It's sort of a one room school. A dozen children aged eight through fourteen come here Monday through Thursday to share education with Cameron. The bottom line for me is that all children are geniuses, are natural naturally wise initially, and I think that children to varying degrees get restricted and damaged by the way they get treated. Like Raffie. Brent Cameron also had a vision, one that centered entirely around his daughter, Atlanta. I'm Atlanta Cameron, and I'm Brent and Maureen Cameron's daughter. I was the kid that said I don't like school, it's not working for me, and uh, I thought it was extraordinary that they said, Okay, let's do something about that. Atlanta Cameron was put at the center of everything her parents did. They sacrificed a lot to give her the perfect childhood, or rather their version of the perfect childhood. My dad mentioned that he was really scared to have a kid and actually hadn't thought he wanted kids because he'd been so terribly lonely in his childhood. There wasn't a lot of communication or discussion or not no talking about feelings. So it was an epiphany for him to have a child and realize he could do it differently. This episode is about what happens when parents do everything possible to create the ideal environment for their child. It's like Raphie's child honoring philosophy come to life, but does it work. I'm Chris Garcia and this is Finding Raffie, a ten part series from My Heart Radio and Fatherly in partnership with Rococo Punch, about the life, philosophy, and the work of Raffie, the man behind the music. It was the early nineties when Raffie came across the Cameron family story across the front of the magazine. Read the headline a new model and Education, and Atlanta Cameron was the future story. Her article would inspire Raffie. It would begin to lay the foundation for his child honoring work. But today's story begins almost a decade earlier. So let me set the scene. If you had walked in, you would have walked into a sixteen foot geodesic dome which was perched down on the lake. We had a fireplace going, we had two midwives there, and yeah, we had a home birth. Wait no, not that far back. Fast forward a few years tone before Atlanta was featured in any news stories. She said something to her parents that any six year old might say, I don't like school. And I think that's a pretty normal thing for kids to say if they're shy or it's just not feeling right for them. They toured me around, tried out different places, and I just said, I don't like it. I can't. I just I don't like it. Why can't I just keep learning from you? Remember she's six. And then my dad said, okay, well I'll quit my job and I'll start a school. It's too bad Brent wasn't here that we could talk more about this. That's Maureen Cameron, Atlanta's mom. Brent Cameron, Atlanta's dad passed away from cancer in two thousand and twelve, which is why you won't hear from him today. But he had a big impact on the people he met along the way. He looked like the epitome of a hippie, six ft something other, big, huge hair coveralls. He was very charismatic, a very strong personality. I was exciting to be with him, like everything was going to be an adventure, you know, because there weren't that many rules. It was all explore this explore that the family relocated to Vancouver, from a rural part of British Columbia. After a recession shut down their small health food store, they moved to the city to find work and eventually to open a school geared specifically towards Atlanta called Wonder Tree. So I've been listed as the co founder, but I always said it was more extraordinary that that they started it. As crazy as it sounds like, it seems like the bigger choice, but my dad had been a teacher in different kinds of schools already, so he could. He knew that there his ways to do it. So I think I was that spark that said like, hey, I'm interested in something different. He's like, I know how to do something different, and and I have the skills and the knowledge and the passion. Let's go for it. He would call newspapers and say, hey, I'm gonna have a school. I'm starting, and everyone loved it until they asked how many students, and when he said my daughter and that's it, the parents would go I'll wait. Finally, one brave parent enrolled their child in Wonder Treat and the Cameron's learning experiment was off and running. Soon the school was at capacity, that is, twelve students, which is what Brent determined to be the perfect size. We didn't have funding in the beginning, and he didn't want to charge very much for people to come so that people could afford it. I remember that we would go behind office supply companies and would go to their dumpster full of paper that they were just throwing out, and so that's how we got our paper for the school. At first, my dad used to say, we're rich, and I'd say what, And I'd get so excited. I'm like, oh my god, we're rich. And he'd be like, because we have each other, and I'd go but like, it chokes me up thinking about it now because I don't have him anymore. He just saw that so much of what was going on our society started when we're young, when we're kids, and if we're not seen as whole humans, if we're just seen as you know, that this industrialized model of schooling kind of being in parallel with the industrialization of our society. Right. We didn't always go to school, and it's become such a gospel that you you go to school and this is the only way to learn is if you can't learn outside of school. So we left the classroom