KEEPER: 

Good teachers will do a similar thing to what happens inside of Rangers and inside of Burning Man. They’ll build an environment that’s ripe for learning and exploration, a place where it’s okay and in fact, encouraged to make mistakes, to try new things, to figure out who you are, find your way, and build your confidence over time. And then when you need help, which we all do, come up alongside you, and kind of build that next layer of scaffolding to get you to the next place that you need to go.

 

STUART: 

Hey, everybody. This is Burning Man LIVE — actually live, live — broadcasting from the fabulous webcast trailer in Black Rock City, Nevada, as long as it lasts. We’re here in the dust, and we’re having a good time. 

Today we are going to talk with someone I’ve wanted to have on the program for ages, because she brings a really interesting perspective on taking the Burning Man vibe out into the world, and maybe living this life more than a couple of weeks a year. She is a senior leader of the Black Rock Rangers, and she is also the principal of the Gerlach School. So she lives year round in the little community, the closest, I would say, year-round community to our temporary city. And, I’m really just curious about how those worlds overlap, how they interact.

Welcome, Ranger Keeper.

KEEPER: 

Thank you so much, Stuart. I’m really excited to be here.

STUART: 

Yay. Well, let’s just start at the top. I mean, for people who are not familiar with the Black Rock Rangers, how do you describe what the Rangers do?

KEEPER: 

One of the “dichos” of the Rangers is “riding the edge of chaos.” We think about the big wide reality out there, and then we think about our beautiful, important city inside of Black Rock City, and we kind of think of Rangers being around the edges of it, helping people stay safe, helping them have whatever experience they want to have in Black Rock City. It can be being the adult with the radio who if a medical situation happens right in front of you, you can call and get help or support. It can be just coming alongside someone who’s having a rough time; relationships didn’t go the way they wanted them to, or there’s camp conflict, or the unexpected occurred. 

A lot of us spend so much time planning for this incredible city in the dust. And the week-long nature of it makes every moment feel so important. So when things don’t go the way we planned, sometimes it helps just to have someone be there for you, to help get you through to the other side of whatever’s going on. 

We’ve adopted the color khaki as what we wear so we’re identifiable. And the reason we did that was because it’s the same color as the dust out here. So another one of our “dichos” is to “rise out of the dust when needed and disappear when not needed anymore,” not trying to get in the way of anyone’s experience. We just want to be there, as needed.

STUART: 

That reminds me of Larry Harvey’s old saying that we know we’re doing our job when people don’t even know we’re there.

KEEPER: 

That’s exactly what it is. I think there are times where it’s useful to have someone there, and then there’s lots and lots of times where it’s useful not to have someone there, but just be in the background.

STUART: 

And there are something like 800 of y’all out here in Black Rock City this year, plus countless Rangers around the world; I know Rangering has been adopted at multiple regional events around the world, perhaps even in year-round communities like Gerlach. But we’ll get back to that. 

I want to know what your path was like. How did you get to Burning Man and to get to the position that you have now?

KEEPER: 

Oh, man. Well, it’s a long, windy road, like so many of us that have been here. 

The first time I came to Black Rock City was in 2001. It just kind of happened serendipitously, where, you know, a few different close and trusted friends from different parts of life had all brought it up around the same time. And then someone’s grandma died for real, and there was a ticket, and they were like, “Do you want this?” And I said yes. And that changed everything. 

So I came to Burning Man with a small group of friends, and I really quickly fell in love with it. One of my first nights here, I was enjoying Center Camp late at night, and a lot of my friends who I had been out with had already gone to sleep. I overheard some people talking and playing with light things, and ended up sparking a lifelong friendship with one of them, who was a Ranger; Ranger Long Shot. We walked out of Center Camp to watch the sunrise. He said, “You’ve got to come back next year and you gotta be a Ranger. And I think your call sign should be Keeper.” And I did, and I’ve never really looked back since. 

Yeah. Long Shot is still a great friend, He did so much for the Ranger department. He helped form up our first Mentor Cadre which is a process that we used to just pass along information that we’ve collected over the years to our new up-and-coming Rangers. They go for a walk with a few different mentors when they come to the playa and want to be a Ranger. And then there’s a decision-making – you know: Does this work out for the person? Do we think it’s going to be a good fit? And we welcome them in and give them a hat and a shirt, and they can go sign up for shifts and become a Ranger.

STUART: 

Now, how did you meet Ranger Crow? It must have been somewhere in that path…

KEEPER: 

Yeah, that’s somewhere in there, too. 

So Rangers have done a great job, in my opinion, since the very beginning of spending time together; just kind of growing the community, finding that common ground for the work and spreading it more into a family type of environment. 

I was going through UCLA’s Masters in Education program that was really focused on getting highly qualified teachers into difficult environments. And so I was teaching in inner city Los Angeles in a very overcrowded school. I picked a scheduled track that, of course, gave me time off during Burning Man. Friends from my program were all really nerding out on the value of bilingual education and saw that as an important piece of the educational infrastructure when we’re trying to serve a community, and almost all of the community members speak Spanish as their first language. And there’s a lot of learning theory around why bilingual education really helps kids develop. There was a bilingual educators conference going on in the Bay Area, so we went up there together. 

I had been at an LA Decompression event, and one of my Ranger friends there had said, “Oh, you’re going up to the Bay Area, you should contact this guy Digger, He’s this great Ranger, and they always go out and hang out on Monday nights. Hang out with your Ranger pals on a Monday, spend some time building community.”

