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

Welcome to the first internet installment of the book I wrote last summer, Duct-Taping Your Butt To A Chair: And Other Projects For A Monday Morning. This was created as a part of my Graduation Process from The Village Free School, a democratic, free school in Portland, Oregon.
The wonderful thing about this body of work is that it's a perfect snap-shot of my experience being immersed in a radically alternative school. Looking back on my own writing, even less than a year later, is humbling and exciting. Now, as I work towards a possible career in alternative education, it's great to have my perceptions of the 'free' model recorded so thoroughly for future reference and re-enlightenment.
The remaining sections will be uploaded throughout the following weeks, as well as any other fun items I find on the inter-webs deemed sharable.

The Philosophy, Part 1

          

            My three core principles are as follows:

1. Avoid being a part of the justice system - this includes getting challenged, challenging someone else, being on the justice board, being nominated for justice board, or even voting in the justice board election at all. Trust me, it’s best to just avoid trouble.

2. Keep your eyes on Room A students at ALL times. Be vigilant, especially when- no, you know what? Always. Always be vigilant.

3. Self motivation runs this school, so get motivated. I’m motivating you to become motivated.

            I know those aren’t the “official” ones, but I firmly believe these make far more sense.

            Let’s discuss my first principle: avoiding the justice system.

            Maybe my immediate distaste for being involved in our justice system stems from my time in public school (as do many of my problems in life, or at least I love to think that they do.) Starting in kindergarten, classroom justice is swiftly dealt out by the teacher whose sharp eye and ear searches out infractions and provides in the moment retribution. It’s been best to simply avoid this tyrannical rule at all costs, and to avoid the children who are labeled as “trouble makers”. Even sitting near these kids could get you in trouble, as the teacher only hears random noise in the background and cannot sense when the voice is of an evil or pure-hearted nature. I used to feel the pinch of tears when my name would be called, or singled out in the middle of a sentence the way some educators have the special power of doing. “The French revolution began in the year 1789, Leslie, and would prove to be…” I was usually only telling my friends to shut the hell up before they got us all in trouble (I know, everyone claims to be innocent, but believe me, I was! I swear!) Being told to go out in the hallway or to the principal’s office would have been life wrecking.

            The day I was suspended because I was accused of hitting another child was probably the lowest in my whole life. I loved the system and would have never stepped a hair out of line, so to be so wrongly accused of something so massive was an utter shock that took me months to come to terms with. School was my life, it still is, and I didn’t deserve that kind of treatment.

            All of that may have something to do with my absolute avoidance of the justice system. Our justice system is nice though - really, really nice. The breakdown is that anyone can ‘challenge’ anyone if they feel that other person has broken one of our three community rules (respect yourself, respect others, respect other’s property.) You have to use that language too, if you’re serious about it. You say “I challenge you…for being a poop face,” or whatever the issue is. I always thought this should go, “I challenge you…to a duel!” and then the two of you can pull out your swords or plastic light sabers and have at it until one child is left standing. Right? But no. Instead the accused can choose a staff judge or to have their case sent to the justice board. If you choose a staff judge, the punishment power goes right back into the hands of one supreme dictator, although fortunately all of our staff are extremely fair in their punishing and live for equanimity. Since the accused gets to choose the staff member as well, most people choose the staff that they’re closest to so as to receive an ‘even fairer’ sentence (although that’s completely not true. It just makes them feel better.)

            Choosing the justice board drags out the process, which is why I always laugh when people getting challenged for relatively small infractions choose the J Board (that’s slang for those in the know). It also takes the incident out of the moment. J Board only meets on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons so you have to wait to have your case heard until that time, whereas with a staff member, you can usually catch them that day or right in the moment if nothing else is going on.

            I’ve never been challenged for anything nor have I sat in on a J Board meeting, so I honestly can’t say what happens. I believe it involves a lot of hearing people state their case, watching them cry a little, and then staff-monitored deliberating of a proper course of action. It’s staff monitored because the J Board is made of students who are voted in by the student body every half year. And not surprisingly, it’s really only Room B students who are interested at all in being on this council. I can’t say if every other teenager feels the same way I do about classroom justice or if it’s just our sheer laziness coming through, but it’s very rare that any Room C student attempts to serve. At least we have the ten year olds who take it very seriously and who get very emotional about making the cut every semester.

