Sudbury silver linings

Today we’re pleased to share an important update from Bruce Smith, a longtime staff member of Clearview Sudbury School, about the Clearview community’s democratic decision-making around reopening during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a time when so many are stressed and scrambling, when good options seem rare, gratitude for the silver linings becomes that much richer. As schools and unschoolers alike approach the end of summer, I am very fortunate to be part of a community that just made our own hard, but healthy, decision.

At a special (and, of course, virtual) meeting in late July, the staff, students, and parents of Clearview Sudbury School voted to push the first day of our 2020–2021 school year to 2021— January 6th, to be precise. Our schedule the rest of the year will also see reduced hours and four-day weeks. This vote followed two rounds of surveys and informal discussions, as we worked over several weeks to assess everyone’s preferences and concerns, along with crunching all the numbers we could get our hands on.

While the outcome was relatively difficult and frustrating, there is also a degree of comfort and gratitude. I know I feel better putting off reopening to a date when more of us will feel safer returning. Neither opening while Texas remains a hotspot nor spinning the revolving door of opening and reclosing held any appeal for me. Nor was I interested in returning to the week-to-week uncertainty of this past spring, not knowing if we’d be closed for a week, a month, or the entire semester.

There have been many times over the years when I’ve appreciated the democratic processes of Sudbury schools, but this is the first time it’s hit home quite like this. There’s still plenty of uncertainty, of course, and it isn’t getting any easier to support our families, to keep everyone feeling connected at a distance. However, in comparison to so many other schools, I feel incredibly lucky to be part of one where everyone has a voice and a vote, where we get to decide for ourselves, together, what approach feels safest and best for us.

In a perfect world, every family would have this much of a say in the decisions affecting their children’s learning. And who knows? If this crisis leads more people to find the educational option that works best for them, well, maybe that will be a silver lining on a grand scale.

Thanks for reading, and my best wishes for health and strength to all of you.

Bruce Smith

Happy Birthday, Clearview!

Guest contributor Bruce Smith is a staff member at Austin’s Clearview Sudbury School. A former high school teacher with degrees in English, history, and education, Bruce co-founded the first Sudbury school in Illinois. He also staffed at Alpine Valley School in Colorado for fifteen years and is the founder and president of Friends of Sudbury Schooling. On the blog today he celebrates an important milestone in Clearview history.

Around here, people’s birthdays are kind of a big deal — especially when someone turns 10 (“Double digits!”). Well, when the school you brought into the world hits the same mark, that feels like a really big deal, too.

On November 9, 2009, Clearview Sudbury School opened with four students in two rooms rented from Genesis Presbyterian Church. Now, ten years later, 35 students enjoy nine rooms at the same location. That in itself speaks volumes for what we’ve learned about nurturing relationships and staying true to the Sudbury model of self-directed, democratic schooling. Thanks to our families and staff, as well as our friends at the church, we’re not only surviving but thriving.

Here are a few tidbits of what ten years have brought us:

• We’re the oldest existing/longest running Sudbury school in Texas.

• A total of 114 students have enrolled at Clearview, and we’ve employed ten staff members.

• One of our first-year students is still here, and nine current students have been enrolled at least six years.

• Tuition has gone up only $2,000 since 2009 (with minimum annual tuition now at $1,600), underscoring our commitment to making a Sudbury education as affordable as possible.

• We’ve brought internationally famous writer, researcher, and self-directed education advocate Peter Gray to Austin three times. (Good links to Peter’s work include his Psychology Today blog and his book Free to Learn.)

• Students and staff from more than half a dozen other Sudbury schools have visited Clearview.

• Clearview staff have attended Sudbury conferences in Massachusetts, Maryland, and New York.

• We’ve had five graduates in the past ten years.

To celebrate our big birthday this past November, we hosted an event with Jim Rietmulder, co-founder and staff since 1984 at The Circle School in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on November 15th. Please check out the YouTube videos of Jim’s talk, and consider buying a copy of his great new book, When Kids Rule the School.

Whether it’s our regular potlucks, our annual family camping trip, or just the spontaneous fun, intense interactions and deep play of daily school life, there’s always lots going on at Clearview. But don’t just take our word for it — below you’ll find the perspective of a long-time teacher and administrator who visited us last Spring.

Happy 10th Birthday, Clearview Sudbury School!

Thank you for your invitation to visit Clearview. When we spoke about the Sudbury model several weeks ago, you really piqued my interest. From the vantage point of an educator/administrator in public education for nearly 25 years, I dove into the history and researched many stories, explanations, and testimonials on this educational framework. I must admit, I found it delightful to read about how children were free to learn at their own pace and investigate based on their own interests. However, I couldn’t wait to see it in action because I truly couldn’t imagine what children would do, if left on their own, to manage their time and learning experiences.

