Let’s Talk About Screens; “Screen Time” and Self-Directed Education

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There is an ongoing cultural debate about “screen time” and its effects on well-being. Most of the evidence is theoretical or anecdotal; there are no large-scale studies, meta-analyses, or longitudinal studies involving children and touchscreens. The debate is often confounded by the breadth of activity included in the term, “screen time.” This article won’t take a position on whether screen use is inherently good or bad, or on whether “over-use” even exists; instead, it describes how the Self-Directed Education (SDE) environments mitigate the potential of over-use and its associated suite of problems, while also creating a productive space for the “screen time” debate to unfold.

Screen Use in Self-Directed Education Spaces

As noted, in most SDE environments, there are no restrictions on how much students can use their screens. Upon receipt of this knowledge, some people assume the student body at a school like ours – the Hudson Valley Sudbury School – must be a zombie horde of proto-cyborgs: incontinent, drooling, and endlessly gazing into their glowing, jewel-like screens. But the truth is even more startling: screen use at our school is moderate.

It seems fair to suggest that insofar as people are turning towards their screens more and more, they may be attempting to meet basic psychological needs, such as the three proposed by Self-Determination Theory:

  1. Competence (seek to control the outcome and experience mastery),
  2. Relatedness (will to interact, be connected to, and experience caring for others), and
  3. Autonomy (desire to be causal agents of one’s own life).

Self-Directed Education environments create conditions which may satisfy these needs, thereby negating the need to “escape” into a screen. They do so in the following ways:

  1. They allow students to choose from a theoretically unlimited list of activities, as opposed to the strictly limited options available in traditional schooling environments. This condition increases the odds of each student finding something they might learn to do master. Since students are free to move at their own pace, to experiment, and to work privately or with the company and instruction of others, they are less likely to be discouraged by failure and more likely to attain competence over a broad range of skills.
  2. They tend to feel more familial than institutional. “Screen time” is usually intensely social and offers lots of occasions for connection, both online and with friends at school. The freedom to choose companions, and to spend as much time as wanted with those companions, provides opportunities to develop deep and meaningful connections.
  3. If nothing else, SDE offers the chance to be the causal agent of one’s own life; full autonomy is central to the very definition of the concept of SDE.

One ability which is particularly relevant to screen over-use is self-regulation, which overlaps the first and third psychological need above. Self-regulation requires competence over a variety of skills, including lay-psychology, introspection, willpower, prioritization, and planning. SDE provides spaces for young people to begin mastering these skills – and in SDE environments they tend to do so in earnest, because they are responsible for themselves, and they know it.

Young people appreciate being trusted with the responsibility, just as adults take it for granted, and they feel that it’s right that they should be, and they rise to that occasion. It’s not that young people in SDE environments are self-disciplined ascetics – self-mastery is a lengthy and lofty project, just ask your local wisdom tradition – but they do tend to be “advanced” in this area, especially after a few years. If you ask around at our school, many teenagers will tell you things like, “I don’t use instagram at school; it’s not what I’m here for,” or, “I don’t bring my tablet to school so I can focus on my friendships.”

The bottom line is that “over-use” is less likely to occur at our school, and that when it does occur anyway, it is less likely to persist, and that when it does persist anyway, the environment is supportive of the phenomena running its course in a healthy manner.

Solving the (Potential) Problem

The focus of this section is the Sudbury model, and Hudson Valley School in particular, because that’s what I know first-hand, but much here will also be true for other SDE spaces. The Sudbury model provides a hopeful platform for working towards reasonable solutions to any problems posed by screen-use. By utilizing a democratic governance structure and – even more importantly – by building a “democratic ethos,” Sudbury facilitates productive communication.

Recently, France passed a national law prohibiting public school students from bringing their phones to school in order to intercept what administrators and teachers saw as a slew of problems phones were causing in their schools. But prohibition has a poor track record; it’s riddled with psychological hazards, and it subverts the need for autonomy and debilitates communication by setting up an antagonistic dynamic between those with power and those without. Sudbury schools, by contrast, are direct democracies, and there is no authority separate from and above the student body. This simple yet astounding circumstance sets everyone at ease from the get-go. The ethos of the school is likewise democratic, in the best sense: staff and students regard each other as fundamentally equal, and the right to be and to express oneself is universally respected. There’s something like a vibrational field of equality which protects the school culture; it’s not that there aren’t differences among us, or that power is never abused; it’s that we respect each other’s autonomy. An equivalent ethos – and therefore arena for conversation – can be found in many other SDE spaces, including those which do not operate as direct democracies.