and did real world projects as much as possible, because it's really important to understand quote unquote the real world and not just live in a little school bubble. Right. The kids made all of the decisions. They got to decide what to spend tuition money on, meaning they chose who they wanted to hire and what they wanted to learn. Like clowning. They hired an expert clown for that. But they also did things that were pretty incredible, like learn how to code before that was even a thing kids did so I don't know, if you know the old school max they were like a screen and everything. So the carrying case was about, you know, I don't know, three ft by four ft and very heavy. Kids would carry those home for the weekend and bring their computer home as if they were portable. They got so good at computers that a local power company hired them to make a computer program for their business and paid them a lot of money. They got paid was it fifty third thousand fifty dollars? He was very interested in taking away labels and really meeting children where they were and saying, how can I help you learn and be the best you. Meanwhile, the Cameron's juggled a lot to see Prince Vision through the school, finances, the press, parenting workshops, community potlocks. Plus Maureen was also working full time as a nurse to keep the family afloat. But then she had a bad car accident and had to find another source of income, so they opened a home schooling branch of Wonder Tree, which Maureen ran. It was seven practically, I mean not entirely, but we kind of were living, breathing and eating it. It was all consuming, for sure, for my parents to run this school. And so I remember going to bed listening to them working in the office across the hall. For me waking up and they were working. I became very independent because they were too busy working away, and so I'd be like, oh well, and then I just figure it out. He would mythologize things about me because I was part of the school that he was promoting and talking about. So yeah, I became a mythology and and this thing. For instance, Atlanta says she didn't learn how to read until she was nine, and Brent would put his own spin on her story. He sometimes claimed she was eleven. It was his way of embellishing the school's narrative that kids learning should be self directed. He had a habit of doing things like that. He would be very good at underestimating some things and overdoing so, as all good storytellers to. Yeah. Yeah. The pressure that I felt was to turn out well. I was the first example of the school of this learning model, and so I better turn out well so that I can show, yes, my parents did this crazy thing. They sacrifice so much financially, emotionally, whatever they've sacrificed so much made this amazing thing. And oh boy, I better turn out well because I'm the one. It's like, you know, I'm the one as an example of Look, I turned out like this, so that means it works. Eventually, the pressure of all the hours of work took a toll on the Camerons. After ten years, Brent walked away from Wonder Tree. At this point, Atlanta was fifteen. My dad could see that I was a teenager and could use some community, and he needed a break and just needed a little pause. So Hi homeschooled for a couple of years. It was a bit lonely, um and sometimes I wonder like, oh, should I have gone to normal school just to try it? Out or what would have that been like, but he still had so much passion for running an independent school. After a brief hiatus, Brent started another school and once again Atlanta was at the center of it. Yeah, to be the wonder child is what people would often say. I would just go, Okay, I have some understanding what it must be like to be famous, because you get this identity that's like kind of outside of who you are that people are responding to today. We continue our education series with a profile of a Vancouver school so innovative it isn't even called a school. My name's Alanna Cameron and I've been here for about a year and a half. I think that maybe more who knows. And the reason I'm here is I helped create it. They called it Virtual High Virtual because it was originally supposed to be all online. It would be like a wonder Tree for teenagers. The virtual part didn't last long though. We got a house, this large mansion house that like had lots of floors and rooms, but the idea was it could be a meeting place. Well, we ended up going there every day, Like I think almost everyone came every day because it was just so exciting to learn in person and have mentors and be social together. Like at Wondered. The students ran everything and they loved being there so much they slept over by choice. They hired a mom to chaperone. Meanwhile, people from all over, from academics to celebrities, came to visit this ramshackle mansion run by teenagers. My dad had this great idea of giving out awards of excellence to people we thought were doing exceptional things in the world. So Linus Pauling, Jane Goodall, Boba Tundla Tunji. So we got to go to their talks and then go backstage and have a chat and say, hey, we think you're excellent. We run this crazy school, and we're giving you an award from our crazy school. And so Michael Moore actually came after a documentary premier. Now 'am Chomsky. Now I'm chomps Chomsky as well. Yeah, I know, so fun. Gnome Chomsky, the father of modern linguistics and the whole nature versus nurture argument. He had to check out Virtual High. I think a lot of people were fascinated about what was going