Sudbury and the Fear of Falling Behind

Written by

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?

Written by

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.

Know Thyself – Know Thy Fun

Written by

Early excuses. Toys and schools.

Looking through children’s toy catalogs I’m always struck by the language. Scattered throughout the pictures of all sorts of toys, plastic or wood, bright colors or neutral colors, puzzles, trucks, dolls or whatever, there are special snippets of language designed to tell me something important. But what are they telling me? Phrases like “kickstart your child’s play,” “support your child’s development,” and “piano keys that play music and encourage creativity.” They make me suspicious. The first sounds violent, the next obvious, and the last sounds absurd. Since when did piano keys not play music or discourage creativity? Phrases like “helps your baby develop from a crawler to a walker through adaptive technology” are possibly reassuring to those concerned their children might instead develop from a crawler to a swimmer, or perhaps an orthodontist. Phrases like “differentiate among colors and sizes” make me imagine my toddler sorting white and brown eggs into large, extra large and jumbo sizes in an egg factory. 

Looking through pamphlets for preschools I see more language that reminds me of the toy catalogs. I’m assured by more than one institution that sensory tables and their messy play “provide endless ways to develop and learn”. They stress that “play based learning” is a powerful method to absorb and process information and they hasten to add they also have formal instruction. As the children in question get older the language shifts more toward instruction. Similarly, the toy catalogs for older children focus more on the instruction and less on the play – and less on the fun.

But – toys are fun. People like to have fun. That’s sort of what fun is. And when someone tries to sell me toys with a long list of explanations and justifications for why these toys have value above and beyond being fun, well, I recognize these as excuses. The implication is that the fun is not the value and has to be excused with some other value, e.g., the lesson, the content, the learning, you know… the important stuff. “Yes, we made the toy fun but that was just to lure the child in. Please trust us that it’s really about important stuff.” I like the word “excuse” because it’s less polite than “justification” and it highlights, for me, the discomfort I have when I read the language and feel I’m being sold something. I especially like the word “excuse” because it’s uncomfortable enough to highlight some of my own excuses to myself.

Later excuses. My kids’ play.

I have a bunch of kids, my kids have a bunch of varied things they like to do, and I’ve noticed some consistent language used when others discuss some of those things. And some consistent excuses. 

One child showed an early love of art and a talent for it as well. She spent endless hours not “practicing” or “studying” or “learning” but just “arting” or doing whatever she felt like doing in the way of art. Most people would react to her and her art with questions about long term goals for her art, about “growing up to do art”, about “doing art to make money”, about a career as an artist, and especially about displaying her art, her skill, and herself to others. Art is a fairly respectable thing, but not like being a doctor you know, so it needs some excuses. “What are you going to do with your art?” That is, “since you clearly have this skill, how do you intend to make this a focus of the person you need to grow up to be?” Because knowing what you want to be when you grow up is one of the great excuses. This same person also is an insatiable reader, consuming written material and retaining it, faster than almost anyone I ever met. I have heard few people – but there have been a few – ask her to what greater purpose she was going to apply her reading. Reading is pretty darn respectable. It doesn’t need as many excuses.

Another child showed real enthusiasm and talent for chess. Chess is a game that gets a lot of respect. The strategy, analysis and problem solving skills required to master it are not questioned. Chess doesn’t need excuses. However, when his appetite for chess was sated and his hard focus on it waned then some minor excuses were needed to excuse the lack of interest. Tricky things these excuses. He also showed a lot of interest in some complicated card games, in particular Yu-Gi-Oh and later Magic The Gathering. These aren’t as respectable and need more excuses. Yu-Gi-Oh is a game that requires a lot of basic arithmetic and reading skills for the typical player age range, and I found myself mentioning these excuses often when describing this game. Math and reading are strong excuses and you get a lot of points if you can refer to them. The age range of Magic is older, so math and reading don’t cut it any more, but you can compete with others and talk about your performance and you can actually win money in some cases. And money is a great excuse. If you can tell grandparents that an activity involves math or reading or winning money then it makes everybody happy. And we quickly pick up the importance of making these excuses. On a trip to a surgeon, the surgeon asked him, “So, how’s school?” “Fine,” he responded. The surgeon followed up, “What are your plans?” and he replied, “Oh, real estate and law.” The surgeon nodded with a smile. I didn’t laugh. I knew he was interested in these areas, but plans? So, later I asked him how he had exactly those answers ready to say so smoothly. He replied, “That’s what they like to hear.” Real estate and law are great excuses.

