Learning

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 ›

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 ›

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… 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 ›

For 50 years, Sudbury Valley Schools, and other schools inspired by its model, have been providing children with a place to grow like no other. Our starting point is treating children who enroll at school, from age four and up, as human beings… Read more ›

All too often parents, educators, and even students ask us why we are so adamant about not offering any courses at SVS, and why we only teach in response to the students’ initiatives. They wonder why we don’t just offer a few “required” subjects and… Read more ›

  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 ›

I can’t believe I even wrote such a sappy title. Me, the tell-it-like-it-is gal, who never exaggerates. But let me describe a bit of a very recent day. As I was walking down to school, on an absolutely perfect morning, a young boy (7), whom we will… Read more ›

This was published in our Janury 1998 Journal; a note from Jean and Rick Leif about what their daughter is up to now has been added. Quite a lot has been written about what it is like to be a student at Sudbury Valley School, but I would like to… Read more ›

The month of December always feels rushed, but in a good way. Students are more amped than usual. They are excited for Christmas, parties, and especially making gingerbread houses. Mimsy organizes a few days to make gingerbread houses before the… Read more ›

When talking about the school, we all find others confused about what we believe, and about what we do. As with most confusion, much of the confusion can be reduced to language. People casually use certain terms loosely and interchangeably as a… Read more ›

In many ways, it is nothing short of miraculous that Sudbury Valley has reached the 50th year of its operation. For all the talk of reform in the world of education, those parents who feel comfortable allowing their small and large children autonomy… Read more ›

It is the first question parents ask once they try to wrap their minds around the fact that students at Sudbury Valley are, in fact, free to use their time in the ways that appeal to them. And even after we have gone through the whole bit; after one… Read more ›

Through a series of coincidences involving shelving books at school, I recently found myself spending a weekend reading through Cynthia Voigt’s “young adult” cycle of books about the Tillerman family, starting with volume number two called Dicey’s… Read more ›

… all I can do is read a book to stay awake, And it rips my life away, But it’s a great escape … BLind MeLoN, “No Rain” (1992) Recently, I did something very unhealthy. It started innocently enough with picking up a book a student had pointed out… Read more ›