on. I think it gave people some kind of a wow. This is a possibility, it's a potential. There's something interesting going on here, and I want to be part of it. The school also had weekly coffee houses, kind of like an open mic for students and their families, and one night Raphie showed up, going to take a walk outside today. I'm going to see what I can find today. Going to take a walk outside today. I'm going to see what I can find today. It was like four year old part of me that kept saying, it's fee you know, like I was like there's a little bit of a fan inside of me at all times. But on the outside I was a fifteen sixteen year old saying, oh, it's so nice to meet you and um, and also so exciting that he to see that he truly cares about children, that it wasn't an act. I remember being fascinated with virtual high and the whole idea of learning by a stuff design, you know, on the half of students. So I hung up. I went over there and you know, kind of soaked up the vibe and talk to people. You know. I was just amazed that they trusted the learning process, they trusted life, they trusted their daughters, creative response to a situation and not many people would be able to do what they did, but they chose that. And I was intrigued by the outside today, gonna see what I can find today. I'm gonna take a walk outside today. I'm gonna see what I can find. I think he and brent recognized something in each other. Maybe maybe it was that shared desire to contribute to the world. My dad just felt very lonely most of his childhood. Yeah, if you've watched Madman and and That, when you see the main character go home and pat his kids on the head as he walks by them and goes to get the newspaper and a drink, like seeing that show really hit home for me because I realized, Oh, that's what he meant, this non emotionally available experience. So I think that's why he liked saying I was a co founder, because for him I was that inspiration to go, Wow, it can be done so differently. It can be done with heart, it can be done with caring, and there's another way to do this. After a bit, Paradise got a little lost. Brenton Maureen ended up getting a divorce, but Brenton Atlanta continued to share a house and a life together because you'd moved out and I had you moved out of our house and I stayed there, so because everything in that house represented a kind of a center point of of what was going on with the move from Wonder Tree to Virtual High. So it's definitely a little confusing. Meanwhile, the school was being run on a shoestring budget and things were starting to unravel. I think there started being a bit of a slippery slope after all the years. I mean, the parents loved him, but it's because of my mother that they stayed. We had some parents leave because they felt like, oh my god, my kids aren't following a curriculum. How are they going to be successful in the world. This is crazy. And he would just be like, too bad, That's what I'm doing. And my mom would soften it and try to bring people in and sometimes that worked, and sometimes people would leave because they thought it was just too far out there and they'd get scared. We're flying by the seat of our pants. We were not an official school, so we had to charge tuition for our program, and we charged pretty much a base rate tuition that just allowed us to scrape by. This is Michael Maser. We weren't in it to get rich or to be an elite prep school for teenagers. Michael co founded Virtual High with Brent and he was in the trenches for what happened next. Michael said, as the school initially had support through British Columbia's Ministry of Education. We tried our our hardest to garner that ministry support and they offered it and then took it away, and that left us really flat and demoralized. Raffie even donated money to try and help. He sang it a benefit concert for the school, but it wasn't enough. Ultimately, Virtual High didn't make it, and so you can imagine my disappointment when we did have to fold it because we couldn't seal support from the education ministry despite many people's endorsement of what of what we were doing. After only three years, Virtual High shut down. Ultimately it came down to a lack of funding, or maybe people got spooked that the students were running the show instead of sitting at their desks taking tests. Either way, it closed before the world could really see if this experiment worked. Yeah, it was definitely sad and felt like untethered in a way. It was like suddenly all the strings were cut and then we were all just left to our own devices. It was a community and it had this beating heart, and so once the physical place was gone, it was hard to recreate that feeling for sure, because we have this shared experience that's really hard to explain two people that weren't there. There's this deep connection that just stays. Brent, on the other hand, wasn't willing to walk away from his vision. He moved virtual high online and kept at it, and that's what he was doing until he passed away. He did mention when he was in the hospital before he passed away that he regretted not having a little more time with me and knowing that he missed out on some things because he was so focus, so focused on his work. He wasn't a normal dad. He had all the kids in the school where his children in some ways like he was available for everyone. After everything ended, Atlanta backpacked through Nepal, but eventually she enrolled in music college and that was kind of nice for her to try out a place with