Elementary School Skills?

Check out this fantastic imagination of what life would be like if the skills drilled in elementary school were actually pertinent. I LOL'd a bit.

How Life Would Be Different (If Grade School Was Actually Important)

Duct-Taping Your Butt To A Chair - Building: A School

            Above the front entrance hangs a small wooden cross, symbolizing someone’s unity with God- certainly not ours. This is an immovable holdover from the previous occupants of the building, the Catholic Church we’re renting space from. In the current space, there aren’t any other such reminders gracing the walls, but I’ve heard that this is a new thing. The old building apparently had a large gold-streaked portrait of Jesus and a ‘count with angels’ number poster and alphabet. They were mandatory wall fixtures, whether for official Church use or for our own good.

            The door thing’s okay though. Our building is on the side of an ugly, busy street and there is a too-official looking fire exit right on the side of this road that everyone tries to use at least once before being yelled at by whatever staff member catches you. My first day started this way and so did a lot of my peers’. So if you’re lucky enough to already be in the loop about our school, you won’t be confronted with a cross on your first visit because you’ll have come in the right door. By the time everyone else knows to use the actual front entrance, they’ll already know that we have nothing to do with that little blessing.

            The people running the church are nice and understanding of our situation, being a school with sporadic financial trouble. The board of directors say that we’re current in our payments to them, but I just don’t buy that. I feel like we should owe them thousands in in uncollected rent after watching the VFS‘s budget over the past three years. It’s probably just plain robbery, but I won’t say anything.

            The building itself has some issues. The paint is chipping. The oven doesn’t work. The basement smells like, well, old basement. The circuits blow if you have the radio, the water boiler, and the toaster oven plugged in at the same time. One Monday we were attempting to make a simple brunch of bagels and toast when we were kicked out of the downstairs by a committee trying to set up something or other. We moved the operation upstairs, plugged in all of our necessary equipment and then watched an outlet spark and the whole room go dark. Someone was dispatched to flip the circuit breaker, and in the time it took them to walk back upstairs and enter the doorway, we had performed the same feat a second time. They went back and we decided as a room what appliances were the most important. Coffee, bagels and jazz music were deemed the most necessary items for enjoying ourselves, and for the rest of the morning we sat in almost complete darkness, still in our group circle, very quietly while Louie Armstrong tooted out some notes to accompany our chewing and sipping.

            Slightly more dangerous, the ceiling has a habit of falling in on us. Anyone who’s spent time in an older building is familiar with that ominous creaking and small snapping sounds that come from walking on the floors above ground level. I always thought that us kids would make the main floor fall in on the basement, and that there would be irreparable damage, either to the building that we don’t own or to someone’s life. There are no rules against running, jumping, having dance contests, throwing tantrums, or hurling hundred-pound objects onto the floor  in our building, so guess what we do? The only rule along those lines is that there are no ‘wheels’ allowed inside, except for those Heely shoes that were voted acceptable by ASM a few years ago. By the time the teenage boys had outfitted their skateboards with rubber wheel-shaped pegs that allow for performing skate tricks inside, I thought for sure an earthquake-style implosion was going to happen any day. Whenever they would “skate” in the old Room C and I could hear the Room A class below us innocently having percussion class in the music room, I would beg the boys to stop, stop, stop, before disaster struck.

            Imagine my surprise when a year later, it finally did, but in a most unexpected way. I was in the arts studio and a student exited the room, pulling the door shut behind them. A second later there was a deafening crash from the opposite corner. I turned to see six square feet of school-grade ceiling tile come crashing down onto the desk that thankfully, held no students. I was amazed that some mundane activity like shutting a door had done us in, and on the roof where no kid could have jumped down to cause a collapse. The arts studio was closed for a couple of weeks while the room was repaired, and for the next month everyone was really careful about shutting doors with a feather’s touch when they were gearing up for their synchronized jumping jack tournaments.

            Despite some structural flaws, I’ve heard that this set-up is much, much better than the previous arrangement.  The church allowed us to move up in building size during our fourth year of existence when the number of kids we had exceeded the amount of square feet they were on. They had crammed the roughly thirty kids into a two room setup, with only a small closet serving as an office. No homerooms, no libraries, labs, or art rooms which every school should have, no real organization. I can see how this was appealing at first to a fledgling democratic school where the ideal is to have an un-segregated student body and a cohesive mix of ages and activities. In real life though, teenagers, ten year olds, and kindergarteners just don’t belong in the same room every day of the school year. I’m glad I never saw this old set-up considering my biggest problem is my fellow students being in my face. That might have turned me right off.

            So these past groups of students managed not to personally tear the school to the ground, but the new batch are looking to succeed where others failed. We had a life skills class this past year in Room C that was a huge hit. It was the only class being offered at the time that had a pass/fail requirement stamped on it with certain projects to complete in order to stay the course. Along with many other cool challenges, each student was asked to learn or become comfortable with a practical life skill every week, like cooking a family dinner from scratch or filling out a job application. We all got to pick what skill we wanted to do and then share back with the group on our progress if we weren’t done. Two tweenagers explained how, as a joint venture, they were going to repair a hole in a wall that week. They reported that neither of them had any prior experience with this, but they had looked up exactly how to do it and had acquired the appropriate supplies. “Well great, boys! So where is the hole that you’re going to repair?” gushed our teacher. She was so proud of them. The boys beamed back. Very practically, one explained “We’ve got that covered.” “Yeah,” his friend added, “we’re about to make it.” He held up a long wooden pole with a slightly sharpened end.

*  *  *

             Surprisingly, it’s a trend amongst alternative schools to rent space from churches. We all have limited money and they have extra space that they won’t charge an arm and a leg for. I spoke with people from other free schools and they also had rented space from various religious worshipping centers before being able to buy their own spot of land.

            The coolest school building I’ve seen so far has belonged to the Brooklyn Free School. They managed to buy their own five story brown-stone right in the middle of Brooklyn, New York, and it is the most amazing set-up. I went to stay in New York City last year and got to visit this wonderful place. Each floor is designed for a different age group, with the bottom level serving as a lunch area and rec room. The higher you climb, the older the ages are until you reach the very top floor where they’ve tucked in a lovely, fully stocked library with a view of the neighborhood. I guess the reward for climbing all the way up there is to have silence. Despite this being an actual residential building with just a lot of average sized rooms, they’ve created: a rumpus room, with netting on the walls and bars on the windows; two art rooms, for bigger and smaller kids; a library, as I’ve mentioned; a kitchen down on the bottom floor; and an office space. That’s along with the many other rooms (many more than we have) for various purposes and classroom uses. It felt a little like The Burrow out of Harry Potter, the way it twisted up and up with new surprises at every level. And because free schools always feel slightly claustrophobic from the many little bodies whizzing past you, leaving their playthings all around, this rambling building felt smaller than it really was. In my mind, I remember it getting more compact as you reached the top, Eiffel Tower style, just from experiencing everything as you go.

            Although, being an older building and having not just one, but five levels of free school hanging above your head made being in the downstairs a bit terrifying at times. There was so much more potential for a cave in that I found myself embarrassingly covering my head when something would crash three floors above.

            The Brooklyn Free School was featured on by the NPR radio show, This American Life in 2011. The episode was all about when kids take charge from adults, and the host, Ira Glass, went to the school and reported on their unique democratic structure. He sounded slightly skeptical when describing the ASM he witnessed and the way the students interacted with one another. The funny thing was, the radio crew almost wasn’t allowed to come because they had to be voted acceptable by the students to be on campus. Ira was shocked by this, and I thought it was a beautiful example of the power that the student body really holds in democratic schools. We were all so happy at the VFS to hear of a kin free school getting national attention and excited that we actually knew people who were on ‘This American Life.’ Alternatively, we gritted our teeth over not having contacted the host back two years earlier when we had sent in a request to be featured. He said he was interested and that we should send in a video documenting ourselves for him to bring to committee and make a decision on our potential. Of course, we never did, and spent a while griping about not having a video camera and then not knowing how to work it and then not having the time. Damn our ability to get nothing done!

            A free school with a more similar look is our good friends to the North, Windsor House School. Their public appointed building looks nice, not old and decrepit like most school buildings I’ve seen in my own district. When I visited their school recently, I was amazed at how similar they were to the VFS. Everything was basically the same, down to the days of the various meetings and the appearance of the population. There were just more of them, the students that is, and in a much nicer building. It has a few more classrooms than ours does (enough to have rooms just designated as ‘classroom’) and also has just one main hallway, like us.

             They also have real things, seeing as they’re a public school. A library that’s an entire room crowded to the brim with real books. A high-quality gymnasium (unlike the wooden beamed one the Church lets us use) with actual sports equipment that came with it. There was a performance space with a backstage and lights and a curtain that wasn’t sewn together by a group of mothers one afternoon. But the most enviable thing: central heating. That’s right…They have central heating in EVERY room and it comes on every day ALL EXPENSES PAID! I know! The rule at our school is that, the shoddy heating system can be turned on as soon as you see your breath. Even then, you wait half an hour for it to warm up, it begins blowing out cold air after two hours of power, and you listen to our executive director grumbling about all of the money this is costing throughout the whole time. Then he tells us that to pay for it we’ll have to go home late on Christmas Eve and he’ll be freezing us to death in order to decrease the surplus population.

            I also fancy their music room. I’m not sure if I’ve stated yet how much I detest our own one. Along with opening windows and performing indoor skate tricks, the teenage boys also loved to blast music from that large closet down in the basement. In the days when Room C was located right above this room, the electric guitars and bases and pianos and drums could not only be heard as if we were at a concert, but could be felt vibrating through our beings, straight through the floor. It was insane.

            But at Windsor House, the music room is kept in their only portable outside of the school building. On the first day of my visit, my friend and I (also from the VFS) were excitedly shown around by another teenage girl who was one of the earlier risers at her school. We had arrived on campus just before the district bus arrived carrying most of the student body, which also ranged from ages 5 to 18. She agreed to give us a tour, and then, just in time to be the figurines in the exhibit, the school bus kids flooded the building. After their arrival, she became extra excited and giggly at the prospect of showing us the music room, which was located inside a portable about thirty feet away from a side entrance.

            As soon as we stepped outside we could hear the thumping of a drum and the lower notes of some electric guitar spilling out into the nine o’clock sunshine. We walked inside the room and left the bright morning behind. It was cave-like in there and far, far too loud. Two teenage boys were pounding their hearts out on those instruments, making up for the past eighteen hours that they hadn’t been together in their rock-n’-roll den. This was not the most ideal way to start the day and my friend and I soon exited the room, leaving the girl behind to bob  her head and listen attentively to the ear splitting ruckus. But the fact that the main school building couldn’t hear a note of this was a truly marvelous thing, something that our school should definitely learn from.

            Windsor House School is forty years old and has always been a free school, but when things got financially hard a while back, they joined with the local school district to mixed reviews. The major change is that all high school aged students must receive at least four credits worth of classes a year, meaning that those students MUST take classes in order for Windsor House to receive funding. Yikes. And those classes have to be school-sanctioned, you know, like taught by certified teachers out of district approved textbooks and all that jazz. So you couldn’t just take “My Little Pony Playtime”, “Zombie Movie Madness”, “Basketball in the Gym,” and “Spiderman Appreciation Hour.” The biggest benefit of this arrangement is that these students also have the ability to get a real high school diploma if they want to go all out and take a full course load. I spoke with some of the students who were saying this was too much to ask of them, but I eagerly told them, “hey, at least you have the option!”

            Windsor House is located in North Vancouver, B.C. (which is actually an entirely different city than just plain, old Vancouver) on the side of a large hill covered in wilderness. The suburb surrounds this entire area, but from a visitor’s perspective it’s hard to see where the forest starts and the town begins. It’s all kind of intermingled. That also means that they have the wild at their fingertips, literally at the end of their field area which morphs directly into the side of the hill and the trees.

            So unlike in our part of the Pacific NW where we only have your typical Fire Drills and Earthquake Drills, they get to have annual Bear Drills. You know, just in case a nearby vicious animal wanders onto their field and tries to eat a small child. I didn’t get to see a Bear Drill in action so unfortunately I personally don’t know how to protect myself against a bear attack, but the idea itself provided endless amusement. I would look out across the field and just think that we were actually close enough to the Canadian outback that there was a real possibility of being accosted by a huge furry mammal while playing tag at school. Everyone there had bear stories to share about their own experience with those creatures all around the Vancouver area. It was kind of unfathomable. It just proved that I was in a foreign city. They didn’t have Bear Drills at the Brooklyn Free School. Canada should really move into the twenty-first century.

