS advanced certificate (School Administration and Supervision) from Baruch College.

Alan lives in Park Slope with his wife, Alexandra Anormaliza, who works for the NYC Department of Education in their central headquarters. Her daughter Arielle goes to the Brooklyn Free School. Alan's son, Alexander, is a graduate of Brooklyn Free School and is in his second year at Evergreen State College.

Jonathan Ho, Advisor
Jonathan joined the BFS staff in 2007. Originally from Taiwan, he moved to the US at the age of 7 and grew up in the quiet suburbs of the midwest. Upon completing degrees in mechanical engineering and English Literature at the University of Michigan, he traded road trips for subways and joined the NYC Teaching Fellows. After a brief stint teaching math and earth science in Crown Heights while earning a masters degree from Brooklyn College, he discovered democratic education and Brooklyn Free School. He reads, writes, draws, and makes books.

Lily Mercogliano, High School Advisor and Member Board of Trustees
Lily Mercogliano is proud to be a member of such an incredible school community. Herself a graduate of a Free School in Albany, NY, Lily joined the BFS staff in 2005 after graduating from Northeastern University with a B.A. in History and Secondary Education. As an advisor for the high school program she has been fortunate to teach some of the most uniquely gifted and talented young people imaginable, and to work with such a dedicated team of fellow educators, interns, parents, and volunteers. Lily joined the BFS Board of Trustees in 2007, and has served on a variety of school committees over the years. She loves laughing, cooking, baking, hiking, and growing with this school.

Tawni Bell, Lower School Advisor, Intern Program Co-coordinator
What can I say? I love kids and I love to play. I came to this amazing school in 2007 shortly after moving to New York City from the beautiful Pacific Northwest with my husband. My road to BFS included living in Hawaii, Chicago, and varies cities in Washington State while studying and living the among the arts. Along the way I picked up a BA in Theatre and Creative Writing and an MA in Interdisciplinary Art. Teaching and mentoring at Brooklyn Free School is one of the most inspiring and challenging (in a good way) periods of my life to date. Being a part of this community encourages and enables me to model life long learning for our students. It has deepened my understanding of being a part of a team, a family, and our society. When not at or thinking about Brooklyn Free School (and sometimes simultaneously) I am dancing with my daughter, laughing with my husband, playing sports, or making stuff.

Sarah Mercogliano, Lower School Advisor
Sarah was born in Albany, NY and was lucky to have a very diverse educational career. She began it by spending 13 years at the Albany Free School where she learned what it means to be a free schooler. She loved math class and the amazing trip she got to go on with her class. Sarah decided she was ready to try out public school once she finished 8th grade and went from a class of 8 students to a class of 900. She loved meeting new friends, playing sports, and searching out the positives in public education, but always knew something was missing. After graduating from Ithaca College she decided it was time to get back to city living and see what options were out there. While studying for her Masters in Childhood Education at Brooklyn College Sarah got very frustrated with the hoops she had to jump through in the public school system and had a hard time agreeing with many of the ideals her public school trained professors were preaching at her. Lucky for her, just as Sarah’s frustration with the New York City Public School System reached its height, BFS posted a job offering and she got to return to her progressive school roots and see what it would be like to be on the other side of the Free School movement as a teacher.

In her free time Sarah loves to be in the outdoors hiking, swimming, and relaxing. She also loves to bake (and loves sharing this love with students) and make her small Brooklyn apartment smell like the most wonderful Italian food!

Liliana Gomez, Middle School Advisor
Liliana joined BFS in the Fall of 2010 excited to continue her work and learning in democratic schools. Formerly a teacher at Teddy McArdle Free School in New Jersey, Liliana joined the Northeast free school movemnent shortly after retuning to the States in 2007 after 11 years of living abroad.

In her time outside of the US, Liliana followed her dream of becoming an organic farmer and learning to build homes out of natural materials, such as earth cob, waddle and dob, and adobe. In her journeys she also helped to found the School For Alternative Living in the Foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in northern Colombia, which provided educational opportunities for all ages in permaculture and natural construction.