structure. Then Atlanta found herself back in Creston, British Columbia, the small town where she was born She now owns and runs a coffee roastery. It's called Lark Coffee Roasters, inspired by the saying on a lark to do something just for the fun of it. That's important to me that whatever I do is because of the joined enthusiasm, and that definitely stems directly from going to the kind of school that I went to, and I miss it. That's one thing like I'm coming to terms with is that that it was such a rich experience of community, and that sometimes I forget the loss of that, that I don't have that in my life in the same way since then, just feeling seen and heard and held by a group of people is such a good experience. So I guess I'm coming to terms with the fact that the world is not as safe and beautiful as that experience was. It's a little harsher. I mean, the world isn't as kind of place as as wonder True was. Maureen lives next door to Atlanta, and they see each other almost every day. I think if you as a woman in your own right, doing your own thing, and we kind of keep track of each other. And yeah, and because we live in the same small community, we can go to events together. Which is really nice. I wanted to be seen as myself. It wasn't just from the outside world. It was also from my family, like, hey, you guys decided to start to school and do all these things, which is amazing and great, and yet I need to figure out who I am outside of this family. And it was such a strong narrative that it definitely took some work to go like, hey, this is me over here, just as I am. So even when you're seen and heard, there's still an individual. Is very important part of growing up, right m h. Next time on Finding Raffie. Like anyone else. You know, I've had periods of my life where you know, I've had challenges to go through, but it's always a return to love and a return to play. Just a little playful Raffie, yeah, baby, So you know, it's just my way of enjoying every single day. Joy is not something to be postponed. Finding Raffie is a production in My Heart Radio and Fatherly in partnership with Rococo Punch. It's produced by Catherine Fendalosa, Meredith Hannig, and James Trout. Production assistance from Charlotte Livingston. Alex French is our story consultant. Our senior producer is Andrea Swahee. Emily Foreman is our editor. Fact checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado. Raphae's music is courtesy of Troubadour Music Special thanks to Kim Layton at Troubadour and the news clips featuring Brenton Atlanta Cameron Our courtesy of the CBC. Our executive producers are Jessica Albert and John Parotti at Rococo, Punch, Ty Trimble, Mike Rothman and Jeff Eisenman at Fatherly and Me. Chris Garcia thank you for listening.

It's sort of a one room school. A dozen children aged eight through fourteen come here Monday through Thursday to share education with Cameron. The bottom line for me is that all children are geniuses, are natural naturally wise initially, and I think that children to varying degrees get restricted and damaged by the way they get treated. Like Raffie. Brent Cameron also had a vision, one that centered entirely around his daughter, Atlanta. I'm Atlanta Cameron, and I'm Brent and Maureen Cameron's daughter. I was the kid that said I don't like school, it's not working for me, and uh, I thought it was extraordinary that they said, Okay, let's do something about that. Atlanta Cameron was put at the center of everything her parents did. They sacrificed a lot to give her the perfect childhood, or rather their version of the perfect childhood. My dad mentioned that he was really scared to have a kid and actually hadn't thought he wanted kids because he'd been so terribly lonely in his childhood. There wasn't a lot of communication or discussion or not no talking about feelings. So it was an epiphany for him to have a child and realize he could do it differently. This episode is about what happens when parents do everything possible to create the ideal environment for their child. It's like Raphie's child honoring philosophy come to life, but does it work. I'm Chris Garcia and this is Finding Raffie, a ten part series from My Heart Radio and Fatherly in partnership with Rococo Punch, about the life, philosophy, and the work of Raffie, the man behind the music. It was the early nineties when Raffie came across the Cameron family story across the front of the magazine. Read the headline a new model and Education, and Atlanta Cameron was the future story. Her article would inspire Raffie. It would begin to lay the foundation for his child honoring work. But today's story begins almost a decade earlier. So let me set the scene. If you had walked in, you would have walked into a sixteen foot geodesic dome which was perched down on the lake. We had a fireplace going, we had two midwives there, and yeah, we had a home birth. Wait no, not that far back. Fast forward a few years tone before Atlanta was featured in any news stories. She said something to her parents that any six year old might say, I don't like school. And I think that's a pretty normal thing for kids to say if they're shy or it's just not feeling right for them. They toured me around, tried out different places, and I just said, I don't like it. I can't. I just I don't like it. Why can't I just keep learning from you? Remember she's six. And then my dad said, okay, well I'll quit my job and I'll start a school. It's too bad Brent wasn't here that we could talk more about this. That's