            I feel like stressing that my own school does actually have all of the normal amenities of a ‘regular’ school- just different. I mention being jealous of some of the things that the other schools have, but that’s only because they strike my fancy more than others. Like, I’m totally willing to sacrifice Room B to put in a huge, fully stocked library. And then forcing all children under the age of fifteen into forced labor to build an actual stage and auditorium in the basement. I also wouldn’t object to selling all of Room A’s toys in order to buy an espresso machine for the café. Yeah. But I will point out that we’re the only school with a fully stocked science lab, complete with an actual-factual scientist manning the chemicals and equipment. Our art studio is always overflowing (in an organized way) with new supplies and fun donated items that inspire a lot of amazing projects. The kitchen downstairs, despite being slightly leaky and broken, is huge and can hold entire classes of kids. We have a rock wall, a composting system and bin, large school grade bathrooms, and before the financial crisis, we had a honkin’ big salt water aquarium downstairs with all sorts of fun things, like a seahorse and an octopus and every kind of brightly colored fish you could want. Hopefully we’ll get all of that back when our budget stabilizes.

            Because the space isn’t ever quite what we want it to be, we play musical rooms every summer. Since moving into the new building, we’ve changed our classroom arrangements before the start of each new school year in hopes of solving whatever new bout of problems came up during the last one. Usually it’s the staff deciding that the population of one room has outgrown the space or needs a more cozy atmosphere. One year Room C was moved across the building into a space described as “more cave like” by the staff. Unsurprisingly, we are the only room that no longer plays along in the annual event, having found the perfect space for us brooding teens. The last time around, the goal was to create a rumpus room from the large area that used to be called The Living Room. This was the designated quiet spot for parents to meet, classes to be held in peace, kids to calm down, and a spot to generally be mellow in ( not that it was always used for this of course, but I’ve gone in there plenty of times and spent perfectly quiet hours without a soul around.) Now, it’ll be a designated loud space to be even louder than usual in and “get out all of your energy, so that you can be calm in the homerooms.”  So now we have the usual crazyness happening in thee homerooms and in the place where we used to be able to go to escape all of that.

            Sharing the same campus as a church isn’t as remarkable as it could be. We see no pastors in robes, overzealous congregation members, or long bell solos calling us to prayer. Sometimes we get the somewhat lost older person who comes wandering through our doors. “I’m here for the service,” they say, or, “I’ve come to volunteer.” The person behind the desk in the office balks, “Well, okay…I don’t remember speaking to you on the phone. How did you hear about our school?” It takes both parties a few moments of confused staring and false starts to then realize that the gray haired woman with the rosary in her hand is looking for the church and not our own non-profit. It’s the cross above the door. We should really talk to them about that.

            A few years back we made it in good with a city planner or developer or general politician that someone was introduced to at some event. We have a lot of random connections in our community that are always coming and going with the families themselves. People always show up at the next circle meeting bursting with the big news about who they recently met and how this relationship might benefit the school. That makes us sound like we go out into the community only to trick people into friendships with false pretenses. Not true. We’re just a lot of people who happen to know a lot of other people. And if those people can help us, then… So, okay.

            This city person liked our school so much that he talked to us about a possible development in our area that would house a new space for our school. He showed us his plans to build a huge environmentally friendly building a few blocks away from our current location that would have everything we could want.  It would be the new bees knees of the neighborhood that’s been thinking about gentrification for a while now and hasn’t quite made up it’s mind about whether to go through with it. All he needed was this proposition to pass in the next city vote and the building was as good as ours. Unfortunately, the proposition was to demolish a massive city park that’s been there since the neighborhood’s inception and is a local favorite amongst little league teams and even our own students, who go there to frolic. It’s probably a good thing it didn’t pass. Whatever.

            It’s been really fun to visit free school’s in other parts of the country and to contemplate what it would be like to go to school in those cities. Having off campus permission in New York City where Manhattan is a thirty minute subway ride away would be pretty sweet. That’s how I felt about Portland during my first year of free school, mainly because I had never had that kind of freedom. “I don’t care if I can go to the library at any other time of the day! I want to go now!” Actually, back then I was really dissatisfied with my home town and told everyone I knew that I was moving to New York as soon as I possibly could. Portland was the dullest place I had ever been to and I honestly didn’t see how my parents weren’t also pulling their hair out and trying to run away as fast as they could. It only took a little while for the freedom effect to wear off and I soon exercised my off-campus privileges much less liberally.

            Now, I’m mostly in a denying field-trips phase. Other children are always chomping at the bit to get out of the building and explore the city, but whenever possible adventures are suggested, I generally always pass. “Seeing a show downtown? No thanks, I did that yesterday.” “The Nickel Arcade? How old do you think I am?” “For the last time, I’m not going inner-tubing down the side of Mt. Hood and then getting hot cocoa in the lodge! Stop asking!” The field trips always do sound kind of amazing and if I didn’t get out of the house so much already, I probably would be game for a lot of them. Except all of the screaming kids go, too. That’s kind of a bummer. I’m imagining that the museums and the shows and the hikes would are a lot less enjoyable when you’re surrounded by half of my school. That just doesn’t do it for me. Instead, I hang out at school while almost everyone else leaves, which gives me the peace and quiet I need in order to get work done. Field trip days are usually my most productive by far.

            The school itself is really close to one of the grossest streets in Portland, so local field trips are pretty much out. There’s a Fred Meyer’s right on that street that is pretty safe so long as you get in and out quickly and back onto our side of 82^nd. I mean, the druggies in the area aren’t too bad, but most of them hang around the plasma center, conveniently located right next to the closest library so there are no trips there either. It’s usually better to just not leave the school grounds unless you’re on your way to a different neighborhood because between the men walking around with that jean-pocket limp, the prostitutes, and the clouds of orange toxic waste floating by (I’m surprised we weren’t evacuated that day, but the City of Portland wanted us indoors, not out) you soon realize you’re in a place you shouldn’t be spending time in anyway.

            This is sad for some of the teens who are just starting to get their sea legs and go out a bit more on their own. I’d imagine they’d hang around the area and move on from there, but we’ve covered that issue. So they’re left to go straight into the city which is sometimes a big deal. Many studens are just learning how to bus on their own. I watch them staring at the Portland bussing website, as if by looking at it the long enough the information would be burned into their brains.

            They were planning this bus trip across town and it was their first time going alone. The staff told them to call while on the bus and once they arrived at their destination. My parents arranged this rule for me during my first year at VFS and I hated it. It felt so patronizing to an independent girl like me, that I would purposefully do all of my trips before or after arriving on campus so that I wouldn’t officially be on school time, and therefore didn’t have to be embarrassed. These kids needed it though, and seemed slightly more anxious than the staff. With directions in hand and worried looks a plenty, they set off into Portland, never to be heard of again. That hour. They called an hour later, lost, and the staff helped them and it all worked out in the end. But, yeah.

            One might be surprised that groups of teenagers can walk around during the day and not get stopped by police. My biggest concern when I was younger was always that I was going to get stopped and questioned about why I wasn’t in school. We didn’t have school ID’s during my first year so if we got stopped, our instructions were to have the cop call the school’s office number and speak to a staff member. Being afraid of any kind trouble, this idea horrified me and I was always on my toes when I saw an officer during any of my outings. I think this has only ever happened once or twice with our students. That’s why I was highly amazed when, years later, I visited the Brooklyn Free School and the police arrived on two separate occasions that morning to drop off loose children. I guess New York has a bit more of a street hooligan problem. I can’t imagine why.

            There are a lot of amazing places in town that make me excited that we’re located here. I tell my friends about the trips we all take on school time and they all just roll their eyes, completely scoffing at the idea that any of this is real. “You’re school couldn’t really do that and call it a field trip. Really.” They’re just jealous that taking field trips in public school requires so much work that it’s never worth it anyway. Yes, some of our choices are odd, but our goal is to have fun. Why make everything academic and serious when we don’t have to? Along with all of the unusual places, we hit up some of the children’s top 10 for the city, you know, with museums and children’s theater and what not. The only nontraditional thing that I’ve seen any similarity between us and public school was a regular ol’ trip downtown just to hang out. Every once in a while we let our kids run loose amongst the food carts, stores and parks. I equate these kind of trips to the pit-stops my parents used to take on road-trips when I was a toddler. They would stop in a rest area and literally ’run me’, sending me around trees and made up obstacle courses to let out energy. We have to ‘run’ our students every once in a while.

            “Oh, yeah. We do that sometimes. For no reason, right? Just to look at it?” I laughed when my boyfriend told me this. He lives in a suburb outside of Portland and is my first close friend ever to do so. I don’t know much about suburban life because of that and it was weird to think that all of these children are in the city so little that they need field trips to see it. I kind of assumed everyone drove into the city everyday for a little bit anyway just because. I would. But because of his hobbies and general awesomeness, he finds himself in the city quite a bit, so the thought of teachers from his school trucking him all the way downtown just to be a tourist was pretty amusing.

            One more really great thing about being in Portland is the culture that’s already here. The words hippie, hipster, progressive, accepting, young, young at heart, green, organic, and biker friendly are thrown around a lot. It’s not hard for our school to fit in here like it might be in, let’s say, a small mid-western town. I’ve gotten a lot of enthusiastic if not interested responses to my school while explaining it which I know wouldn’t always be the case. Everyone generally has something nice to say about it, or how smart the idea of it is, or how much fun it would be, or something along the lines of “good for you for doing your own thing! You must be so smart.   

            I’m just happy that I don’t have to spend all of my time defending myself. The most proving-my-worth I have to do always takes place with my judging peers who are intimidated by how interesting free school sounds and then must bring it down by exposing its flaws. Jerks. It would just be hell to have to do this with all of the grown-ups in my life, people who I look up to and would hate to have think of me in a bad light. I’m sure a lot more of them do than let on, but maybe all of the progressiveness in the air and the organic ingredients in their lunch make them willing to hear me out and try to understand. Just the fact that the Catholic church in our down and out neighborhood is willing to accept us and put up with our shenanigans is a wonder. So, thank you, Portland.  

Duct-Taping Your Butt To A Chair - The People, Part 2

            My mother’s favorite story about the people at VFS is a little something we like to call ‘Beets for Beards’. It all started out as a simple morning meeting discussion, one of our usual random bits of sharing amongst the students. Our Room C advisor at the time, Jackson, was rocking what might have been a slight hangover and a scruffy unshaved face. “I wasn’t able to shave this morning; I really hate this.” He uttered this from his seat in the circle as he scowled across at us from over his second cup of coffee. His twenty-four hour shadow was surprisingly full and amusing for us who had never seen him with anything gracing his facial region.

            “Well, I really like you with that beard. You look so cool,” an older student (we’ll call him Dan) admitted from across the room. Everyone quickly agreed and rounds of compliments for our favorite staff member issued forth. “I like it a lot!” “Yeah, you should grow it out!” Jackson stared us all down, giving a resounding “no” with his slightly bloodshot eyes. “It itches,” he said. “It’s scratchy and it’s ugly. No.” But we weren’t done.

            “Could we pay you to grow it out for a week?” Dan offered. The answer was still no, but Jackson thought a little harder before adding, “how would you like to do the thing you hate most everyday for a week? And then have that thing living on your face for the rest of the day?”

            “Ooh! You should make him eat beets!” a girl in the back quipped. We all ooh-ed and ah-ed with agreement. It was widespread knowledge for no particular reason that Dan’s least favorite food was (and probably still is) beets. I don’t blame him. Beets are a very offensive root.

            The next day, Jackson went out and bought about twenty cans of Fred Meyer brand pickled beets in a variety of fun cuts and set them on a shelf overlooking all of Room C. The agreement was this: for everyday that Jackson grew his beard out further, Dan would eat half a can of beets first thing in the day during morning meeting. This provided endless amusement for Room C students. It was almost too much to watch one of our suavest older males pucker and gag over opening the eerily colorful can with a rusty can opener and dig into his breakfast. He wasn’t allowed anything to wash the taste of dirt out of his mouth during the whole mess. The worst days, reportedly, were when he had a can of balled beets, the kind manufactured with something like a melon-baller that came in these bigger than bite sized clumps. We’d hold our breath as he squinted his eyes, plugged his nose, and bit off a chunk of beet, leaving trails of purple juice down the sides of his mouth.