Liliana is passionate about youth, the earth, working towards peace and compassionate social horizontalism. She believes that empowering young people through community engagement, social activism, and democratic education, can foster a future where social justice will thrive. She is also thrilled that her ten year old daughter Primitiva is attending BFS.

Katherine Chew, School Counselor and Member Board of Trustees
Katherine Chew, MSW, is a native Brooklynite and mother of two who helped found Brooklyn Free School to create a supportive and enriching community for her children and other children in NYC. Years later, BFS is a vibrant community of active, caring people of all ages pursuing what they want, challenging themselves, sharing knowledge and passions, and doing the work of building solid community. Katherine has a BA in English and Drama from Tufts University, and a Masters in Social Work from New York University. She works part time as the BFS counselor, and has worked elsewhere as a Clinical Social Worker with teens and families, an addictions counselor, an outpatient therapist and group facilitator, and teaching theater to children. Katherine lives in Prospect Heights with her husband and 2 children, both of whom are now long-time BFS students. She spends as much time as possible with her kids, reading, dancing, walking in the woods, playing and making cool stuff. BFS has remained a significant and positive force in her and her family's lives for these past 8 years, and we are all so grateful to be part of this community.

Kathy McCullagh, Curriculum Advisor
Kathy was an early childhood classroom teacher in progressive New York City public and private schools for ten years and then served as a school director in progressive public schools for five years. She has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in education, supervision, literacy and curriculum development at Bank Street College and Long Island Unversity and supervises student teachers for Long Island University. She has also been a parent activist in her children's schools, working on issues of class size, standardized testing and race. She holds an MS in Supervision and Administration and an MA in Early Childhood and Elementary Education, both from Bank Street College in New York City, and a BS in Interdisciplinary Studies from Friends World College (now the Global Studies Program of Long Island University). In addition Kathy has been an enthusiastic student of, and participant in, the descriptive review processes developed by Pat Carini and others at the Prospect School in North Bennington, Vermont and applied in schools around the country. These processes support the respectful study of children's learning, activities, and works by using observation and description as the ground for teaching and inquiry. Kathy has worked with BFS since it's second year as a facilitator of descriptive work and staff support. She is thrilled to join more fully in the daily life of this vibrant and flourishing community in the role of curriculum advisor. Kathy lives, with her husband and two children in Park Slope, Brooklyn where she likes to garden, cook and escape to the great outdoors now and then. Her oldest child is a thriving BFS student.

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David Easton, Member Board of Trustees
Born in New Jersey and raised in rural Connecticut, I'm a country boy at heart. After 18 years of running through the woods, jumping off gorges and living amidst nature I moved to the big city where I surrounded myself with much needed diversity. Over the next four years I studied at NYU where I received my Bachelor's of Fine Arts for film and television production (with a minor in philosophy). The city and all that it has to offer has captivated me ever since.

A few years ago I pursued my interest in education and became a NYC teaching Fellow and started teaching special education in Ozone Park, Queens while getting my masters from Queens College. My experience at the middle school where I worked led me to start researching alternative methods to the standard public school way. I loved my students and felt sorry that they were expected to conform to the system and not the other way around. I am a constant self-directed learner and feel that it is really the only way that anyone learns anything. I truly believe that living is learning and learning is living and I can't imagine having one without the other.

Jerry Mintz, Advisor, Consultant and Member Board of Trustees
Jerry is the founder and director of AERO (Alternative Education Resource Organization), which is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year. He was also the founder and director, for 17 years, of a democratic free school in Vermont, The Shaker Mountain School. Jerry has worked extensively during his career with parents, educators, and others who have been interested in alternative forms of education for their children, to start new schools, learning centers, and other non-traditional educational models. Jerry is the author of a new book, No Homework and Recess All Day: How To Have Freedom and Democracy in Education.