Taken together, our structure and ethos facilitate clear and honest communication; because there isn’t a power differential between any two parties – and the threat of patronizing regulation or prohibition is absent – real, vital conversations can unfurl. Students and staff alike relax and talk without fear of retaliation. It’s like your friend who’s a good listener and doesn’t judge you: you talk to them, and the conversations are enormously helpful in processing your experience and moving forward. Contrast this to conversations you have with that friend (or family member) who moralizes, jumps to conclusions, and gives unsolicited advice (usually along the lines of, “you should be more like me,”): you avoid talking to them, and when they do get their hooks into you, you resent them and their message; it’s counterproductive.

Many SDE spaces, including Sudbury Schools, have formal platforms for communication as well. At a recent meeting here at HVSS a group of teenagers actually brought up the issue of “screen overuse” in our wider society, and asked for discussion on how we might proactively address it at school. Prohibition theoretically possible, but impossible to imagine: if anyone formally proposed it, every School Meeting Member would show up with their pitchforks and torches, ready to defend their freedom. So the meeting was creative, and several promising ideas were proposed, including the creation of a “scree-free” zone in the building, a petition which willing parties could sign, agreeing to put their screens down during certain times, and the organization of more school-wide activities. Discussions like these usually don’t lead to the adoption of any new policy or law, but they do affect the school culture, and our culture is more important than our legal structure anyway, because it’s more influential on students’ experience at school.

The fact is screens are not going anywhere, and no doubt more are on the way. To the extent that their use may include hazards, the best safeguards against them are found in free and equal spaces such as those created by SDE: 1. The opportunity to live a rich life which satisfies our needs, and 2. A space to grapple with the issues in a supportive community of productive communication which sharpens minds, challenges assumptions, and lends courage. SDE environments are thus well positioned to navigate the the incoming tide of screens, as well as other approaching oceans.

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.  

Sudbury and the Fear of Falling Behind

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Not long ago a parent told me that her son had “never been happier” since he enrolled earlier this spring.  And indeed, that very morning I had seen him running across the back hill with his arms outstretched and his head thrown back; it was like a scene from Free Willy.  His parent told me that, while his former school had stretched itself to make things work for him, he remained miserable there.  His needs, for space and time and companionship, were not being met.  I hear it a lot: it was like trying to fit the old round peg into the unforgiving square hole, but here, at last, there was no hole to conform to.  Out the window at this moment I can see three little bands of kids wandering the grounds, gesticulating excitedly, creating worlds beyond my kin.  One of them has green hair and no shirt.  One of them is carrying a bag by a strap around his forehead.  And one of them is being led by another…on a leash.  It’s so easy to forget that homo sapiens have developed a complex set of needs – and the skills to meet them – over 200,000 years of evolution, and they are embedded in us like algorithms that find expression one way or another.  We need to explore our identities and forge them in the context of intense social interaction in order to be successful, healthy, and happy.  Welcome to our “school.”

But something downright insidious has been popping up a lot around here lately.  It’s that old shade of capitalism’s angst – a 20th century zombie staggering relentlessly into the 21st – the fear of “falling behind.”  At our school, a sanctuary in a world which works relentlessly to colonize places, bodies, and minds, it manifests as the fear of “being stupid,” or, “dumb.”  Compulsory universal schooling has such a hold on us that even parents bold enough to send their kids to HVSS sometimes worry about academic achievement – and the kids do, too.  But the idea that everyone should be instructed in a uniform curriculum of academic minutiae, or even study academics at all, is a yarn spun by the past.  Even the belief that it’s necessary to study academics in order to attend college is no longer tethered to reality.  It’s the fakest news this side of Trump Tower, and there’s no more reason to worry about it than about Vladimir Putin influencing your choice of breakfast cereal.  Kids here do not “fall behind,” they attend to their real needs and learn how to thrive.  They are not pushed, pushed, pushed to do and be things opposed to their reality.  So I would suggest that the kids crammed into classrooms are the ones missing out, and anyway, as my grandmother used to say, “the hurrier I go, the behinder I get.”  

It’s become cliche to critique the current system of education by comparing it to a “factory model” and describe it as an artifact of the industrial age.  While it seems obvious that the traditional model – classrooms, desks, chairs, teachers, students, textbooks, bells, etc. – is outmoded, this narrative is really just a caricature that serves more as a rhetorical device to shape the future of education rather than as the true story of its complex history (and as a fan of history, I have noted many times how, the more I read about a particular era, the less confident I am that I can explain its basis).  To me, though, the interesting aspect of the “factory model” narrative is the broad implication of it, which is that school is designed to meet the needs of society – to maintain cultural stability and eternal economic growth – rather than the needs of real people, and what’s more, the societal needs it serves have already been left in the dustpan of history.  This appears to me to be mostly true.  Neither we nor the system needs us to study academics any longer, or to learn the lessons of traditional school.