And so I reached out to Digger and true to form, he said, “Oh, that’s so awesome. Yeah, please come stay at my house. And this is the pub where we’re going to go.” And so I did that. And Ranger Crow is one of the Rangers who happened to be at that “Mondays” which I think they called a Disorientation Meeting at the time.

So we spent a little time at the pub and it turned out Crow had been living and working out here at Burning Man’s ranch out in Black Rock Desert, and he was going to be crashing on Digger’s couch as well. So after we were done at the pub, we all went back to Digger’s house to hang out some more. And, um, that was kind of that. One thing led to another. 

STUART: 

Sparks flew. Fade to black.

KEEPER: 

Sparks flew. Yep.

STUART: 

Today you guys are married, you’re parents, and you are locals here in Gerlach. You are community pillars as well as being senior leadership in the Rangers. What’s that like being the Ranger outpost in Gerlach, Nevada year round?

KEEPER: 

Yeah. That’s a great question. And it was a pretty intentional thing when Crow and I were talking. He moved to LA for a while, finished up grad school, saw my brother graduate high school. We moved up to the Santa Cruz area together for a few years. 

One of the ideas we kept coming back to is that there really wasn’t a great way to transition from coming from cities and various points beyond and landing in the middle of Black Rock Desert for things like Juplaya or camping, or in fact this event, in some ways. There wasn’t a lot of infrastructure or space in between.

We kind of talked earlier about the idea that Rangers exists on the borderlands. We thought it would be really helpful to have some kind of outpost, the idea of an outpost being a place you can go when you need a thing, and that might just be using a flushing toilet, it might be having to have a place to work on your vehicle for a little while. It might be a quiet place to go and spend some days taking a break, and it might be just a helping hand on the way of someone’s voyage out to the desert. The desert is a beautiful place and fairly unforgiving as well. And as we all know well, you need to be kind of prepared for everything. 

STUART: 

And you can never be prepared, but you could strive.

KEEPER: 

And yet, here we are. 

STUART: 

You’re talking to a guy who went out without his goggles in the middle of the 50 mile an hour windstorm.

KEEPER: 

Choices were made, Stuart.

STUART: 

Questionable choices.

KEEPER: 

Yeah. We had heard about a piece of land for sale in Gerlach that had a view of the Black Rock Desert, and we thought, okay, well, that sounds pretty great. And I was getting into welding at the time, and we talked about building a little welding area in the back and putting in a giant window and having a fireplace. Those kind of felt like our core commitments to what it would take to build somewhere that felt like a home away from home. And we were just going to do that for a year. Like you do, just one year, and here we are.

STUART: 

And what year was that?

KEEPER: 

That was in 2008. I was teaching in Watsonville at that time, with a kind of a migrant farmworker population. A teacher was retiring at the Gerlach School, which was kind of a rare event, so they had a job opening. 

And Friends of Black Rock was reorganizing itself. Will Roger Petersen was running their board of directors, and Will and Crow have known each other forever ever; Crow had helped support DPW operations for quite some time. And Will said, “Hey, Crow, you know, working on this environmental organization, help take care of the desert.” That was interesting to Crow. The school said we’re looking for a good candidate to fill this job. And then this property ended up being for sale. So that was our confluence of events.

STUART: 

So this was back when the Empire Mine was still operating, and there were three schools in Gerlach. And, when the mine closed, all the families moved away and all the kids moved away. I can only think of, like the one room schoolhouses of the old west, the way that the grades were all combined together. I’m curious about, from an educational theory point of view, what did you apply to that to say “How do we do this with…” How many kids was it?

KEEPER: 

We reopened in August of 2011; Crow and I had been there for three years and kind of the traditional, typical school. And then everything changed. We went from about 85 students down to eight. So we had eight students when we opened the new version of the school. After spending several meetings with Washoe County school districts, trying to figure out what would be our pathway forward, it’s got to exist somehow. But this was in a world where Zoom and distance meetings didn’t really exist.

STUART: 

And it wasn’t like you could just move them to a nearby school because there is nothing nearby.

KEEPER: 

That’s correct. Yeah. The closest other school to ours is the Pyramid Lake Junior High and High School, which is in Nixon, which is 60 miles away. The closest school beyond that is Natchez Elementary School, which is on tribal land, but Washoe County School District manages the building and the school, and that’s, pre-K through 6 school, and that’s in Wadsworth, which is 75 miles away.

STUART: 

You managed to keep the school open in an altered form.

KEEPER: 

Yes. And like seems to be a commonality among Burners, the challenge of: Here’s this canvas, what will you do with it? Find something that’s going to work and be interesting, and figure out where that gray area is between building something that meets the needs of the school district, the students, the families, and our population, and also leans into the uniqueness of the structure that we now suddenly find ourselves in, where there isn’t a Gerlach High School, a Gerlach Middle School, and an Earnest M Johnson Elementary School, there’s one school, um, which we now call The Gerlach K-12 School.

STUART: 

Go Lions!

KEEPER: 

Go Lions. Absolutely. Chew ‘em up, Lions. 

That kind of a puzzle and a challenge was honestly part of what made me lean in even more. Those first three years I felt really like a fish out of water being here. I was raised in a very urban environment. Gerlach felt like the complete opposite. And I didn’t quite know how to be, and I wasn’t quite sure if it was a good fit. We had a lot of conversations about what this might look like, and how long would this last and that kind of thing. 

But when things changed and we really lobbied hard to say, “You’ve got to keep the school open. If you close the school, you’re going to kill the town. And that’s not an option. You’ve got to keep the school open.” So we got to that level of agreement with the district that they would, in fact, keep the school open. 

