It Just Made Sense
Today’s blog post was contributed by Meg Carpenter, a current Alpine Valley School parent.
My first encounter with the idea of schools with children instead of numbers was a book from a friend who bought it for me after a heated discussion about standardized testing. My friend and I had grown up in Texas with TAKS tests given annually. I also had younger siblings who had a whole future of draconian test-taking to follow at the time, the thought of which made me that much more invested in this testing conversation. A quarter of the way through reading Summerhill School: A New View of Childhood I knew there needed to be more of these methods and I could be someone who helped with that.
Years pass and I have a family studies degree in hand with a path set to open a progressive haven of “schooling”. A stop along the way included learning more about a progressive school close to me named Alpine Valley School. I had a meeting with Larry who founded AVS that pushes my boundaries about thinking less about what a school should look like than to what childhood could look like if shaped by the children themselves.
I was a convert and had seen the light. I needed to be involved directly and decided then to pursue specifically the Sudbury model and gain experience as a staff member. A school on the east coast had an opening and I went for it, attending for a week and interacting with the 60+ students and 4 staff members. I did not get the position and after the process, I see now that the role of a staff member was not for me, but the respect I have for Sudbury school staff members grew that much more through my experience. I’m grateful for the perspective I gained and am so happy with Alpine Valley School’s staff. With that, the goals I had for my career shifted, but my heart never wavered that this model of schooling can give children the true space needed to find their own definition of happiness.
My involvement with Sudbury schools shifted to advocacy and as a parent. In the couple of years since my application as a staff member, my daughter has grown from a toddler to a kiddo just as confident and effervescent as ever and definitely not as “seat-ready” for kindergarten as any other 5-year-old. From the conversation with Larry I knew that it would be a top priority for Clementine to attend a Sudbury school for her primary and secondary schooling and when the time came to enroll her for the next year of either pre-school or starting her K-12 experience there were questions between my husband and I like, “Is she ready?” “Does she need a pre-school schedule still?” After a tour and an open house for my husband to hear someone else’s telling of the Sudbury model beyond my own the answer was emphatically yes, Clementine is ready for this.
So far with my daughter’s first school year, my heart is so light knowing that AVS is her school and our community. A habit has formed over the weekends of Clem asking excitedly if tomorrow is a school day and when we answer that no it’s not, we are always met with a begrudgingly sighed okay… I can’t imagine taxing over my kiddo’s homework day in and day out, being sent report cards of her worth, or just seeing that outside is a beautiful Colorado day and that Clementine could not spend her time playing outside to her heart’s content. But instead of homework, tests, and scheduled activities, Clementine is building forts, drawing, and playing tag amongst the other things she decides are worth her time. The joy she finds in her “big kiddo school” is a bright and obvious thing that ripples into our lives again and again.
What alternative schools have meant to me has changed in some ways and not in others, but through it all, I believe Sudbury schools just make sense.