One thing our model maximizes is flexibility, and in a world which is changing at an exponential rate, flexibility is an inherent good.  As society and technology change, certain of our needs change too.  But our model also maximizes opportunities to develop timeless skills – the ones that aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.  Take for example this quote from Wes’s thesis:

“Sudbury has equipped me with a lot. I can talk and think in the realest way there is. I can make choices about what I want, choose things that I will work incredibly hard for, stick with those things, and succeed at them. I can lead and listen and I work well with others. I am not afraid of a challenge and I have the strength and problem-solving to overcome what’s in my way. I feel prepared to go on to college and both have a great time and succeed at what I hope to do there, which is figure out what’s next. I am looking forward to finding out what that will be, and navigating that path once I do. I think what Sudbury has given me, in the simplest terms, is to be prepared to always make the next choice and then the next one and every one after that.”

Wes has learned how to function interdependently – that is, to listen, speak articulately, reflect, evaluate options, and make decisions.  And when he needed to write a thesis, he figured out how to write a damn good one.  Thank goodness he wasn’t distracted by minutiae and the judgements of random adults while he was in high school.  There may be holes in his academic knowledge when he goes to Sarah Lawrence next fall (and there are absolutely no holes in our academic knowledge, having attended traditional school, isn’t that right dear reader), but he’s become such a solid person that any challenge posed by that deficit will be trivial to him.  Unfortunately, many students coming out of traditional model schools can’t say the same, and in fact there is a mental-health epidemic well underway on our college campuses.  

And then there’s the simple truth that none of us remembers most of the academic knowledge we learned in school.  My wife studied advanced mathematics in high school, but yesterday in the car she whipped out her smartphone to compute 14 x 3.  14 x 3?! And you know what? It didn’t matter – she got the information she needed.  Dare I say it, I doubt it will be necessary to even know how to read or write a few generations from now (sue me!)  There’s so much to learn, so much we have to know and be able to do to be a successful adult, and the traditional domain of schools is a tiny and mostly irrelevant sliver of it.  The world races madly along, increasing production to meet the manufactured needs of the economy, afraid to “fall behind;” thank goodness again that we have this sanctuary where we can work to meet our own authentic needs together.

What are They Doing?

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Well it’s the first warm day of March, and most people here are outside, climbing trees and rolling in the mud, building sandcastles and playing street hockey.  I just played a game a student created called, “Sharktooth.”  I lost.  I was also, for a time, the overburdened father of two very demanding young girls, busily making dinners to order (why do I let them get away with that?!)  while attempting to regulate their screen-time (the “screen” was a slab of bluestone) and mediate their conflicts (you’d have to be a saint to do this well, I assured myself). I had to quit that game after less than an hour.  People sometimes complain about “kids these days” preferring the virtual world to the outdoors, but I don’t think it’s true; when all the obstacles – obstacles that adults have created –  are removed,  they go outside.  A lot, and really in all weather, not only when it’s nice.  But the spirit today is more celebratory than usual.

So what else do “kids these days” do when the typical yoke of post-industrial childhood is lifted?  Well, it’s always different –  freedom tends to variety – but I’ll tell you some of what I’ve seen today. This morning in the office a student came bursting in explain to anyone who would listen that she had, unexpectedly, been moved to undertake the writing of a memoir; her friends had encouraged her, expressing fascination with her life.  She said she was surprised, because all of a sudden, filed with purpose, she felt she was a writer, and what’s more, she was getting some clarity about certain elements of her life.  There was another student in the office sharing the news of the impending birth of her brother, talking excitedly about her hopes.  Later, in the kitchen, there was a group of girls making and sharing lunch.  I was on tapping away on my screen (work-related, ok?) and they told me to put it away and “go outside,” so I did, deciding that was probably a good idea.  On my way out the front door I passed a teenager leading a crying six-year-old with a barely-scraped knee to the nurse’s office.  “He doesn’t need medical attention,” I said with the cold, calculating logic of a robot.  The older student rolled his eyes and whispered, “It’ll make him feel better, Matthew.”  Right.  I went outside and walked over to the stage.  There was a group of 8-11 year-old boys crowded around a tire swing, taking turns winding it up as far as they could and riding out the spin.  It was going crazy fast.  But some guys didn’t want it wound too far so they wouldn’t go too fast, and at first there were mutterings about “backing out,” that sort of thing, until the most adventurous guy out there, yelled, “Hey! Everyone responds to G-Forces differently! No one should be pressured to experience more “G’s” than they want!” and that fixed ‘em.  Meanwhile, there was one student sort of prowling around looking for people to mess with.  Everywhere he went he was leaving howling kids in his wake, “leave us alone!!!”  I was about to talk to the guy to see what was up when one of our oldest students came striding out of the building and right up to him and said, “what’s up?”  I’ll have lunch, I thought.  

