Episode 44

Larry Welshon with his father, Don,

Episode 44: Founding Stories - East Kent Sudbury School

This is the first in our series of special episodes called Founding Stories, in which we interview founders of other self-directed democratic schools around the world. On this episode, we chat with Kezia Cantwell-Wright from East Kent Sudbury School in Kent, England. Kezia shares her own family’s personal journey to alternative education, what it took to get their school off the ground, and her advice for starting an alternative school - which may surprise you!

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This episode is also available in video format on YouTube. 

Interview Transcript

Kezia CW: (00:00)

My name is Kezia and I'm one of the key founders of East Kent Sudbury School. We opened in January 2019 so we're now in our third term, and it's really exciting to be finally living it. I think right from the beginning, from when I realized that I was having my first child, I threw myself into being a mother and I read everything I could about everything and on. So when it came to thinking about education, I similarly wanted to do my, do my homework and make sure that I was choosing the right choice. And then I met friend for a baby group who told me that she was considering home educating her son because she thought he wasn't going to fit into mainstream. And as he was telling, she was telling me about about that and about unschooling. It just resonated and something inside made me think, yeah, actually this, this could be something that we want to do too.


(00:52)

I guess that kind of nudged us the or along the the, the road of self directed education. And we found ourselves quite seriously taking, you know, taking self direct education really seriously. But then when my daughter got to be about six, I started to see a shift where up until then it felt like not doing school was broadening our horizons. It gave us access to more and her being with me all the time didn't seem to be a problem. It was helping her independence and then suddenly around six I think seemed to shift and I wasn't really enough anymore. She needed a consistent community of peers. Whilst we had a great social life as home educators, it wasn't a consistent community. You know, you saw different people on different days and you never quite knew who was going to show up to what. And I realized that what we needed was a solid group, a place where she would feel as as at home as she did at home, but she would have a much bigger pool of people to interact with, um, where she wasn't relying on me to make things happen. If she had a vision, she could make it happen through that community, off her own back and not require me to facilitate everything, which was kind of what happened in home education. So it kind of seems like we needed a school, but this was the thing that we'd kind of avoided up till now. So it was like, okay. And then I, of course I read Peter Gray's book, um, heard about Sudbury Valley School. And then, there was no turning back. It was just like a light bulb went off. Of course, there wasn't one in the United Kingdom. I talked to my friend, um, the same friend actually who first introduced the idea of home education to me. We'd kept in touch and we'd always compare notes. And so we'd been comparing notes all the way along. And I said, look, I've, I've, I've found the Supreme model school and I S I suddenly realized I want to start a democratic school.


(02:52)

I think I did that. I must have sat on the idea for at least six months kind of going, well, I'd really like to do that, but I'm too busy and maybe I'm not the right person to do it. You know, I don't know if I've got the courage and maybe no, maybe we could just move to Paris or maybe we could just move to Massachusetts. So maybe we could just move to Island. You know, none of these options seemed realistic. It kind of seemed like really we, we had no other choice. Um, I said, OK, I, I want this to my kids. I, I can't accept anything less from my kids. But moreover than that, I become to be just really mad that it didn't exist in the UK. And it, it became a bit of a, uh, a passion that I just, I couldn't let go off.


(03:38)

So one day I I thought, okay, right, I'm going to go for it. And I created a Facebook group and I couldn't believe it. I, within, I think within about three months, we had about 300 people join the Facebook group. And I thought, okay, you know, just like Facebook just blew up in front of my face. And I thought, Oh, all right, okay. So all the people have been thinking this too. Um, and it's been a bit of a roller coaster ever since. Yeah. One of the best things that I read off trust thought the journey was a blog post by um, Aaron Keohane who was a founding member of Sudbury Paris and also of Wicklow early on, and he really spelled out for me the steps and I wished that I'd read it before I made my big Facebook announcement. And one of the biggest things I, I learned is the, no matter how democratic you want to be somebody, somebody or some group has to lay down a vision and you've got a, a choice of the outset. Are you going to be a vision holder, in which case set out your vision and recruit people to help you with that vision and make it really clear what it is from the beginning. Oh, do you want to find a group and co-create a vision on, on. It's best to think about that before you tell anybody other than maybe your partner. Oh, best friend about it because, well, I think I, I found was really early on in the, in the day I was a little bit woolly. Um, and so I've got this idea, but I don't know exactly what it is yet. And then of course everyone, it gives license to everyone then to tell you what your idea should be. I guess I discovered that there were a lot of, a lot of children out there. There are a lot of children that are unhappy in the educational choices they've got on. There were a lot of parents that are really desperate and really angry and they want something perfect for their children and it doesn't exist. And when someone comes out and sort of dangles this carrot of hope or maybe, maybe this is the thing to say of your child and then, and then they go, actually it's slightly different to that. Um, they really, really upset and um, reasonably so because there should be lots of choices, shouldn't there.


(06:01)

What else will other fake, big things I've learned the team is everything. Um, I think something to expect is that there will be one or two people that do the lion's share of the work and you will have maybe six or eight other people that do little things to help you along the way and you really, really need them. But to expect them, expect everyone to do an exactly equal amount of work is unreasonable because some people will have more time and more energy. I'm more passion to give to it than others, but that doesn't mean that it's not important to the other people. They just, they physically can't give what you can give and it will only breed resentment if you set yourself up to expect that. What's your advice to somebody starting in school? Well, firstly, don't do it if you don't have to do it. If you can move somewhere, if it's fewer children, if you can move somewhere, just move somewhere. Just do that. Or if you're really, really passionate about starting a school, see if there's anyone else already on that already in that process that's already begun because it really is such a gigantic task. And I don't regret it for one second, but I definitely wouldn't do it again. I get quite a lot of emails about would I start a school in Manchester or something? No, no! Why would I do that? One of the no, so go and find someone else, you know, and especially don't open a school just round the corner from someone else. You know, you don't, it's not about vanity. These schools are really small. They appeal right now to small number of people and they need bodies and they need passionate people, you know? So you have to bear this in mind. When, when, when, when you starting out on this, do you really, really want to be that person or can you just help someone else out? And then if you decide that no, there is no other choice than think about your vision, find some good people and take it slow. Don't rush it. There are days when I, you know, I just want to well up cause I'm just so happy seeing this beautiful community or living together and rubbing along and seeing these kids be together. That wouldn't have been together. Friendships formed, that wouldn't have happened. And yeah, it's, it's really, it's really exciting.