Mystic River Learning Center

I am a Learning Center parent, and was one of the people who helped establish MRLC in 2002. I grew up in Cambridge and Newton, and I was homeschooled for 8 months (back when homeschooling was a truly rare thing) during High School, while my family traveled to seventeen countries in Africa and Europe. It was an extraordinary and formative experience, one the best years of my schooling. I never forgot the flexibility to follow my interests, the closeness to my parents, and the sense of control over my own learning!

I began tutoring and teaching during high school, and found that teaching was one of my great loves. I have taught all sorts of subjects to all sorts of learners, including teaching design science to college students, electronics to high school students, origami to elementary school students, and symmetry to kindergarteners.

I believe very strongly in experiential learning and learning through play, for children AND for adults! Relationships among play, mathematics, and art were the subject of my Masters' work at MIT. I frequently bring toys from my extensive collection to share at MRLC, including complex construction sets, optical toys, unusual spinning tops, gear systems, and kinetic art objects.

I hold a Bachelor of Science degree from Yale and a Master of Science in Visual Studies from MIT. I spent several years as an engineer before becoming an artist (my best-known artworks were for three of Boston's "First Night" celebrations). For 10 years I was an assistant to Dr. Arthur Loeb, in classes combining art and mathematics, at Harvard University's department of Visual and Environmental Studies. I was a faculty member at Rhode Island School of Design, where I co-taught a visual mathematics course based on the work and Teaching Collection of Dr. Loeb.

Over the past two years at the Learning Center, I have taught the "Crazy Construction" classes, art/math classes, "How Big is Big? How Big is Small?" (a math course introducing students to infinite series, powers, and logarithms), drawing classes, and cooking classes.

Lynette Culverhouse has taught math to children of all ages both in schools and in the homeschooling community. She is a licensed teacher with many years’ experience. Her love is helping kids find the fun in math and the pleasure in exploring its depths. Her workshops for teachers and parents on Having Fun with Math have been very popular and have helped many people understand the process of learning math. She is the founder of the Mystic River Learning Center.

I am a Learning Center parent. I'm fairly new to the world of homeschooling, but I'm grateful to be discovering this world and to have the opportunity to do this with my children, and to enjoy the other kids at the Learning Center.

I have a liberal arts degree from Carleton College. I majored in History, but I've always been interested in and studied many subjects: Math, various sciences, Religion, Anthropology, Literature, etc. Homeschooling my kids is one of the best uses I've found yet for my education and a wonderful way to fuel all of these interests.

I've found ways to earn a living as needed over the years, but my real love has been my "extracurricular" activities. I've been an avid folk dancer for many years, performed for ten years with the Mandala Folk Dance Ensemble, served five years as the program chair for the New England Folk Festival (seven years on the Board of Directors and I'm still on the Program Committee), and am currently the President of the Folk Arts Center of New England. I also teach folk dancing (mostly Balkan) and enjoy dancing of many different kinds. I also love to sing (almost anything) and performed for a few years with the local Balkan band Zdravets.

For the past several years, much of my energy has been spent managing my household and raising my children, and my "work" outside the home has been on a volunteer basis. I see so much of this as community-building effort, though, and community is such an important part of my life: the folk dancers, the homeschoolers, the Mystic River Learning Center, the farm we belong to, and so on. It's a whole separate economy that runs on the currency of goodwill, and it's critical to the quality of all our lives.

I am a teacher, scholar, artist and writer recently relocated to Cambridge from New York City. I am delighted to join the Mystic River Learning Center community. I hope to offer classes this year on subjects such as: French; Spanish; Bookmaking; Creative Writing; Poetry Off the Page; Performance and Installation Art; Chocolate Studies; How to Make your Own Museum; Rules: Can't live with Them, Can't Live without Them; Gifts, Exchange and Economies; Film (appreciation and making); and more!

I have taught courses in many conventional academic environments, including Phillips Academy, New York University and Bard College. But non-traditional teaching is my passion. In 1997 I co-founded a small non-profit arts organization called Witness Tree, whose mission is to reveal the liberating force of literature in diverse communities. Through Witness Tree I have conducted interactive literature, arts, and creative writing workshops for adopted youth, prisoners, New York City public high school teachers, corporate employees, adult literacy students, and members of the general public in parks, stores, bars and laundromats. I have also been involved in educational projects in Trinidad, Puerto Rico and India.

I believe in active, questioning and playful learning. I am interested in guiding students to develop their own interests but also in providing sparks that may lead them to new ideas and unexpected paths. I also believe that learning is fundamentally interdisciplinary and that we can learn from everything around us. So I try to combine art, science, social studies, math and other subjects in my classes.

Now for the important things you should know about me:
I was born in India, grew up in Detroit, lived for the last ten years in New York City, now live in Cambridge and hope to one day live in Denmark. I love the color green (pistachio), winter, medieval music, Scandinavia, languages, coffee ice-cream, poetry, singing (though I can't sing), all sorts of creativity and all sorts of teaching and learning.

I received my Bachelors degree in English from the University of Michigan and my Masters degree in Comparative Literature from New York University, where I am a doctoral candidate.