            The punishments they dole out always sound extremely well thought out, if you ask me. For not doing clean-up, you might have to vacuum all of the downstairs for a week. For leaving your lunch out over night and attracting little buggies, you might have to clean out our two refrigerators. Things like that. It’s really interesting when a staff member is challenged by a student, because the J Board gets even more serious and takes twice as long to come up with a proper reprimand.

            All in all, this system is pretty amazing and it keeps everyone sane. You never want kids warring with each other, holding grudges or constantly butting heads; especially in a small community you want to avoid any lasting hurt feelings. I think our system does this quite effectively. Everyone’s voice is heard, things are talked through until the children feel okay about it, and most importantly, everyone’s treated like human beings. No trips to the hallway without knowing why exactly you were sent or not allowing the problem to be talked about (why would you even need to go to the hallway if the issue was talked about in the moment and resolved?). It’s my belief that a lot of the “trouble children” I witnessed in public school would have had absolutely no trouble if the teachers had been willing to engage with them for longer than one authoritative sentence brushing them off.

            I just don’t like getting myself involved in it. That’s all.

            Briefly touching on my other two core principles here will set me up for nice, longer explanations later.

            Core Principle #2: Be vigilant around Room A students.

            As evidenced by The Reginald Chronicles, the youngest set of kids are a sneaky bunch. Turn your head for two seconds and they’re in your bag, crawling between your legs, sticking things in your hair or on your shoes. They may be absolutely adorable, but they were scientifically engineered that way in order to draw you in closer, so that they can go in for the kill - or for your personal bubble space. 

            Core Principle #3: Self-motivation.

            If you are not willing to give of your time and energy towards running this school, then you are a dead weight. I will be honored to break this down for you further in the ensuing chapters, but for now I leave you in tantalizing anticipation. 

            For a long time I didn’t like to use our secret code word that we respect as Holy law. This is our best solution, I believe, to the problem of people not starting fights where fighting is truly not necessary. It’s called ‘Stop Seriously.’ This phrase, when said with authority at the second party causing you grief, automatically stops all joking around and let’s them know that you are serious. Anyone can say ‘Stop Seriously’ to anything they are offended by, whether someone’s cussing a lot, or making inappropriate jokes, or saying hurtful things, or physically hurting you, or anything. If the other person(s) don’t stop, then you have the right to challenge them for that behavior. Not that every challenge must start with an initial Stop Seriously, but it’s a really good way to avoid a challenge later on that the other person might not have seen coming. This rule was first created when kids would get in arguments and their friends couldn’t tell when they were being serious or not. “Stop, stop, stop,” coming from anyone could either mean “no really, you better stop. Now.” or “keep going, keep going, it’s just fun to pretend I don’t like your behavior!” You have to admit, this is an actual problem in life, especially with small children who excel at instant mood swings. So not stopping after a Stop Seriously is unthinkable. You just stop. But in my quest to avoid conflict, I unconsciously avoided this phrase, as well. If I let myself use it, my controlling nature would take over and I would become the school’s ‘Appropriate Content’ Nazi. Now I mostly use it to get younger students off of my legs as I try to walk down the hallway.

            In fact, there’s a whole list of things that I don’t like to get involved with at school. Another big one is meetings. Again, this is only a personal stance because: We love meetings. A lot. There are circle meetings, council meetings (if you’re so lucky as to have a different meeting vote you into attending these extra meetings), morning meetings, all school meetings and emergency all school meetings, all because we like talking about our problems.

            Outside of the justice system, a way to bring up issues or create change is through All School Meetings (or ASM, as we say). This is what we call our weekly period on Wednesday afternoons when staff and students can vote on proposed law changes or money allowances. The proposals go up on the big hallway bulletin board as they’re written throughout the week and anyone can post one. Then, whoever wants a say in what is being brought up can attend ASM and vote yay or nay.