Maureen Cameron, Atlanta's mom. Brent Cameron, Atlanta's dad passed away from cancer in two thousand and twelve, which is why you won't hear from him today. But he had a big impact on the people he met along the way. He looked like the epitome of a hippie, six ft something other, big, huge hair coveralls. He was very charismatic, a very strong personality. I was exciting to be with him, like everything was going to be an adventure, you know, because there weren't that many rules. It was all explore this explore that the family relocated to Vancouver, from a rural part of British Columbia. After a recession shut down their small health food store, they moved to the city to find work and eventually to open a school geared specifically towards Atlanta called Wonder Tree. So I've been listed as the co founder, but I always said it was more extraordinary that that they started it. As crazy as it sounds like, it seems like the bigger choice, but my dad had been a teacher in different kinds of schools already, so he could. He knew that there his ways to do it. So I think I was that spark that said like, hey, I'm interested in something different. He's like, I know how to do something different, and and I have the skills and the knowledge and the passion. Let's go for it. He would call newspapers and say, hey, I'm gonna have a school. I'm starting, and everyone loved it until they asked how many students, and when he said my daughter and that's it, the parents would go I'll wait. Finally, one brave parent enrolled their child in Wonder Treat and the Cameron's learning experiment was off and running. Soon the school was at capacity, that is, twelve students, which is what Brent determined to be the perfect size. We didn't have funding in the beginning, and he didn't want to charge very much for people to come so that people could afford it. I remember that we would go behind office supply companies and would go to their dumpster full of paper that they were just throwing out, and so that's how we got our paper for the school. At first, my dad used to say, we're rich, and I'd say what, And I'd get so excited. I'm like, oh my god, we're rich. And he'd be like, because we have each other, and I'd go but like, it chokes me up thinking about it now because I don't have him anymore. He just saw that so much of what was going on our society started when we're young, when we're kids, and if we're not seen as whole humans, if we're just seen as you know, that this industrialized model of schooling kind of being in parallel with the industrialization of our society. Right. We didn't always go to school, and it's become such a gospel that you you go to school and this is the only way to learn is if you can't learn outside of school. So we left the classroom and did real world projects as much as possible, because it's really important to understand quote unquote the real world and not just live in a little school bubble. Right. The kids made all of the decisions. They got to decide what to spend tuition money on, meaning they chose who they wanted to hire and what they wanted to learn. Like clowning. They hired an expert clown for that. But they also did things that were pretty incredible, like learn how to code before that was even a thing kids did so I don't know, if you know the old school max they were like a screen and everything. So the carrying case was about, you know, I don't know, three ft by four ft and very heavy. Kids would carry those home for the weekend and bring their computer home as if they were portable. They got so good at computers that a local power company hired them to make a computer program for their business and paid them a lot of money. They got paid was it fifty third thousand fifty dollars? He was very interested in taking away labels and really meeting children where they were and saying, how can I help you learn and be the best you. Meanwhile, the Cameron's juggled a lot to see Prince Vision through the school, finances, the press, parenting workshops, community potlocks. Plus Maureen was also working full time as a nurse to keep the family afloat. But then she had a bad car accident and had to find another source of income, so they opened a home schooling branch of Wonder Tree, which Maureen ran. It was seven practically, I mean not entirely, but we kind of were living, breathing and eating it. It was all consuming, for sure, for my parents to run this school. And so I remember going to bed listening to them working in the office across the hall. For me waking up and they were working. I became very independent because they were too busy working away, and so I'd be like, oh well, and then I just figure it out. He would mythologize things about me because I was part of the school that he was promoting and talking about. So yeah, I became a mythology and and this thing. For instance, Atlanta says she didn't learn how to read until she was nine, and Brent would put his own spin on her story. He sometimes claimed she was eleven. It was his way of embellishing the school's narrative that kids learning should be self directed. He had a habit of doing things like that. He would be very good at underestimating some things and overdoing so, as all good storytellers to. Yeah. Yeah. The pressure that I felt was to turn out well. I was the first example of the school of this learning model, and so I better turn out well so that I can show, yes, my parents did this crazy thing. They sacrifice so much financially, emotionally, whatever they've sacrificed so much