            Sometimes funnier would be Jackson, sitting by and watching like a wronged king punishing the criminal at court. Dan’s gasps of pain were not enough for him. According to Jackson, the gross itching carpet on his face was much worse to live with than a few bites of beet in the morning. “I’m in pain!” he’d complain, and we’d all simply nod, knowing full-well that he could stop this whenever he wanted. He must have been enjoying this too and didn’t want to see the experiment end.

            All good things must come to an end though, and there were twelve cans of beets left on the shelf by the time it was all over. Jackson came into school with a face as whisker free as a babies, the kind that teenage boys grimace at every morning in the mirror. Dan could have done a better job of hiding his relief during morning meeting, but was also obviously sad to see the fun come to a close. He had won. We saw who the true man was, although our advisor was pretty adamant about the unfair circumstances of the bet.

            This staff member- Jackson, or “if you actually write that book, call me Bob”- should really be given some credit. Jackson has been one of the most influential people in building our school over the years and comes with the most amazing stories. It’s hard not to when you’re twenty-three and already executive director of a non-profit. It sounds like a really awful business move on the community’s part for hiring a twenty-three year old to be in charge of the whole thing, but you’d understand if you could meet him. No, I’m serious. Having had him as a teacher these past three years, I can say he has this way of talking that enlightens the words themselves. He’s incredibly intelligent and talked his way into an advisor position at the age of eighteen. No one’s looked back since. When we were searching for a new director last year and some other options fell through, there was really no one else to turn to besides Jackson. It’s been a hard year for him leading the pack and I haven’t seen him much, since he’s been holed up in his little office, but I like to remember his truly shining moments when he was a staff member a few years back.

            His first grand moment wasn’t even when I was around. I’ve heard of a school dance one year where he showed up with 200 condoms from Planned Parenthood and began flinging them across the dance floor at the teens who were bumpin’ and grindin’. That was his version of ‘safe chaperoning’. The younger kids began opening the condoms, slipping them all the way onto their small feet, and skating across the wooden floor.
            During my first few months at the VFS, he definitely topped himself. When I told my boyfriend this particular tale, he seemed to be in shock, all of a sudden stammering about “the-the normal field trips that normal kids take, Leslie. Normal teachers just don’t do that. Dear God, why can’t you just be normal?” This is an adventure that I don’t usually recount, just because I’m worried of getting reactions like that, or worse.

            It’s not really as bad as it sounds. A bunch of us teens were talking about how much fun it will be to go clubbing when we’re of legal age and how it sounds like quite the experience. Jackson chimed in that there were such things as underage clubs and that with our parents’ permission, we could all find out what clubbing is like right now! It was a school field trip, and we brought signed permission slips the night we all met at his house to go on our super awesome adventure. We piled into his car and drove right downtown to the shittiest area right off of Burnside, where you can’t tell the street kids from the club-goers in the rising moonlight. Oh yeah, it was a LGBT underage club, as well. That doesn’t make it different than any other club, I’d imagine, what with the thumping music, the fighting off of unwanted sexy dancing partners (we were on school time, after all), the sweaty bodies all crammed into what feels like the only spot left in the entire world, except that you also get drag shows starting at around three a.m. The lesbian rappers were pretty awful, but the lip-synching divas were about as fierce as they come. Maybe I was just tired, seeing as it was creeping towards four in the morning, but by the time “I Will Survive” was being belted by a queen in a purple sequined gown, I was in seventh-heaven. Jackson lead us bleary-eyed kids back to the car soon after, and we ended up crashing in his living room as arranged by our parents.

            A lot of club-goers were taking his Religions class that year and were having an excellent time being lectured at. Unfortunately, the ability to take these crazy, kick-ass field trips at any time of the day without planning sometimes wins out over weekly standing plans. A fellow staff member decided that he really needed a Voodoo doughnut, like, immediately, and proposed a field trip across town on the double. Of course we were all going to go, I mean, duh, but Jackson wasn’t too happy. He had spent quite a while preparing the lesson plans, he told us while sipping from his fourth cup of coffee that day, and he didn’t want to be put a class behind in his syllabus. “Fine,” he grumbled, “whatever.” And we were free. Free school teachers usually know not to try and stop these kind of unexpected hindrances, but we all felt guilty for abruptly taking off.

            On our way to the donut shop, we decided to bring Jackson back a treat so that he might forgive us. It seemed only natural, going to a store that specializes in weird, questionably edible creations, that we should bring him back something bizarre that he might appreciate with his mostly fun-loving personality. When we got to the store, the answer was staring up at us from its shiny rotating platform. The item was purchased (with an extra touch added to make it appropriate for the subject of the class) with pooled money and we hastened back to our religions class, only about an hour late. He protested at first, calling us deserters, but we quickly turned into dessert-ers as we proudly presented him with the best present any one of us had ever given: a half foot long cock and balls shaped piece of dough with the words “Jackson loves Jesus” scripted in pink frosting on top. He loved it. All was forgiven.

            Jackson is one of the best teachers we’ve ever had. He knows how to get people’s attention with whatever’s at hand and is a natural at coming up with creative ways to do things. Students have always loved taking his classes because he’s so interested in whatever he has to say. He was the person to tell me this next story and I was kind of surprised that anyone wouldn’t want him on their team.

            When the school was just starting out, the adults in the community had to come up with emergency evacuation drills for everyone to follow according to state law. They followed the formula for fire and earthquake emergencies, vacating the building and all that jazz. Then, a few concerned students came forward with concerns regarding their safety. Apparently, the staff had failed to prepare for the most dangerous threat: a zombie apocalypse. A team of students was dispatched to form an emergency plan of action. They spent the next week interviewing everyone in the building about what skills they might bring to the survivors team if we were to be infiltrated by the undead. Things like having good aim, and being able to start a fire without matches were highly prized. They asked Jackson this, and in true fashion, he said he was really good at analyzing data and graphing. When the committee presented their plan, they assigned everyone jobs in case of attack based upon their various skills. At the end, the group marched up to Jackson and said very matter-of-factly, “Sorry, but you’re left behind.”

            Even better was when he was put in charge of organizing Adventure Week: Spring 10 and took it very seriously. Usually staff just arrange field trips which take enough time as it is, but Jackson really wanted to try something different. No one actually knew what was going on while he pieced together the week’s plan with the help of the other staff members. It wasn’t until the Monday of Adventure Week that he gathered up all of the older kids for a special pre-Morning Meeting meeting.

            “We’re doing a Medieval Simulation and you all are the royalty. Your job is to sit in the castle all week and make fun of the peasants. Don’t make eye contact with the serfs. The younger kids are going to move up in the feudal system over the next few days-shut up! I know that’s not how it worked- by completing tasks you set forth and earning points. Go put on dresses and robes and for Gods sake, go find some armor because you’ll never defeat the Vikings this afternoon without some. I want you in the castle in fifteen minutes. Oh, and at one o’clock, a dragon’s attacking. Go!”

            This was the first we had heard about any of this. As far as we knew, we were all going to OMSI or Powell’s, or Voodoo again if we were lucky. But our standing around in confusion changed when someone in the back yelled, “well…Charge!” and everyone rushed out of the room in giddy excitement. The costume room was quickly desecrated as we threw on anything that looked vaguely historical (togas, fairy costumes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, poodle skirts) and we tromped onto the stage, which had been turned into a fancy castle-esque room over the weekend. Jackson came downstairs carrying a purple full-length robe and plastic golden crown.

            “Places!” he cried, and we all scrambled to guess what that meant. A few people lounged across couches while others took sat on thrones of their own, as Jackson was now doing. Excuse me- King Jackson, as he was addressed to the ‘peasants’ who were presently lead downstairs by the other staff.

            Once they were all seated in the rows of chairs that had also appeared on stage over the weekend, Jackson barked at the first row to “come kiss my ring!” The five came up and did so, as he grimaced and scoffed at each kiss on the gaudy ring now adorning his finger.

            “Now,” he began, “welcome to my Kingdom. I am King Jackson, and you are lowly, dirty, smelly peasants.” He pretended to read off of a scroll until he got too into character and began excitedly pacing. The rules of the simulation were explained, kids were grouped into families to go and build lives together, and a parent stood by getting it all on video. “You will do our bidding,” he said, gesturing to us behind him. “You will spend the day making your houses and planting your crops. Those of you with special jobs better do them well or you will be beheaded. Serfs can expect no lunch break. Also, there was a dragon spotted in the neighboring kingdom, so I’d watch your back. Now get out of my sight!” With that, the kids were dismissed to construct little child sized cardboard houses and to begin earning their points. Royalty got to walk around the countryside critiquing construction and trampling on construction paper fields. When the dragon attacked, noble warriors who had been chosen beforehand were given weapons of the foam stick and plastic light saber kind. Everyone else filed outside while the brave few practiced their fighting indoors, like soldiers beneath the coliseum.

            Outside, it was revealed the dragon was of the car-horn variety. The task was to complete some unremarkable activity while blindfolded after being lead over towards where Jackson had parked his car. While attempting the task, Jackson would honk his car horn only ten feet away and the child would drop their task out of utter terror and lose the match.

            Car-horn dragon. A new favorite game. The sadistic surprise never got old and we all enjoyed watching our ten-year-old friends get the shit scared out of them. That was, until the Vikings attacked. From the opposite side of the field where they were unseen by the crowd, our school’s interns and a handful of teenage boys came tearing across the field screaming to wake the dead (or the neighbors who were probably beginning to wonder what the hell was going on at the damn hippie school today.) Dressed in Viking helmets and properly padded with skateboarding gear, they were tackled to the ground by the kids almost instantly.

            Every day that week resembled the first one. The fate of the final one was to be voted on by the peasants themselves. Jackson offered them the choice between a ball to celebrate their hard work or a revolution against the feudal system, following the French method (we had moved a good 500 years forward since Monday). Being a democratic school, they chose a revolution that was mob-ruled, ending with a trial for each member  of royalty (that ended up looking surprisingly like an ASM) and a beheading. Newly elected guards rolled out a guillotine to finish us all off. I had caught some other teens constructing this on Jackson’s orders a few days earlier as he and guessed correctly where the final day might lead.  

            I would venture to guess that the Medieval Simulation was one of the most fun times we’ve all had at school. Of course, there are years I wasn’t there for and many moments that I’ve missed by sitting in a corner. Let’s also not forget that my sensibilities seem to be different than the people’s around me, so I suppose I actually will have to retract that statement. It’s one of the best, if not the best, times I’ve had at the VFS. And I thank Jackson for that.

            Then, of course, he became a malevolent dictator (I.e. executive director) and locked himself in his office until he fixed the budget and convinced someone to haul away the Christmas trees. Sure, he comes out occasionally, but only for brief appearances, like when he told us about the boy to girl ratio and when the ten year old put the mug in the microwave. He still has to evacuate in case of emergencies, so at least we see him then.

            And sometimes he needs to come out in order to help the school run. If he needs something done, he will come out of his man-cave long enough to make it happen. I’m thinking of the school-wide survey for all of the students on the performance of the staff for that year. The volunteers in charge of making it happen online were doing a poor job, and so he ventured out of his office to put signs on every door in the school, reading “One free cookie if you fill out the staff survey!!!! -Jackson” This was not a new trick; many volunteers before him have gotten much more student participation than that for the same price. The thing is, it works every time without fail. So they got the surveys properly filled out by almost every member of the student body (I wonder who forgot…*cough, cough*) and everything was happy. Students began asking him for the promised treats and he kept shuffling them out of the office, saying, “soon, soon.”

            A couple of months later and everyone had forgotten about the undelivered sweets except for one of our Room C advisors. Every week since the survey, she had been politely asking during morning meetings if we- they- had received their cookies, always in a conversational and lightly curious manner. After two months of this, she surprised everyone by asking once again and then becoming hugely disappointed when the answer was still no.

            “That isn’t right! He promised you cookies and something must be done. Let’s protest!” Everyone was slightly confused but highly eager, once prompted, to begin making signs and taping them all over their bodies. I sat by and watched as they came up with slogans. “Let them eat cookies”, “Make cookies, not war”, “Give me cookies, or give me death”, and quite simply, “Be a better boss.”  One of Jackson’s little sisters made a sign saying, “I’m telling mom,” while the other wrote, “you’re a horrible brother” in big letters all over her posters. They were armed and ready. I didn’t really see much point in participating if I wasn’t owed a cookie, so I chose to sit that one out. Not that I wouldn’t have anyway, but it was a convenient excuse.

            While rallying the Room C troops, it was decided that they would do a silent sit-in at first, just to annoy him. The hope was that he would cave in immediately so as not to be bothered, but in case he held out, they were going to bring in more people. Particularly, the Room A’ers. Who could say no to their sad, adorable faces? They would be ushered in by someone after a while if nothing happened. Then if needed, they would bring in Room B next.