And then we went through lots of hardship as a community. I mean, there were 26 people working at that school before, and there were only three people who stayed on. So that was a ton of really hard goodbyes, and not in a way that anyone would have wished for.

And then the mine in Empire, Nevada, being one of the last company-owned towns in America… How do you say goodbye to this place you raised your kids in, you know your neighbors and it’s its own unique place. And now there’s a fence built around it and the zip code has been erased off the map. And my gosh, that’s a pretty shocking, different kind of reality. 

So, anyway, yeah, going back to your question of ‘what do you do?’

STUART: 

How do you structure that? I’m super curious. I’ve seen films with, you know, old school marms in the wild west, right? There’s a great one called “Don’t Shoot the Teacher” with Bud Cort in it, where he goes to take over a rural school in Canada somewhere.

KEEPER: 

Well, I like the motto! I definitely would keep that title around!

STUART: 

In that film these kids come to school with guns because they have to hunt on the way there and on the way home. That doesn’t happen in Gerlach, I’m sure! But yeah, that notion of older kids helping the younger kids, is that something that you carried into the new environment?

KEEPER: 

Yes. A big part of how we think about things is through a lens of community. I tell everyone who comes to visit our school that it’s much easier to think about it as a big family rather than a small school. We now have 13 people on our staff, and in a way that feels like you’re co-parenting with 12 other adults to try to figure out what’s going to be the best thing for this student, or this group of students, or our culture, our family out there.

It’s a fairly unique kind of design, and we do want to make room for older kids supporting younger kids. We also want to be respectful of older kids need their time and space to learn about things too. And so how do we build a community that has room for all of that? 

One of the things that I really love and appreciate about the school is how much interaction there is, and how much looking out for each other there is. 

There’s a fair amount of transiency, have kids that kind of come and go, which seems to be part of mining culture in some ways, and also part of Gerlach. You know, some people are there because they really want to be there, and some people are there because maybe they don’t have another place to go. And things don’t always last forever, so we do see some turnover among the kids.

But we’ve brought in kids from really rough and tumble neighborhoods in cities that come to our school and have this jarring experience of finding their identity and figuring out where they fit in this community. They become softer. And they lean on those relationships. And sometimes it takes a long time, but they come through.

That’s really one of the reasons why I’ve wanted to stay. I have two kids of my own now. And in fact, when we opened the school in 2011 with that eight students and three staff, um, I was on maternity leave because I went into labor at the Perseids Meteor Shower Camp Out that Will and Friends of Black Rock were at, and there happened to be a full moon and Bronco decided that he was ready and it was time.

STUART: 

That’s a great origin story.

KEEPER: 

It really is. We talked about naming him Percy for a while, but anyway, yeah. So brand new baby, brand new life. It turns out that Bronco is an incredible human with a huge heart. And seeing him when he did come to our school in kindergarten and watching these high school boys with so much energy and so many ideas about how to interface with each other.

But then Bronco would be running along and he might get confused about where he was or trip and fall down, and they would just stop what they’re doing and help him get up and check in. And that was a really beautiful thing for me to feel like, no matter who you are when you’re at this school here, supported and cared for like a family member. For a long time, that sense of community, love and support has far outweighed living 110 miles from services.

We’ve just kind of pushed and figure out ways to make it better, you know? What can we do to improve the school? What can we do to improve access to all kinds of experiences for each of our students and what they need? And I’m quite proud of the school that we’ve grown into, and look forward to growing more.

STUART: 

Can we zoom out, and can I ask you a broader question about that? 

KEEPER: 

Yes.

STUART: 

You wear a lot of hats at the school. You are the principal, you are a teacher, and you’re also a mom. How did those worlds interact, and how do you juggle all that?

KEEPER: 

It’s a challenge. I try to think the minute that I walk through the doors of the school, and I tell my whole staff this too, we’re here to serve a role. We are doing this work in service of our students, our families, our community, our school district. And so when we figure out who that person is for us, like, who are we inside of those different hats or those different lenses, can really shape how we make decisions, how we communicate, kind of what part of ourselves we show up as, while still being authentic. 

For myself, the mom part of it added a whole other layer to my school identity, and I was pretty nervous about it before my boys started going to school. And one of the first things that came up is, what are they going to call me? They were so used to saying, “Mom, mom, mom,” which is really typical. We even have in our younger students, oftentimes they’ll turn to their teacher and call the teacher mom, because you’re in this kind of nurturing and providing role. And, pretty quickly I said, okay, we’re going to have to figure this out. “So when we’re at school, I’m Mrs. Black, and as soon as we can be home, I’m mom. I’m still me. You’re just interacting with different parts of me.”

My younger son thought that was kind of funny. His first day of kindergarten, we kinda spent a lot of time in the day going to “Mrs. Black, Mrs. Black, Mrs. Black.” And so, he got it, he picked it up by the end of that day. And then I remember walking home after a long day. The first day of school is really exciting and takes a lot of energy. And I remember walking in through the doors of feeling like, who have finally got to unwind and relax and he said, “Hello. Mrs. Black!” I said, “Oh, you can’t do that. You can’t do that. I’m home now. I’m your mom. Come give me a hug and let’s take it from here.” So, it’s been a challenge to navigate.

I often will reach out to Crow as the other parent when I’m putting my principal hat on, if there’s, like, an issue that needs some direction from school where I’m expecting any other parent, I would ask them to get involved in a situation in, or I would at least let them know this is what happened at school today. So I’m going to talk to you about your son and what happened today. And, younger one, especially has had some protest moments of saying, this is so unfair because I’m hearing about it at school and then I’m hearing about it at home. I said, that happens in other families, too. It’s just that you’re not hearing about it from the same person in a different family, so.