            Proposals range all the way from taking five dollars from the ASM budget to buy a new Barbie doll for Room A to changing the bylaws of our institution. When we say that kids decide on the rules of our school, this is the process that we’re referring to.    

            A trained student or roped-in staff member leads the meeting, drawing a little table out on the chalkboard to show each proposal and each vote. The student or staff bringing the proposal then reads it out loud and the group has time to ask them any questions or give feedback before the first vote. The proposal is re-read for understanding and everyone votes (usually -hopefully- an experience without any guiding peer pressure). The minority voters then get a chance to say why they voted that way and the discussion continues. The leader keeps a running list on the board of who’s in line to talk, called The Stack, since fifteen kids jumping at the bit to speak can get very confusing. Then the proposer can call for a second vote (or can revise their original proposal to gain more votes) and the fate is decided. Sometimes these discussions can go on forever with high stakes proposals, taking up entire meetings for only one topic.

            You can see why sometimes it’s hard to get students to attend ASM’s. In order for something to be voted on, the meeting has to have a quorum of eight kids, which is often hard to come by. Staff and students comb the hallway, ushering stragglers and dazed-looking children into the Living Room one by one, until they have enough to get something done. Recently, a law passed that every student must attend one ASM a month just to keep these meetings alive. It’s sad that it’s so hard to get people to attend the coolest feature of our entire school, but even I don’t go that often. I guess it’s just like democracy in real life - people only show up to vote on the issues they care about. And even then, not so much.

            Some issues really draw in the crowds. I’m thinking of big structural changes, like when big Monday Morning Meeting was abolished and when the munchkins were officially confined to only Room A until otherwise certified to roam at will. Banning un-committee approved video games, freezing the ASM budget during the financial crisis, and buying a school Slip-N-Slide were all big discussions, as well.

            But the biggest and most controversial decision made at an ASM has to be the banning of high fructose corn syrup on school property. What started out as an innocent appeal for the well-being of our students turned into an all-out war, with harsh words on both sides. Our then-executive director came to the conclusion that our students were consuming far too much junk food and candy. According to him, this was going against our core principles to permit this kind of behavior. Instead of trying to get rid of all sugar (and thereby severely hurting the repertoire of the baking class), he proposed a ridding of all high fructose corn syrup. Unfortunately, this ban would also hurt my favorite form of afternoon entertainment, the Two O’clock Ouch. Ah, the joys of kids hitting their sugar-high stride after consuming too much junk during lunch and then literally running into walls. You hear groups of tromping footsteps running down the hall, a large thud as the wall shakes slightly, and then a genuine cry of pain. Nothing beats that climax after hours of building noise and irritating patter.

            However, I was certainly not the biggest protestor. Riots practically broke out in the hall the second the proposal went up and much whining was heard from the large crowd of youngsters who I had never seen without soda and candy in hand. They took their disgusting snacks with them to the next ASM, creating one of the largest crowds I’ve ever seen attend. Every age group turned out to vigorously support both sides, with only a handful like myself who just wanted to witness the bloodbath.

            The meeting began with a reading of the proposal and a discussion followed which I have never heard the likes of since. I know our school community likes to talk in circles,  but these children put their parents to shame, arguing and yelling and petitioning against the staff who kept missing the main point: candy is delicious. By the time the adults were producing paper material toting statistics on the negative health effects of HFCS, the meeting had already crept into clean-up time. The discussion was put on hold until the next Wednesday with fierce fighting continuing throughout the week. Signs and banners were made by the pro-syrup movement and placed on every door.

            The absolutely astounding thing was that the proposal to ban HFCS actually

passed. Go figure. I honestly have no idea of how that happened seeing as how the candy defenders clearly had more people at the meeting; I wish I could remember if it was a close vote and what the numbers were, but it was too long ago. My guess was that it came down to just a few people. HFCS was officially banned from school property. However, the battle was not over.