            They marched forth down the hall and entered his office just as stoic as they were silent. I applauded all of my peers as they exited Room C for leaving me with an entire room all to myself while they calmly filed into a cramped closet at the opposite end of the building, closed the door, and sat in silence. It was what I had always dreamed of!

            Before I could kick-back and really let loose in that room (by reading a book, an unusual occurrence inside those four walls), the music started. I thought it was coming from Room A at first throwing another raucous dance party, but this bubble-gum pop was in even worse taste than their Miley Cyrus and Jonas Brothers. I poked my head out into the hall just as Justin Beiber began the chorus of his latest number one hit. The music was coming from all the way down the hall…in Jackson’s office. Really? My heart fell as I realized they couldn’t actually be quiet for any sustained amount of time. They were physically incapable of it. They had made something happen and yet again, the entire building was absolutely vibrating with obnoxious noise.  

            A Room B’er who had already investigated the scene came dashing down the hall towards me. “Jackson’s playing Justin Beiber to make them go away!” he shrieked with glee.

            “And is it working?” I asked.

            “I don’t know, they’re still all sitting there, and most of Room B has gone to join them.”  

            Soon, I saw little heads peeking out of the Room A doorframe to see what all the hub-bub was about, and they quickly began trickling out to join the fun. After fifteen minutes, the music hadn’t stopped. I couldn’t hold out any longer and had to go see for myself what the heck was going on. Inside the small office space, big enough for maybe ten people at most, the party was pumping. Jackson sat at his desk with an excellent poker face on, apparently completely absorbed with his computer screen and unaware of the six-years-olds coloring on the notepad next to his hand. It would be pretty hard to be unaware of the screeching music coming from his speaker set and the whole of Room C behind him though, carrying on as if it were any other occasion. Along with some Room B and A kids, they were drawing and talking, playing a board game and blasting their own music from a laptop- some horrible country song.

            I was only in there for a moment before Jackson whipped suddenly around in his chair to face the crowd. Some action stopped while others carried on, now completely oblivious to the reason why they were in there at all. It seemed like their moment had finally come. That was, until he shouted, “alright, for every five minutes more that you’re in here, you wait an extra day for your cookies. They’re coming on Monday. Now get lost.” The party seemed to slow down and kids began picking up their various forms of entertainment. The whole gang was gone within the minute and Jackson closed the door firmly behind them. They trailed back to their homerooms in a state of confusion- was this the outcome they had wanted?

            “So,” our teacher asked, looking up from the chapter book she was busy reading aloud from, “is he going to the store right now?” We had all figured that he would walk right down to the Fred Meyer groceries and be back within fifteen minutes, taking care of the problem quickly and efficiently. This had been the widely anticipated response.

            “Um, no. He said we get them on Monday.”

            “So, you…lost?”

            “Well, yes.”

            And after all of that effort and the whole big protest, they had really all lost. It’s the running joke in school to call Jackson a dictator and King Jackson just because of his very blunt, but effective way of keeping us all in check. However, his power is never truly appreciated until situations like this come along. Literally, the entire student body can be protesting inside of his office and he will still win the battle. It’s kind of amazing, actually.

            Being amazing, and not just in that formidable way, is a trait amongst Room C advisors, past and present. I know all of our staff members put up with a lot- and come to think of it, I’m sure dealing with the younger crowd is actually far worse- but it sure feels like the Room C folks put up with the most pure shit. I mean, who really wants to deal with a bunch of unresponsive teenagers who are constantly getting into fights and dating and breaking up and destroying furniture? There used to be an old coffee table that was falling apart and a staff member mentioned getting rid of it. So when they left the room, our skaters jumped on top of it on the count of three and the whole thing exploded in a cloud of woodchips and splinters. I sat in stunned disbelief literally two feet away, as this was the coffee table that our circle of couches surrounded. Then they picked up the biggest pieces and left the room as well, leaving a crash test site in their wake. Us teenagers, we’re all trouble.

            Our meetings are always unbelievable, as well. Our advisors stand up at the chalkboard for hours trying to coax any kind of reaction out of us to absolutely no avail.

            “We’re going to be making brunch on Monday, so what do you all want?” Silence. “Do you still want to make brunch?” Silence. “Is that a no?” One head shakes. “…Okay, so what do you want to make?” Silence. “Waffles? Pancakes? Breakfast burritos?” Silence. “Cereal? Turd Sandwiches?” No reaction. “Okay, moving on!”

            Every minute of every meeting follows this pattern. I feel bad and try to answer these insanely easy questions as much as possible, but I can’t be a prick and answer everything all the time. This is unfortunate because nothing ever gets said otherwise. I don’t know why being unresponsive is desirable, I can barely stand these meetings as much as our staff can. One time our advisors had a checklist going on the board for various items we wanted to get done throughout the week. They were trying and trying and trying to get us to participate in discussing these, and eventually one of them wrote “staring blankly at each other” at the very bottom and checked it off. It was the only one so far.

            And you see, this is not because of poor leadership which is what one would suppose from teachers in any other school. Our advisors are completely competent. It’s the environment of a free school to not be coercive, not to force anything out of students, to let them be. If they’re not going to talk, they’re not going to talk. Try again tomorrow.  So the staff are following the conventions of a free school, which just happen to make these meetings comparable to having hyenas ever so slowly gnawing at your flesh.

            They’ve tried to make it better this last year, because for some reason, this last year has been the most unresponsive yet. And we’ve had more tweenagers than ever before. Correlation? Yes. But our staff members have come up with all sorts of group bonding activities to try and break the arctic-grade ice that’s perpetually stopping communication amongst us kiddos. Part of the deal with only having two meeting days a week was that Monday was Room C brunch day- where we all go into the kitchen and prepare a feast for us to devour while meeting- and Wednesday was Wednesday Fun-day- where after we meet, we all play a surprise game-like activity arranged by the staff.  Brunch-day is the best because most of the time I like food more than I like my “room-mates.” On Wednesday we vote on what to make on Monday and it’s always something delicious. I was telling my friend about this and he got very confused when the list of menus started to sound only like dessert. “Wait, so you all had chocolate chip waffles and ice-cream?” “Yes, and cookies.” “But I thought cookies were last week?” “Only because it was Craig’s birthday. We just felt like having cookies this week, too.” “So what’s next week?” “A pie swap.”

            Wednesday fun-days usually include something like having board games out, Queen tribute air bands formed, or a group favorite happens, like ‘Bowl full of nouns” (I hate that game only because one week we played and penis was submitted for use five times). One Wednesday we had a “Getting Ready Relay Race,” where we had two teams going through all of the morning activities before coming to school. A balloon was shaved, cereal was fiercely gulped, tricycles were raced around traffic cones in the parking lot, and once the teams had arrived at school, I raced my friend in writing lines on the chalkboard. We spelled out “I will not be a cog in the machine,” ten times. I won. I have one extra year of public school on her, so…

            Towards the end of the year, Wednesday Fun-days became all about organizing a Room C trip. We’ve done this in years past, but only when the present advisors had taken on full responsibility for making it happen. This past year our advisors asked that we actually get off of our butts and make something that we want happen. Laughable, I know. But they were really adamant about this crazy scheme and turned Fun-days into time to plan fundraisers and make whatever tokens needed to be assembled for use. I sat out of ALL planning because I guessed correctly that this trip would never be taken and I was much more content to sit in my worn-in corner and read that day’s Willamette Week. The group decided to sell these things called “finger-pianos” at Last Thursday on Alberta Street to earn some income for their trip. They then spent weeks and weeks being coaxed by our staff to actually go and create those little pianos like they said they would. “I’m kind of busy listening to my ipod, maybe later?” they whined from their lounging positions on the couch. It made me tired just to hear the staff trying to get those kids into the arts studio. I’m so sure it took them less time to make one hundred pianos than it did for the staff to force them out of Room C. My growing belief that those kids would never pull this off was confirmed when the first Last Thursday selling attempt was cancelled due to rain. We live in Portland, Oregon. I just couldn’t believe that anyone’s heart was truly in this- in fact, I was pretty sure they were being forced into this group lead activity. 

            They were talked into trying again the next month, but the night before a rather mild Thursday, disaster struck. The precious finger-pianos had been packaged in a big box in the trunk of our staff member’s car and some passing thug in the night had thought the box held something a lot more valuable than the teenage equivalent of macaroni art projects. Fortunately, nothing else in the car had been taken and the car itself wasn’t damaged. But. The finger-pianos, they were no more. Everyone got to school and our staff called an emergency Room C meeting to tell the grim news. The day turned sober and depressing with everyone in an emotional state. I got home that day eager to tell my mom what had happened since she had been privy to the whole saga. Well, she began laughing. Surprisingly, that also got me going and I also began cackling uncontrollably. It took me until that moment to realize just how hilarious this was. At school, the air had been so sad that I hadn’t been able to see the comedy. “Hmm I wonder who took those damn things…” she joked. “I would check your classmates cubby’s, if I were you.”

            At least they tried to organize something and actually had group bonding time, which is way more than I do.

            The other staff come with fun stories too, I’m sure. I just don’t know what they are. I only experience them when I’m in their classes (which isn’t that often) or in passing. I can say that they all look the part of free school teachers, with their dreadlocks and round chemistry glasses and hip clothing. They’re all extremely nice, and I’ve always liked every advisor the school’s had throughout the years. Our hiring committees do their jobs well.

            We always get really awesome interns, too, which is not a given. For putting in the same amount of work as the staff, interns get paid only $200 a month which is barely enough to cover lunch everyday at the Taco Cart. So I’m always surprised we get anyone willing to hang out with us for 30 hours a week for basically nothing. But every intern we’ve ever had has been amazingly nice. I think they seem even cooler because they don’t technically have advisor authority over us. They’re generally young people, fresh off of earning or beginning to earn teaching degrees, and just want to spend their time playing guitar, board games, Sprout, ping-pong, 80’s karaoke, or whatever else we want all day long. And they want to get the most out of their time with us as a “learning opportunity” so they always say yes to things like being Vikings during Medieval Simulations, or running field trips when the staff don’t have the energy, or even leading the after school program for three more hours of screaming children and only a couple extra bucks.

            All of the adults hanging around our halls (hall) truly do love us. As I’ve said, there’s no way they would be doing any of this if they didn’t. You can really tell with such events like the Start-of-Year Camp-out, the multiple Adventure Weeks and the End of the Year Ceremony. All of these special community things that take so much extra time to pull together make us as close as we are. I personally really enjoy the Start-of-Year campout, at least the idea of it. Getting all the parents, students and staff together for a two day retreat in the woods full of games and hikes and community meals and lots of bonding sets the tone for the year. Of course, I’ve been busy with…things these past two years and haven’t been able to attend the whole time, but I’ve heard it’s still as great as ever.

            On the last day of the school year, the staff gather us all downstairs and present a video year book that they’ve usually thrown together in the prior three days. It’s always  touching and emotional for the parents watching. Next, the staff acknowledge the kids who know they won’t be returning to the school the following year and get their chance to tear up. Finally, the kids are asked to come up and say something about the one or two staff members who are usually on their way out and get their chance to join the crying fest, effectively leaving everyone in the room bawling by the time the party’s supposed to start. But it’s always the sweetest thing, and my avoidance of that somewhat mandatory event is also completely coincidental. Is it my fault that I’m always busy with…things and have very important places to be?

            Needless to conclude, all of the extra time they put on top of the extra time they’re already giving really makes our school fun. My mother went to a free school for two years as a child, and she said that they were the most miserable years of her education. This was because the school was led in the most hands off way possible. Teachers would let the kids be free to the extreme of never planning any classes or activities and never interacting with them. She said she spent most of her time with the thirty other students sitting in a classroom with absolutely nothing to do. Picture all day, every day of an unruly high school class before the bell rings and the teacher walks in. Or every day of the school year being like The Breakfast Club. I’d imagine that after a full week of that, one would want the structure and goings-on of a standard program. She was skeptical of me attending a free school in the first place because of her own experience, but after a year of coming home with all of these stories, she changed her tune. The staff really do make the school come alive.

            After the staff, come the parents.

            Everyone arrived in school on the first day of the year, all bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to see all of our lost companions. The staff hijacked the Monday Morning Meeting that day to welcome us all and play some bonding games. The most time consuming activity that morning was the task to try and learn everyone’s name. It’s not that there’re ever that many students or much turn over, but the circle in which we all stand, students, staff, present parents, is asked to state their name, do a funny move, and have the group repeat along with the gesture. Sounds simple enough. But you have no idea how long five year olds can take in coming up with a move on the spot. They giggle, look at their feet, “umm…” for a minute, until a staff politely encourages them to do something, anything, so that we can move on.

