About

Who are we?

Byron Clark

Byron is a former IT profesional and educator who holds a Certificate in Tertiary Learning and Teaching in addition to a bachelors degree in history. He is currently studying media and communications. He is better known as the author of the national best seller ‘Fear: New Zealand’s Hostile Underworld of Extremists’.

Mandy Henk

Mandy has been teaching and learning on the margins of the academy for her whole career. As an academic librarian, she’s worked closely with academics, students, and university administrations for decades. She taught her own courses, led her own research work, and fought for a vision of the liberal arts that supports learning and teaching as the things that actually matter.

Dark Times Academy is jointly owned by Mandy and Byron. Our vision is to bring together eager learners and passionate teachers to create a vibrant learning community focused on building the kinds of communities that help us get through hard times.

Learning doesn’t have to be sited within oppressive institutions or led by people who seem more interested in real estate investment or running a hedge fund. It can be run by us–learners and teachers who care about the work and about each other.

Our Vision for Learning

Learning takes hard work, but it should be satisfying, engaging, and learner driven. It should build connections and community, enrich our inner lives, help us live better together, and create a sense of vibrancy that gives us meaning and a sense of direction.

If you want to understand why the world is how it is, how people have changed the world in the past, or why things seem to be as they are–this is your place.

For us, connection is key. Dark Times Academy takes a relational approach to education. It’s about connection. Connections between students and teachers, students themselves, and between our teachers. There’s no grading, no competition, and this is no place for ego.

Humility, care, and mutual respect guide our learning philosophy.

Classes

We love technology, but we prefer to use technology to facilitate connection and interaction–not to enrich Silicon Valley billionaires or steal the work of creatives. This relationship to technology is reflected in our pedagogical model.

All of our online classes are centred around weekly Zoom classes that include in-depth discussion and activities. This lets our teachers teach and our learners meet each other and build a learning community. To further encourage interaction, each class also has a moderated Signal group chat to share resources, keep the discussion going, and get to know each other!

The interactive portions of each course are supplemented by a short pre-recorded weekly lecture from your instructor or a guest lecturer and a weekly curated list of readings, podcasts, and videos. You can do the readings now or you can save them for later. It’s up to you! Our classes are a judgement and anxiety-free zone–you can decide what you put in and what you get from each class.

Many of our classes also include an optional final project you can work on (or not!) to help you build a skill, engage more deeply, or just create something for the joy of creation.