Meet Callahan, our sweet, soft spoken, speed demon. While he is one of our youngest he would like you to know he’s already faster than a long list of people, but we won’t name names. He likes to spend a chunk of his day walking around school observing the going’s on. “I like the independence here” he says. Sometimes you get the sense that someone is watching you and you turn to find him there quietly and patiently stalking you with a dollar – hoping you will open the School Store – much like lion stalks a gazelle.
It’s this type of patience and determination that makes him so special. He has been working on his dribbling, his football spiral and his new goal of spinning the ball on his fingertip. You can often find him playing ball on the blacktop with Red Ninja who is about 10 years his senior, Red Ninja says “he’s very nice, such a good kid. He’s shy but when he plays basketball or football or other games he starts to come out of his shell, so I’m trying to play with him a lot.” It is moments like this that we can see exactly why age-mixing is Sudbury’s secret weapon.
Callahan recently joined the local baseball team. He didn’t know anything about the sport, or anyone on his team, most of whom are 3 years older, but he marched into the season bravely, with his head held high, had fun regardless of the results, and batted .500 for the season. When I asked him how it felt he said “it just feels how it feels.”
But Callahan is not all sports, he’s funny “I put all the parts of clowning together to make people happy.” He is as sweet as a koala, takes pride in his imagination, loves pizza and fried acorn weevils (seriously!), enjoys sleeping on the floor – as long as it’s heated, has an extensive repertoire of sound effects, knows ALL the lyrics to Hamilton and he’s also becoming quiet proficient in his foraging skills. He seems to have a knack for finding morel and black trumpet mushrooms and can identify many edible plants. In addition to scouring the woods for Mother Earth’s bounty he also enjoys crabbing, fishing and watching his sister get kissed by a sea lion.
While talking he paused and looked at me and said “I think there should be a limit for devices at school like there is a limit for the computer room, there should be a limit for iPads because some people spend too much time on them.” He didn’t get to finish his screen manifesto because he spotted someone out the window that his friend had just been looking for, he launched off the windows seat to go let her know where he was.
Callahan, we are so lucky to have a guy like you. Thank you for your humor, kindness and perseverance. If I had one message for you, it’s “Frog Belly Ratbone 1, 2, 3…I’m so glad you are here growing wild and free!