It’s Important to Know How to Fail

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At Hudson Valley Sudbury School, our “learning standards” are categorically different from the standards used at other schools; our goal is that students learn whatever is most salient for them to live a fulfilling life. Sometimes, what is most salient is a “life skill” like tying their shoes or remembering to eat lunch. Often, it is an interpersonal skill, like how to set a boundary in a relationship. Occasionally, it is an “academic skill” like performing the arithmetic needed to make change, or the more advanced math needed to do well on the SAT. Ultimately, for many students, it isn’t really a skill at all – it’s wisdom about how to be human, as exemplified in this reflection by one of our nine-year-olds who has grown up at the school. This is the kind of learning people tend to do when they are free, safe, and ensconced in a supportive community – the kind of learning we are fortunate enough to witness routinely at our school. 

“My flute teacher said that one thing he struggled with when learning the flute was trusting himself. But he learned that the more you persevere the more you trust yourself. 

I never even thought of that – trusting yourself. I only thought of it as something that you do to someone else, or someone else does to you. You can actually skip that whole factor – if you just don’t think about trusting yourself and you just do it. But when you fail I guess some people lose a lot of trust. 

Persevere – gain trust – persevere- gain trust – fail – lose trust – try again – persevere- gain trust. It’s an infinite loop. 

I am so used to failing in certain things, like in some games, that I know exactly what I need to do, I try again. And I don’t care if I fail, it’s normal, and I can always try again. Failure to me…instead of a little bit of sadness and anger…for me, it’s motivational. To help me move forward. Instead of holding me back.

Did you know that if you never lose you will never truly win? You have to take multiple attempts at at least one thing in order truly win – at anything. What happens is that..in all of it…there’s no…no way to win without losing. If you win every single time then it doesn’t feel good to win. It feels like a normal thing. And then when you don’t win you get extremely mad. 

It’s important to fail, and it’s important to know how to fail. And it’s important to not get mad at someone else when YOU fail. Because it’s not your fault, or their fault, or a game’s fault, it’s just life. If you blame someone else for your failure then nothing is gained, only stuff is lost, and you lose trust in yourself. If you look at failure as helping you, and healing you, instead of destroying you, then that is the key to actually winning. 

And this doesn’t just apply to games. It applies to everything, so many things: painting, building, reading, writing, sewing, acrobatics, friendship, crocheting, so, so, so many things.”

A Fish out of the Hudson – A Sudbury Student goes to India

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You can imagine my excitement when I was invited to speak at The Association of Internation Schools of India (TAISI), the education conference for private schools of India taking place in Goa.

I would get to go to a country halfway across the world on a continent I’d never been to.

I would get to share my views at a conference in a country that’s known to have rigorous views on education.

I was in Germany when I got the invitation email at 1 am. I texted my mom immediately and resisted the urge to wake my brother up and tell him. I was thrilled! I started thinking about what I was going to say. What the goal for my talk would be. I knew I wanted my audience to see my school like I see it. I also wanted them to see there is more than one effective form of education.

But first, they had to understand my school, and I mean completely get what it’s like to be a student at a Sudbury School. I didn’t want to pretend that Sudbury was like a traditional school or try and defend it. I wanted to be real about my experience here and I wanted them to get it.

So, in my talk I wanted to explain how Sudbury is not a school about just academics. Kids here learn how to evaluate themselves, how to set their own goals, and how to be independent. I wanted to talk about how “learning” looks different for every kid here, and how that’s ok. I wanted to show them how our democracy works, how we vote on everything, how the student majority rules, no principal, no veto power. I wanted to tell them how it felt being School Meeting Chair at the age of eleven, what was frustrating and hard, and how it really forced me to understand how democracy works. I wanted to convince them that trust is the most important part of any school. I really believed that I wasn’t just representing what a Sudbury School is; I was representing students everywhere. I had to show that kids have valuable input when talking about education.

I wanted to sound confident, knowledgeable, and natural. To get to this point, I practiced like crazy. I gave my talk to anybody that would listen and when nobody would listen, I gave it to the mirror. Seriously, my friends started being able to recite not only what I was saying but the tone of voice I said it in. I mouthed it silently when it was slow at my job (I actually got into some kind of awkward situations because of that). I whispered it on the plane to India when I couldn’t sleep. I even tried recording myself, but ended up only being able to listen to it for about 10 seconds. I thought about what word to emphasize in every sentence.

So finally, we get on the plane to India! At one point, I look behind me nervously thinking that I’ve lost my cell phone. My eye meets a chatty Indian woman with bright orange hair, who starts setting me up with her grandsons. She starts telling me how gorgeous they are and how their mother is Italian and they are both in law school etc, etc. I was definitely flattered, but – no thank you.

Fifteen very long hours later, we landed in Mumbai. As we drove away from the airport and towards south Bombay, I was mesmerised by just how different it was from Kingston — there were auto rickshaws and two wheelers weaving (kind of like playing Grand Theft Auto) in between traffic. There were slums and multistory buildings right next to each other; dogs, cats, and of course, the occasional cow, the endless broken symphony of car horns, and then the bright colors that seem to shout out to you.