So, our students are taking care of each other, putting their ideas into practice, getting into and out of quarrels, and having fun together, but what’s the point – what are they preparing for (assuming a school is at least on one level a place of preparation)?  They’re preparing for the new economy of the Creative Age.

As Thomas Friedman points out in this pithy piece in the New York Times,

Software has started writing poetry, sports stories and business news. IBM’s Watson is co-writing pop hits. Uber has begun deploying self-driving taxis on real city streets and, last month, Amazon delivered its first package by drone to a customer in rural England.

The robots are here, folks.  Already, not only manual labor is being mechanized, but mental labor as well. Even AI Dr’s which have all the medical knowledge ever created at their fingertips (“buttontips?”) may not be too far off. Friedman goes on:

In short: If machines can compete with people in thinking, what makes us humans unique? And what will enable us to continue to create social and economic value? The answer, said Seidman [author of the book How: Why How we do Anything Means Everything] is the one thing machines will never have:“a heart.”

Therefore, Seidman added, our highest self-conception needs to be redefined from “I think, therefore I am” to “I care, therefore I am; I hope, therefore I am; I imagine, therefore I am. I am ethical, therefore I am. I have a purpose, therefore I am. I pause and reflect, therefore I am.”

Our economy has moved from “jobs of the hands” to “jobs of the head,” and we’re on our way to “jobs of the heart.” Our students are free to study or engage whatever sets of knowledge and skills they want to, and the school does not privilege or value any one above the any other, but whatever choices they make, they’re learning their own hearts. They may roll in real mud and climb real trees – or maybe not – but everyone here ends up rolling in the mud of life, and climbing the trees of emotion. They learn to navigate the forest.  It can be messy, like birth and death and family and culture and- well, you get the point. But our students learn to make a life, and, in the rapidly advancing future, that means a living, too.

School Meeting Dispatch: Sleeping at School

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Last week a motion to ban sleeping at school(!) came before our School Meeting.  Although sleeping isn’t a widespread practice here, it is common to see one or two students sawing logs at some point on any given day, and occasionally certain of the cozier nooks in the building become de-facto napping spots; it’s the “flipped classroom” concept taken swiftly to its apocalyptic  conclusion.  Anyway, there’s a feeling, at least amongst a few of the staff members, myself included, that there is something just a little weird about it.  While it’s true that our students have full responsibility for deciding how to spend their time, sleeping is unique among human activities because the sleeper is unconscious (and can therefore hardly be responsible for themselves).  Besides, sleeping is generally a private act, not a social one, and it comes wrapped in an aura of intimacy – and blankets, and all those blankets and limbs strewn about willy-nilly look sloppy; it’s a little hard on the eyes and it’s probably pretty bad PR.

But when the motion hit the floor the student body was wide awake and ready to go, and in the ensuing discussion they developed examples of classic argumentation without necessarily knowing it.  This is one of the more beautiful aspects of school meeting: students develop the skills they need to operate effectively in a democracy by participating in one (rather than by merely studying one), and by actually defending their rights, writing legislation, and creatively working through the implications of the decisions they have to make.

 

Here’s a rundown of how it went:

The very first student to speak on this issue hit on the old “slippery slope argument,” saying, “First, you ban sleeping, but then what’s next – a ban against sitting around ‘doing nothing’?”  This drew excited murmuring from the assembled, a sort of parliamentary tittering.

The next speaker paraphrased scientific research to support the argument: “If this is about being idle or something like that, I’d like to point out how important sleep is to proper functioning.  It’s all over the news.  The more you sleep the more you can learn, really.”

Another student pointed out that the very same day he had taken a 20 minute nap because he wasn’t feeling well and woke up feeling refreshed.  Several more students piled on, adding arguments about how much sleep teenagers need and how difficult it is to get enough during the night.  School districts across the country are grappling with sleep research which shows that the hours their schools keep are harmful to teenage biology, but we’ve already solved this problem by…well, letting sleepy people sleep, so why recreate the problem?  And besides – sleeping is one of our basic biological needs!  What could be more natural than sleeping?

