This is Rainbow, but I call him Pot of Gold, when quietly remarking to myself – again – on how freakin’ rich this guy is. He’s an HVSS-lifer, and- well, maybe “Rainbow” is a pretty good nickname, because he covers the spectrum of human activity beautifully and colorfully: he’s a devoted reader of fiction (“Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, Dr. Sleep by Stephen King, and When you Reach Me by Rebecca Stead are the best”), an aggressively modest artist (sorry, Rainbow!) and cartoonist (“art is lit, except when people talk about it, or tell me what to do, or how to do it”), and a mathematical juggernaut (“he best part of math is derivatives and acceleration. I just do it. And why? It’s fun, it’s good, there’s lots of stuff. It makes sense, I can see it. I don’t do stuff for any other reason than wanting to do it, or needing to do it because there’s something else I want to do and I have to do this first, you know?”). Rainbow was our the JC Clerk for 6 months in a row recently, which lemme tell you requires extensive reserves of patience and endurance, *and* he just spent a week spearheading the school community service project, raising $1,800 to buy toys for 31 kids this holiday season (“buying toys is *so* much fun, but who wants to keep them? This is perfect.”) These days at school, most of the time Rainbow is hanging with “the crew,” which is a trio of 5 year-olds. He’s helping them make this demanding, HUGE transition to being students here, and they LOVE him. Gosh, we do, too. Thank you so much, Rainbow, for taking such good care of us, for being so generous with your smile, your time, and your energy, for your general badassery, and for sharing that pot of gold with us.
Opportunities
At Zena Democratic School, we pride ourselves on offering our students endless opportunities; they are free to pursue their interests, dabble in this and that, or to fall head over heels into a subject without interruption – for as long as the interest remains, or to follow it wherever it may lead.
But the most valuable opportunity we offer students is the time and space to discover who they are. Students at ZDS have time to be, to think, to talk, to play, to discover what they enjoy and appreciate and, equally importantly, what they don’t enjoy or appreciate. We offer an opportunity to practice crucial skills such as motivation, persistence, articulation, and humility, to be part of a democratic community, and to experience acceptance, cooperation, recognition, and celebration. This unstructured time is where the real beauty of the ZDS experience lies and where the most important learning usually takes place.
However, many people do love content and instruction, and there is plenty of organized and formal activity at school. Students often organize this on their own, or with the assistance or leadership of a Staff Member, but they may also request the Programming Clerk to facilitate whatever kind of instruction or activity they’d like to have, from basic reading instruction to skateboarding lessons to sex education; every topic under the sun is theoretically available for our students to explore and to receive instruction upon.