            It’s usually always the same behavior. But from a clump of little ones taking up a good ten minutes on their giggly group, came the wild card. He looked up from his homemade, hand-sewn pleather shoes to stare at the group. Very still in demeanor compared to his squirming friends, he looked around and said “They named me after a vegetable.”

            There was a pause. Everyone waited in anticipation for him to continue on and actually say his name, but he was finished. Finally, the Room A staff member declared, “this is Kohlrabi!” and gave him a silly gesture that didn’t match at all the grim look on his soured face. I’ve been in love with this one moment for years now as the perfect illustration of the relationship some children have with their parents and their given lifestyle.

            First off, they were already a “they.” Not “my parents“, not “mommy and daddy” as most five year olds would say, but a “they”. People in an entirely different class than himself. Secondly, he’s blaming them for being named after a vegetable, something that they’re probably growing in their huge garden with chickens circling around it. Kohlrabi seems like a normal enough name (for free school), but this young man apparently groups it with artichoke, broccoli and rutabaga; foods you would not want to share a name with. It was sad to see that he already felt this way at a young age. I hoped phrases like “they sent me to a hippie free school” and “they won’t let me cut my hair” weren’t also circling in his head waiting to come out when prompted.

            As you’ve probably guessed, this is not the only weird name we have on tap. Unusual naming is a trend amongst parents in our community although , fortunately, Free School parents can’t take all of the credit for the names I’m about to list. Most are from my childhood in various alternative and arts based schools in Portland. I’ve met The Colors: Blue and Red, The Numbers: Seven and Eleven (x2 no less); The Foods: Jelly and Mead; The Domestic Animals: K9 and Cat; The High Gods: Thor and Juno; The Celestial Occurrences: Aurora and Solray; The Majestic Trees: Asher and Cedar; Every Flower in a Bouquet. The best (with no offense to those other worthy contenders) has to be Boye. There really is a boy in Room C named Boye. Supposedly his parents couldn’t decide on a name for him for his first few years of life. Eventually, the family had to take a plane ride and the airline company needed a name for this two year old child so they simply said, “Boye.”  It just kind of stuck.

            You know, this is the population here in Portland, and the free school just holds a magnifying glass up to the more eccentric parts.

            Around the building at any given time, you can find a large group of parents just hanging around, usually about one fifth the size of the present student body. Everyone’s generally lovely, but my favorite are the Mother Hens who take roost in our couch circles and around our coffee machines.  Out of all the parents who mysteriously don’t need to work, the mothers have the most free time to come and do their motherly thing with their children all day long. I remember the mornings in elementary school where tearful mothers would part from tearful children on the first day of school, both parties wishing they could just stay together to face the challenges of school and social situations by the other one’s side. The school would even send out reminders asking parents to please leave the school grounds by a certain time so that students had time to fly solo. The free school sends out no such messages. We welcome family bonding and feed off of parent volunteers, so if the two never wish to be more than a few feet away, more power to them. Surprisingly though, the mothers don’t hound their children by actually being in the same room with them. They mostly hang out in the living room or in Room C where they can create a coffee shop-like experience. Three or four of them sit in a circle and gossip to their heart’s content as if they were in their own houses. I love these impromptu get-togethers because they gossip about serious shit! Marriages, affairs, money, fights, and usually the one mother who isn’t currently there and how her child did such and such. I love it, love it, love it. And because we treat our students like real people, we’re all (mostly) allowed to listen and jump-in when appropriate. Best way to spend a morning ever. And this all happens right where we have classes, so you have an equal chance of walking in on a history lecture or a lecture on who’s dating who and why. Love it.

            If you took a survey of the various characters at any group event, you would see a couple of distinct types and not much else. Remember- snap shot of Portland.

You have: super skinny vegan ladies, some sporting the “all natural” hair state of dreadlocks; the vegetarians who are usually clad from head to toe in tattoos (they’re not quite as pure and organic as the vegans who would never inject ink into their skin); the mothers hens who actually appear quite chicken like with their bodies puffed out from carrying children; and gentlemen who always seem to have facial hair. We have other kinds of men hanging around, like the ones also clad entirely in tattoos, the big bulky men who look like they’ve just gotten back from a month on the side of a mountain to pick their child up from school, but the common denominator is always facial hair. Yep.

            All of the parents are really supportive in that unsupportive way. Being ‘ideas people,’ they’re all more than happy to stand up in meetings and declare how important some issue is or how in support they are of a certain thing, but no one will actually follow through on making those things happen, or those long winded and accusatory rants worth while. Frankly, I’m tired of circle talk just so every parent can give their support to everything at least twice per item so that they can hear the sound of their own voice and how motivational it sounds.

            I would be remiss not to touch on the trend of not eating meat that has swept through our population. Really, it’s kind of amazing to be in such an ideally healthy habitat, and as a mammal just looking for a comfortable environment, I find it wonderful. So the children don’t always do that good of a job of taking care of themselves (if you’ll please note the ban on High Fructose Corn Syrup), but if you look at the lunch their parents provide for them, it always appears quite nutritious. We don’t have enough money in the school to house a daily lunch program, so everyone brown bags it (or goes to the Taco Food Cart two blocks away which, for the record, carries vegan and vegetable stuffed options.) Almost everyone’s concerned with organic, healthy food which is a relief because those are the arguments that usually start sounding like Republican v. Democrat debates. Either you understand and believe in healthy living, or you don’t.

            We have a lot of different food sects. There are meat-eaters, vegetarians, vegans, and a few raw foodists, macrobiotic gurus, gluten-free and sugar-free people all running about. Unfortunately, like as with any religion you’ve bought into, it’s hard not to want to convert your friends and neighbors which leads to problems. The second biggest group (after carnivores) are the simple vegetarians and they’re after us, especially since they know they have the health and humanitarian angle covered. We’ll watch documentaries or read news articles about food, the environment or health in Room C and the few vegetarians will always begin preaching about their ways, using whatever was just presented as evidence.

            I went to a café with two vegetarian students and we were all standing in front of the big overhead menu, deciding what to order. I commented on how I had just watched some documentary the other night all about the meat industry in America and that I really didn’t feel like having any animal product that day. Their eyes immediately lit up and small, knowing smiles appeared. “Well, it’s never too late to start being a vegetarian,” they said. “We’re glad your eyes have been opened.” They were missionaries hearing I had finally accepted Jesus into my life.

            Sometimes though, I wonder if our community hasn’t taken the health food craze a little far. Children like to imitate the adults in their life and up to a certain age, if mom and dad do it, so will they. This goes for things like diet and food choice which the parents dictate in their house anyway. I’ve seen lots of families where the parents are vegetarian or vegan, or even raw food-ists, and their child is too. Some of them say that their kid chose on their own free will to follow this path while others admit to having a strict position on what comes out of their kitchen. I really worry sometimes for the kids who are living on the diets that their parents can handle because they’re grown adults, but that deprive growing bodies of vital fats and nutrients. I’ve seen some people literally eating a head of lettuce like an apple and calling it lunch, but the small child next to them always looks eerily skinny when nibbling on the same meal.

            And then there are the children who are more gung-ho about their diet than the parents. During some community lunches, I’ll be working down in the kitchen preparing whatever dish, and students will come in and see what’s happening. At the sight of the block of cheese on the counter, they’ll bolt out of the room, angrily yelling “Why are you doing that!?! Cheese is murder!”  They run around with self-satisfied looks of smarty-pants-ness and continue their chant “Cheese is murder! Cheese is murder!” until told to “Stop Seriously, and go the ____ away!” They generally don’t until you physically chase them with the accursed block of cow product in hand.

            Parents and staff make up the bulk of the adult presence in the building, but there are always a few outside volunteers hanging around at any time. Even more than the staff, or the interns, I have to wonder how we get these volunteers who truly find the school on their own. A surprising number of them aren’t connected with any educational organization or personally know any community members before signing up. I believe Google has provided a large portion of our free labor to us over the past few years and we really should be paying them for this service.

            Every year we get a few hipsters from town who are thinking about being teachers when they’re done working at coffee shops, a few education fanatics who have already been studying schools like our for years, a couple national and international visitors, and a handful of mystical sun children who have just blown in from training at their massage program and really jive with our flow and want to know more about our energy and what celestial alignment we fall under (get what our school’s about and want to know more about our program and when they can come in to help). Some of these people have taught the most interesting classes I’ve taken at the VFS. Others have sat and stared across at us on the couches in Room C, feeling rightfully out of place and unsure of what to do with themselves. It’s always  really awkward when they don’t get that things don’t always happen at school even though there’s infinite potential. Then they try to talk to us or introduce a conversation about some academic topic that no one cares about. We’d rather go back to playing on Facebook and reading our newspaper. But really, who’s to complain. I’ll say it again: we wouldn’t run without volunteers.

             There definitely is a larger free schooling community, as well, bringing in extra attention. Believe it or not, there are free and democratic (they don’t always identify as both) schools all across the world, especially in North America, South America, and across Europe in countries like England and Germany. Our school has always been close to Windsor House School up in Vancouver, BC because of the proximity, I believe. I’ll have to ask someone soon how that relationship started, but we have lots of student exchanges and  some staff members have worked at both places. Other staff members here have gone to free schools off in New York, like The Albany Free School, and know people at the Brooklyn Free School, and other such places.

            We’ve only been in existence for a turbulent seven years and it’s getting on the impressive mark. Free schools are hard to keep alive because of cost and  fluctuating populations (there was a huge burst and then dwindling of them in the sixties and seventies as the hippie fad came and went). It’s good to see that the few landmark schools, the ones that have been around twenty, thirty, forty years, all keep in touch and attend conferences whenever possible. By the way, international conferences are so much fun. If you’re really into alternative education, that is. There are days and days of mingling with people from all over the world connected with alternative schools and it’s sometimes enlightening and sometimes funny to hear them share and mostly brag about their own schooling set-up. Everyone thinks their democratic shit smells and operates in a non-conformist way the best.

            I personally like having my free school right here in Portland. The city is already so much of a hippie den and alternative wonderland, that it’s really no surprise a free school cropped up here. It fits in too perfectly. Recently, I was asked to explain my school to someone and I got through the name before being stopped and asked “The village of what?” I stammered and said, “Well, I don’t know.” I had never even thought of this before, as the name had always just sounded catchy and properly back-to-roots. He replied swiftly, “Because Portland feels like a Village most of the time.” We laughed and I realized that this was the village that was supporting me and my school and letting us co-habituate with all of the standardized schools all around. It was an especially profound realization, considering one of the main principles of our school is that we exist in and learn from the outside world, and not through a musty textbook and a bored teacher. I thanked my lucky stars from that joke, to finally know on a larger scale who the people were exactly that were raising me. 

Duct-Taping Your Butt To A Chair - The People, Part 1

            It takes a village to raise a child.

           

            It takes a Village Free School to raise a child (I’ve been working on that one for a while). Self-congratulations aside, it really does. And my peers and I are the living proof. 

            You know what? - let’s talk about my peers, shall we? For as much as I like to rag on them (and I will do so, I assure you), they’re actually…really great. Really great. I couldn’t say whether it’s the people we naturally attract or the environment we put them in, but these are the nicest and most honest students I’ve ever met. Maybe it’s that we’re not capable of holding lasting grudges against each other or that we just know each other’s angry faces by now, but most of us get along on a base level. It’s pretty hard to actively dislike anyone. Like, in an ‘I’m going to murder your first born’ kind of way.

            For priding ourselves on our diverse state of being (which I’m not denying- free school is pretty far out there), we definitely attract types. There are the guitar players, the artists, the skaters, the long haired smelly kids, the gamers, the dreaded (haired) Rasta wanna-be’s, and the manga-loids. We don’t get preps, we don’t get athletes, we don’t get intellectuals (for the most part), ‘partiers’, Goths, fashionistas, kids who would literally have no friends were they in public school, or minorities. No seriously. There was an African-American two years ago, but she has since left. It leaves all of us white folk scratching our heads a little over how to solve this issue. We’ll let you know when we have a good answer. At least our anti-discrimination statement at the bottom of all of our public marketing includes an extra little something special. To quote directly: “We don’t discriminate against anyone ever, because that’s just mean and wrong.” I can almost hear our executive director saying this out-loud to himself, nodding and then typing it up.