But what about people who might take advantage of their freedom at school and choose not to sleep at home because they can “just sleep at school?”   Well, it doesn’t seem fair to punish the whole population because a few people might take advantage of the rule.  Well perhaps we should just ban bedding. Or maybe it would work to limit the amount of sleeping someone can do at school?  Or to deduct the time spent asleep from the attendance requirement?  Eh, not a bad idea, but probably too difficult to enforce, and besides, there’s something ridiculous and even Orwellian about it.

Another option is to place restrictions on the locations sleep is permitted, maybe it should only be permitted in side rooms, or in the quiet area.  This was received with nodding and various other barely discernible signs of approval from among the assembled,  and with that, the motion was withdrawn to be reconsidered and perhaps amended and resubmitted by the mover.  Most usually, our School Meeting works like this to find consensus rather than a mere majority.

But the most powerful argument of the day, and the most basic, was that the liberty of the students must be jealously protected.  Student freedom – the responsibility for choosing what to do – is the essential fact of our school, and that’s pretty cool.  Any incursions into this responsibility are so not cool; they represent existential threats, and everyone here knows that instinctively.  Sleep, after all, was not the issue.  The students here know well what they have, and they’re willing – and very able – to protect it.

In this election season, discussions like these seem all the more relevant.  Our students are preparing to be responsible citizens of The Republic, while students elsewhere are clamoring for more information about democratic process.

So, after the motion was rejected and the meeting ended, we turned out the lights and took a celebratory nap on the spot.  Just kidding.  But anyone who wanted to could have made the choice to actually do that, which, I think, is pretty cool.

School Meeting Dispatch: Bathroom Rules

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And we’re off, almost into October, and Sudbury education is under full sail here at HVSS. I think of learning at our school as happening in three basic ways: formally – with instruction and structure, informally – with conversation, play, and individual pursuit, and communally – with collaborative problem solving in our Judicial Committee and School Meeting. Personally, I am most excited by the communal learning, and I think it’s a unique facet of the school. Here’s an example from September: last week, a motion to reserve one of the school’s bathrooms for the exclusive use of those aged 12 and up was brought before the school meeting, and a fascinating discussion ensued. Incidentally, I have a toddler, so potty humor is so hot right now at my house, has been for a while, and in fact I’m giggling this very moment, but I promise I’ll spare you, sophisticated readers, any ill-formed jokes in this post, although I will admit that the meeting was not similarly spared.

The raison d’etre of the motion was a claim that some school meeting members, in particular some of the younger ones, leave messes in the bathrooms, creating unpleasant circumstances for the more mature, considerate, and thoroughly trained members of the community. However, in this community any standard imposed by age immediately raises red flags, because we know that age is used in regulation primarily as a proxy for competency, even though it’s an unremarkable observation that each is actually independent from the other. One mechanism the school often employs to bypass this issue and ensure competence is the “certification,” whereby any user of potentially dangerous or messy equipment is trained, tested, and cleared to use. So, right away, the idea of a “bathroom certification” was floated. In this case, though, certification was considered inadequate and ultimately unenforceable. After all, everyone already knows what they’re supposed to do, and bathrooms are used privately behind locked doors. Therefore, the movers asserted, a more draconian measure was required. Still, most members of the meeting chafed at the idea of an age-based regulation, and several of them proposed alternatives: for instance, one bathroom could be locked, and the key kept in the office as it is at many coffee shops. Presumably, anyone who would bother to fetch the key would be likely to use the bathroom considerately. Or, one bathroom could be reserved for use by any member of a group which agreed to take turns cleaning it. Or, one bathroom could be reserved exclusively for those willing to “pay to play,” so to speak; even if the fee were very small, the assumption again was that only considerate users would go to the trouble. There were some less practical ideas too, like bathroom monitors and sign-in sheets. One staff member offered the opinion that the staff take turns cleaning bathrooms throughout the day, which was met with giggles from the students and icy stares from the rest of the staff. Eventually, the movers elected to withdraw their original motion to consider the alternatives they had been offered.

It was the kind of conversation I love witnessing here, or anywhere else for that matter: people identifying a problem and presenting a solution to the community, which carefully considers it and collaborates to find the best way forward. I’m fond of saying that our curriculum is responsibility and our method is freedom. Our students take responsibility not only for directing their own lives at school, but for figuring out how to share our resources and make the community work. We don’t cook up simulations of problems for them to solve, we just safeguard their right to self-governance, and they do the rest. If you attended our recent open house, I think you got a really good sense of the amazing things that happen here. It always strikes me, though, that the school doesn’t deserve much credit for any of it, because what you see here is just people, who we call “students,” taking ownership of their lives and their community, becoming themselves, and doing what people do when they are free and safe, which, simply put, is thrive.