made this amazing thing. And oh boy, I better turn out well because I'm the one. It's like, you know, I'm the one as an example of Look, I turned out like this, so that means it works. Eventually, the pressure of all the hours of work took a toll on the Camerons. After ten years, Brent walked away from Wonder Tree. At this point, Atlanta was fifteen. My dad could see that I was a teenager and could use some community, and he needed a break and just needed a little pause. So Hi homeschooled for a couple of years. It was a bit lonely, um and sometimes I wonder like, oh, should I have gone to normal school just to try it? Out or what would have that been like, but he still had so much passion for running an independent school. After a brief hiatus, Brent started another school and once again Atlanta was at the center of it. Yeah, to be the wonder child is what people would often say. I would just go, Okay, I have some understanding what it must be like to be famous, because you get this identity that's like kind of outside of who you are that people are responding to today. We continue our education series with a profile of a Vancouver school so innovative it isn't even called a school. My name's Alanna Cameron and I've been here for about a year and a half. I think that maybe more who knows. And the reason I'm here is I helped create it. They called it Virtual High Virtual because it was originally supposed to be all online. It would be like a wonder Tree for teenagers. The virtual part didn't last long though. We got a house, this large mansion house that like had lots of floors and rooms, but the idea was it could be a meeting place. Well, we ended up going there every day, Like I think almost everyone came every day because it was just so exciting to learn in person and have mentors and be social together. Like at Wondered. The students ran everything and they loved being there so much they slept over by choice. They hired a mom to chaperone. Meanwhile, people from all over, from academics to celebrities, came to visit this ramshackle mansion run by teenagers. My dad had this great idea of giving out awards of excellence to people we thought were doing exceptional things in the world. So Linus Pauling, Jane Goodall, Boba Tundla Tunji. So we got to go to their talks and then go backstage and have a chat and say, hey, we think you're excellent. We run this crazy school, and we're giving you an award from our crazy school. And so Michael Moore actually came after a documentary premier. Now 'am Chomsky. Now I'm chomps Chomsky as well. Yeah, I know, so fun. Gnome Chomsky, the father of modern linguistics and the whole nature versus nurture argument. He had to check out Virtual High. I think a lot of people were fascinated about what was going on. I think it gave people some kind of a wow. This is a possibility, it's a potential. There's something interesting going on here, and I want to be part of it. The school also had weekly coffee houses, kind of like an open mic for students and their families, and one night Raphie showed up, going to take a walk outside today. I'm going to see what I can find today. Going to take a walk outside today. I'm going to see what I can find today. It was like four year old part of me that kept saying, it's fee you know, like I was like there's a little bit of a fan inside of me at all times. But on the outside I was a fifteen sixteen year old saying, oh, it's so nice to meet you and um, and also so exciting that he to see that he truly cares about children, that it wasn't an act. I remember being fascinated with virtual high and the whole idea of learning by a stuff design, you know, on the half of students. So I hung up. I went over there and you know, kind of soaked up the vibe and talk to people. You know. I was just amazed that they trusted the learning process, they trusted life, they trusted their daughters, creative response to a situation and not many people would be able to do what they did, but they chose that. And I was intrigued by the outside today, gonna see what I can find today. I'm gonna take a walk outside today. I'm gonna see what I can find. I think he and brent recognized something in each other. Maybe maybe it was that shared desire to contribute to the world. My dad just felt very lonely most of his childhood. Yeah, if you've watched Madman and and That, when you see the main character go home and pat his kids on the head as he walks by them and goes to get the newspaper and a drink, like seeing that show really hit home for me because I realized, Oh, that's what he meant, this non emotionally available experience. So I think that's why he liked saying I was a co founder, because for him I was that inspiration to go, Wow, it can be done so differently. It can be done with heart, it can be done with caring, and there's another way to do this. After a bit, Paradise got a little lost. Brenton Maureen ended up getting a divorce, but Brenton Atlanta continued to share a house and a life together because you'd moved out and I had you moved out of our house and I stayed there, so because everything in that house represented a kind of a center point of of what was going on with the move from Wonder Tree to Virtual High. So it's definitely a little confusing. Meanwhile, the school was being run on a shoestring budget and things were starting to unravel. I think there started being a bit of a slippery slope after all the years. I mean, the parents loved him, but it's because of my mother that they stayed. We had some parents