Writing by:

Foss Tighe

Blog post |
Remote Learning: When Governor Baker announced on April 29th that schools would remain closed in the state of Massachusetts through the end of the school year, he also emphasized the importance of continuing and expanding “remote learning” for… Read more ›
Blog post |
A few months ago, my kids were planning a big sleepover of SVS students at our house. Besides the usual suspects, there was one new name. I immediately start asking what I thought were the key sleepover questions: Did they like frozen pizza? Were… Read more ›
Essay post |
The great Greek historian and traveler Herodotus includes the following conversation with the queen of Persia in his histories. He is trying to explain how things are in the Greek democracies of the 5th century BC. Persian queen, Atossa, asked him… Read more ›
Blog post |
Sudbury Valley nay-sayers often point to the lack of grades and high school grade point averages as one of the great risks of sending your child to SVS.  As I understand the argument, a good grade point average is necessary to get into the… Read more ›
Blog post |
It started with the 12-year-old girl down the street who told my daughter she would never get into college. I am sure many of our friends, who were devoting untold hours to ensure that their children excelled in public school, wanted to say the… Read more ›
Blog post |
This is a tough question. SVS lacks the more traditional ways of bench marking a child’s progress through school. There are no parent-teacher conferences, no grades, no MCAS scores, no curriculum, no classes and no grade point averages. There is… Read more ›
Blog post |
During this holiday season, my daughter gave each of her SVS friends pillow cases. Using a fabric marker, each pillow case was emblazoned with a block of text. Then each pillow case was rolled up like a scroll and tied with a ribbon. The result… Read more ›
Blog post |
  Cori, my oldest daughter and Kali, one of her close friends at SVS, are having a good-humored debate about which one of them reads more books. This debate has been going on so long now that for Christmas their friends bought them each a… Read more ›
Blog post |
When I was growing up, I cherished every opportunity not to go to school.  If I had a cold, I would play up the symptoms to get a day off. Snow days were manna from heaven. And so it was with my own children in public school. As parents with… Read more ›
Blog post |
I was very amused when I heard that my children were "Playing School" at Sudbury Valley. I learned about this one morning when my daughter urgently needed to print out some "worksheets" before we left for school. God forbid, a teacher arrive at… Read more ›

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