And then there are some pernicious excuses, like The Great Play Excuse. This is a fairly enlightened excuse. It happens when someone is challenging a particular play activity, probably one that doesn’t have especially strong excuses in the opinion of the challenger, and you feel compelled to defend the play by saying something like, “It’s not that this particular activity is worthy, or that he or she will keep doing this forever, but they are practicing skills that will be applicable to other more worthy tasks in the future.” Everyone nods because this sounds very reasonable. And it is. And it’s also an excuse. Or The Talent Excuse, which I’ve used several times in my examples here without mentioning it explicitly, whereby you justify doing something just because you’re good at it. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that people are allowed to do things they’re lousy at. 

I want to stress that I don’t think these excuses are bad things. This is how we express value and justify our choices. And that’s great. I’m using this label “excuse” to sensitize myself to a whole class of language I use to imply what’s valuable without being explicit; to highlight my own conscious and unconscious actions that communicate to everyone else what my values are, but most especially to my children. Especially because it was the word “excuse” that triggered an epiphany for me about what I expect from my children and from Hudson Valley Sudbury School.

A big excuse. My kids’ school.

I’ve had, and have, a bunch of children in the Hudson Valley Sudbury School for some time now. And I’ve gone through multiple variations of how I talk to others about the school. I’ve worked through lots of thoughts about what I want from the school myself. I’m not one of the Sudbury parents who spends a lot of time doubting if Sudbury is a good choice. I’m straight up blunt that I’m a huge fan. 

Without getting preachy about Sudbury, I have to lay a foundation for my language. I did fairly well in public school. I aced almost everything, and went on to do well in higher education. But my single biggest characterization of my public school school experience was that it just wasted so much of my time. I met a few good teachers, was exposed to a few interesting topics I might otherwise not have been, but almost all of my formal school experience sucked up almost all of the time I was trying to spend on my own activities. Without a doubt, those activities, the ones I followed my nose to, proved to be the basis of my college and professional career, but I had to slog thru the swamp of the rest of it anyway. At least that’s how I look at it. Thus while Sudbury has many advantages, one outstanding factor is simply that the institution will waste as little of my children’s time as possible, and leave it for them, individually and collectively to decide what to do with the limited time they have. 

Sometimes in a discussion of HVSS I’m pressed to defend this or that aspect – “How will they ever learn math? How will they learn to read? How can they get exposed to enough stuff? Who’s going to direct them? How can you trust them? It must be chaos! Etc. Ad nauseum.” You know the list. It’s possible to defend each of these questions robustly, but the most particular and pernicious challenge goes something like, “What do mean they just get to run around having fun all the time? How is having fun going to relate to The Real World? When are they going to get down to the really important stuff?” You know, the stuff other than having fun. And so there is another excellent answer I learned. I would often reply, “My kids have just one job at that school and that is to figure out what they want to do.” They have plenty of time. They really only have to do that one thing and I’d be thrilled. Just figure out what you want to do. I point out that I have professionally interviewed some high scoring college graduates who didn’t have any idea what they wanted to do, nor even knew that they were allowed to want anything at all. These very smart people would sit across from me and answer questions like they were taking a quiz and never turn on, never engage. Their education never left them the time to get so bored that they had to dig themselves out of the boredom with the only tools they could actually call their own: their own desire. And I never hired any of those people because I knew they weren’t going to help me solve many problems that wouldn’t get solved without them. Expressed this way, many people understand this concern. Most parents have this vague nagging cloud hanging over them: “What will my kid do? Like, eventually.” And you know what? Almost always people are really impressed with this answer; with this excuse: You have to figure out what you want to do.

