Fool's Friday: An Educator's Journey

Fools Friday is the story of one man's life as an educator, of the unique independent school he founded and led for twenty-six years, and of the hundreds of young adults who touched his life. In episodes ranging from senior pranks, counterfeiting rings, and the New Lunar Society to trauma and tragedy, Tom Pike explores the two qualities he found equally present in his teenaged students: the carnival spirit of Fools Friday and the essential Quaker belief that each of us has the sacred within us. In teenagers, he shows, both qualities are close to the surface and can burst forth at any moment. The goal of education, he argues, is to find a way to let this happen while initiating young adults into a world that forbids both. Fools Friday recounts moments when this worked and moments when it did not, learning as much from negotiating failure as from celebrating success. Fools Friday: An Educator's Journey shows how the often baffling, sometimes tragic, and always heartfelt choices made by teenagers in these crucial years come from this emerging sense of engagement with the world, and the different roles educators, parents, and peers can play in this process.