History

The Academy for the Love of Learning was birthed from an intense ten-year collaboration between Academy President, Aaron Stern and his mentor, Leonard Bernstein. Stern, then Dean of the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, was committed to using aesthetic experience as a pathway into the kind of self-knowing and discovery that motivates and guides the natural human desire to learn. Stern’s commitment to this approach to learning found its counterpart in Bernstein’s belief that the arts, and particularly music, could play a crucial role in cultural transformation. Their shared aspiration led them to explore how to awaken, nurture and fuel a life-long love of learning as a means to becoming more fully human.

Following Bernstein’s death in 1990, Stern continued to experiment with, develop and refine this approach to learning through his work as consultant and facilitator, educator and researcher. Among his many activities was his work with teachers, school administrators, and parents determined to provide a holistic, life-affirming education for their children, and looking to bring their schools into a state of health and consciousness. In a similar vein, Stern’s work with non-profit organizations supported a deep reconnection with values, and the recognition that a collaborative learning environment is vital to the health of any group working to benefit society.

In early 1997, Stern saw that it was time to establish the Academy formally, and to create a center that could engender a community of people committed to growing this approach to learning. He began the process by inviting a group of peers to join him in creating a vision for the organization. Over a two-year period this group, through a series of retreats, engaged in a creative reflection on Stern’s methodologies and a learning process that led to a firsthand experience and understanding of this approach to learning. Thus, the Academy rose out of their shared direct experience of its principles. From those beginnings through until the present day, we believe it is our deep commitment as an organization to practicing the change we want to see in the world that sets us apart.

The Academy was formally incorporated as a 501© 3 non-profit organization in late 1998, and during that first year we planned our initial set of programs. Between 2000 and 2002 the Academy began to offer its first workshops and trainings. During this early stage, workshops were designed with the intention of creating a shared field of knowledge and experience among both Academy staff and those most intimately connected with the Academy. Program presenters were people who had been influential in Stern’s personal and professional development and, therefore, in informing the wisdom base of the organization. As this careful introduction of his work was engaged with and embodied by Academy staff and friends, the ‘field’ supporting the development of curriculum and programs intensified and deepened. The first public training program – the Consultant/Facilitator Training – provided a context for further experimentation and development of our approach to learning and facilitation.

Since 2002, the Academy has been moving into a larger context and growing a core group of staff and associates. We are consciously moving into a new stage of development as a relational organization. Drawing on what we have learned in the past seven years, individually and collaboratively, we are invoking a new form to support our complexity. Stern’s consulting practice is evolving into an advisory service and training program called Ventana; the Consultancy Training has metamorphosed into an innovative new training program in personal leadership called Leading By Being; short workshops are now being offered; pilot public school Teacher Renewal programs are underway in Sedona and New York, and in the summer of 2005, in partnership with the Rudolf Steiner Foundation, we facilitated an Invitational Retreat for Waldorf school administrators, which we hope will prove to be the first of a series of retreats.

Our findings are informing the development of an accredited curriculum for teachers and educational administrators. This program is being planned and developed in cooperation with a major healing arts institution and will provide an experiential, integral approach to teaching and learning based on the Academy’s philosophy and principles.

In 2003, the Academy purchased an historic property in Santa Fe, New Mexico, planning to restore the house, standing on 86 acres of land, known as Seton Castle, named for its designer and former owner, the prolific author, artist and naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton. In 2005, when the restoration was two-thirds complete, fire consumed Seton Castle leaving only the stone walls and chimneys. 

The Academy has developed plans for a new home to be constructed near the former castle site, which will be preserved as an outdoor meeting space and meditative garden. The new Academy Center’s beautifully conceived, green buildings will include warmly furnished gathering rooms, a high-tech media center, an area devoted to Seton’s archives, artwork, books and artifacts, offices, an art studio, a small performance space and a gathering place for contemplative practices and community meetings.  The Center, to be a LEED certified building and a model of sustainability, will be a home for the Academy’s expanding programs and offices and will also provide a valuable cultural resource to the communities we serve.  We anticipate completion in summer of 2009.