And that was my epiphany. Even when I was doing my best to leave my kids as free as I could to take away what they would from their experience in school, I was still defining the standard for that experience. And that’s OK. I’m a parent. We communicate standards, among other things. This most excellent excuse was my best response for almost ten years. But then I had a moment of clarity of what i wanted even more that they take away from the experience. I wanted them to have fun. But why?

My Current Excuse. Know Thyself.

Student performing in music video shot at HVSSIt’s lovely to find a thing that you like, something you like to do, someone you like to be, or someone you like to be with. But one day you’re going to wake up and the world won’t look the same, and food won’t taste the same, and your passions will have shifted while you were busy fulfilling them; even making the big bucks, or winning the big awards, or accomplishing whatever you had set out to accomplish. A day may come, will come, when you don’t know what you want. Many such days may occur. And that’s OK. You may be ten, fifteen, thirty, forty-five or seventy years old. You may have just scored a major victory in your field or you may have been depressingly unproductive lately. And then, things change. So what do you do? Well, what did you do the first time? What is your previous experience falling into a passion?

What’s fun? What feels good? What do you want to do? How do you know what you want to do? Do you recognize passion in yourself? How do you recognize passion? Maybe these seem like simple questions. Maybe they seem silly. More and more I think these are the most important questions one can examine. And more and more I’m interested in my children having the opportunity to answer this question.This one question is central to your existential definition. 

So what do you do? Well, hopefully you have some practice at sniffing around looking for some passion. Hopefully you have multiple experiences of what it’s like to be looking for an interest and randomly or purposely walking into one so that you have some practice in recognizing an interest when it appears. Hopefully you had some time to be with yourself as yourself had some experiences of joy and fun and passion. But let me stress, I’m not primarily concerned with which experiences my kids have or which thing they’ve landed on right now. I want my kids to have a chance to become sensitive to what it feels like to fall in love, to fall in love with yourself, to recognize a passion and take hold of it. A particular passion itself is not my hope for them. I want them to have the chance to learn something about recognizing mutual passion between themselves and the world when it comes along. I want them to learn self-awareness of desirable opportunity knocking on their door, and have some practice answering.

That’s my current excuse and I’m sticking with it for now. 

Welcome Back to the Real World

Written by

Hark, the school year beginneth! The long, languid, dreamy days draw to a drier, crisper end. Time to get back to reality. How utterly gratifying to return to a school designed to support young people’s humanness. How invigorating to be able to focus on such a vital task, rather than on, say, sprawling tomes of byzantine standards. Hallelujah. Summer fades, yet my mood endureth.

You know, our school is often misunderstood (big surprise, I know). It’s true that we’re different, indeed we are the alternative to everything else. But sometimes we are accused of living in a kind of Rousseaun fantasy – summer forever. Time frittered away in reverie while the rest of everyone is busy learning how to dominate the real world. I mean the markets. Or whatever. Ideas like this might even pop into the heads of Sudbury parents from time to time, or staff, or even students. But this unimaginative thought ignores the complexity, the history, and the evolution, of our human reality. In fact, HVSS is the most real place I know.