            This stereotyping is pretty much the case in every age group. You can see in the youguns who will be what kind of a stoner when they grow up and who will write D&D fan fiction. They’re the most adorable, though. I swear, and not just because my baby making hormones kicked into high gear this year, those children are the cutest things I’ve ever seen. I really wish I had spent more time in Room A over the past three years. They always kind of scared me up until now. I didn’t want to be climbed on by snotty hands and made to do macaroni art projects for hours on end, which is what happens when you step inside their little kid vortex. Those poor volunteers, I thought. At least the staff members were getting paid for their efforts. However, it struck me recently while watching the little A’s frolic around the art studio that they really do have the most fun.

            Sometimes their adorableness can be put to good use, as well. Not that we wish to exploit their charms to make a profit, but fundraising has never been hurt by a smiling five year old in a pink tutu. Two years ago a student drew a picture of herself at school and slipped it under our executive director’s office door as a present. He liked it so much that he put it on the next round of asking cards being sent out to previous donors, and sure enough, someone else liked it, too. We got one thousand dollars off of that little girl’s doodle, and they made sure to tell us that it had been the picture that had simply melted their hearts. This is also the same child who pulled the office fire alarm a few days later after mistaking it for a light switch, so you have to factor out the cost we paid the fire department to come out to our building when you’re adding up her net gain for that week.

            Now, I know us big kids aren’t supposed to pick favorites, but I’ll just say that there was a little lady in Room A this past year who absolutely won me over. I liked her even enough to cross the threshold of that madhouse to come and sit with her. After being asked to watch her one morning by her frantic mother, she learned my name and quickly decided that I was the coolest older kid in the whole school. Yes, it’s true, I am, but most children just won’t admit it. Since older students don’t hang out too terribly much with the younger crowd, when Room A kids meet someone who gives them the time of day, they love them forever. And after that morning, she and I were best friends. She loved seeing me in the hallway when I was passing through and she held her tiny arms out and cried “LESLIE!” as loud as possible. I would run to her and she would wrap herself around my lower half, almost buckling my knees in. She could do this all day, too. She was like a goldfish with a five second memory and would keep this routine up every time we met, even if I had just come through. I bet if I had stood next to her long enough without speaking, she would have turned with those big eyes and shouted “LESLIE!” once again, with a big hug to match.

            It turns out I knew of this little darling before we were besties. During our first adventure week of the year, one of the staff decided to host a lunch buffet for everyone at school each day of the week. I signed up to be on kitchen crew with my good friend, thinking we could both avoid actually participating in anything. The idea was that we would start with $30 in donations, use that for our first day’s groceries, and then ask for $2 a person to pay back what we owed. This system worked pretty well all week, except for that first day when kids weren’t aware they would be charged in advance. We received a lot of I.O.U.’s and upset calls to parents happening in the lunch line that put the entire process on standstill, but every child was fed regardless of the ‘rules’, at least on that first day. Then came up the smallest of all Room A children who could barely reach the serving tray station and was just a pair of miniature hands and a disembodied voice. I explained to her that it would be $2 and she squeaked back that she didn’t have that kind of cash on her. She ambled away before I could stop her and was lost in the crowd of kids. Five minutes later, the disembodied voice returned, with the hands carrying a bright blue piece of paper.

            “Here you go.”

            She handed me the electric blue card and proceeded to the front of the food line without a second look. I examined the roughly chopped piece of paper. There was a giant number two written in the corner, and in large, robotic child letters across the front, was written “Georgia” (her name). She had given me a Georgia Dollar. This was not a tongue-in-cheek move that an older student might attempt to be clever, but a sincere belief that this paper was just as valuable as the green ones everyone else had. For some reason, I felt very proud.

            Then there’s Reginald. He attended the VFS two years ago and left the biggest mark on the school that’s ever been dealt. That this tiny Room A boy could do so much damage is almost unthinkable. Of course, it completely helped that he had a face like an angel, so when you saw him walking down the hall you didn’t immediately suspect him of suspicious behavior. He was the dictionary definition of a firecracker, destroying almost everything in his path. He was always so hyper; he would come into rooms running at full speed, zooming under furniture, picking up items and chucking them across the room, going into other people’s cubbies and pulling out their belongings. You couldn’t have open food containers, bottles, or bags out because he would get into them without fail. And it was really like watching a walking, breathing pinball machine; you could barely catch him tearing into one thing before he was at your side slurping from your drink and then bouncing on the couch the next moment. Like lightning, that boy was.

            We used to have a coffee station in Room C until we caught Reginald at it one morning eating sugar straight out of the bag with a slobbery spoon that he maniacally dipped in and out. Our advisor grabbed him by the stomach and hoisted him upwards away from the table. “Stop! You’re hurting me!”

            “Well, are you going to stop eating our sugar?”

            “Let me go!”

            He was dropped to the ground and quickly leapt across the room onto our cushy chair, jumping and beaming as if he hadn’t just complained of being crushed.

            “I was faking!” he chortled, and dashed off past the growing crowd right back to the sugar bag which we had stupidly left unattended. He scooped another spoonful of sugar into his small mouth before the staff member had him by the stomach again, wriggling in this grasp. “Stop, stop!” he screamed as he disappeared down the hallway back to the confines of Room A.

            We generally liked having Reginald in Room C for entertainment purposes. Being a word-loving girl, I highly enjoyed the time he bounded into the room wanting to play some game he called “battle”. “Tug-of-Battle, Tug-Of-Battle! Come on, you guys!” He soon ran out in search of more competent playmates as we stood around staring at one another. Eventually someone offered quietly, “did he mean Tug-Of-War?” and the room erupted into laughter. It was pretty cute. We could also prompt him to say adorable things when the moment was right. A staff member was trying to get him to return to Room A for clean-up while he was running in circles like usual. One boy who was watching all of this said, “Tell her that her words are offensive.” Reginald smiled giddily and declared “Your words are expensive!” before darting out the door once more.

            The next month, an older student was on her way into the kitchen when she noticed a pool of red liquid at her feet in the doorway. She tore into the room, to discover Reginald and his trusty sidekick Winston sitting on the tiled floor with the box of kitchen knives open in front of them and two foot-long deathly utensils clutched in their hands. A bottle of ketchup lay at their side, as well, sliced open with a bread knife still embedded in its body. She managed to not faint, and instead proceeded to coax the knives out of the boys’ hands before calling for a staff member.

            That incident, and his usual manic behavior, is why we currently have the Room A Certification law. That rule was created to keep him and his friends from destroying the entire building and each other. Before the time of Reginald, Room A students had free reign of the entire school and could move from room to room like every other student. Since adults are evenly spaced throughout the building, it was pretty safe to assume there would usually be someone there to helpout and supervise. It was soon realized however, that Reginald needed to be in a fully enclosed, well-guarded space, not unlike a maximum detention facility. Sadly, rules cannot be fairly bent for only one student. On a very gloomy day, it was voted upon at ASM to make it so that no Room A student could leave their homeroom at anytime without a staff presence. Even though we would all miss our little buddies dancing around the school, it was for the greater good to lock away the whippersnapper before something terrible happened. Eventually a certification system was implemented to allow those kids who could prove their maturity to be able to leave unsupervised, but that took a while. In the mean time, the school building was a much quieter place.

            In an awful way, that was a fortunate turn of events. Having shrieking kids and moving bodies in the same room as active classes was incredibly distracting. Room A students, although adorable and mostly worth our time, do slow down every process they get themselves involved in. Meetings take three times as long with all of their basic questions for clarification, and having them hovering over students who are in classes and constantly talking is a disruption to the entire group. In fact, I think I took their lockdown the best out of everyone. Probably because I’m cold hearted and actually wanted to be able to concentrate on things. Aren’t I awful?

            Not that we don’t get that behavior from Room B students, as well. They excel at messing with the dynamic of the school. If you walk into Room B at any time, you will most likely find it empty. This is because they split up into groups and roam the building all day long, causing noise and disruption wherever they go. Of course, they get things done - things that the rest of us couldn’t hope to accomplish. As I’ve said, they practically run most ASM’s, hold almost every position on the J Board, are the most active during clean-up time, and then pity the rest of us who can’t seem to find the heart to help out. They actually get kind of passive-aggressive about it. Even though all students participate in clean-up at the end of the day, it’s well known that the Room B students put in ten times the effort that Room C students do. Because of this, some days we arrive at school to find nothing in Room C picked up or cleaned in the slightest, aside from the things that were under our jurisdiction. It’s an interesting problem since we’re not willing to actually pull our weight during cleanup either. Mostly we end up challenging whatever cleanup team made the most obvious job of not doing their work, which only makes them hate us more.

            The raw energy of the Room B kids gets to me. There are fifteen to twenty of them and mostly boys. Mostly all boys in the sense that in my third year here we have only one girl. The influx of middle school-aged boys is pretty obvious when you think about it, although it took me a few years to believe it was anything besides punishment for a crime I must have committed in a past life. At ages eight, nine, ten and eleven, young boys are just hitting their stride of rambunctiousness and like to yell, scream, fidget, move around, and play. This makes it hard for them to be stationary in a classroom for six hours a day. In an era where a lot of adults are turning to pills to cure their children’s ‘problems’ with attention, it’s heartening to see some recognizing the actual issue: that their children are eight, nine, ten and eleven year old boys! So most of our younger set come from public schools where they were constantly in trouble for their behavior. Their parents decided to send them somewhere where learning happens along side all of the running and yelling that they feel compelled to do. That also says a lot about the ability of girls to just ‘play the game’ of schooling and conformism, considering you hardly ever hear of young ladies having such “attention problems.”

            One day our executive director came up to our homeroom and posed an interesting question from the doorway: without counting, what do you think the boy to girl ratio is in Room C? There was a long pause followed by a few timid replies of two to one, three to one, maybe. It was a loud morning full of the usual disruptions and I remember coarsely yelling out the highest guess of three and a half to one. Our exec. laughed at that, then told us the true statistic: One to one. For the first time in years, Room C finally had the same number of girls enrolled as boys. Like Room B, the older students generally have more males for the same reasons. So why would everyone guess something much different? Our exec. said that every person he had asked that morning had given the same skewed guess as ours and that he wasn’t surprised by our answers. The truth was, it just felt like there were far more boys than girls crowded into that room. They take up more physical space with all of their moving and playing and for the most part, they are louder, smellier, ruder and more obnoxious (although some girls are really fighting for those titles). While everyone else shrugged their shoulders, the staff advisors did their usual “Take notice of that, boys” routine. This news gave me heart to make just another one of my bold, impassioned, completely despised speeches calling for immediate change in the behavior of my peers. I average about one of these a week and I am always looking for a spot to interject one into daily conversations, so my classmates are getting very good at coming up with rebuttals. The boys argued that, “well, the girls should just take up more space! If they want the room, then take it!” I decided not to continue fighting with their horribly warped idea of how to share the room, and went back to my doodling.

            Part of the reason why it feels like there are more boys than girls even in Room C, is because of the amount of younger boys throughout the rest of the school. Like I said, they populate the entire building and love to spend time in the older kid’s room hanging with their teenage buddies. So at any given time, I’m sure we do have more males in the room than females, but that argument was ignored.

            One can really falsely sense how many more boys we have by the amount of cussing, video game playing, and scraped knees we get by the end of each day. We would do well to have a school nurse once we can afford to have one on the payroll. There used to be a ‘gaming room’ until the staff vetoed the operation and shut it down one summer. I say room, but it was actually a five-by-ten closet in the basement with no window and four computers crammed in there all humming away. Kids would enter at nine in the morning and not leave until clean-up time. The issue was first brought up as a concern by some female classmates who worried that their peers were not taking care of themselves when they stopped coming out to eat their lunches or get any physical movement at all. That used to be the cool hangout spot where you could usually find most Room B students. The one thing that could get them out was Sprout, our school’s version of dodge-ball. Enough of them wanted to release internal energy that only a couple hardcore fanatics remained in that dark closet while the gym was open.

            I personally have a problem with so many damn boys running around - the cleanliness of the school goes down. That sounds rather stereotypical, but you wouldn’t believe what I’ve seen.

