Mickey Revenaugh, Pearson's vice president of business development for online learning and the co-founder of the Connections Academy online school program, shares highlights from her life in learning.
- Primary School: There were several–we moved a lot–but let’s go with Washington Elementary School, Sacramento, California.
- High School: Bakersfield High School, Bakersfield, California
- University + major: Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, then transferred to Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut; majored in American Studies. Two decades later I went and got an MBA at New York University, and then another 10 years after that an MFA in Creative Writing from Bennington College. Lifelong learning, yo!
- Learning-related photo and story behind it: The photo on the left is me as a Brownie Scout in 1966. It was the first and last time I wore a uniform for fun. It was also short-lived: I quit Brownies when it became clear we were going to spend every session doing girl stuff (making necklaces out of painted spools, etc.) and not learning cool handshakes or the Law of the Pack like the Cubs. On the left, the Bakersfield Californian Newspaper 1974. The caption, the hair and the bell bottoms say it all.
- In school I excelled at: All-nighter miracles, and anything I could write my way through.
- In school I struggled with: Physical Education! I was always the smallest, wimpiest, least coordinated kid in class and I would do almost anything to avoid the playing field. Enrolling in Modern Dance in high school saved my dignity and my Grade Point Average.
- After school you could find me: Either still on campus with the “good kids,” immersed in extracurricular stuff – lit. mag., debate, student government, you name it – or congregating at the park or my house with the iconoclastic “bad kids” (see Question 8!), one eye on the clock for when my single working mom would be home.
- Troublemaker or Teacher's Pet?: Total Teacher’s Pet who actually longed to be a Troublemaker and therefore hung out almost exclusively with Troublemakers (see Question 7).
- You'd be surprised to learn that in school I... Missed my entire first semester of middle school because I broke my left femur over Labor Day weekend and ended up first in traction and then a body cast all the way through Christmas. I had a “home visit” teacher who would bring me workbooks and notes from the classmates I would not meet until January. If only online school had existed then!
- In high school people thought I would grow up to be a: Journalist
- Favorite teacher/professor and why: Ann Williams, who taught Environmental Literature at Bakersfield High School and got us to read Silent Spring as 16 year olds; Anat Lechner, my MBA professor (and one of the few women on faculty at NYU Stern at the time) who taught me that all teams “form, storm, norm and perform”; and Susan Cheever, creative nonfiction teacher in my MFA program, who encouraged me to write about Barbara Dreyer and the founding of Connections Academy (“What Barbara Made”).
- Favorite book: In fiction, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye – for making me fall in love with New York City before I ever set foot there. In nonfiction, Disrupting Class by Michael Horn – still the most thoughtful and prescient exploration of online learning around.
- First job: After working as a chambermaid, dishwasher, and movie ticket taker through high school and college, my first full time job was as managing editor (aka sole paid editorial staffer) for a barely above-ground newspaper in Rochester, New York.
- If I could do any job, it would be: Aerial performer in Cirque du Soleil
- The course I'd most like to take today: Data Analytics (for which I am about as suited as for Cirque du Soleil)
- If I could have any celebrity as a teacher, I’d pick: I was fortunate to take a guest seminar with Toni Morrison when I was in college; if I could, I would bring the eternal Ms. Morrison back from the beyond to sit in the presence of her genius once again.
- Today I learn the most from: Internet rabbit holes, and random conversations with people under the age of 25.
- Do you learn best by reading, listening or doing? It depends on how proximate the new learning is to what I already know. If it’s close – an extension of current knowledge – reading or listening work equally well. If it’s a stretch I have to get my hands on it! In combination always with staring at it, reading about it, and tracking down experts to talk me through it.
- Best piece of career advice I ever received: When the going gets rough, model the behavior you would like to see in others. (In other words, quit yer bitching.)
- My personal superpower is: Curiosity.