It Feels Good

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Yesterday was the second day of school at The Hudson Valley Sudbury School. For me it was an emotional start to the year. My youngest is now officially enrolled as a fresh five year old, and two of my oldest graduated last year leaving me to start the year without them. It’s been bittersweet. I know that they were ready to leave.  One is at Sarah Lawrence College, not too far from home so I can still lay eyes on him every so often. I look forward to watching him grow, I eagerly await the stories of his classes, his adventures and what it’s like to be a Sudbury grad, and of course to watch him serve as an alumni at various school events. The other has flown across the world to conquer the professional video game stage, signed as a well-paid, pro player on a team in Asia. He’s on a team that is navigating having players who speak 4 different languages; he’s training, he’s greeting fans, he’s keeping color-coded spreadsheets about technical play – the opportunity of a lifetime. They are both exactly where they should be, and they have taken these steps with a grounded confidence that makes me proud. And I’m doing what I can to miss them in a positive way.

My five year old has taken to the school with gusto. He wakes up early so he can take the school bus (even though I go in two hours later) and makes sure to check if I will be leaving later than the bus. He comes home exhausted after hours of make believe games, of running hard. He’s excited to tell me how he beat a new level in a game he’s been playing, bought something from the school store or was the first on his team to be ready for End of Day Cleaning. His confidence and independence are soaring. While I miss having my baby at home, attached to me, it is blaringly obvious how happy and ready he is to be there. He has also been a walking reminder of what my 17 year old was like when he enrolled just shy of 5. It’s a changing of guards as his graduation means we no longer have any students from when we first opened.

So many things have changed within these walls and on this campus since the day we opened 14 years ago. With the exception of two staff the entire student and staff body is different. The building has been painted, there is an incredible playground, a garden, and an entirely new building has sprouted up. The processes, for the most part feel well oiled and there is solid history behind law decisions and culture. It feels secure and grounded. It feels good.

Now, feeling that the school is stable, that the ship is in good hands, I can look toward the future. We have some exciting projects in the works: we’re looking at ways to build a strong endowment, maybe even so strong we could run the budget off the interest, and we’re thinking about ways to support the Sudbury philosophy worldwide – sending ambassadors out to help startup groups, etc. – we’re thinking a bit outside these walls. It also feels good.

Yesterday, as I sat on the swings and looked around the campus I was struck by how many things had changed and at the same time everything is the same. I watched a group of boys climb high into the trees, a couple of young girls walking arm in arm chatting, 3 young boys were playing hard in the sandbox – leaping from the boulder while battling imaginary bad guys, a group of teens were talking in the garden, surrounded by fresh veggies and flowers…. They were all so happy to be back at school. And I could feel it from the swings as I surveyed the campus. So I hopped up and took an hour finding each person in attendance, and I asked them one question and wrote down their unfiltered answers. It confirmed my beliefs. I am so grateful to be part of a school where feeling “good”, “great”, “awesome” or “serene” is at the forefront of their minds.

  • Their answers to “How does it feel to be back? (and for the new members of the community – “How does it feel to be here?”)
  • It so serene, cool and chill. Weird, but cool chill. I’ve never been so relaxed in a school setting before. It’s weird to get used to.
  • It’s like family
  • Liberating
  • It feels really good. I feel more grounded. I missed all the people more than I thought I would. It feels great to be back with people who feel the same way as I do.
  • Cool
  • Good, good, great!
  • Amazing
  • Good
  • Feels pretty good
  • Fine, great, it’s nice to be back
  • Good!
  • I like it!!
  • Weird
  • Good
  • Thumps up
  • Little bored
  • Good
  • It’s good
  • Pretty good, better than my last school!
  • Yeah, it’s gooood
  • Good
  • Why did it start so late??
  • Oh yeah, it’s great!
  • I had a great summer but it’s good…so what are you doing?
  • Good
  • Good, I mean, you can’t top good!
  • Welcome. And I’m not alone all the time, my life is back on track!
  • Energizing
  • Same old same old – I’ve got this one (pointing at a friend) and this one (pointing at another friend)
  • Pretty good, bored, a bit stressful
  • I never left, but for the most part it’s absolutely wonderful to have all the kids and commotion back. I like having kids back even if it’s harder to get work done.
  • It feels pretty good, but surreal not having the people who left.
  • It feels real great.
  • Good, I’m bored at home
  • LIT
  • Really awesome, best day. I’m really so happy. I’m glad to have some time away from my family and to be with my friends.
  • Awesome la vista, awesome ba bista
  • Awesome, awesome, for real!
  • Good, great
  • Great
  • Amazing, really! I missed my friends
  • It’s the cat’s pajamas to be back
  • Good
  • Meh
  • It’s good, I like it
  • It feels amazing, like I never left
  • I missed school
  • A hearty 7 out of 10
  • Cool
  • Good!
  • It feels like chocolate pudding
  • Hopeful
  • Invigorating – there are so many opportunities
  • Good
  • Good, I’m excited to have something to do
  • Great
  • Feels like a reset on my brain, a nice exhale, first stretch of the morning, first sip of coffee all at once, all day long.
  • Pretty good
  • Radical
  • Feels kind of like…something
  • Pretty fantastic
  • It feels like Christmas morning, lots of anticipation, bubbling excitement and surrounded by family

