Chemistry at Sudbury

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Every day, somewhere on the Sudbury campus, students are engaging in scientific pursuits. In the last couple of days this has included cooking in the kitchen, making homes for wooly bear caterpillars, tending the garden, pulling out a magnifying glass to get a closer look at “diamonds” discovered in an old broken brick (“No, that’s QUARTZ!”…“No, it’s a diamond!”), finding a baby turtle in the field, pouring over books about sharks and dinosaurs in the library, mining for metals and forging tools on the video game Minecraft, and a multitude of other activities.  In an open school with 57 students, 6 staff, over a dozen rooms and 67 acres of land, we can’t help but bump into science at every turn.

Yesterday, several of our 11-year-old boys came up to me and asked for some help using an old chemistry lab set they brought from home.  The set had sat dusty in a corner of their house for years and they’d never opened it.  I’m not sure what inspired them to pull it out, but their excitement was palpable.  It was a beautiful sunny, warm fall day and we found a quiet space outside to set up.  We cleaned the dust and debris off of the lab equipment and started flipping through the instructional booklet.

Our various containers of chemicals sat before us.  We pawed through them, and the boys read the foreign-sounding names out loud.  “Phenolphthalein Solution”, “Ferric Ammonium Sulfate”, “Sodium Carbonate.”  Their curiosity was contagious. 

To investigate, one student opened one of the small containers and took a whiff.  “Huggakpluhh!” he spluttered.  We discussed “wafting” to safely smell something in a Chemistry Lab, and together we poured over the precautions for the various chemicals.  Of course, the most exciting chemicals were those with the most precautions.  “May cause skin irritation.  If contacting skin, rinse with large amounts of water.”  “Whoah!” the boys said, and we pulled on our plastic gloves.  The rules and dangers of the lab added to the intrigue and excitement of our play, and the boys handled the chemicals with a deep concentration and serious caution appropriate for a lab setting.

Our first experiment: to create a polymer from two solutions.  We carefully prepared our space, mixed the solutions, and made a gelatinous, yellowish-gray solid they affectionately named “booger”.

I’ve never had the chance to just play in a chemistry lab the way these boys were.  Unfortunately, before I could discover chemistry for myself, chemistry was thrust upon me in a compulsory science class in my public middle school.  Later on in college I chose to take several years of chemistry as a part of my pre-med requirements.  Finally, I gained some satisfaction from these classes because I was choosing to take these courses to reach an end goal I had freely set for myself. Still, the lab time was intensely structured and high pressure, with no time to sit back and wonder after a stunning chemical transformation or to form independent questions during the course of an experiment.  Instead I was working hard to reach the “correct,” predetermined answers to someone else’s questions.

As the boys and I sat huddled around the lab equipment on the Sudbury grounds, I relished the opportunity to rediscover chemistry through their eyes, and chemistry that morning was more fascinating than ever before.  Questions flooded in: “What’s Sodium Carbonate?” was followed by a description of molecular structure, which spurred the question, “Well how do they get the oxygen in there?” leading to several interesting guesses and a brief description of bonding.  But the real focus was on the action—“How did those two clear liquids just make a purple precipitate?!”

Other students were quickly gathering around, fascinated.  People were asking questions and excitedly pointing to the different parts of the lab kit.  The boys began to exercise some crowd control.  They were willing to have bystanders but they required silence.  This chemistry play was a serious, concentrated pursuit.  After a few minutes many of the spectators moved on, but one girl stayed, watching intently as the boys pipetted solution into the cells in the reaction plate.

Taking in the scene, I noticed how the creativity, enthusiasm, focus, and determination I see these boys practice daily in role-playing games transferred seamlessly to the chemistry lab, and how beautifully the often rigid lines of “work” and “play” are erased by a day at Sudbury.

My Depression

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Seventh grade was when my depression began.