            Example A: entering the kitchen to find a Room B boy getting himself a cup of water. He took one of the ceramic mugs that we have available and filled it up underneath our specially filtrated water spigot. Then, he put the cup right back face up in the cupboard. “What are you doing?” I pounced. Flabbergasted, he replied, “I’m just putting my cup back. Geez!” “Yes, but you’re putting it back into the general pool. Someone’s going to come along and use it.” As it dawned on me just how many cups I had used out of this cupboard over the years, I asked, “Do you always do this?” “Well, yeah,” he said, “It’s face up so no one will use it. What, you wouldn’t want me to waste water and wash it after every use, would you?” Once again, it dawned on me how I had never before thought of a distinction between cups turned up versus down, my anger mounted and I yelled, “Take the damn thing with you! Don’t put it back for *gulp* people to use.” He stormed off, clearly upset by my unjustified and random burst of anger. As I vowed never to use another piece of school dishware again (a promise that I’m horrified to say I haven‘t kept) , the cup remained face up, sitting innocently amongst its ambiguously clean comrades.

            This is the same young boy who was solely responsible for the second annual Microwave Day by putting a metallic mug in the machine. Hon, if you’re reading this- I’m not holding it against you, but I believe you have a problem with cups.

            As precocious and inappropriate as they sometimes seem, I forget that they are little ones at their core. During our school-wide Protest For Cookies, I was sitting with a different B boy discussing what was currently happening a few rooms over. He was sitting in Room C waiting for our advisor to do her usual lunchtime out-loud reading session. I explained how most of the school was protesting for their right to cookies which brought the excitement to his voice as he got to his feet, full of political zeal and screaming for justice. He looked ready to go join the fray with fire in his eyes, until he promptly sat back down and said, “I’ll go after chapter book, though.” He then proceeded to have a cute little book read out loud to him while he munched on his lunch of carrot sticks and a peanut butter sandwich. 

            A third younger boy, also a favorite of mine, has had quite a few moments like this, so it’s harder to pick the best. This particular young man likes to discuss the more grotesque side of life and strike up conversations on world domination, the possibility of a coming apocalypse, and all of the gruesome ways that one could die. During one of our school’s many insect infestations- this time with ants- he surprised us all by calling an emergency ASM to denounce the killing of any of the bugs to get rid of them. “They can feel, too!” he yelled, on the verge of bursting into tears. Alternative methods of eradication were discussed, while I groaned in the corner about being forced into a half hour long meeting for the sake of a couple hundred pests that he normally pontificates about brutally killing, along with the rest of the human race.           

            Yes, Room B students are full of surprises, but they don’t interest, irritate or generally confuse me as much as my fellow Room C students. I have to say, I have a lot to say on this subject. Let’s do this.

            Our staff members were clever to dub us the “’C’ monsters” this past year. We resemble squirmy, slimy, wet monsters in so many ways. I should start by saying something that my peers would never expect to hear from me: they’re all incredibly nice people. I don’t get the chance to say that nearly enough, probably because I spend most of my time being somewhat pissy while at school, but I’m writing this over summer break and have been away from them long enough to be honestly reflective.

            They’re all thoughtful, kind-hearted, understanding people who I’m honored are a part of my school community. I’m never embarrassed around them or afraid of being judged in any way, because I know that we all get each other. It would be hard not to, being in such confined quarters. That’s truly the only reason why I complain. It’s just like being around loud, slightly abrasive family members everyday for six hours. You begin hating each other.

            Not that I would participate in ‘trust fall’ exercises with them. One day our activity was to bond by falling blindly backwards into a pile of each other’s hands and expect them all to concentrate enough to catch the faller. I watched the mingling of fingers and “oh, wait! Hold like this,” moments while the faller stood unaware. If concentration means silence, then we were playing a very dangerous game. The screams from the catchers mid-fall sent shivers up my spine for the victim- I mean, faller. I sat out, reaffirming my decision when the first child came down with a large crash. I don’t know where that sound came from- maybe a God-given warning- but it was entertaining. I think the rest of the students had fun, though, with this activity. They bonded and learned to trust one another; I honed my ability to recognize situational irony. I wish I could just let go and join in with the group. I’m not a team player, but everyone around me is. If everyone acted like me, the room would be a lot more pissy, self-absorbed, and boring. I believe we all know this to be true.

            Mixed ages and maturity levels make it harder as well. There really should be four homerooms, although I realize that’s a bit excessive. But, I don’t think anyone in Room C would disagree. Even last year, our youngest room members went off and set up a kind of ‘home base’ in a different room, unintentionally creating their own mini homeroom for the ages in between rambunctious twelve year old and brooding teenager. In essence, the Middle School Room, or Room M. This was welcome because - and no offence to them- the tweenagers are the hardest to live with. They’re in the throes of the worst, most awkward stage of growing up and they’re shoving it in our faces for hours on end. It’s like, “we’ve already experienced all of this and made it out! Go deal with your confusion and embarrassment somewhere else!” They’re constantly discovering themselves, and their peers, and their peers’ reproductive organs. I have heard more boob and penis jokes in the past year than a public school health teacher. I wasn’t aware that those were the funniest words on the planet, were you? Or that the idea of someone having boobs or a penis is worth laughing about for four hours straight? Still no? It’s unbelievable and I’ve told them as much, but what can I really do against the power of newly released hormones? They commonly argue that they’re only commenting on how amazing the human body is and how they’re empowering themselves by challenging social conformities and using those words in regular conversation. “Personally, I like BOOBS and I feel like I should be able to say the word BOOBS. What’s wrong with liking BOOBS? You’re all so hypocritical. BOOBS! BOOBS, BOOBS, BOOBS!” It would be really daring and progressive of them if they weren’t tweenagers who are just covering for their new found fascination of their changing bodies using phrases picked up from a liberal community. And it’s never breasts, always boobs, to further aggravate my own sensibilities. Unfortunately, the staff buy this. “Of course, honey, no one’s stepping on your freedom to say those words. You’re right, penis is not an often used word in conversation. Break conventions, little ones- be free!” So they’re allowed to go on. I feel like it would do them well, as young as they are, to have someone tell them that the reason no one uses those words is because they’re inappropriate for nice conversation. End of discussion.

            It’s not like the older brooding teenagers aren’t without fault. I know I certainly bring my own little rain cloud of gloom with me into the room everyday, or boy troubles, or erratic, mood swing behavior. Sometimes the tweenagers even cheer me up when their general compassion and undiminished youth shines through. The younger they are, the more sincerity they show. I remember I came to school on Valentines Day in a complete emotional tizzy over my boyfriend not having contacted me. “He didn’t even ask me to be his Valentine!” I whined to an uninterested crowd (this is what we do instead of first period, in case you‘re wondering. We sit around the couches sipping coffee, and do an unsolicited check-in with whoever‘s in earshot). My boyfriend and I had been going out for over half a year at this point which everyone knew, so my reaction was… you know, slightly clingy. Slightly. Our youngest Room C student disappeared from the room for half an hour and came back with the biggest Valentines Day card I had ever seen. She presented it to me with full honors, glittery bobble hearts on top, yarn streamers, handmade paper bag full of candy, and all. I’ve never felt so touched.

            After that I had to concede that she was, in fact, cooler than Stephen Sondheim, which was an ongoing debate between us. Sometimes I like to annoy my classmates with random Broadway trivia, and she had become aggravated when I claimed that he was cooler than everyone else in the known universe. The youngest C’er contested this immediately (she also leads us in morning group sing-along’s of a ditty entitled “I’m The Most Awesome Person Ever“. Instead of the Pledge of Allegiance, everyday we are all asked to rise for Katie’s ‘Awesome’ song.) Well. She was clearly wrong and we’ve spent many hours arguing this, but in the end the Valentine endeared me to her so much that I allowed that one small concession.

            We have some slightly strange characters in Room C, asides from the plain adorable.

            There is a boy. He walks around with no shirt on. I call him, “No Shirt Boy“. His hobbies include climbing things, parkour (whatever that is), and wooing young ladies in Room C. The story goes that he was walking in the Summer sun one afternoon and chose to remove his heavy button-up shirt. Once stripped down, his natural human instincts emerged and he swore to never be fully clothed again in society‘s oppressing garments. Whatever the boys claim, I simply remember him showing up at school with limited amounts of clothing on. At first he did have a shirt that he found acceptable - a black mesh tank top- but even that was discarded after some time. His basic outfit became a pair of grey cotton shorts ripped at the knee and a zip-up jacket to cover himself when important people were visiting the school. No shoes either. Even in the winter, I never saw him with anything else on. It was an issue of legality after it was an issue of propriety. We thought for sure he would start wearing real clothing again once our exec. explained how it was against the law for him to be undressed like that on school grounds. But, this is free school and the law was totally infringing on his freedom to be naked. If I were our director, I would have fought that one every single day, but he ran out of steam after a couple of attempts and No Shirt Boy was allowed to continue on. To complete the look, he’s even grown his hair out and now resembles some lost island castaway or version of Early Man. One day he came in with glittery silver paint over his nipples. That’s really all I have to say about that.

            I mentioned earlier how we attract types of people, and no where is this more obvious than in the students of Room C. It’s like someone goes around to skate parks and independent music stores and passes out flyers for the school. My first year at the VFS, we had a huge population of skater boys who dominated almost everything we did since they were the majority. I butted heads with them quite a bit, but they did give me something to do. Now that they’re gone, I have no one to reliably be mad at.

            Every field trip was to the skate park. If they chose to stay on school grounds, they’d be in the parking lot gliding smooth circles around a group of three or four girls oohing and awing appropriately at their various maneuvers. Of course, then they’d come inside and stink up the place with their sweaty man smell. And since they had just been exercising for hours, they were hot as hell and had to open up every window in the room, which are many and most of an entire wall. This was in the middle of January. I would have killed them, but my hands were numb and I couldn’t feel my legs, so movement wasn’t an option. And since my dying of hypothermia was the minority condition, their freedom trumped mine and I had to exit my homeroom for about two months until the spring brought back the function of my vital organs while in Room C.

            Then if they weren’t skating, they were playing music. Because what does every male between the ages of 12 and 25 in Portland, OR know how to do? Say it with me, now: Play acoustic guitar! That’s the modern mating call of the hipster race; they would never win the ladies without being able to serenade them with a tune from one of their favorite undiscovered indie rock bands. Therefore, it follows suit that most boys at my school can also play this magical instrument, although few have moved beyond the ranks of the Top 40 pop list. I don’t want to think about how many times I’ve heard “Here Comes The Sun”, “Dream On”, or “Hey There Delilah” playing in a horrifying loop directly behind my head. You too, can bear witness to this by listening to the soft ringing sound coming from my ear canals - it’s those songs playing on repeat from the darkest crevice of my skull. We do possess a pretty spiffy music room downstairs though, where the future indie rock-stars go and practice with a full drum set, two pianos, and every little noise maker they could want. My first day at the VFS, I was ushered down there by the skaters who began to play some wonderful song about California that I can never remember the elusive tune of. The customary girl companions hit percussion pieces and bobbed their heads knowingly. It was actually quite intoxicating, and I don’t think I could have been welcomed into the community in a better way. 

            The one charm I’ve neglected to mention about all of my teenage peers is that, first and foremost, they’re not associated with any public school system. A surprising amount of our older students have never been inside a standardized classroom, and have therefore never been tainted with the horrible air that seems to be pumped into those institutions. It makes kids go insane. They’ve never had to use ceiling acrobatics to get down a hallway during period change, or fit all of their textbooks into a small rusting locker (we prefer to scatter our crap out freely and equally through the entire room everyday), or have been fit into a harsh social structure imitating the adult ones surrounding us that puts you as either popular or not (most likely, not). Those of us fresh from high school can easily spot the pure unencumbered spirit of the people who have just obviously never been through that shit. The transition can be hard for older kids though, who haven’t yet had the years of ‘de-schooling’ to adjust. To make up for this, some of the teens try to duplicate their high school experience, you know, the horribly crappy one that they came here to avoid by making everyone attend embarrassing holiday dances and putting on school plays that the entire student body is forced to participate in (despite whether or not they knew who Shakespeare was, or could even read the script). But the most important aspect of being a teenager that they could never leave out is the falsified drama, and I’m no longer talking about The Bard. I’ve always thought that most teenagers’ terrible misfortune and “oh my god, I hate my life” moments are manifested purely for their own entertainment. After all, cat fights and messy love triangles are so much more entertaining than SNL these days. My student body proves this theory.

            And what’s the one thing that goes along perfectly with messy, unneeded drama? You’ve guessed it: teen love. There is nothing more dramatic than fighting over a guy, hooking up with someone, breaking their smitten heart and then making a scene by going steady with your best friend’s ex, all in one afternoon, no less! Now, I love really attractive members of my preferred gender just as much as the next teen ------------------------------------------- (that was me pausing to watch a group of boys walk by), but I try not to be so obvious about it, especially at school. There just isn’t any point in even looking. With fifty kids, fifteen teenagers and only eight of us with naturally good looks, it would be hard for anyone to find a date.

