Blog
It isn't always easy to take the road less traveled. When my daughter first started attending Sudbury Valley School, she was five-years-old. Parents, friends and colleagues didn’t understand the school when I told them about it. Their questions… Read more ›
It is odd but true that the things we most value in our lives are things which are hard to quantify but easy to feel.
We all want our epitaphs to say that we were good and decent folk, not that we were rich and thin and got all A's in school.
So… Read more ›
We live in a country which is governed on the principle of individual liberty, where people have been able to grow up in a way that fosters imagination and inventiveness. This idea of the sovereignty of the individual underlies the… Read more ›
(Part 1 in The Living Water School School's “Transparency” Series)
It is late. I have just fed my dogs. Everyone is asleep and like most nights, I am the last one up and I’m usually thinking about the school. Tonight, I am thinking… Read more ›
People always say the J.C. is the heart of the school. They’re right. It’s the way our school handles misdeeds or wrong doings on a daily basis. It’s one of the reasons it’s so enjoyable to go to school here and to work here. There isn’t one… Read more ›
Fifty years of working to keep SVS alive and vital is my personal equivalent of summitting K2 the toughest mountain on earth.
Warning! Unlike most of my writing, which dwells on the joy and optimism of daily life at SVS, I am going to go to the… Read more ›
Every morning, from the beginning of the school day, one can watch children making their way from the parking lot to the main building. Some come running, breathless to get down to work, to carry out whatever they had planned for the day. Some… Read more ›
On May 9th at noon the SVS Music Corp gave its first concert since it was disbanded three years ago. I was part and parcel to the proceedings, being the only adult with the privilege (tech and mixer), and I got to watch all the trials and… Read more ›
As we walked down the driveway to the main building, slightly jet-lagged after the flight from the UK, I thought I knew what to expect. After all, we had spent a year immersing ourselves in Sudbury literature with the aim of opening a school in Kent… Read more ›
The last days of the fiftieth birthday year of Sudbury Valley were days of fun, of laughter, and also of tears.
The fun part was greeting the 35 students returning from a five day camping trip to Nickerson State Park on Cape Cod. Despite having to… Read more ›
Every year, a large group of kids from Sudbury Valley decamp (literally) on the next to last week of school to Nickerson State Park, in Brewster, on Cape Cod. While writing this I was waiting (as was everyone else who didn’t go) for them to… Read more ›
“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” – the three cornerstones of this country, and the reason it was founded in the first place. These were the “unalienable rights” that our founders declared belonged to every person – … Read more ›
Twenty years ago a Sudbury type school was established in the state of Maryland. Its group of founders, with help, bought twelve acres in a wooded area, built a large structure with their own labors (and with a little help from their friends), and… Read more ›
I was speaking with a prospective family at an Open House a few months ago
and telling them about the democratic process at Sudbury Valley and how
students are respected, empowered, and internally motivated. The dad
interjected, "Well, I think it’s… Read more ›
It’s already the first week of July and it is only now that I finally am rested enough to have a modicum of perspective about the hectic crazy busy last month of school.
The annual five day camping trip to Nickerson State Park on Cape Cod requires a… Read more ›