When we got to Goa I was tired, hungry, and just really gross. At this point, we had been traveling for forty eight hours and I was stressed. The cab ride from the train station to the hotel was about an hour and it was all winding roads with what felt like a speed bump every five hundred feet. The houses were so colorful and pretty, the environment was tropical and I swear to god we saw a group of palm trees that looked exactly like the cover of Where the Wild Things Are. My mom kept trying to chat but I was not in the mood (sorry mom!). I just wanted to get to this hotel.

When we finally got there, my panic was temporarily delayed by the ridiculous lavishness of the hotel. I mean, it felt like we were in a movie– it was huge and right on the beach. When we first went in, they gave us a cold towel. Then someone came out and handed us a rose, then a necklace. We were laughing so hard because it felt like a culture shock within culture shock.

I was really excited to get to the conference so I got down there as soon as I could and immediately felt like a fish out of water. There I was in jeans and a t-shirt, the youngest person in a room filled with professionally dressed educators and principals. I didn’t know anyone and I was worried no one would take me seriously. I didn’t even know how to check in!

I found Jeff, the staff member from my school who was also speaking at the conference, and he helped me sign in. I got this cool name tag that said “speaker” on it and I started to feel a little more comfortable, so I talked to some people about Sudbury but the conference was pretty much over for the day. Then Raghava, the curator of our session, showed up and soon after, so did all the other panelists. We all proceeded to a rehearsal.

The first speaker to rehearse was Deepak Ramola who is the founder of Project Fuel. He goes around learning life lessons from all sorts of people and then turns them into curriculum. He was super nice and and a great speaker. He sounded so natural and conversational and was actually interesting. He had obviously put a ton of effort into his talk and I was like, “Damn! I wanna sound like that.”

Then went Babar Ali, who was one of the only kids in his village to go to school. When he was nine, he would go after school and teach the other kids what he had learned that day. At the age of sixteen, he was named the youngest school headmaster in the world by the BBC. He now has over five hundred students between two schools, both of which are completely free. All of the teachers are former students. Recently, Babar was offered a full scholarship at a prestigious university in the United States and turned it down because he knew his students would suffer without him. He was really shy, but he talked to me a little and showed me the text book where one of the chapters was about him. It was like the sweetest humble brag I’d ever heard. Throughout the whole rehearsal he seemed really tired and looked like he was about to fall asleep and I was like, “Me too, Babar”.

Kalyan Akkipeddi, who is the founder of Protovillage, talked about his village which is the prototype for a sustainable village in rural india. He bought 5 acres of land and he, his family and 12 other families built (and are building) the village. They harvested 200,000 gallons of rainwater and started a seed bank for the other villages. His point was to show surrounding villages how to be interdependent within the village. During his talk I was just like, “Oh, my god!” Everything they did was so inspiring.

Then followed Saba Ghole, who after graduating from MIT, started a maker school in Cambridge, MA where instead of classes, they have studios where the kids have projects they work on like designing things for wheelchairs or bio clothing. She was really nice and even laughed at a silly joke I made, so I liked her even more.

On the morning of my talk, I arrived at the venue early enough. There was someone speaking before our session. His slides were full of boring statistics, graphs, and more graphs. He talked about how much more money there was to make in the International School business in India. I was just thinking the whole time, “Wow! This is the exact opposite of our panel.” His talk was followed by some great talks by my fellow panelists. After Jeff’s talk someone asked a question about Sudbury. Something about how they had had trouble with how little structure they had in college and how much worse off they would’ve been in a school like Sudbury. That question completely freaked me out and I figured that they already hated us, so I went to the bathroom and frantically practiced one more time. I was determined to change their minds!

Finally, I gave my talk, just as I had practiced it: clear, slow and articulate.

After my talk, to my surprise, everyone wanted to talk to me. One woman even told me I was inspirational. Someone else said I was a great speaker. One person even wanted me to speak at his conference! And there was this one very earnest woman who looked me in the eye and asked, “Amelia, how can I make my kids self driven?” (I bet she didn’t even see the irony in that)! Someone else said they were questioning everything, not only as a teacher but as a parent. And then, the guy who had asked Jeff that question, came up to me and I was like “ok, here we go”, but to my surprise, he only wanted to know more. “What do younger kids care about in school meeting? What motions do they make? How do they vote on things like staff salary?”

It seemed as though everyone really understood Sudbury. I was honestly so proud of myself. Earlier, I said my goals were to show that there was more than one effective form of education, and that kids do have valuable input to add. I felt like I had done that and that felt really rewarding.

All of this attention went straight to my head and I was like, “I can’t talk about Sudbury any longer, I must go for a swim!” So I did.

There was a wine and cheese social that night and everyone there was trying to talk to us! This stern looking headmaster came over and was like, “I wanna be part of the cool people conversation” or something like that while I thought to myself, “Ah, so this is what being famous is like.” Again, straight to my head.

Afterwards when everything started to calm down, I started to realize how important it is for schools like ours to go out and be a part of the larger education world. We can’t just stay in our bubble. I saw the need for student perspective. I realized that nothing is going to change without it. I had just done one of the scariest, yet most rewarding, things in my life and it was over and that sucked but all I could think about was how lucky I was to have wormed my way into this group of people. I can’t wait to do it again!

It Feels Good

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Hudson Valley Sudbury Basketball School

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[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

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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.