STUART: 

So yeah, I know a lot of people have a lot of complications of work life balance when they work together, and with their families, but yours probably gets really crazy around the time of the Burning Man event in Black Rock City, right? Because that’s also when school starts, right? That’s the first week of school. I mean, when we first started going out at that time of the year, of Labor Day, most schools started after that, it was no problem. Now, I don’t think any schools start after Labor Day anymore. So how do you juggle that in that week or two when both of you have to be out on playa, right?

KEEPER: 

Oh, it’s definitely been a paradigm shift. 

Eight years ago, I had some really supportive leadership inside of Washoe County School District that were keenly interested in learning more about the Gerlach K-12 school, thinking about the model that we were kind of building as we were going along, and trying to think more deeply and more broadly about what are some of the right things to do that we can put in place here, especially in light of the fact that we want schools to be responsive to their communities. We want families to feel involved in school, and feel like the institution is meeting the needs of the people who’ve been serving. 

And we just had a laundry list of things that were big challenges during event week. Some of them are logistical things like, how does the bus get gas at the gas station when the gas station line is super long and takes hours to get through? How do we deal with drivers on the road, when the roads are jam packed with people coming on ingress or egress from Burning Man? How do we maintain our presence with our students when every person in the town of Gerlach and greater Empire communities, in some way or another, is affected by this event, whether it’s love it, hate it, you know, the event has a huge impact.

They’re taking a community that’s roughly 300 people and pushing that up to 80,000 people. So every system is touched in some way by the presence of Burning Man. 

And long story short, we gave a presentation to the Board of Trustees of the school district to say, we would appreciate some changes to our school calendar for a couple of reasons. Number one, we are on a five day week right now, and getting to Reno and getting back, which is really our nearest hub for services, is almost a four hour round trip, which means any student who has a doctor’s appointment, any family that needs to do business or banking, anything along those lines, that’s a day absent from school, and attendance is a really big thing inside of the world of education. That’s how schools are funded.

STUART: 

Yeah, it triggers your funding, right?

KEEPER: 

That’s right.

STUART: 

Days per child in care right?

KEEPER: 

Yep. Average Daily Attendance. The ADA numbers are really big. There are laws written about absenteeism for students, and their consequences. And there’s a whole system built around trying to make sure that kids are present, both for their learning and also just for their social well-being. That is an institution we’re helping to care for, for these young folks.

So we wanted to operate Monday through Thursday with the idea that families could then have Family Fridays. Right. This is Friday. This is your day in the week to get your business done, take care of your needs and help ensure that students are present and learning for the days that they are there.

The board approved this change. It also has helped with recruitment and retention of teachers too. So we can have teaching staff that live in Reno, come out to Gerlach to work, stay in our school district housing, go back to Reno for their weekend and make that a tenable arrangement. 

And then the other change in calendar that we proposed was to close during the week of the event. They surveyed parents. We did a lot of work on the ground, talking to community members and staff, and making sure, are we making this right level headed decision? Is this really the best interest? And overwhelmingly it really was for people. 

So we currently shut down the school operations during the week of Burning Man. We help them understand the impact through things like, hey, when it’s the way it has been going, when it’s event week, let us just share some snapshots of things that we’ve seen. So here’s a picture of some Burners who decided to camp out on our school grass field instead of going into Black Rock City. And here’s how many times someone rings the doorbell asking if they can use the restroom, or use our library, or get some water, or what have you, because we’re an open institution. And here is how the traffic has impacted our bus and our students who walk to school, and there’s just a lot going on.

STUART: 

At least two of the students at your school I know have parents who work for Burning Man. What’s the composition like?

KEEPER: 

The biggest place that we pull families from is from the mine, the Empire Mining.

STUART: 

Okay, so that’s where the bus comes in. You don’t make kids walk from Empire to Gerlach!

KEEPER: 

We don’t. Seven miles one way feels like kind of a too high of a stake.

STUART: 

It would build character, but…

KEEPER: 

It does build character. 

But yeah. We do have quite a handful of families whose parents are connected with work at Burning Man Project. So that’s an important thing to consider as well.

STUART: 

Well, it’s great to have the school district on your side. And I know they have a lot of respect for you. Your teacher of the year, a few years back for the district. Yes.

KEEPER: 

Thank you. Yes. There was a teacher of the year for Washoe County School District, and a finalist for the state of Nevada.

STUART: 

Oh my God! I didn’t know that part.

KEEPER: 

Yeah. And then, a more recent honor is that I was named the Administrator of the Year, for the state of Nevada, with the school boards, so, that was great.

STUART: 

You are kicking ass, Keeper.

KEEPER: 

Thank you.

STUART: 

That’s fantastic. Does the district show that same kind of support in like… I’m curious about curriculum development. All I know about curriculum comes from California public schools, where it’s pretty rigidly driven into a STEM curriculum and all testing-driven and all that stuff. Is Nevada the same way? Do you have more leeway? Are you able to put some STEAM in the STEM and do more arts? How do you structure that, particularly in your case, where you’re operating in kind of an island out there that’s way out of the mainstream of what is otherwise a fairly urban district, right?

KEEPER: 

Yes, it is primarily an urban district. So, Washoe County School District has about 61,000 students, and they are primarily concentrated in Reno and Sparks. There’s Incline, which is up near the Tahoe area, and then the schools in Wadsworth and Nixon. 