Playground Build 2016

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I have to admit that I was nervous last Friday morning.  We had really paired down our plans for build day because most of our project leaders were unable to come on the actual date, and only a few people had signed up to participate.  Then, during the week, lots of people volunteered to come, which was great, but I worried we didn’t have anything for them to do.  I imagined little groups of bored and despondent, formerly hopeful people milling around in hats and work gloves, wondering why I was so unprepared utilize their talents.  I imagined them packed into the kitchen while it poured outside, huddling over styrofoam cups of instant coffee, staring grimly at the muddied floor, kindly offering their seats to each other, maybe even taking turns weeping bitterly in the far corner.  I imagined patiently trying to explain to each person the predicament, why it turned out like this, but being received, like a foreign diplomat trying in vain to maintain favor after breaking a promise, with icy silence, stiff nods, and untrusting-yet-firm eye contact.  

It turns out, though, that people don’t necessarily need to be told what to do.  When the time came, tasks and projects seemed to appear out of nowhere to fit the abilities and inclinations of those who were there. Imagine that.  The grounds were cleaned up and noticeably improved, new ground was claimed for the playground(!), and several creative structures were built by hard-working teams.  And it didn’t even rain.

People jumped right in, got to know each other, made new friends, and generally had a blast working together.  Try as we might to maintain our cool, nearly all of us were swept away in ecstatic waves of philia.  Human beings are made to band together to accomplish mutual goals; few things are sweeter or feel better.  I’d even claim that being part of such communal efforts is an essential nutrient.  Today we are well-fed.  To all who came out, please know that we are extremely grateful for your work, and even more so for your energy and kindness.  This school has always been a communal effort, built by many without centralised authority, the way a school should be.  Thank you all again, and see you Saturday!

See the Facebook Album for more pictures: https://www.facebook.com/HudsonValleySudburySchool/photos/?tab=album&album_id=10154287740028804

HVSS Theater Co-op Presents “Spamalot”

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A surprising thing happened this semester for the Theater Co-op. Once we chose our spring musical, Spamalot, many of the older members decided not to take part. Thus many of the new and younger co-op members received bigger parts than anticipated. At first this was a bit overwhelming and nerve racking for many of them since they were not sure they were ready for such a big jump. But with some reassurance they happily embraced the parts.

Working on this show has felt a lot like working on my first show with HVSS; Arsenic and Old Lace in 2013. During our normal rehearsals I slip in acting exercises and games to support actor training while we work on our blocking. Little things to help with the basics you would get in an acting class or know from doing a previous show. However there is one very different thing this time around, two thirds of our rehearsals are for either dancing or singing, another set of skills new to some of these actors. Thus they have a lot more to work on everyday. Since it is a lot to take in, occasionally our rehearsals will become unfocused, but unlike 2013 I now know how to work with Sudbury students much better. We started to collectively make rules for what to do in rehearsal while you are not on stage; to keep focused on the show so that we are using the 10 hours of rehearsal time per week to its fullest.

I have very high expectations for these students and the work we put out as a co-operative. No matter their age or experience level (there are first timers in this show and ages 7-15). We keep working moments in scenes, songs and dance numbers until they are right. I also added a new facet to the show this year, which is that each student must assist in a technical aspect of the show. It has been a learning experience adding this extra task. Some students stepped into their technical roles with ease, such as our choreographer and vocal coach; while other have missed deadlines and worked a little harder to get their tasks done, but they did get them done. Needless to say being part to the theater co-op takes a lot of dedication.

The best part of this experience for me has been seeing these students, some of whom I’ve been working with for 3 years, gaining confidence and breaking out of their shells to take on leading roles, both on and off stage. It’s been a pleasure to get the chance to work more closely with them, and help shape their performances.

This show is very ambitious, our biggest yet. Much like the group in 2013 they are learning fast and working hard, and it’s paying off. Spamalot, (a delightful rip off of Monty Python and the Holy Grail) is a wacky, over the top self-aware comedy. In fact the choice to do Spamalot, a challenging show for any group of even adult actors is not out of the ordinary for this group. These students aren’t satisfied by run of the mill kids plays, they go out of their way to pick fun shows that are bold and interesting and push the boundaries of what most consider children’s theater. Which is one of the reasons our shows get such high praise, because we put on shows audiences want to see with exciting characters to watch.