I want to tell a story from my own summer, about learning – a personal learning experience. I was lucky enough to get to spend five weeks on the coast of Maine on property my grandparents bought almost 70 years ago. The spirit of the land remains strong; like our Mountain West, Maine retains its natural power despite intensive human habitation. It’s inspiring, and I find that it sparks the imagination. Early on in our time there, I decided to listen to an absolutely devastating history of the Western Front of WWI – not sure why, going with my intuition – I’m impressionistic with my interests, that’s how I learn. I remembered reading about it in high school, but I only got the dried out basics: trenches, gas, it got bad out there. Basically, all I learned was that WWI happened, and it was important. In July when I started listening to this history, put together by a passionate and insightful reporter, and which included lots of first-hand accounts of the combat, I couldn’t stop. I binge-listened. One day I did almost eight hours of audio. I wandered around in a kind of daze. I lay in the grass and stared vacantly into the vault, I watched the tide coming in, II stroked my baby’s wispy hair for hours. It was really horrific stuff, much worse than I had thought. A few times in the afternoon I went running on trails through the woods, and I couldn’t help imagine being in the forests of Flanders, shells smashing into the pines as I ran, faster and faster, men (and boys) on the ground everywhere, clutching at the rocks, the moss, the mud. At night, lying in bed, I composed letters to my family and wife and children from a bomb shelter in Verdun, where I was waiting for my turn to jump out of a trench, just as the apocalyptic German bombardment of that city began. A friend there, in Maine that is, not Verdun, gently accused me of appropriating the worst misery of millions of people for my own entertainment, but I didn’t see it that way. I thought of it as a way of witnessing, of honoring the people who were there, and of looking closely at what people are capable of. It was all very real for me. The quality of the history, along with the space and time I was afforded both to find what was alive for me and to immerse myself in it, allowed me to have an amazing educational experience, because that’s how I learn. This is what’s available to our students here at HVSS: we offer the “real world” insofar as our students have access to all the ways they “really” learn.

Wow, I can’t wait for the first day of school – what fun it will be! The staff here are so lucky to be able to interact with young people, who everywhere lead the world in play, enthusiasm, hopefulness, and closeness, in an environment of fundamental equality. How satisfying, and what a relief, to be permitted to treat them with complete respect instead of being expected to compel them to perform tasks and regulate their behavior with carrots and sticks. What an almost mischievous joy it is to protect their access to money and political power within the school, which they are systematically denied elsewhere. And- even that last, totally outlandish-sounding proposition is totally “real.” The hunter-gatherers from whom we descend knew that young people are sovereign, too – we lived guided by such principles for hundreds of thousands of years; it’s etched indelibly in our biology. Perhaps that’s why young people expect to be treated with kindness, to be cooperated with, and to be given assistance. And – how fascinating it will be to watch our students learn in all their myriad ways, many of which do not look to our narrow perspectives like “real learning” at all. But! But but but but – no time is wasted here. If you’ve ever been for a visit, you may disagree – perhaps you’ve observed loafing, television watching, and texting and tweeting and instagramming. But even during these seemingly trivial activities, though, something important is happening, at least and especially when it’s happening here, where young people are candidly expected to be powerful and intelligent, where they are trusted as a matter of course to direct their own lives. The marinade is mixed and set – would you suggest the steak wastes time marinating? An inelegant metaphor perhaps, but it gets the job done. Just being here, where their full humanness is seen and honored, is, at certain points in individual students’ process, enough.

Speaking of steak, marinade, and the real world, I recently was helped at Fleisher’s Craft Butchery by one of our recent graduates, Colin Thrapp. He had just returned from a solo foodie trip to Norway. Since graduating two years ago he’s worked at Outdated Cafe and now he’s with the butchers. He’s out there in the real world, being treated with the respect he expects, learning real skills from experts, and, I might add, offering excellent customer service (thanks, Colin). He may or may not go to college – I don’t know, I don’t care, I’m just happy that he sees options where I saw only college, that the world is his oyster, that he is guided by his own genius and not any arbitrary external standards. That’s what our people look like. They’re just so themselves, just so…real.

So everyone, it’s that time of year: September, back to school. The bells are tolling, and teachers and students all over our surreal country are waking up nauseous. But not us. We’re really quite excited for a nice little dose of reality. See you soon.

Playground Build 2016

Written by

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”

Written by

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

Written by

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.

