Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

Thank you for having me.

I really did.

I couldn't understand kind of what the point was or what it meant to do things there.

And school really didn't feel like it was about learning for me.

It felt like it was about doing stuff.

And I can hardly describe the sense of just release on Friday afternoon and the dread on Sunday night through my late elementary, especially, and early middle school, sixth grade

I finally ended up for a lot of complex reasons for things that were happening at school.

I finally ended up just kind of stopping going to school.

I sort of was like a soft dropout about, you know, I just stopped getting up in the morning.

And I think my parents just kind of stood back and realized I was doing all kinds of interesting things.

We had the great fortune of living in the woods in Connecticut in a very remote place.

And my parents were both from the inner city, one from Detroit, one from Yonkers, New York, right?

And they decided they were going to raise their kids on a farm and try to grow what we ate and, you know, and have animals and all kinds of things.

And so I was really deeply involved with running that farm, taking care of the animals.

I was playing the piano.

I was...

You know, running around in the woods, training dogs and, you know, all kinds of things that was keeping me very, very busy.

Oh, God.

I was a little older.

And that actually represents a turning point in my education, I think.