These young people are doing a great job taking their new acting training seriously so that they can be totally ridiculous on stage. Right now we are putting the final touches on our wackiness, making our silly walks a little sillier; our crazy voices a little crazier; and our punch lines a little punchline-ier. You won’t want to miss it. I am excited to see this group perform; to see these fresh faces, and a few of our veterans, help us all find our grails’.

Math

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I’ve worked at Sudbury for five years now and this fifth year is my nerdy dream-come-true. As a Sudbury staff member, we follow the students’ lead and engage in the activities they choose to pursue. Sometimes our personal passions are shared by students and we can engage in those activities together, and other times we might be waiting around for a long, long while for something we love to catch on. Well, I love evaluating algebraic expressions, playing with geometric shapes, and puzzling out information about movement and time, and lucky for me this year I get to teach about these concepts every day of the week!

In this glorious, mixed-age environment, with students moving freely throughout the building, popping their heads into side rooms, engaging in constant conversation, and organizing around their interests, fads can spread rapidly here. Rainbow-colored hair, D&D, improv games, Ga Ga Ball, Geometry Dash, Heelys…the list goes on. I’d like to think of math as “the new Heelys”. Or maybe Heelys are the new math. Either way, the number of students engaged in some sort of formal mathematics study has doubled over the last few months, and I’m loving it.

This all began at the beginning of the school year when a 13-year-old came to me to ask for help preparing for college admission. She dreams of attending NYU for dance and performing arts, and learned from their website that competitive applicants have high SAT scores and must demonstrate proficiency with a range of math skills and concepts. And so the classes began. Our “Do Not Disturb – Math in Progress” sign got some attention, word travelled, and soon others were asking about what we were working on and if they could join in, too. A second class was added for a different group of friends that wanted to work collaboratively. A handful of other students met with me once or twice and then set out on their own or in pairs to pursue the subject independently. At this point in the year, I’ve had about twenty-five students ask for math support in one way or another, and I know that other staff (and students, too) have offered formal math resources to even more students.

The funny thing is though, although this is the first year that formal math study has taken off since I’ve been here, the students I’m working with already know a tremendous amount about the subject. Within a handful of weeks, the students have been at or above public school “grade level” in math, even though this is their first math class ever. So how do we explain that? I started asking around to find out how students learned what they know:

  • “School store – I go in and buy things every day.”
  • “I learned math in the school store when I was getting mentored to become a cashier.”
  • “An older student taught me. They wanted to try teaching math, so they sat me down and I learned how to multiply.”
  • “My mom wanted me to memorize the times tables so she put a big chart up in my room, but I thought, ‘Well that’s pointless. Why memorize it if it’s right there in front of me?’ But I learned what I need to know just by looking things up when I need it and that’s given me the skills I need for everyday stuff.”

But most Sudbury students can’t tell you how they learned math. In fact, many of them wouldn’t say they know any math at all until you press them:

  • “I dunno, I just learned it. It’s like walking. No one taught me exactly, I just tried at it and one day I was walking. One day I just knew how to work with numbers.”
  • “I don’t know any math… well yeah, I can do basic things like buy things in the school store.”
  • “I can’t do math really… oh, well yeah when I bake stuff in the kitchen.”
  • “I don’t really do any math…sure, that’s true. I do math with Magic [Magic the Gathering card game].”

The truth is, math is everywhere. We consider it a fundamental skill for successful adulthood because we use it all the time, in all sorts of ways; for students living their big, full, diverse lives here at school, they encounter these real-world mathematical applications at every turn. Baking in the kitchen, making change in the School Store, counting in a board game, making calculations for a video game or card game, taking measurements for a sewing project, constructing a structure in the playground… the list goes on. Even pursuits that use no math skills directly seem to be helping students in their math studies. One student active in the Theater Co-op had half of her multiplication facts memorized overnight, after significant practice memorizing lines for school plays. Another student who spends a tremendous amount of time making three-dimensional art in the art room was especially quick at looking at two-dimensional representations of 3-D objects and calculating volume and surface area.

Sometimes parents worry about how their kid is going to learn math if they’re never forced to take a course. It seems to me that students will have a hard time avoiding learning math if they are also, as they are at Sudbury, given ample space and support to pursue their passions within a dynamic community of learners. Parents aren’t the only one with this concern though. While students experience the unique challenges and joys of self-directed learning, they are aware that just down the road and all across the nation, others their age are sitting in rows being drilled in arithmetic and algebra and geometry and a range of other subjects. And Sudbury students want to know how they measure up. For many of the students seeking my assistance in math this year, the first thing they’ll say is that they want to make sure they can hack it, and that they aren’t “falling behind” their public school peers.