Hudson Valley Sudbury Basketball School

Written by

[Ed. One of the questions often asked during our Open Houses is, “Do kids at a Sudbury School challenge themselves?”  Matthew address this question in the blog below.]

The Underdogs first game is on January 27th, 2016 at 3:30 at Donlon Gym (43 Partition Street, Saugerties, NY 12477).

This past Tuesday at 9:00 it was 18 degrees here on campus, not factoring in wind-chill…. It was windy. Most of us were right where you’d expect us to be, huddled up inside the building, working and playing. Our new basketball team, however, was training…. Outside.

In fact, they were lined up in the push-up position, balancing on one hand while dribbling a ball with the other. I watched them from the office, shaking my head in admiration and disbelief, as I have so many times this year.

The coach – Noa, a student – was walking slowly back and forth in front of them, his lips soundlessly chanting incantations to the basketball gods. I went outside to get a little closer to the action – the team’s energy drew me out there, as it has so many times this year. When I reached the court, though, they looked so dialed in that I pretended I was just walking by on my way to the mailbox.

As I passed, Noa broke the wintry silence, addressing his players: “Keep working. I promise you there isn’t another team in New York practicing outside today.” I’m sure he was right, and I’m sure there isn’t another basketball team in the state anything like ours at all, any time of any day. Maybe they haven’t played a game yet, but I’d say they must be the best team in the state.

Recently a parent told me that her son and husband had been taking boxing lessons from a coach in Kingston, and that the coach was “getting them to do things they would have never done otherwise.” She was implicitly questioning our school’s strict prohibition against requiring (or even coaxing) students to do anything in particular (or anything at all) with their time here.

She wanted more of the value that sometimes comes from being pushed, encouraged, and held accountable by a coach.

I couldn’t agree more that such value can be immense, but there’s a fundamental difference between asking to be pushed and trained and encouraged and having it thrust upon you. Her son has chosen to box with a coach, and that’s the basic reason his boxing is producing joy and energy in his life. Of course, the parent knew all this and really just wanted to talk it through. And I understand how the concern about a kid wasting his time doing what appears to be nothing can creep; it happens to me, even as a staff member of the school. And then things like “The Underdogs” happen that put me firmly back in my place and remind me that taking initiative – laying claim to and directing your own life – is maybe the most important thing, and commitment only flourishes unfettered by compulsion.

“The Underdogs” are our basketball team, of course. The name is simultaneously a misnomer and stunningly accurate. Accurate because no one on the team has really played much basketball at all before this year, and because they still have never played indoors together, and they’re…well, a little short.  But it’s a misnomer because they’re able to invest as much time and energy to the enterprise as they like here, they work as hard as any team out there, and, having created this together – as friends and partners – they’re a true team in the un pour tous, tous pour un sense of the Three Musketeers: a family acting strenuously towards a common goal.

I mean… when you make something from scratch, you invest your heart along with your time. When you, as a young person, choose a peer as your leader, rather than opt into an adult-led activity, you retain ownership and pride of purpose. Which is not in any way intended to say that seeking out adults for instruction is a bad thing; it’s often a good idea because adults generally have more knowledge by default.

In this particular case, though, the kids made a good choice. Noa is, as mentioned above, a student, and he’s 15, but as a coach he reads like he’s 35. His grasp of the sport, and his own skill in the diversions of the court, are consummate, and his passion for the project is intense. Noa has his sights set on college basketball, and the best way to master something is to teach it.

You wouldn’t ordinarily think of our school as a basketball school, but that’s one of the really cool things about us: we can be a basketball school, or any kind of school for that matter, if the students make us so.