Sheryll Durrant, Member Board of Trustees
Sheryll, along with her husband, is a founding parent of the Brooklyn Free School. She was educated in the public school system of Jamaica, which is very much tied to the British grammar school system - very strict, uniformed, and academic. She feels her son should experience a freer type of education: self-directed and self-motivated - a system that engenders a love for learning. She is interested in her son becoming a well rounded human being, rather than succumbing to the atmosphere of enforced obedience that is found in more institutional settings. She graduated with a BBA in International Marketing from Baruch College/CUNY, 1993. She worked in various industries: house wares, advertising, publishing, newspapers, fashion and finance. In the early 1990's she owned and operated Hummingbird Gallery, in Soho, NY. She recently left a position as a Senior Manager at St. John's University in their Marketing and Communications Department, and is now volunteering her time to Sustainable Flatbush, a community energy and sustainability non profit.

Corinne Goodman, Musical Theater Director and Member Board of Trustees
Corinne Goodman has been an educational activist and teacher all her adult life. She is delighted that the Brooklyn Free School is flourishing and was such a healing and transformative place for her son Silvan for the four years that he attended the school. After graduating from Brooklyn Free School, Silvan took a year off from school, and is now a student at Ithaca College's School of Communication. Corinne also has a daughter who graduated from Emerson College in Boston with a BFA in Musical Theater, and who attended alternative public schools in Brooklyn and Manhattan from kindergarten through high school. Her daughter is currently in the cast of the Broadway revival of Hair. With a BA in elementary education, Corinne taught in various public and private schools in NYC and Massachusetts for many years. She was a founding parent of the Brooklyn New School, where she was on staff teaching music for seven years. As a parent, she was the chair of the Parent Involvement Committee at the Brooklyn New School, and a PTA Co-Chair of the NYC Museum School in Manhattan. Corinne is a professional singer, and has taught voice technique privately and at The New School For Social Research for over 20 years. She is currently the Director of Brooklyn Summer Players, a 4-week musical theater summer program for 8-13 year olds, and Brooklyn Players School-Year Classes for First Graders and up, both in Park Slope. She is the Vocal Coach at The Rosetta Lenoire Musical Theater Academy for 14-20 year olds in Manhattan, and is the Director of the annual musical at Brooklyn Free School that has a cast of over twenty students from ages 5-19.

Randy Karr, Member Board of Trustees
Randy Karr works for the NYS Office of Mental Health coordinating the Information Center in a psychiatric facility. She has a B.A. in Art Education and a Certificate in Computer Programming from NYU. Upon hearing about the formation of the Brooklyn Free School in December of 2002, she immediately became involved in working toward making the school a thriving reality for her son and others. Her son continues to blossom there. She is a member of the Park Slope Food Coop, Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Mariano Torras, Ph.D., Member Board of Trustees
Mariano Torras has a B.S. (1988) from New York University, an M.A. (1993) from Fordham University, and an M.A. (1995) and Ph.D. in economics (2000) from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He presently teaches economics at Adelphi University in Garden City, NY, and credits his experience working with college students---many of whom are both severely deficient in basic skills (math, reading, and writing) and uninterested in learning for its own sake---to opening his mind to democratic education and self-directed learning. Despite being a “successful” product of the NYC system of public schooling, he wants his two sons and daughter (along with as many other kids as possible!) to have a more enriching educational experience than was available to him, one that sparks instead of stifling kids' natural curiosities about how the world works. He is thrilled that his two sons are attending the Brooklyn Free School, and looks forward to sending his youngest child when she is old enough. In addition to teaching economics at Adelphi, he has published numerous articles on sustainable development in scientific journals and recently published a book on the environmental and social consequences of economic growth in Brazil. Among other professional groups, he is affiliated with the Association for Social Economics and the International Society of Ecological Economists. He has also been on the staff of the Center for Popular Economics, and is a member of the Park Slope Greens, Brooklyn Parents for Peace, and the Park Slope Food Co-op. He is, however, most proud of his involvement with all the kindred spirits on the Brooklyn Free School Advisory Committee. Mariano keeps the school’s books as well.