Yeah. Curriculum has really specific rules around it about how curriculum get adopted. There are committees. Adoption process takes years, and it also takes funding. For our school it has been a challenge to figure out how to navigate that. 

Since the time that the Gerlach K-12 school became its own unique school with all the grade levels included in one space, we had to come up with something that high school students could use to have access to highly qualified teachers; class itself can come through an online program. So our secondary students, they’re taking their math class, their history or social studies class, and their science classes through an online platform. 

And then our secondary certified teacher is highly qualified in English Language Arts. So she’s instructing just an incredible class that goes from six through 12th grade in one classroom of Language Arts skills. 

And then we also are running a P.E. class in person, and a leadership class, which is a really exciting and interesting area where we do have flexibility about what can we do to build a more interesting program. So those are all in-person. 

And then in our elementary, we have the online curriculum with both a mix of teachers and teacher assistants kind of providing and leading our students more through that curriculum. So that they can get to mastery.

STUART: 

How do you get the arts back into that curriculum that’s developed with science, technology, engineering and math?

KEEPER: 

I think one of the really wonderful connections that we can draw from Burning Man with Gerlach schools is the arts program. So Burning Man is obviously just leading the world…

STUART: 

Radical Self-expression I believe is one of the Ten Principles, last time I checked. 

KEEPER: 

That’s it. Radical Self-expression indeed. The art is just so inspiring, and we love having these connections with both the artists, and getting to see the art a little bit with our students. There’s definitely an impact of the art in Gerlach itself. There have been art pieces that have come out here. There was a mural project, and some of them done in the town of Gerlach recently, and some of the muralists are connected with Burning Man.

And, we are always looking for ways to bring art into our school, because in a typical school in Washoe County, they have these courses called ‘specials’, and that’s when they bring in art instructors and computer class and librarians and P.E. We don’t have access to specials because we’re too small to get those allocations. So that kind of felt like a personal challenge.

How can we make sure that our students still have access to things that are really meaningful and important in shaping someone’s life in their own expression? So we’ve tried to get creative there again. 

And one of the cool things we’ve had going for the last few years is we’ve had a visiting artist who’s come out to work with our students under a program that is called Arts for All Nevada, where we pay for her to come out. Arts for All Nevada recently switched, so they’re actually paying for some of her time worked. For a while we were paying for that too. And the money that we’ve used to pay from that has come from a solar array that was installed at Gerlach K-12 School by Black Rock Solar just after the year of Green Man. So they did this incredible thing for our school which I know they also did, over in Nixon and Wadsworth.

STUART: 

And the savings on the utility bill have paid for that program?

KEEPER: 

That’s correct.

STUART: 

Oh, that’s so cool.

KEEPER: 

It is really cool. The money got lost for a while in the district. And then we were able to reclaim it. 

This year we’re looking at potentially a different model, where we have some local folks signing up to go under the umbrella of Arts for All Nevada, because they have the insurance and the programming, and then they can still come and work with us. Actually, we have a mom of some students right now who’s an incredibly gifted artist who we’re working with. 

And then we’ve also done other programs, like we were connected with a group called Artemisia Tridentata that was this awesome group of three ceramic artists who had all been teachers in the past. They came out and did a bunch of ceramic work with our students over the course of one year. They would come out for a day, teach with our students, go hands-on with clay and ceramics. Then that evening they would open up for the community, so community members could come and also make ceramic art with them. They’d come back and have the second day with the students, and then they’d go home. 

That eventually became a series of these kind of totems that are all over our school right now. I think there are nine of them with all these different pieces that are all stacked up. That was a combination of lots of students making them, a couple of staff making them, community members making them, and just brought a whole lift of art and joy to our school. 

And we had another kind of set of artists we were working with that did a similar thing, where Crimson Rose and some of her organization helped create this situation.

STUART: 

That’s right, Crimson Rose, Burning Man Art Maven, is one of your neighbors there in Gerlach.

KEEPER: 

Yes. We had a photographer at UNR, and we had a visual artist who’s down in Carson City, and they would come out as a team, and they did an incredible series of art projects with them. The kids got to hang their artwork at UNR in a gallery space, and then we did a field trip to UNR so that the kids could see their artwork out there in a gallery, and know that pride, and just connection, meaningfulness of of art and being recognized in the public space for people to interact with it. So I love that project.

STUART: 

That is really beautiful to hear. Yeah. University of Nevada, Reno has been a great thought partner and ‘feet on the street’ partner for this community for a long time. 

Another thing I know from my limited experience with California schools is that, you know, money’s always tight. And a lot of times the PTA asks, the parents are asked to chip in. I mean, yes, how active are your parents? You actually have a PTA for the school? Or is it just the whole town is your PTA?

KEEPER: 

We did stand up something for a couple of years, and we had a few families that were really interested in that. That particular year, I signed our school up to represent the State of Nevada for national Christmas tree ornaments. And so we got to make all these cool Christmas tree ornaments, and they kind of helped us with some logistics there. And then I got to go to Washington, D.C. and show our tree, which was really great. But that kind of fizzled out.

And it is a really tough thing to work on because it’s not a wealthy community, and we want to be responsive to that. And the way that our community… I think this really falls in line with the principle of Gifting, right? And we say the value of a gift is unconditional.

STUART: 

Yeah. As it says in the Ten Principles, ‘gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange.’