These days, walk down our hall at 9:30 in the morning and you might see Noa on the phone, reprimanding a tardy player for not calling to notify him. Crack open the door to one of our side-rooms at 2:30 and you might see him delivering a teary-eyed speech on the value of stepping out of your comfort zone and grappling with the unknown. Or watch, like me, with admiration and disbelief as the players run to get water after a round of “suicides,” aiming to be back on the court in 30 seconds or less so as not to have to “do it all over again.” Watch them drill, and listen as Noa as he tells them that if they mess up… that’s evidence that they’re doing it right, that they’re working hard and pushing themselves to be better.

What I love the most about this team is how supportive it is of each player. The earnest encouragement they offer each other is a genuine motivator, and the jubilation they enjoy together when any one of them masters a skill energizes them all. These kids know each other well, of course, as they attend a school which doesn’t segregate kids by classes and ages. There’s this natural sort of tribal quality to the team that stems from their intimacy.. It’s just so damn fun! I coached a couple little league teams when I was in college, and I wish those teams had had that quality. The difference was that those kids didn’t know each other; they were meeting for the first time to play baseball… So it was harder for them to really come together.

So usually there’s an end of day scrimmage between the team and a few staff members, which has allowed me to keep intimate track of their progress, and the rate of improvement has been swift and steady across the board. At first, they wanted it bad, but their skill level wasn’t as fully developed as their desire. So, they played some pretty physical basketball. Hey, they did what they could… I’m 6’3”. And the rest of the staff is pretty ok. But that was weeks ago. Already the Underdogs are passing well. They’re boxing out. They’re setting screens. These kids are nailing their shots, folks. And they’re laughing. A lot! And… beating us….. Sometimes. They’ll be playing their first official game January 27rd at 3:30 pm. Underdogs, maybe. Best team in the state, definitely….

Happy, Healthy, Strong

Written by

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.

Apprentice Learning

Written by

Apprentice Style Learning at HVSS

One of the most effective ways of learning a new skill is through an apprenticeship.  This style of learning is essential to a Sudbury model school and is practiced naturally all day, every day.  This blog entry gives a couple examples of this style of learning in action.

In love with The Law

This year our Law Clerk is Eli, a 14 year old lifelong Sudburian.  “I’m interested in the whole field of law,” Eli says, “but mostly in criminal defense.  I want to see systems work… I like it when there are well defined processes to follow.”

A couple weeks ago Eli shadowed a Public Defender in New Paltz.  “Andy explained that defense attorneys don’t defend people; they defend people’s rights, which is a good way to think about it,” Eli says.  He was invited to sit in the witness chair while plea bargains were worked out, and he was allowed to attend private meetings with clients.  “It was very interesting because it’s a thing that normally you don’t get to see if you’re anyone other than the defender.  I also got to watch them test out a new device they have for people on probation.  It’s a little hand-held device the probationer breathes into once a day, and it has facial recognition software so it will catch it if it’s not the right person doing the test.  They also have one that straps onto an ankle and the second you consume any alcohol it sends a signal to the courthouse…The courthouse was full.  Most of the cases were DUIs and drug use.”  As Law Clerk, Eli has been working on clarifying the procedures of JC and the trial process; it’s been stressful, but rewarding.  He’s looking forward to setting up a schedule to shadow Andy regularly.

]It Takes a Lot to Run a Store

We have a small school store at HVSS which sells snacks and other sundries.  Last week two of our youngest students – Mae, age 5, and Macey, also 5, decided to begin the difficult process of becoming certified to run the store.  They took to the task eagerly, mentored by Shelley and Vanessa.  They have been working on looking up prices, counting money, and carefully filling out the store ledger.  They have practice sheets, and have been asking students and staff to pretend to buy things so they can fill them out.  How long will it take to gain full certification? “Probably a long, long time,” says Mae, “we have to learn more about money and writing first…and we really need to work on drawing our ‘2s.’”  What does Macey think the pair need to focus on next? “Practicing money, and doing the numbers.”  And where does their motivation come from?  Macey says,”it’s fun,” and Mae adds,  “we don’t want to bother people to open the store for us – we want to do it ourselves,”