Now before anyone asks, nothing triggered this. I just started feeling like crap in seventh grade, despite my loving family, amazing friends, stable household, good grades, and basically perfect life. There was the exhaustion, and then the sadness. The sadness had no source. There was no reason for it, but it was there. It was like incredibly distracting background music, turned up a little too loud. At first I tried to get rid of it, but when I realized I couldn’t do that, I turned the volume up, grabbed a blanket, and just let it surround me. I could still have happy moments, at times. I still laughed at jokes. I still smiled at things. But the sadness was still there, waiting, and it absolutely hated being ignored. I went through life with lead weights on my ankles, my head, and the corners of my mouth. 
 
Weekends with friends were life-saving. Because I couldn’t tell my blood family what I was going through, my other family, my friends, saved me. I would show them my broken heart, and they would kiss it and put band-aids on it and keep it beating until I could see them again. I would spend hours collapsed on them, and they would rub my cut-up arms and kiss my forehead and charge my failing batteries enough to keep going for another week or so. 
 
I held onto moments with the people I cared about and little things I would find when with them–a rock in the shape of a heart, an old rusty nail on the side of a path, little objects that I wouldn’t let anyone touch and would cling to when I felt lost.
 
I needed help, but was too scared to ask for it. This went on for a few years. But then my parents found out. I forget how. It may have been my sister, or it may have been that I forgot to cover up my arms with bracelets one day, but either way they sent me to group therapy. It was good to talk to the other girls, and it was good to let it out, vent a little, relax for an hour and a half every Tuesday night. 
 
But my brain was still messed up. They put me on Zoloft, after some persuading from my concerned sister, and I think it helped for a few months before my body got used to it. Then it stopped working, so one day, I took myself off of it. If you’ve ever read about or gone through Zoloft withdrawal, you know that it’s hell.
 
By eleventh grade, my grades dropped into the 40s and my parents grounded me. I wasn’t allowed to phone anyone, see anyone, or go online until my grades improved and my room got cleaned. 
 
Neither one happened. 
 
After a few months, my parents realized that grounding me was making it worse. I got new medication. They sat me down and asked me if I would like to try out a private school. A Sudbury school. A non-stressful, no curriculum, democratic school that lets its students choose how they spend their days, learning through everyday experiences and play. 
 
They told me I could visit the school and check it out, and I started sobbing. I didn’t see any way out before that. I had been planning to be dead before senior year, and this school was my miracle.
 
I’ve been going to Sudbury for around three months now, and it has changed my life. The doubts I had about the philosophy of the school dissolve with each 9-year old poet, each 6-year old who answers the phone, “Hello, Hudson Valley Sudbury School, how may I help you?”, with each child who knows more about friendship and morals and honesty and communication than half of the adults I know. This school, this crazy, radical, insane school, has saved my life. It has taught me to hold on to inspiration, to find new reasons to live every second, to be different and odd and inspirational and ferociously passionate. 
 
Every once in a while, for a few days, I get bogged down again. I sit down and feel like living is impossible, like I can’t possible keep going, like the world is fading to grey again. Depression will come back, smiling and spreading itself through my bloodstream, turning my bones to lead and asking, “Did you forget about me?”
 
But it knows better than to stay, and I know better than to let it. Because no, I didn’t forget. And I’m not cured. But I hold the chains now, the whip, whatever metaphorical leash I need to keep it down. I’m in control now.
 
What I’ve realized is that I was never weak. Throughout those five years of not being able to do anything and wanting to give up entirely, I was not weak. I was beaten, bruised, bloody, but I was alive. I am alive.
 
I am alive.
This article first appeared in the Good Life Youth Journal.  A free journal written by young people for young-minded people.

Images of Sudbury

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Periodically, our blog entry will be a photo journal. This photo journal is presented by Vanessa.

This year – my tenth as a staff member at the Hudson Valley Sudbury School – I have been given a gift; I get to follow my ever curious toddler as he explores campus and interacts with the big kids. Because my son is often on the move I often only glimpse the joy, focus, fun, and talent that weave this community together. Experiencing the school like this has reminded me to stop and look closely, to revel in the fleeting moments, and to be thankful to be part of a school in which education is built on moments like these.

