Today we’d like to introduce you to Audie Alcorn.
Hi Audie, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I am currently Head of School at Whole Life Learning Center — South Austin, an independent pre-K-thru-8th-grade nonprofit school of almost 100 students, with its roots in Montessori and Waldorf philosophies and with social-emotional learning (SEL) at its core.
As a child myself in the 1970s, attending public school in a small Texas town, I loved going to school. But I treated the academics as a sort of game — and the rules were straightforward and clear: listen to the instructions, do just what the teachers said, store a lot of information in short-term memory, repeat it all back on demand, and receive a bunch of quick rewards. I got pretty good at this game from early on, ultimately graduating #3 in my high school class in 1980. But by then I had begun to suspect that there was something superficial about this way of learning; I felt I was accumulating bits of knowledge but not really much wisdom.
Though the academic trajectory I was on pointed me towards college, and to career plans in ‘business,’ my aforementioned suspicions — that I had been missing out on a deeper level of learning and wisdom — led me to apply to only one college that year — Southwestern University, a small liberal arts college (and Texas’ oldest) in the then-sleepy little village of Georgetown, just north of Austin. Again, I loved it — but mostly I was continuing to treat academics as more or less a game — this time with the end goal of landing a good-paying job upon completion. I graduated in 1984 with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree, and I went straight into an entry-level position as an auditor for one of the largest accounting firms in the world, Price Waterhouse.
However, if you had asked me even back then (and to this day) what my favorite classes at Southwestern had been, I would have answered, without hesitation, the courses I had taken in Philosophy, Religion, Psychology, and Fine Arts, credits which were required as part of Southwestern’s liberal-arts focus. No Accounting or Economics courses would have made that list, even though those subjects were my major and minor.
After 3 not-very-happy years with PW in Dallas, I decided to retreat back to what I had always loved — school. And this time I was going to dive more deeply and not just treat it as a game. I wanted to learn for the sake of learning — as an end in itself, not as a means to other ends (good grades, a job, etc.).
A couple of good friends of mine from Southwestern were, at the time, in law school at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, and so I moved in with them and was soon taking courses in Philosophy at Texas Tech. I loved every minute of it, on a deep and satisfying level. For the first time, I was embracing ‘learning’ as a value in itself, not just as a series of hoops to jump through to get to something else. (And to emphasize this, to those who would ask me back then, “You’re getting a Philosophy degree? What are you going to do with that?” I enjoyed smugly replying, “I’m going to hang it on my wall.”) I earned my M.A. in Philosophy from Texas Tech in 1989.
Still stretching my wings after having freed myself from the suit-n-tie, downtown-skyscrapers world of public accounting, and because I had long fantasized that being a park ranger would be a great way to make a living, I applied that summer to work for the National Park Service. I was hired, and I enjoyed more than 7 years living and working as a ranger, most of that time spent at Zion National Park in southern Utah — a magical, stunningly beautiful, spiritual place. I worked in the Division of Interpretation and Education there at Zion, and my home was alongside a river, at the base of a 2,000-foot-tall red sandstone cliff.
By the mid-1990s, I began to feel the itch to return to academia once again, and to study more Philosophy — this time at the PhD level. But because I had been out of school for several years, and because I had leapfrogged over a lot of foundational Philosophy courses (having earned a Masters degree in the field but not a Bachelors), and because I had never studied a foreign language at the college level (something that a strong PhD program would require), I decided to enroll as a non-degree-seeking student at the University of Arizona in Tucson, with the intention of taking 10 undergraduate Philosophy courses and 2 years’ worth of German. The advisor I met with before starting pointed out that, if I was going to be taking all of that, and transferring in two degrees’ worth of credits from Southwestern and Texas Tech, I could stay for just one additional semester and earn a second Bachelor’s. More school? Sure! So, in 2000, I earned a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from U of A — after having already previously earned a Master’s.
With this, and with fresh letters of recommendation and a smattering of German, I entered the PhD program in Philosophy at Rice University in Houston. But the move back to the downtown area of another big Texas metropolis — after years in the deserts of Utah and Arizona — proved to be too abrupt and too urban, and I only stayed at Rice for a year, hoping to ultimately get back to something more ‘earthy.’ I started working for Whole Foods Market in 2002, eventually transferring with them to the Front Range in Colorado, working at two different stores in the Denver area for a few years.
In the spring of 2007, another friend of mine from Southwestern visited me in Denver, and he was then an educator — working for a Montessori school in Houston. I was ready for a change (it had been a very cold winter in Denver!), and before I knew it, I was entering a 3-year Montessori teacher training program in St. Paul, Minnesota, and working as a classroom assistant at The Post Oak School in Houston.
From there, I went on to lead an elementary class at Bay Area Montessori House for a year; then was a 6th-grade math tutor at an inner-city public school in Houston; then, in 2011, I moved to Austin and began working in the upper elementary classrooms at Austin Montessori School, where I stayed through 2013.
After a year-long return to Whole Foods Market here in Austin, in 2015 I returned to teaching, serving as the middle-school math teacher, head of the math department, and co-associate head of school at AESA Prep Academy in west Austin.
In 2017, I started ATX Tutoring & Academic Services, tutoring students mostly in math and writing, while also teaching math part-time at Progress School of Austin. My tutoring business flourished during the pandemic, but by 2022 I was longing for community and so returned to the classroom, as the middle school math teacher at the Academy of Thought and Industry (now Guidepost Academy), here in Austin. In 2024, I also earned an Adolescent Montessori Teaching Certification, through the Prepared Montessorian Institute.
In the fall of 2024, I was recruited to become the Director (Head of School) at Whole Life Learning Center in south Austin. As of this writing, the school is entering its 15th year, with almost 100 students, from 3-year-olds in pre-K to 14-year-olds finishing 8th grade. Our mission is “to inspire lifelong learners, creative change-makers, and conscientious leaders for a more equitable, just, and sustainable world.” We focus on holistic education, social-emotional learning, ecological understanding, project-based learning, and community.
Wisdom… not simply knowledge.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
At times, my path has seemed like a meandering one, but when I zoom out a consistent thread is evident. I have always been striving to make the most of this one life. And though there have been some hard times, overall I have been extremely fortunate, I have been blessed with some amazing opportunities, and best of all I have met and worked with so many amazing humans.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
As Head of School of Whole Life Learning Center — South Austin, I support a team of incredible teachers/mentors; a roster of nearly 100 vibrant youngsters; a community of parents who want something different for their children than the standard, industrial style of education; and a vision of children, education, and the world that is emotionally intelligent, connected to the Earth, loving and respectful, idealistic, fair and just, and always learning and growing and improving.
Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
The most important lesson has been the age-old advice to “Know thyself.” The more you know yourself, the more time you will spend on pathways that are aligned with your values and that resonate and lead to deeper feelings of reward and contentment.
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