I offer these thoughts as one who has and continues to work with young people and their families for over 35 years. I have been so intrigued by the SVS Model, that I had to experience it in person.
Sudbury Valley School is not really a school. It… Read more ›
Blog
Monday, August 12, 2019
It was Valentine’s Day. There had been something afoot for quite a few days, and there were lots of valentines – simple but perfect (Cori and her friends at work) – made for people to write inside. Pink, white, lavender and red papers were… Read more ›
Monday, July 29, 2019
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 best… Read more ›
Monday, July 15, 2019
[reprinted from The School Bull, Informal News about The Clearwater School]
Feel in it
Even swim in it
And music noits
Fill my bain
This is the poem my son wrote to accompany a three-foot tall, three-dimensional art project he created while… Read more ›
Monday, July 1, 2019
For many centuries, philosophers and scientists have been debating human knowledge: its nature, limits and origin. On this last point, we still are trying to understand how much the human being is born knowing and how much he discovers… Read more ›
Monday, June 17, 2019
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 ›
Monday, June 3, 2019
There is not a lot of talk these days about happiness. It’s considered more of an accidental condition than a fundamentally required, or expected, one. Company human resource officials don’t start their interviews with prospective employees by… Read more ›
Monday, May 20, 2019
What do SVS students have in common? What are the distinguishing features of this vibrant collection of people whose energy strikes you the moment you encounter them? For a long time I have been trying to articulate the answers to these questions.… Read more ›
Monday, April 22, 2019
All through this past winter kids at school spent time outdoors when they could (usually), playing basketball, taking walks, climbing on the rocks, or using the swings and the slide. After the pond froze and was safe to walk on, many of them were… Read more ›
Monday, April 8, 2019
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 ›
Monday, March 25, 2019
Emma is just one of those “little girls”. They don’t look that individualized; they look like the little girls one used to see in picture books, the ones that behaved either perfectly or horribly, but the story came out all right in the end. But… Read more ›
Monday, February 25, 2019
In the car on the way home from the Maynard Fine Arts Theater on Saturday, January 26, Danny and I were elated.
We had just seen the movie “Drowning in Pennsylvania”, which was written, produced and acted by Sudbury Valley students and alums.… Read more ›
Monday, February 11, 2019
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 ›
Monday, January 28, 2019
Originally appeared in the June Journal of 1992, Volume 21
After so many years of explaining the philosophy of SVS I occasionally get tired. Tired of the same old questions which show me over and over again how difficult it is for people to… Read more ›
Monday, January 14, 2019
A couple of months ago, one of my good friends told me of an interactive exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art. William Forsythe, a ballet choreographer, created rooms where a person’s own body movements were the subject.
I immediately felt… Read more ›