The Qualities of a Sudbury Education

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Last year I spent my afternoons tutoring students who came to me mostly from high-powered traditional private schools. I didn’t do much during sessions; I spoke casually with the students, commiserated, encouraged, laughed, asked occasional questions, and tried to stay out of their way as they navigated the difficulties of compulsory performance. But the students, their parents, and the owner of the company all thought I was doing a lot, and they happily bestowed upon me the credit for improvements in the students’ work and were delighted that the students actually enjoyed coming to tutoring after a full day of slogging through school. I admired and liked the owner of the company – my boss – and over the course of the year I described to him in detail the Sudbury philosophy and what I had been seeing at HVSS during my internship. He was interested, and understood and approved to an extent, but he did have a concern: “Matthew,” he told me, “you are an excellent teacher. You need to be working with kids and teaching them; I don’t want you to throw that away.” I was taken aback; alas, had I failed in my explanations of Sudbury?

There is a lot of play at Sudbury, and it could be said that play has a sacred place in the Sudbury philosophy because it is so often what kids want to do and what kids learn the most from doing. But it seems that in the process of learning the philosophy people often lose sight of the essential qualities of Sudbury education – freedom, trust, and responsibility, and come to believe that Sudbury only values play, or eschews other pursuits. But in the first instance – and in the last – Sudbury by definition does not approve of play or anything else over and above traditional academic pursuits, which have enormous value for me, personally. But any pursuit has little value outside the context of freedom, trust, and responsibility, and that’s the point.

One day at school a couple weeks ago I spent the morning quietly reading books about sticks, streams, and bunnies with a five year old girl. We paused to examine the illustrations, to read the expressions on the faces of the characters, and to guess at what else they might do in their imaginary lives. We talked about how lovely it might feel to just be a stick floating down a stream. Then, she was done, ready to move on. We walked down to the art room where an older girl taught us both how to make a potholder using a simple loom, which appealed to me because I’ve had it in the back of my head for years that I’d like to weave (now I have an extra potholder, too). Later in the afternoon I sat down with a teenager who was here on his visiting week. He had asked me to help him design a course of study focusing on human suffering and its causes, how chronically ill people are viewed in a society which privileges health, man’s pursuit of meaning despite suffering, and the roots of philosophy. We were beginning with Plato’s classic Meno. We each took roles in the dialogue and read aloud, pausing frequently to dissect Plato’s meaning and appreciate Socrates’ wit. At one point a group of younger kids came in to try to get the visiting student to come outside and play. “I need a little more of this, first,” he told them.

In the Meno, Socrates hypothesizes that knowledge lies latent within the hearts and minds of human beings, and we have only to “recollect” it. For Socrates, knowledge is found only by those who seek it honestly and diligently. When education is compulsory, so much of the work of the educator is figuring out how to get her students motivated. Games, rewards, punishments, and the passion of the teacher for the subject are all considered tools to achieve this. But these things very often fail, and in the process they debase students, telling them there is something essentially wrong with them (since they need to be compelled). For me, my own private play and imaginings have been the lodestar which has guided my investigation of life. Imagination has given me access to a wider scope of human activity than my tiny life could ever allow. When I am in a sword fight at Sudbury, I imagine that the swords are real. It takes concentration, but when it is done well – when the imagination is employed vigorously to polish the scene until it becomes real – the thoughts, emotions, and sensations of it spring to life – and later, questions, and the drive to investigate, and grow.

The next time I talk to my former boss at the tutoring company, I’ll tell him that I do get to “work with and teach students. I’d like to explain that freedom for students does not mean that formal learning does not happen at Sudbury; it means that when it does, there is a better chance for it to be authentic, because the student has chosen to engage in it – and meaningful, because it arises directly out of the student’s life – and fruitful, too, because students here come so often from the fecund fields of imaginative play.