“I practiced some algebra a little bit at the beginning of the year for a few weeks. I realized it wasn’t actually that hard, I got bored, and I stopped doing it.”

For some students, the reassurance that they can learn the material when they try is enough and after a few sessions they move on to something else. For other students, they find they genuinely enjoy mathematical problem-solving and concepts and continue their study week after week, moving far beyond the public school expectations for students their age. So maybe we’ll continue on to calculus, or maybe a new fad will sweep through and it’ll be on to the next thing. Meanwhile, I’ll savor the moment and who knows, maybe their next passion will be long-distance bicycle touring and I’ll find my bliss again.

Happy, Healthy, Strong

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HVSS does not have an official mission statement; the closest we get is the text of our graduation process, which states that, in order to earn a Certificate of Graduation, a student must prove to a committee that s/he has gained the problem solving skills, adaptability, and abilities necessary to succeed in whatever they are going onto next. This is an imminently sensible goal, honoring as it does the natural richness of humanity by acknowledging that different people will want to live different kinds of lives, and they’ll have to do different things to prepare for it.

In this post, though, I would like to float another possibility for a mission statement (not for serious consideration, just to offer another way of thinking about HVSS): HVSS’ mission is to safeguard our students’ right to be happy, healthy, and strong, however they define those preeminent states of being in and for themselves. This might make more sense as a mission statement than the language in the Cert/Grad process, because the school’s role is to maintain the environment and manage resources; we don’t actually teach our students skill sets, problem-solving, or how to adapt to new circumstances. Acquiring those kinds of things is just what happy, healthy, strong people do.

This new mission statement occurred to me recently when I was looking around school and noticing just how — well, happy, healthy, and strong everybody looked. We often talk about how capable our students become, but usually in reference to the intangible skills they build while managing the responsibility of being a student here. We don’t talk much about how our school’s program actually supports our students’ health; maybe we just take it for granted.

So it was this beautiful, sunny, warm day, and nearly everyone was outside, where people should be, especially when it’s sunny and warm. I was thinking about how I needed to produce a blog post sometime soon or risk disappointing Vanessa, and I was witnessing an amazing variety of movement while I strolled around trying to come up with something new to point out to show what an amazing place this is. I saw students slacklining, using our obstacle course, working out with the gymnastic rings, brachiating on the swingset, dancing on our outdoor stage, stalking across the front lawn like animals (big cats?), playing basketball, sword-fighting, and riding bikes – all in the course of maybe three minutes. Our students, freed from the confines of rigid desks and boring playgrounds, and with unlimited access to the outdoors, move in incredible ways all the time, building their strength, developing balance and agility, and engaging their bodies in the ways they were meant to be engaged. A group of about ten younger students is also making regular trip to The Jungle, where they practice parkour and circus arts. There’s usually a rich layer of social context heaped on top of the movement here, too, whether it’s narrative, team dynamics, or artistic statement, and we usually focus on that layer when we talk about the benefits of all the action, but I’m more and more interested in what the movement itself is doing for our students. Even when they sit down here, they’re able to ditch the typical chair/table arrangement and opt for more natural positions. And this isn’t merely about being physically fit or even free and happy either: the human brain has actually developed to engage and control complex movement. Over 50% of the brain is dedicated to movement capacity. The changes in our postural style, and the increasingly sedentary lifestyle of some sectors of the population over the last 10,000 years has led to diminished emotional and imaginative capacities – it’s actually changed our feelings and thoughts. So by limiting the opportunity for movement in our educational system, we’re not doing kids any favors, and we’re not making anyone any smarter. Because we learn new movement via “mirror” neurons, it’s even true that the less movement we see in our environment, the less our brain is stimulated. Dr. John Ratey of Harvard Medical School says that body movement stimulation is also responsible for the maintenance of executive functions like sequencing, recalling memory, prioritization, and sustaining and inhibiting attention. It’s the twenty-first century; the brain and the body are one.

When some people come to our campus and find our building basically empty and our outdoor spaces bustling with activity, what they think they see is kids wasting their time. When I look around, what I see are young apes stimulating ancient patterns programed into their brains and becoming the robust, well-rounded organisms they were meant to be. So next time someone asks you if you’re worried that your kid isn’t learning their lessons as in a typical classroom, tell them, “no, they’re too busy becoming happy, healthy, and strong for that stuff.” And then go ask your kid to take you to the park and show you a move.