leave because they felt like, oh my god, my kids aren't following a curriculum. How are they going to be successful in the world. This is crazy. And he would just be like, too bad, That's what I'm doing. And my mom would soften it and try to bring people in and sometimes that worked, and sometimes people would leave because they thought it was just too far out there and they'd get scared. We're flying by the seat of our pants. We were not an official school, so we had to charge tuition for our program, and we charged pretty much a base rate tuition that just allowed us to scrape by. This is Michael Maser. We weren't in it to get rich or to be an elite prep school for teenagers. Michael co founded Virtual High with Brent and he was in the trenches for what happened next. Michael said, as the school initially had support through British Columbia's Ministry of Education. We tried our our hardest to garner that ministry support and they offered it and then took it away, and that left us really flat and demoralized. Raffie even donated money to try and help. He sang it a benefit concert for the school, but it wasn't enough. Ultimately, Virtual High didn't make it, and so you can imagine my disappointment when we did have to fold it because we couldn't seal support from the education ministry despite many people's endorsement of what of what we were doing. After only three years, Virtual High shut down. Ultimately it came down to a lack of funding, or maybe people got spooked that the students were running the show instead of sitting at their desks taking tests. Either way, it closed before the world could really see if this experiment worked. Yeah, it was definitely sad and felt like untethered in a way. It was like suddenly all the strings were cut and then we were all just left to our own devices. It was a community and it had this beating heart, and so once the physical place was gone, it was hard to recreate that feeling for sure, because we have this shared experience that's really hard to explain two people that weren't there. There's this deep connection that just stays. Brent, on the other hand, wasn't willing to walk away from his vision. He moved virtual high online and kept at it, and that's what he was doing until he passed away. He did mention when he was in the hospital before he passed away that he regretted not having a little more time with me and knowing that he missed out on some things because he was so focus, so focused on his work. He wasn't a normal dad. He had all the kids in the school where his children in some ways like he was available for everyone. After everything ended, Atlanta backpacked through Nepal, but eventually she enrolled in music college and that was kind of nice for her to try out a place with structure. Then Atlanta found herself back in Creston, British Columbia, the small town where she was born She now owns and runs a coffee roastery. It's called Lark Coffee Roasters, inspired by the saying on a lark to do something just for the fun of it. That's important to me that whatever I do is because of the joined enthusiasm, and that definitely stems directly from going to the kind of school that I went to, and I miss it. That's one thing like I'm coming to terms with is that that it was such a rich experience of community, and that sometimes I forget the loss of that, that I don't have that in my life in the same way since then, just feeling seen and heard and held by a group of people is such a good experience. So I guess I'm coming to terms with the fact that the world is not as safe and beautiful as that experience was. It's a little harsher. I mean, the world isn't as kind of place as as wonder True was. Maureen lives next door to Atlanta, and they see each other almost every day. I think if you as a woman in your own right, doing your own thing, and we kind of keep track of each other. And yeah, and because we live in the same small community, we can go to events together. Which is really nice. I wanted to be seen as myself. It wasn't just from the outside world. It was also from my family, like, hey, you guys decided to start to school and do all these things, which is amazing and great, and yet I need to figure out who I am outside of this family. And it was such a strong narrative that it definitely took some work to go like, hey, this is me over here, just as I am. So even when you're seen and heard, there's still an individual. Is very important part of growing up, right m h. Next time on Finding Raffie. Like anyone else. You know, I've had periods of my life where you know, I've had challenges to go through, but it's always a return to love and a return to play. Just a little playful Raffie, yeah, baby, So you know, it's just my way of enjoying every single day. Joy is not something to be postponed. Finding Raffie is a production in My Heart Radio and Fatherly in partnership with Rococo Punch. It's produced by Catherine Fendalosa, Meredith Hannig, and James Trout. Production assistance from Charlotte Livingston. Alex French is our story consultant. Our senior producer is Andrea Swahee. Emily Foreman is our editor. Fact checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado. Raphae's music is courtesy of Troubadour Music Special thanks to Kim Layton at Troubadour and the news clips featuring Brenton Atlanta Cameron Our courtesy of the CBC. Our executive producers are Jessica Albert and John Parotti at Rococo, Punch, Ty Trimble, Mike Rothman and Jeff Eisenman at Fatherly and Me. Chris Garcia thank you for listening.