Plato is rich and difficult; we moved slowly. We read a little more, spoke softly, laughed, concluded. Outside our window the group of kids ran by shrieking, pursued by goblins. The student got up and went out into the air and the sun, to play.

Right to Remain Silent Law?

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I am a new staff member here at Hudson Valley Sudbury School.  I moved from Massachusetts with my wife Ana and our baby Susannah to be a part of this place, and this post is meant to offer some insight into why we would do that.  

Last Friday evening my friend Douglas called me up to ask how it was going.  We’ve both taught in public schools, and one way we liked to describe the atmosphere in those schools was “tense boredom.”  In was tense because we were charged with ensuring that at all times our students were behaving according to enthusiastically precise guidelines; it was our job to contain and restrain the tremendous youthful energy before us, to make sure that it was pipelined into “productive work,” and that there were no leaks in the piping.  It was boring because a room full of otherwise creative and fun kids stripped of their rights to move, interact, create, and do much of anything is…boring, and sad too.  I took a minute to think before declaring to Douglas that at HVSS the atmosphere is the opposite: it is “relaxed engagement.”  I am relaxed, I explained, because at HVSS I am permitted to respect children and teenagers; I don’t have to exercise arbitrary authoritative power over them, and no one is exercising it over me, either.  I am engaged because when people are not under the yoke of arbitrary authoritative power they do a lot interesting things.  I am engaged because I am eager to learn – I have a new job, and I want to do it well.  I am engaged because in a small democratic community each person has the responsibility of making sure the school is operating in a just, respectful way.  The system here is alive and dynamic – all policies and laws can be changed by School Meeting, and that’s engaging.

Last week a student made a motion to put a new law into the books which stated that a School Meeting Member shall not be compelled to testify in the Judicial Council, a committee of students and staff who investigate complaints about law violations.  He was upset that he had been “forced to tattletale” on a friend because, at JC, as in our country’s Judicial System, a witness must testify; if you have evidence, you have to provide it (with some exceptions, of course).  He submitted his motion to be put on the School Meeting Agenda and started whipping up support.  He debated in the hallways.  He convinced and cajoled and wrangled: “so, have you heard about the “Right to Remain Silent Law?”  Then, at School Meeting he stood and spoke ardently and articulately, urging us to support his motion.  His case, essentially, was that witnesses should be allowed to decide for themselves the right course of action to take in testifying or not, that allowing them the choice was a manifestation of respect, that if this school is truly based on responsibility and trust then individual liberties – even liberties which may extend beyond what our wider society allows – should be steadfastly defended.  The counter-argument was made by students and staff, my self among the detractors: being forced to decide whether or not to testify puts witnesses in the difficult position of weighing the pros and cons of saying what they know vs. remaining silent to protect friends, which is unfair both to them and to any victims of rule violations.  There was a crowd on hand to witness and participate in the debate, and when it came to a vote it failed by a wide margin.  The student who sponsored the motion called the decision a “travesty” and a “violation of human rights” and left the meeting.  

I thought School Meeting made the right decision, but I’m not as sure now as I was when I voted.  Later that evening, washing dishes, I wondered if he was right after all – if, in a community built on trust and respect and which is bold enough to actually explore and live the implications of those values, it is indeed wrong to compel witnesses to testify.  For now, I still think we got it right, but I also think there’s more thinking to do.

In the traditional schools that my friend Douglas and I taught in, “respect” meant being obsequious and “responsibility” meant doing what you’re told.  At HVSS, “respect” and “responsibility” are living, dynamic aspects of human relationships, and our work at school is an ongoing investigation into them.  There are no authorities on the subject, just an open community of learners refining their thinking day by day.  We have the luxury of having sloughed off the burden of high-stakes testing and a model based on authority and instruction, and goodness let me tell you that’s relaxing.  We are free to work on more important things, to explore together what it means to respect and trust each other, and that kind of human-based work is – by definition – engaging.  It’s good to be here.