As I visited your campus, I saw exactly what I expected to see. Some children playing video games, some climbing trees, some reading, some doing art and writing, some visiting, some on computers, and some eating. I visited with one of the children who explained to me how she felt confident about knowing how to make good choices and how to respect others. I spoke with an adult on campus who attended a Sudbury school in California. Her story intrigued me as I listened to how she was able to navigate college and make solid decisions about her future.

Perhaps the most impressive part of my visit was listening in on the Judicial Committee. This was the moment I said, “I’m impressed!” There’s a huge push in public education to bring children to a place of higher-order thinking. Many programs and methods are used. Teachers are trained in techniques and design to promote deep thinking in their classrooms. What I saw in the Judicial Committee demonstrated so much more than a scripted or contrived lesson. Children were settling their personal disputes with authentic, natural consequences with little assistance from the adults on campus. The adults that were interjecting modeled perfectly how to carefully choose words for the written record and listened respectfully to children as they decided how best to maintain order in their school. The conversations were rich, vocabulary was robust, and social skills laced with respect and reasoning skills were at an all-time high.

The result of what children are experiencing at Clearview Sudbury School tells me what I wondered as I did my homework prior to my visit. While it may seem unconventional to some, it seems so natural to the children on campus. No one is testing to see if everyone is on track. Everyone feels supported. Best of all, these children have not been robbed of their curiosity by years of sitting in rows completing worksheets. I loved it!

I was pleasantly surprised to see what I saw at Clearview Sudbury School. Thank you for broadening my horizons!! Can’t wait to see what the future holds for your students and Clearview Sudbury School. Keep up the great work!!

Bruce Smith

Becoming established

Caitlin Macklin, 9th Street Schoolhouse mentor and founder, recently visited the famed Free School in Albany, New York. In this guest post she shares some images and insights she gained there about building a democratic school community and culture over time.

“Wow. I’m really here. The place of my inspiration.”

This summer I made a pilgrimage to Albany, New York, to visit the Free School. This decades-old institution has long been a guiding light for me. It was my first introduction to the concepts of non-mandatory classes, democratic participation by students in conflict resolution and school governance, and putting children truly at the center of education.

As a new teacher (of four years) and a new school (into our third here at 9th Street), the thing that sank in most for me is the sense of being established that the Free School exudes. The feeling of rootedness settled in as I climbed up narrow stairways and stood on wood floors with lived-in scuff marks—I mean, even the disaster area of the summertime kitchen made my heart ache to have a SPACE to CREATE.

I currently teach out of my home on East 9th Street. This year, Laura Ruiz joined the Schoolhouse, and collaborating feels great! We intend to grow slowly but surely into a larger community of families more the size of the Free School, about sixty kids with a staff of five or six. During the visit to Albany, I was just soaking it in—in awe of what people have built together, just “making it up as [they] go along,” doing what makes sense, not what a bureaucrat tells them to do. Working with families, giving kids opportunities and mentoring, so they may discover and grow while staying whole, messy, in touch with their inner selves.

YouthFX program participants rehearse scenes for their summer narrative film project in the great room at the Albany Free School.

I have put so much thought into how to implement in my teaching and in the Schoolhouse structure the lessons AFS has learned that to see it and know it as a place with a particular community and history helped me understand their context and refocus my efforts in recognizing and building on what our community’s strengths are. Getting to ask Bhawin, a longtime teacher, some of my burning questions about the how of their lives together, talking with him about their process of becoming the school they are now, gave me an infusion of patience with our process.

Bhawin stepped out of the frame as we discussed the community-created Rules on the wall behind us.

I left feeling encouraged to give time to developing the particularities of our program, staying true to who we are as teachers, youth, parents—as people—and to respond from those real relationships to create better and better opportunities for living and learning together. Part of that is my commitment to making democratic, learner-centered education accessible to people in Austin who might not be able to afford it. In addition to an affordable tuition and part-trade options, I’ve also been working with the Education Transformation Alliance to collaborate on creating a scholarship fund.

Making meaningful education available to more folks in Austin is what our work with the ETA is guided by. And I think finding meaning is what this shift in education in Austin is all about: this is a growing movement of people who want more than cookie-cutter experiences for their kids and their lives. People in Austin are more than ever feeling acutely that the current system is just not fulfilling their dreams for their kids. We all want our youth to live lives that are prosperous and flourishing, and I want the young people in my program to identify and define that success for themselves within a strong web of community, where they are known and where they know what resources are available to them.

We are seeking meaning in our learning and in our relationships, and we are creating institutions that respond, that put down roots, that take time to get established, that work together. I invite you to find out more about the many alternatives available across the city on the ETA School Tour this Saturday, Oct. 20!

For further reading on the Albany Free School, pick up any of Chris Mercogliano’s works, watch Free to Learn by Bhawin Suchak and Jeff Root, and check out the school’s website or this blog post from an intern.

Caitlin Macklin

Creating school culture

This guest post by Tom Bohman provides a fascinating case study of the judiciary process in action at the democratically run Clearview Sudbury School, where Tom serves on the staff.