            Luckily, for a long time this wasn’t a big deal at all. There used to be an ancient story passed around from year to year- a myth, some claimed- about a boy and a girl who started dating while still in school. The legend goes that they went out for as long as a few months (which is why it’s widely believed to be a myth) and then over the summer, the boy dumped her. He went on to college, leaving town entirely. When she came back in the fall, she cursed all of her friends for not supporting her during the split and flew off into the night, never to return again, except on visiting days and for special fundraisers. This tale of woe had been passed down through the years, with all of the students who had known these two personally keeping this story close to their hearts. They knew to never date anyone at the school because really, we’re just too small of a group. Of course, flirting will always be allowed so that we can show each other who we would be going out with if we could.

            Unfortunately, the ones who shared this story with me have all moved on by now and a whole new group has come in who don’t know anything about this and have spent that much longer in the catastrophe that is public school. I must say, the new ones held out pretty long though, without causing much of fuss; probably because they were all still dating kids from their old schools or just weren’t smart enough to realize they were surrounded by other teenagers who were equally deprived.

            Imagine a room full of teenagers sitting on a donated black leather sofa with the surrounding chairs creating an uncomfortably close circle, and staring at each other, all day long. You can almost feel the repressed hormones smacking you on the head with a baseball bat (or some other stick-like object).

            At this point in the tale, I’d like to direct you to a story I had previously written about, oh, two years ago. All of the students I talk about are long gone and new, even hornier teens have taken their place. I’d love to share with you all of the bizarre misadventures of our current set (you’d just kill to hear about the love life of No Shirt Boy, wouldn’t you?), but I have neither the time nor the patience to account for everything that’s happened since. So please enjoy this little blast from my past.

            Eh-hem.

           

            When this whole mess started, I was sitting on a couch in Room C. One of the other eight teenage girls walked in and sat down next to me. I should have recognized it then, that sneaky little glint in her eyes that says, “Look out, I’ve got news that’s supposed to be secret, but I’m going to tell it anyway.” I was too busy worrying, like usual, about what I might say to whatever she was going to say and if I’d sound stupid starting my comment with ‘Well’ or if I should just nod knowingly no matter what. It was my general rule to avoid conversation altogether but sometimes I was forced to make exceptions.

            “Did you know that Girl #1 is dating Guy #2?” she asked. I shook my head slowly, trying to imbue it with as much focus and active listening as I could fake. Obviously, my failed expression of interest made her realize that I was not the gossiping type or that I was an idiot, so she slowly got up and walked back out of the room. This bizarre encounter should have tipped me off, as only girls wishing to share ‘life-changing pieces of gossip’ will come over, tell you their juicy info and then walk away with a sense of accomplishment and without another word. I guess I subconsciously refused to acknowledge this upcoming epidemic. Still, I must admit I was a little thrown off by this piece of news. Girl #1 and Guy #2? Dating? I supposed it was possible although I had never actually seen them engage in any kind of conversation longer than passing glances and was sure she had been flirting with a handful of other boys just the other day, but then again, those things are the usual requirements for dating someone in high school.

            The next thing I knew, it seemed like everyone was talking about this new relationship and when I got tired of hearing those three gossip, I left Room C to find a quieter spot. Some of the other teenagers recommended hanging out in the empty closet under the stairs that they had recently fixed up with a television and a few chairs. I let them go, thinking of the crazy staff member who allowed a group of teenagers to transform a closet into a hideaway with a door. I learned later that this room had been converted into their little clubhouse weeks ago, when a failed attempt at creating an industrial arts area had left the room vacant and smelling of sawdust. Ah, the perfect conditions for budding teenage love.

            The problem came when more couples started popping up (one can only hope not discovering their love inside of the closet), and the tough questions started being asked. When Girl #3 began going out with Guy #4, our Room C staff advisor wasn’t quite sure anymore about this teen hideaway.

            “Is the door ever closed? Because it should always be open from now on,” he badgered them. After Girl #5 started going out with Guy #6, a discussion was raised around what exactly was going on in this closet and even what kind of movies they were watching. “The 40 Year Old Virgin? The Notebook? Unacceptable.” They were banned from anything involving sex or sexual references. One time I was walking down the stairs and I heard the faint sounds of video game battles coming from the school’s copy of Spy Kids 3: Game Over, a movie sure to turn anyone off.

            Now before I go any further, I would like to make one thing clear. When I say these kids were ‘going out’, please note that I only refer to their amorous behavior this way because they do. They claimed to be going out so that’s how I’ll phrase it too, though after actually talking with all three of these young couples, I have deduced that not one of them had actually ventured out on what the rest of us know as a date and generally only saw one another at school. So ‘going out’ and ‘holding hands in the hallway then making out in the closet under the stairs when no ones looking’ were  essentially the same thing.

            And they probably were making out (or worse, bum, bum, bum!) in their closet although everyone denied it. Our teacher seemed to think so, too. One day during our regular Morning Meeting, he decided enough was enough and lectured us all on the rules regarding this special room. When asked what was so wrong with being alone down there, he responded by saying, “The fact is, teenagers alone in a room with no adult supervision leads to sticky situations.” I couldn’t have said it better myself, and needless to say, I will never enter this room again.

            The sad truth is, this situation is only going to get more dramatic and comically worse. It’s already started. The same day that the teacher made this announcement, Girl #5 came skulking into the art studio where I was drawing and started telling me all about how Guy #6 had just dumped her. They had been ‘going out’ a total of 24 hours and he had dumped her brutally, crushing her heart completely and leaving her no hope to ever make it through the afternoon. I suppose this was no worse than the other boy who was in there earlier telling me all about how his girlfriend of five days had just cheated and insulted him over text message.

            “She’s a real bitch,” he whined, informing me that first thing tonight, he was ending it. At least he had actually taken her on three dates already, though I have no idea how he managed this over a five day school week. But then again, I can’t fathom how she could have already cheated on him unless she had planned this whole thing in advance which is too ridiculous to even consider, meaning that’s probably the case.

            I didn’t tell him this and I didn’t tell Girl #5 that a one-day relationship was nothing to be upset about and that she should try not to get too worked up about it. The last time she had had a crush on a guy at school was before the dating game had begun so she had been dumped without actually having gone out with him, which I’m told is the most painful thing you can go through and much worse than being dumped by even a long-term boyfriend.

            What I’m really not looking forward to is when they all start breaking up. It’s only a matter of time, as the Teenage Dating Rules instruct that a true teenage relationship can last no longer than two weeks. Any longer and you’re practically not a teenager so go get married or something and leave the rest of us alone. (No, I’m not jealous. What makes you say that?). It will only be a matter of days until they’re all broken into pieces and will be telling us all about how they can never love again.

            Sadly, the best thing about breaking up for them will be the excessive amount of drama and hearsay that will be caused. They will feed off it and then think to themselves, ‘how can I cause even more drama?’ The answer will come to them all at once and then the rest of us better stand back. They will realize after breaking up with all of their respective partners that they are now a bunch of single teens who are clearly willing to date and feeling just as lonely as the next person.

             A mix-matching game will begin and there are just so many possibilities! Girl #1 and Guy #4, #3 with #6,  #5 and  #1 and so on. And after they all break up we get to deal with the resulting heart ache and tragedy. This of course could last for days or even weeks. The really tough part is that small student bodies call for small school buildings and when this all happens it will be difficult for them to avoid each other the way they normally would in a huge building housing 2,000 other kids. We only have one hallway and six classrooms. With so few kids, it’s a huge accomplishment to effectively avoid someone and with so many people trying to avoid each other, it will turn into a game of hide and seek where no one’s it.

            I don’t know what I’ll do two months from now when I’m sitting by myself again, out of everybody’s way, and Girl #5 runs in to the room screaming, “I just saw Guy #6 in the hallway!” What- for the hundredth time today?

            How long will they grieve for? I can’t imagine how long this game can last or how long it will take them to forget about it entirely. I will not tolerate receiving text messages in my college dorm room from these fools telling me about how they just saw so and so at the mall. I doubt that will happen, but I’ll probably change my number when I move away, just in case.

            You see, I’m still baffled by this crazy need to date people that you don’t really like just so you can make-out once and then have your heart broken. Not one boy has proposed that I join this school dating game- although some did flirt with me but that stopped too, when I took to sitting in a corner and listening to Broadway musical soundtracks all day long which is apparently not a sexy, or even remotely attractive activity. Luckily I’m not the only girl or guy being left out so there’s no real shame, just a slight sense of resentment and the feeling that my horribly awkward social skills are somewhat to blame. At least writing is a solitary activity.

            It reminds me of the Marshmallow Experiment my mother told me about. Scientists tested younger childrens’ ability to bypass instant gratification or delay it for an even better prize later on. They were offered one marshmallow right then or they could wait thirty minutes and receive two marshmallows. They traced these kids into adulthood and discovered that the kids who could wait to get their two marshmallows did better in life. Those who understood the saying “good things come to those who wait” were able to reap the rewards while the ones who were all about settling for whatever was available in the moment had a harder time in life, as this need carried over into everything they did.

            I suppose, just maybe, that teenage dating is like that and even, God forbid, magnified at our little free school, where classes are optional and you can pass the day making goo-goo eyes at someone if you want. It’s hard to hold out for something real when that kid across from you on the leather sofa is giving you the eye and there’s a vacant closet downstairs with your name on it. But if everyone could just get these crazy hormones out of their system for a little bit, we could all go back to normal and not worry about manifested drama or sticky situations or whatever. I mean, can’t we all just act like normal teenagers for once and…oh, I see your point. Maybe their marshmallow just tastes sweeter than my two. 

            And that’s what she said.

            Wasn’t that nice? But wait- what really makes it is the follow-up. So I clearly have a distaste for my classmates’ lovesick shenanigans. Of course, they all went on to have disgustingly messy break-ups and to torment me, the angry little hermit that I was (I suppose I still do sit in my corner quite a bit ignoring them all, but I like to believe that my corner has moved closer in towards the group, now occupying a more central spot on the big couch). You know, it’s so funny that I mention all that stuff about ‘holding out for something real’ and ‘playing the mix-matching game with potential partners’ and ‘making out in closets’, because…well, ha ha….it’s a funny story.

            Last school year I was still in full hermit-mode and only just getting comfortable talking to some of the kids I considered “cooler” than me. I was mostly afraid of embarrassing myself in front of the indie rockers and the stoners, who had a surprisingly un-mellow way of talking about the “losers” at our school. We had a big event at the school and I ended up befriending some of them for the first time in my two years there, to the point where I actually got someone’s number. I thought ‘oh, what a lovely gesture’ and moved on. But there he was, texting me as soon as I got home.

            “You seem pretty cool. Do you wanna’ come get high?”

            “Um, no. Thanks, but I don’t do drugs.”

            “O thaz’ cool.. Wanna’ go on a date instead?”

            “Um, sure.”

            And so began the bizarre relationship between the school’s top pot-head and the resident Broadway-wonk who had never said anything more to him than, “shut the damn window!” Yes, he was one of those skater-boys. It was a doomed relationship from the start, but can I just say that he reopened my eyes to how much fun being a teenager is. If you can’t tell from my cynical writings from a few years back, I spent most of my teen years pretending I wasn’t one, until I had a boy kissing me in a back closet. I suddenly understood what all of the fuss was about.

            I knew he was only with me to get over a different girl at school whom he had just ended a relationship with. And I will admit to going out with a different boy from school while in the heinous process of getting over King Pot-Head. The marked resemblance to my previous story struck me so hard that I almost couldn’t bear having it in existence out of embarrassment, but obviously, I’m glad I kept it. Hopefully, I’ll never participate in the mix-matched exes game again, although it’s much less ridiculous when you’re going through it.

             As a side note, I was this close to falling into the trap of drugs and late night “dating” that the previous group of older teens seemed to always get into. I desperately wanted to remain in King Pot-Head’s social circle and was about a day away from committing some irreversible act when I met the cutest, most sheltered boy at a class that I almost didn’t attend. We hit it off and instead of impressing the ex-boyfriend with my hardcore partying and weed inhaling abilities, I impressed the new boyfriend with my clean and sober attitude AND Broadway trivia. When he asked to be the antagonist of my book for his own entertainment, I just couldn’t say yes, knowing that he’s a sweetheart and that he unintentionally walked into my life on the right day and saved me from being one of the “bad” free-schoolers who go down hill instead of up. I’ve never mentioned any of this to him, but he’s definitely changed me for the better. Even if he likes to tease me about my schooling.