KEEPER: 

That really strikes a chord with me in a few ways. One thing is our community is phenomenal about showing up for our students. For several years, we’ve had one high school graduate, a handful of kindergarten graduates, and they show up in droves. And it really is community. It’s… You know, we have people come out… One woman in particular, she worked at the school for 30 years. First, her own kids went to Gerlach High School. Her husband went to Gerlach High School; there’s some deep family history there. And she still to this day brings us gifts to our staff once a month just to give us a little boost of spirit and show, you know, your community is thinking about you, love and support you.

There are handfuls of people that have been involved in the school in some way over decades and decades, who still come back for these graduations. Our district leadership shows up for it, too. They love it. And we have representation from people who just live in Gerlach and are connected to this school in some way, whether that’s through the child or just the institution, or they just want to be a supportive community member.

And we have Burning Man as well. Burning Man’s Nevada Operations kitchen, for the past few years, has worked with us to meet our senior who’s graduating, find out what they like to eat, and prepare a luncheon meal for everybody in the room to celebrate and enjoy after the graduation ceremony. And the school, we pay for the food, and they do all the work and come donate their time and service to us as a way to help build out impact to community.

It is tricky about the money part of it. So our operating budget is incredibly small for the school. It’s about $5,000 for the entire year, not counting our personnel, obviously that the district gives us as a fixed allocation. So that’s been a big challenge to tackle.

STUART: 

Did you say 5,000 or 50,000?

KEEPER: 

I said five, 5K.

STUART:

Okay. Wow.

Recycle Camp, I understand, takes the proceeds from their aluminum cans. And I always thought, that doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but that’s a lot of money in that scale, isn’t it?

KEEPER: 

Oh, it is so much money in that scale, because they’re giving us like $13,000 donation. During Covid they gave us a huge donation that was kind of at the top end of that scale. It’s huge. And Arctica…

STUART: 

Wow. So Recycle Camp is really… Wow.

KEEPER: 

They’re huge for us. And Mr. Blue and his folks have just been a super champion. When we did our staff sweatshirts we made him one because we said “You’re just as much part of this family, w working so hard for us. Thank you so much.”

STUART: 

It’s beautiful.

KEEPER: 

Burning Man Project itself gives us a few thousand dollars. I also have relationships with people in the Burning Man community who are sending our school money. One former Ranger in particular, who’s kind of become our patron saint in some ways, really wants to make an impact. He and his wife do really appreciate the work that he did as a Ranger, understand the ethos, understand what it is to be in a small town, and how a little bit can go a long way. And that kind of substantial donation over time has helped us do things like build out our… We have a greenhouse program that we’re in process of building out. 

Our field trips, I think, are just essential to the work that we do, to say, “Hey, yes, you live in the middle of Gerlach, which is kind of like an island on land surrounded by over a million acres of natural beauty. 

Also, I would really like to take you to see a ballet, and I would love to take you to local museums, to the Discovery Museum for hands-on science stuff. 

We should really get to know our neighbors in the Paiute Tribe much better. Let’s go to their museum. Let’s sign up and experience dancing, and see what that means to them and what that is. Let’s go to visit their fish hatcheries and learn how they spawn cui-ui,” which is a very sacred fish for them. Let’s learn everything we can there. 

Let’s understand that we’re part of a much bigger and broader world.” 

And we have adopted as one of our five focuses in school, to get out there so that we can really become stewards of our area. Because some people come to Gerlach and they’re like, “Ooh, Gerlach, do you live there? Oh my gosh!” And we really want to shift that dynamic to saying, “Oh my gosh, Gerlach! That’s so cool!” Our students could tell you all about Fly Geyser, or they could tell you about Burning Man set up. They could tell you about local ranchers, and their businesses out here who have invited our students to come learn about what they’re doing. They could talk to you about the botany of the area, the riparian areas that exist here. You know, we’ve gone apple picking at neighbors’ homes that have lots of apples. We’ve just tried to do everything we can to show them pride and things to understand and appreciate about where they live, and then also to make them citizens of the world.

Let’s learn what happens when we go see a theater production together. Let’s talk about theater. Let’s invite theater groups to come to our school and do performances, and then have our community members come and be a part of those performances, as well as an audience.

That kind of thinking big about what it means to have some responsibility and shaping the experiences that young people have access to, we can do that because we have supporters who believe in our school and what we’re doing. And that makes it possible, which feels great.

STUART: 

So what have you learned from Rangering that’s made you a better teacher?

KEEPER: 

I have learned that patience is really important, and I feel fortunate that I grew up with a mom who was an educator who also had patience as a virtue. I have learned the value of listening, and I continue to learn that. 

What kids have to say is so important, and it doesn’t matter with Rangering or with children if you think you know, “Oh, I can see what needs to change. We just are going to do it this way.” That’s not really what it’s about, the outcome. It’s really about the process, it’s about taking time to hear what matters to people, to see their side of things, for them to feel validated of “I understand what you just said. I don’t have to agree with it. I just want to reflect back to you. You feel hurt because of this thing that happened. You feel angry because of this. You’re frustrated because of this.” Listening is so foundational to who we are, and what we need. 

One of the Principles that I think matters a lot is the idea of Radical Inclusion. We see that all the time at Burning Man, this belief that anyone is welcome to be here. And in public education that is 100% true as well. There’s nobody who shows up who gets turned away. 

And what I love about that as a commitment is that it sends the message to everybody of you belong here. And in my brief experience on planet Earth, that is paramount. What we need to feel and hear and believe is that you belong here. That culture at Burning Man is important. Burners if they’re feeling that something unjust or something really, truly terrible has happened; how can that be in this place that we love so much? How can bad things happen? They do, and we want to be there to listen and support, and we want to take people seriously and value their experience and just reflect back to them. “I see you. I hear you, and you belong here as much as you want to be here.” 