When I read the complaint form to our Judiciary Committee (JC), I knew the day had come when our school would have to decide a thorny issue: How do school rules apply to virtual worlds in multi-player online games? Before telling more about this particular issue, let me explain about our school’s uniquely American way of protecting individual rights while also balancing them with other potentially competing school community concerns.

Students and staff conduct a Judiciary Committee hearing at the Clearview Studbury School

At the Clearview Sudbury School, rules are democratically determined at the School Meeting, in which staff and students have an equal vote. The School Meeting delegates to the JC the responsibility of ensuring that students and staff follow rules and providing a forum to address School Meeting members’ concerns about their rights. Two students and one staff member comprise the JC, and they vote on whether a rule was broken and, if one was, determine a consequence when necessary. A complaint form specifies who is raising the issue, whom the complaint is against, witnesses, and the details of the situation. All School Meeting members can attend JC hearings and ask questions or provide commentary. All students, no matter their age, are expected to serve on the JC, including our youngest students, who may be five years old.

This particular complaint was initiated by an eight-year-old female student (whom we’ll call Amy) against a nine-year-old male student (whom we’ll call Eric) regarding actions that took place in Minecraft, a game that can be played in different ways. Minecraft provides a rich virtual world in which students typically construct amazing structures, especially their houses, in which they invest much creative thought and energy. The game also contains a player versus player (PvP) component in which players compete against each other. Amy's complaint said that Eric had harassed her during the game when, after being invited into Amy’s house, he killed her online character and took resources from the house. I was randomly selected by the JC chair, a nine-year-old student we’ll call Steve, along with a six-year-old student we’ll call Sally, to hear the case.
 
The JC room was full as Amy and Eric in turn described what happened from their perspectives. Amy reported that she had changed the inside of her house on the Minecraft server that many students played on and invited Eric to see those changes. Amy also said that students on the server typically engaged in creative activities in an open-ended and non-competitive fashion. Eric said he was trying to work on his house and needed the resources that Amy had acquired and decided to take them so he could reach his goal. My reaction was that Eric had violated Amy’s rights to be free from interference by others at school as she pursued her self-directed learning. Eric’s defense, which other School Meeting members strongly supported, was that Eric was playing by the rules of the game as allowed on that particular Minecraft server because PvP mode was turned on (not all Minecraft servers allow this). Since Amy chose to play on that server where PvP was allowed, she had the responsibility to accept that other players could play competitively. I argued that our school should be developing a culture in which our interpersonal relationships count the most, and Amy had asked Eric to stop his activity, which Eric ignored. Eric and other school meeting members said that it was unfair for him to be penalized for following the rules of the game that Amy had implicitly agreed to by playing on that server.
 
After a long, emotional debate, the three JC committee members voted that Amy had been harassed. Since this was the first time this issue was raised and it was clear that Eric did not know that the harassment rule would be applied in this case, he was given a warning as a consequence.

However, we weren’t quite done. As part of our school’s commitment to due process, where everyone’s rights are protected to the full extent possible, any School Meeting member can appeal a JC decision to the full School Meeting in which everyone, rather than just the three JC members, has a vote. Even though JC members are selected so that they shouldn’t have any conflict of interest or appearance of partiality (e.g., a JC member cannot have written the complaint), we know that in a smaller school, the person receiving the consequence may feel the process was unfair and in such a case we provide the appeal process. In addition, anyone can appeal the verdict. In this case, a staff member and older student appealed, as they felt this case set an incorrect precedent for the school.
 
The School Meeting was fully attended, and the motion was made (and seconded) to overturn the JC decision that a rule had been broken. The debate was almost as intense as the first one, and additional nuances were brought forward to bolster each side’s position. A majority of the School Meeting participants voted for the motion that overturned the previous JC decision. I felt the sting of defeat for my position and still believe that greater weight should have been given to Amy’s request that Eric stop his actions even when they were permitted by the server. However, the counterargument that Amy needed to take responsibility for playing on that particular server and knowing the rules was persuasive to the majority. Given that students have the freedom to choose what they do during the day at our school, they also have the responsibility to be aware of the consequences of those decisions.

Ultimately, I think Amy felt her concerns were heard and taken very seriously. I think our school’s culture was strengthened by this case in which staff and students were on both sides of the debate. JC is where our culture of freedom and responsibility develops over time as everyone engages in the often difficult decisions of how to balance competing rights and how we define them. At our school, we feel this process is the best way to ensure that everyone is fully respected and heard. I personally hope we revisit this issue in the future since I’m still not convinced we made the best choice. However, I really value that each member of the school has a single vote and that no member of the school community (even staff) can arbitrarily decide that his or her viewpoint outweighs the collective democratic decision making that is an integral part of our school. Democracy is messy, but it still feels like the best way to arrive at decisions.

Tom Bohman