Welcome Back to Choice

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That school bell’s ringin’! Giddap! Whoa! Welcome back, everyone.

As I write this, the rest of the staff are scurrying around, collating files, scrubbin’ tiles, and wrastlin’ crocodiles, puttin in dat elbow grease, while I tap away on my keyboard, 33 tabs open in chrome, planning next summer.  Just kidding – I’m working harder than anyone else, I’m sure you’ll agree.  I happen to be drinking coffee, too, and for some reason today my coffee tastes like grilled cheese, and strangely enough, I love it.  I’m just slurpin’ it down.  Go figure.

I’d like to congratulate our students, and their parents, for making the bold decision to be a part of our school.  Surely it would (at least appear to) be safer to sign up for the traditional program and march off down the corridors, backpack stuffed with the good stuff.  My daughter is nearly five, and I feel the pull myself, so my congratulations are quite sincere; I know it isn’t always an easy choice, but I think it is a decision well made.

My final adventure of the summer was a trip to the Maine Primitive Skills School for a five day immersion program.  I built and slept in a debris hut, wove cordage from plant fibers, made friction fire, and skinned and roasted a chipmunk (I didn’t eat it though, smelling it was way more than enough, I needed to shower and brush my teeth like six times immediately afterwards but you know: baby steps).  You gotta get your kicks somehow right?  I went for the skills, but I was startled by how emotional the experience became for me.  The instructor emphasized that the most important aspect of survival – far and away – is attitude.  In survival situations (particularly in real ones, not merely when you’re “playing survival” like we were), circumstances can deteriorate rapidly and it can be extraordinarily difficult to meet basic needs.  It’s quite easy to panic, become angry, exceedingly anxious, impatient, depressed, and then, well, die – even when there are accessible pathways to survival.  But if you can remember yourself and choose a positive mindset, your chances of survival (or at least a dignified death) increase dramatically.  

We all know very well that attitude is important to outcomes, that it shapes the meaning of our experience, and that it’s possible to change it if we need to, but these truisms were illuminated and refreshed for me by the unnerving – if contrived – context of primitive skills training.  I made it my practice to continually check my attitude and adjust as needed.  The skills themselves are important, but they came more easily, and I could use them to greater effect, when I approached them with patience and gratitude.  The lesson was an old one made new: there is always choice, whether we recognize it or not, and if we don’t, or if we don’t exercise it, the choice will be made for us by impersonal and often brutal forces.

When I think about what is most important to me for the education of my own children, it’s intimate knowledge of this principle of choice.  An understanding of the possibilities it offers, and the ability to access them, is not only the basis of imagination (and therefore innovation), but also positive behavior (self-discipline), and – most importantly – it makes you secretly (“spiritually”) invincible, because you always get to choose how you respond, internally and externally, to circumstances. I’m not making a metaphysical claim about free will or anything like that – I barely care – I’m talking about plain psychological truth.  

Given that’s what I want my kids to know about, I want their educators to use pedagogy which emphasizes the truth of choice with enthusiasm, clarity, and consistency.  I want them to become familiar with the process of choice, and I want them to practice it, become strong and confident with it.  I see it as the Master Skill which will ensure a Good life for them however fickle fortune (or the economy) may be.

Of course, choice is the raison d’etre of our school.  We do choice like google does search.  Our students have to grapple with the reality of choice the entire time they’re here.  Our model fits the human condition like a glove, it fits our psychology like the Greek pantheon, it’s the local organic option – what the body really wants, what the genome craves.  Even our digimodern lives are really just extended survival trips, and there will be hard times and close calls for all, guaranteed.  As a parent, sometimes I suffer miserably reflecting on this hard, clean truth, but it always clarifies for me what I want my kids to know, and where I want them to go to school.

Welcome back all you brave, creative, thoughtful people, to our sweet, bold little school, where the kids are free to learn and struggle and practice being a human being and the printer is always out of toner and the coffee tastes like grilled cheese maybe because some kid used your mug to eat mac’n’cheese and you like it like that.  Welcome back to this real place.  Welcome back to choice.  