In school, that’s really true as well. We have kids coming from families that are broken. There’s homelessness even in Gerlach. There’s relationships that are falling apart. There are mental health challenges. There are learning challenges. Not everyone is cut out to learn the same way, to have the same end result of going to school. We see violence in schools because there are young people who just cannot find their place. And there’s so much injustice and there’s so many obstacles, and the world is a really harsh place. And you want to know you belong here.

Just like at Burning Man, we tell people, “Welcome Home”. That’s a way of saying we built a place that belongs to you, too. Come explore. Come find where you belong. Come figure out who you are inside of this place. You’re welcome to be here.  

So when we greet our students in the morning, and we get to see them pouring in from the bus or coming in through the door and say, “Hey, good morning, I’m so glad you’re here. I’m glad to see you.” That’s a message, right? It’s like, “You belong here, and I’m going to do my best in our school to give you the structure, support, attention, and responsiveness and connectedness that you need.” When we meet those needs, then we can start moving up a little bit to think about academics and philosophies, and how we want to learn things and how we’re interacting with material that we want to learn.

But it just seems like students, and Burners, and everybody, you want to feel that safety net, especially during a time when the world feels like a more chaotic and unstable place than it maybe used to.

STUART: 

How else have Burning Man’s Ten Principles informed the way that you pursue your job in the schools?

KEEPER: 

I think that Civic Responsibility is another really important principle that has informed the life that I’ve built with Crow. We think of Civic Responsibility as, in some ways, as public welfare, right? How well are we taking care of people around us? And a t least in our house, we listen to our radios 24/7, 365.

STUART: 

Your single sideband Burning Man radios, you mean.

KEEPER: 

That’s correct. We keep our Burning Man or radios on all year long. We sleep with the radios on. The radios are in multiple rooms in our home. The Ranger response role is understood as useful, appreciated in the town where there are limited resources. There is not 24/7 law enforcement response, necessarily. And I think even our two deputies, when they switch out, we don’t have coverage. So it’s really handy on a Saturday evening to have someone who you can call, whether that’s by phone or by radio to say, “Hey, things are kind of going sideways here. We need a hand.” 

We’ve even responded to things that are search and rescue. People come out to the desert, they get lost, they get stuck. It’s really scary out there when there’s not a ton of people around to provide those services. And when we committed to kind of building this Ranger outpost here in Gerlach, and making this a part of what our life is here, that’s kind of what we sign on for, is to say like, “Oh, there’s a serious need. It’s public safety related. We want to respond,” whether that’s something’s happened at a bar, or someone got in a vehicle accident.

And of course, we’re going to call 911 to get help on the way, but while we’re waiting for that to happen – which could take a couple hours for someone to show up, we now have much closer medical services, knock on wood, that’ll stick, but it’s been up and down over the years we’ve lived here, sometimes they really are coming from quite far away. You want someone that’s going to be able to show up on site and just come alongside and say what you need. “Hey, let’s do this. I’ve had some experience. Let’s see what we need to do.”

And now we have other Rangers even living in Gerlach. It’s not just Crow and myself, so there are more people to kind of share that responsibility.

In the Wayback Machine, I think around 2010, we had some Ranger friends come out who noticed, like, “Oh my gosh, wait, cell phones don’t work out here!” There really was a time when cell phones did not work in Gerlach. And they formed this group called Black Rock Amateur Radio Association. They climbed up on Razorback and set up a repeater, and developed a HAM Radio network that could go all through Black Rock Desert. And it was phenomenal. It changed the way we could communicate and respond. And that was Safety Phil and his team, that really led us to some more kind of globalized response for our little area.

Having people right there who all want to help out kind of speaks to that Communal Effort piece also of ‘how do we all take care of each other?’ Not everyone’s going to get along all the time. It’s not a utopia by any means. But people take care of each other when there’s a need for that. And I want to find a way to give back to our community through that lens whenever possible.

STUART: 

I can’t help but think this kind of sounds a lot like Burning Man. I mean, the idea of a community of learning and mutual support and people being brought in. 

KEEPER: 

I think that a strange side effect of now having lived in Gerlach for 17+ years is that, it all is kind of one thing. It’s one life. Which is funny because when I left Burning Man that very first year and got home to San Francisco, I remember just sobbing as I was like, I wanna go back. And how do you… why are we suddenly in a different place with different values and different ways of doing things? I never not want to go here.” And my friend described it as the diaspora, and said, “Don’t worry, you’ll be back.” 

And anyway, I think part of getting to be adjacent in a year-round way does kind of blur the lines a little bit. So I don’t consciously wake up and think, what principles am I going to do today? I think more, I’m going to be a principal today, so what do I need to do?

STUART: 

Oooh it’s the one principal…

KEEPER: 

Yeah.

STUART: 

But how about Rangering? Do you find your Rangering skills are useful when dealing with children?

KEEPER: 

Yeah, I think that Rangering and teaching support each other very nicely. And good teachers will do a similar thing to what happens inside of Rangers and inside of Burning Man. They’ll build an environment that’s ripe for learning and exploration, a place where it’s okay and in fact, encouraged to make mistakes, to try new things, to figure out who you are, find your way, and build your confidence over time. And then when you need help, which we all do, come up alongside you, and kind of build that next layer of scaffolding to get you to the next place that you need to go. So, I find them really similar.

