Jerry Mintz has conducted on-site consultations and workshops for schools and groups in over 15 countries and nearly every state in the U.S.  The range of topics covered in these consultations is too wide to list, but below you will find the most commonly requested consultation topics and a summary of many experiences.  You will also find a list of the countries in which consultations have been conducted. 

School & Group Consultations / Workshops:

       Starting a New Alternative

       Demonstration of Democratic Process

       Democratizing Your School

       Fund Raising

       Organic Curriculum

       How to Reach Your Target Community

       Democracy in Sports

Jerry has conducted consultations in India, Guatemala, Russia, Canada, Mexico, Bahamas, England, Denmark, Germany, France, Estonia, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Israel, Japan, Fiji, New Zealand, Virgin Islands, and nearly ever State in the U.S.A.

Samples of Previous Consultations & Workshops:

(Samples under development.  More to come shortly.)

Brooklyn Free School:

As a result of attending our International Democratic Education Conference in 2003, a group of parents, teachers, students and administrators from the New York City area decided to try to start a democratic school. There had been no democratic schools in New York City for decades. The group eventually split into two committees: one worked on starting a public alternative; the other work on starting an independent school. Jerry Mintz was a consultant at virtually all of the meetings of both groups.

The Independent democratic school opened in September, 2004 and is now in its second year and very successful. Stories  have appeared about it in the New York Times and several other papers. Jerry Mintz continues as a regular on site consultant at the school. 

See www.brooklynfreeschool.org for more information on the school.

Elmhill/Maple HIll School, Plainfield:
Jerry Mintz's thesis at Goddard College was about how to start a new school. It documents the process through which he developed his educational philosophy, organized meetings of local people, and sought potential staff members. This eventually led to the creation of two schools. One was a day school for local students. It was called the New School and ran for over 30 years. The other was a boarding school primarily for wards of the state. It opened as Elmhill School. Its success inspired the creation of many similar group homes and led to the closing of the state's reform school. It is now is known as Maple Hill School and has become a day school with Montessori philosophy, operating in the same building in which it opened 40 years ago.

International Democratic Education Conferences:

Jerry Mintz was a founding member of the International Democratic Education Conference, at the Democratic School of Hadera in 1993. Since that time he has been part of the core group that has developed the IDEC into a powerful and innovative international force. AERO hosts the IDEC listserve, which organizes the conferences. Jerry has spoken at and participated in the subsequent conferences in England, Austria, Ukraine, Japan, New Zealand, India, and Germany. AERO co-hosted the only IDEC to be held in the United States, in 2003.

See www.educationrevolution.org for more information on IDEC or www.idec2006.org for information on the latest conference.

Mohawk, Indian Way School:
In 1968, the year Jerry Mintz opened Shaker Mountain School in Burlington, he heard about some problems that the Mohawk Indians were having at Akwesasne (upstate New York).  They were being charged taxes to go from one part of their reservation in Canada to another in the United States, since it straddled the border. Groups from his school visited them, and their relationship became close. Late one night in 1971 Jerry was called by one Mohawk family because 70 Mohawk children had been kicked out of their public school because they wanted to learn their own language and culture. They asked him to come over to tell them how to start their own school.

He brought a group of his students there the next day and met with a large group of Mohawks in a very crowded house. They told the Mohawk group how to start their school, and a week later they started the first Indian Way School in a building in their back yard. This led to a second Indian Way School at another Mohawk Reservation, Kanawake (near Montreal) which continues to this day. It eventually inspired the North American Native American Survival School movement, with Native Americans learning and saving their own languages and cultures. The Indian Way School at Kanawake and the Akwesasne Freedom School in Akwesasne, the subsequent school to the Indian Way School there, have saved the Mohawk language, which is now thriving.
 

Naleb School, Guatemala:
Jerry Mintz was invited to visit the Naleb School in Guatemala in March, 2005. Naleb is patterned after the country's government with executive, judicial and legislative branches, but they had never had a democratic meeting of the whole school. They wanted Jerry to help the school to some day host the International Democratic Education Conference. They brought him 1000 miles around the country, visiting some rural schools that Naleb is helping. Then he visited Neleb school itself, leading the 250 students and 40 staff members in their first participatory democratic meeting. They have continued to have regular democratic meetings since that time.
 

New Schools Festival, Russia:
In 1991 Jerry Mintz received an invitation to present at the First New Schools Festival of the Soviet Union, in the Crimea. At that time there had been no communication between alternative schools in Eastern Europe and the West. Jerry went there by plane and train. He did presentations and demonstrations on democratic education, helped write the conference proclamation, made contacts and links with many of the participating schools and organizations, including the Stork Family School in Ukraine, The School of Self Determination and the Eureka Free University in Russia. This opened up communications and exchanges between the West and Eastern Europe. One day after Jerry went back a coup took place at the exact spot where he had stood the day before, Yeltsin's White House, in Russia, and the Soviet Union crumbled. Subsequently Jerry brought groups back to Russia for conference presentations three times. In 2001 he participated in the 10th anniversary conference of the New Schools Festival, celebrating the thousands of new alternatives that had been created as a result of the Festival.

Shining Mountain School, Missoula, Montana:

In 1990 a family in Missoula, Montana asked Jerry Mintz to come out there to help them start a school. The local alternative school had a large waiting list and there was a need for another school. He took his niece with him, whom he was homeschooling at the time. He spoke to a large group of people interested in starting the new school, This was followed by several organizational meetings in which they named the school (Shining Mountain), had a first democratic meeting, which his niece chaired, and created committees to raise funds, look for building sites, etc. The school opened the next year.

Unity Charter School, Morristown, New Jersey

Jerry Mintz has done four consultations for Unity Charter School in New Jersey. The school was designed to be democratic, inspired by Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts, but it has always struggled to keep its democratic character. Most recently a Unity Board member arranged for Jerry to return, first to meet with the staff members and a focus group of teacher, students and administrators. Later Jerry returned to demonstrate and lead a democratic meeting with the entire school. This latter even was very exciting with the students putting fully 35 items on the agenda for discussion. Jerry and the students went through the whole process with several of the items, with the staff preparing to continue to follow up and discuss the other items at future meetings. Before leaving, the student group asked to meet with Jerry and the board member to discuss ways to ensure that the new process would be followed and institutionalized.

Waabno Gimaak:

In late October, 1997 Jerry Mintz received an urgent call from the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians in Northern Michigan. They had started a new alternative school, but needed help to convert it from a traditional authoritarian approach to one with democratic process. The school is called Waabno Gimaak, which means "future leaders." The school had planned to have 60 students, but with K-12 open enrollment had ballooned to over 100. The teachers, mostly with public school backgrounds, were not very familiar with alternative approaches.
 
Through video feedback, demonstrations or organic curriculum and democratic process  the students were immediately hooked on the ideas, and surprised with their ability to make decisions. The administrators were also impressed. At the democratic meeting we instituted the "stop rule," which prevented many fights.

As the meeting process continued, the students and staff dedicated themselves to creating  a judicial committee, then setting the rules for the meeting and the school board and judicial committee elections. The following week the school elected students and staff members to the judicial committee, and elected the student board members after a campaign. 
 

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