Community

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 ›

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 ›

Well, first of all, it miraculously not only starts on the first day of our fiftieth year of existence, but keeps going through two full years. After all, 1968 is when we opened our doors, so many of us feel . . . might as well make it two… Read more ›

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 ›

(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 ›

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 ›

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 ›

I myself am tired of my stories about SVS trips in general and of skiing trips in particular. But I just can’t help it! The truth probably is that what I see happening on trips happens all the time at school, but it happens so privately that I… Read more ›

Sudbury Valley has just begun the 2017-2018 school year – and an exciting one it is! This will be our 50th year of operation, the half century mark for what was once a “far-out” experiment. Born in the tumultuous 1960s, SVS was destined to outlive… Read more ›