STUART: 

So on the flip side, being a teacher and a school principal inform how you show up as a Ranger. Has your Rangering evolved based on your experience with kids?

KEEPER: 

Yes. I’m learning all the time about the best ways to be with kids, and to be with people, and that’s informed by our school staff, and how they interact with kids, and everyone’s unique talents and gifts that they bring to the table. And how to watch people become leaders and supporters of the kids, and figure out how to integrate that more throughout our experimental situation of 13 adults co-parenting all these kids. 

One piece of our Ranger training looks at this idea of transcending the model. We go through this training process, to become a Ranger. We put on our khaki, then we think, what exactly does that mean? And so, talk about learning to color inside the lines first so that you know where to color outside the lines, or there’s a quote we had in training for a while that said, “Learn the rules so that you can forget them.”

STUART: 

Oh, I always said break them, but…

KEEPER: 

I think that helps with our school model too, to figure out how do we represent well, the learning intentions? What do we think kids need to learn? How will we teach them those things? What happens if they’re not learning them? Then what else do we do? How do we approach it? How do we celebrate when they do learn the thing? How do we make those victories matter? And then, what lies beyond that? 

Like, you’ve got your camp infrastructure built, but now what are you actually going to do? What are some other creative ways that we can look at learning? So we’ve talked a lot about the community vibe that we can set up there. There’s also what more can we do with the schools and we can be incredible citizens — and maybe this even touches some on Civic Responsibility — when we put ourselves into different spaces. I want our students to feel proud of where they live, to really embrace that idea of stewardship, and so, we do an annual field trip to the Black Rock City construction site.

STUART: 

Oh! How does that go?

KEEPER: 

It’s great.

STUART: 

So you take your kids to DPW.

KEEPER: 

I put our kids on the bus and we get an escort from the lovely Ranger Crow with blessing from NVO and DPW. 

We make sure to say at the Morning Meeting to wear pants today. 

And we show them the infrastructure so they understand a little bit about what these people are coming to that are all driving through their neighborhood suddenly. 

We stop at the Gate, we learn about tickets and the check in and process. 

We go by Ranger Outpost Tokyo and talk a little bit about safety and what to do if you were to get lost, and how Rangers try to support people who are here. 

We go out to the Man Base, get to see the Man while he’s laying down, not quite erected yet, and hear about the design for the year and the process. 

We go out to the temple and hear what they’re doing. 

We have intersection with the Fluffers at some point along the way, who the kids love and adore and seems to be very mutual. 

And then the last couple of years, we’ve gone to Heavy Equipment And Transport to see the giant machines.

STUART: 

What kid doesn’t want to look at a giant crane?

KEEPER: 

Oh my gosh, amazing.

STUART: 

Cherry pickers. It brings out the kid in me for sure.

KEEPER: 

Absolutely. 

One year we took them to the Bike Project, and Andre, our dear friend who has recently passed, was getting them all excited about trying to ride on a double decker bike, or a triple decker bike. And then we had to talk about field trip permission slips and kind of ix-nay that for that particular trip.

But yeah, there’s a lot of exciting stuff to see and do out here. 

And then we end our field trip with a tour of the Commissary. In fact, it was Shelly Getchell that runs commissary, for Spectrum, she and I were the ones that kind of dreamed up this idea when Bronco was just a baby. So they got to see the kitchen, and talk about food service and go in the back and stand in the refrigerator or freezer truck when it’s super hot outside. And then we end our trip with ice cream at the Commissary.

And then we say, “Bye bye, Black Rock City. We’ll see you next year.” And we take lots of pictures, and write really cute thank you notes. And I’ll be passing those out to our departments that we visited next week.

STUART: 

Oh, fantastic. 

I know you also have brought out some of your fellow educators, and shown them Black Rock City. If you could impart one Rangering value to your fellow teachers out there, what would you like them to learn? Other than the fact that what we do is cool?

KEEPER: 

It’s so cool!

STUART: 

Okay, alright.

KEEPER: 

It’s really cool. It is just that we are capable, and in fact have some level of responsibility, of building spaces that reflect the values that we want to see in the world. We want to see art and creativity. We now have a city that reflects art and creativity, and is a living, breathing art exhibit and playground, and playground where people find themselves and feel like they can put their guard down, let go of all these layers, and kind of find their authentic self. It just feels like a free place to be. 

Educators in classrooms talk a lot about the culture inside of the classroom. They talk a lot about social and emotional well-being. We recognize that students walking through the doors into our buildings, the first thing they need is to feel safe and loved, and fed, and cared for. And inside of that structure, we can build in academics and thought, and challenge, and philosophy, and all the things that we want to explore through learning together. But we’ve got to take care of each other first, and we can be the agents of change and creation to build the world that we want to see. 

STUART: 

Ranger Keeper, if you could tell people one thing to take out into their lives from all of this, any other words of wisdom?

KEEPER: 

I’ll rely on my dear friends, Bill and Ted: Be excellent to each other!

STUART:

My guest has been Ranger Keeper, aka Mrs. Black, also known as the principal of the Gerlach K-12 School and Nevada’s State Administrator of the year. Thanks so much for joining us, Keeper.

KEEPER: 

Thank you so much for having me. It’s such a pleasure to get to be here. I’m a huge fan of your podcast.

STUART: 

All right. So, Vav…

KEEPER: 

Thank you, Vav.

STUART: 

Is that good, Vav? 

VAV OUTRO:

Greater than good!

Burning Man LIVE is a labor of love of the Philosophical Center of the nonprofit Burning Man Project. 

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And thanks, Larry.

 

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