Alumni Interview with Colin Thrapp

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What have you been up to since graduation?

Well during my last year at school I worked at Outdated Cafe in Kingston one day per week.  I started there doing prep work – chopping vegetables, etc.  After graduation, I jumped right into working full-time as a dishwasher at Outdated, which I did for about six months, before moving on to being a prep cook for 8 months and then finally I was a head cook for the rest of my time there.  The experience showed me that I did really want to be a cook, although I wanted to work somewhere I could prepare food that was a little nicer, and I wanted to learn about meat (and Outdated is a vegetarian cafe).   I wanted broader knowledge of food, so one day I went across the street to the world-class butchery there, Fleishers, and asked the manager Bryan, “what’s the best way to learn how to butcher?” and he said, “Do you want a job?”  I knew immediately that I would quit my job at Outdated and start up at Fleishers.  I worked there for 9 months, and I learned more than I even knew existed, from working with the meat to learning about the animals themselves, what it means for animals to be healthy and happy, what the exact opposite means, and the difference in the quality of the meat.  Occasionally, we would get our meat in  “primals” which are essentially quarters of animals to butcher, 150 lb pieces of meat that we would take down, or more often Fleishers main butchery in Red Hook, Brooklyn, would send us “sub-primals,” which is essentially each muscle, where you might have the shoulder clod which is the ranch steak, or the London Broil, and we would break that down into steaks.

Before I even started working at Fleishers, I had bought a plane ticket to Norway, because I have Norwiegan blood and I wanted to go explore the country.  So really right after I started at Fleishers I took the trip, and while I was in Oslo I bought a plane ticket to Copenhagen on a whim, and went for one night and ate at a restaurant called Ante.  I met the cook and he asked me to come stag (apprentice) with him.  So I planned to go back after getting more experience at Fleishers.  When I did, this cook was at a new restaurant called Bror, and I started an apprenticeship there – the two head chefs had both been sue-chefs at Noma, which was the number one restaurant in the world for three consecutive years, so there was a lot to learn from them.  The biggest benefit for my career of the whole experience was networking – I have a job opportunity coming up at a restaurant in NYC which is a two Michelin star place called Momofuku ko, which is huge, and the opportunity opened up to me through connections I made in Copenhagen.  I’m glad I’m taking this route rather than say going to the Culinary Institute of America, because knowing the people I do seems way more valuable than a degree, which is really expensive anyway. Also, right now Noma now has a pop-up restaurant in Tulum, Mexico, which I’m going to visit at end of month.

What is your ambition?

In some ways it’s too early – I do have a fantasy of owning a restaurant but I know it’s really too early to clearly perceive what my ultimate goal should be – I’m still a beginner, so I’m still exploring.

What was your time at HVSS like?

I was four when the school was founded and spent a lot of time here that year, and then continued through until I graduated when I was 16, so I was here for around 11 or 12 years.  I spent maybe all my time as a younger student playing.  Later I had some more focused interests – I made movies for a while, and then got into photography and graphic design, I still do some 3-D art, not as much as I might like to do.  And close to the end of my time at school I started to get interested in cooking.

Did you ever study any academics at school?

No.

Are there any moments when you feel like your lack of academic training betrays you?

Uh…not really.  Although when I was in Copenhagen I was in a bar and doing a trivia competition, and I didn’t know some history facts, but it’s not as though that made me feel like my life was falling apart or anything, and actually my teammates (who had been through traditional school) didn’t either.

How did you learn how to read and write?

I don’t know, I think it just kind of happened.  When my brother was four he somehow started reading books, and I saw that, and figured I wanted to read books too.  I’m sure my parents helped me, I don’t have much memory of it.  For writing, it was more self-taught, mostly at school because that’s where I spent most of my time.  I don’t remember specifically how it happened – I think it was gradual, you have to write, it’s a necessity, so you figure it out.

Do you feel like you gained any skills at school that are serving you right now?

Definitely yes, although it’s always hard to know what’s happening because of having gone to HVSS or just because of who I am but if I had to guess what I got here, it’s being able to adapt to different situations quickly, socialize, not have a fear of talking to older people, and also not to have a fear or disdain of younger people trying to do amazing things.  Some people I’ve met in the restaurant industry do sort of look down on younger people in the industry and maybe distrust them, but I’m open to working with younger people and supporting them to get involved with things and succeed.

Note: Good news! Since we did this interview with Colin, he has been hired by Momofuku Ko and moved to NYC.