            The kids took this issue personally and decided the best thing to do after being denied their life blood was to take away the very thing that the adults in their lives treasured. The next week a proposal went up to banish coffee from the grounds as well and the staff finally realized what a grind they were in. Every person from the previous week showed up at ASM with a renewed energy as an eager sense of righteous justice settled into the air. The ringleaders presented a fairly well-reasoned argument considering their temperament and concluded that coffee had the same negative health effects as their own precious HFCS, so therefore the adults were being hypocritical and deserved to die. They didn’t actually say that last part, but you could see it burning in their eyes. The discussion was waged, and for the second week in a row, a surprising outcome was had. Although I’m absolutely positive there were more bodies in that room for the banning of coffee, more hands were raised for it to not pass. This saved the adults, while the students awarded themselves insult to injury.

            Funny enough, after all of the hurt feelings were nursed and the smoke had cleared off the battlefield, no one really seemed to care. The kids quickly came up with a list of their favorite junk items that had no HFCS in them and the staff resumed silently watching in frustration with calming mugs of coffee still in hand. The Two O’clock Ouch remains to this day.

            Unfortunately, the parents had to miss out on all of this fun, seeing as only staff and students are allowed to speak during ASM (some volunteers come in and watch, but they find not commenting too difficult and eventually wander off). The good news is that they have their own forum to jabber on about similar issues. Circle Meetings operate in almost the same way, and happen every two to three month. This allows everyone in the community to come sit in on the process of running our school. Usually they discuss the budget, propose new calendar changes, elect council members and other mundane things like that, so no students really ever join in, save for a few teenagers. Since these meetings hit on important issues and touchy subjects, it’s understandable that every parent wants to put their personal views in to the mix. Unfortunately, this creates Circle Talk, a sad trait of smart, opinionated people. Circle Talk is where every person feels they need to share their thoughts once and then restate them in a different way to clarify, even if someone else has already shared a similar idea.

            According to my mother, I’ve always hated such meetings where the endless talking begins to follow the same script, almost verbatim. I attended an elementary school structured around the same principles of family involvement and we were also asked to sit through tedious meetings, whether during school hours or not. My mother says that when I was seven years old, I appropriately dubbed the All School Morning Meetings, ‘Big Mouth Meetings.’ “The teachers and mommies just talk forever and it’s always the same things,” I explained to my mother, “I hate Big Mouth Meetings.” Yes, Little One, so do I.’ At least nowadays I can appreciate the fact that the discussions are happening and that sometimes goals are accomplished through the non-stop ‘communication.’ Like flossing my teeth or going to bed before my alarm clock goes off, I suppose it will take another ten years for me to not just acknowledge, but embrace this helpful procedure.

            I always invite my parents to such school events because I believe it’s important for them to be involved as much as possible. Now, keeping in mind that these are past PTA parents and that my dad is a public school teacher himself, they usually can’t stand our meetings. The car rides over always include an agreement on how long we stay at the meeting until it’s time to go. “At eight o’clock, I’m walking out the door. Two hours is long enough,” my mom barks. My father usually begins grimacing in the car and keeps his jaw permanently set until arrival back at the house. I could never fully puzzle-out what he thought about these meetings until last year when he was nominated to be on the special Council Meeting group. This nomination he took in stride. I was surprised, yet delighted that our family was going to claim our reserved seat in the school’s decision making process.

            If you’re a parent or volunteer (or even student) who really can’t get enough sharing, then you can be nominated for school council, which is our board of directors. And oh my goodness, do they talk. They talk about depressing things too, like firing staff members, fundraising under deadlines and how to balance a failing budget. Ick! Those are skills I plan to never need.  

            I was also highly relieved that someone else in the family was willing to hold a position on The Council, and that this time around it wasn’t me. Two years prior, I had been elected to serve as treasurer on the Board of Directors for our school. This was fresh off of my winning streak gaining an internship at a local theater and putting on the school play from scratch. I looked like a pretty go-getting fifteen-year-old. The problem was, my motivation and eagerness couldn’t prepare me enough to actually be any good at bookkeeping, accounting, budgeting, or actively participating in two hour long meetings. Thank God, I wasn’t the only teenager serving on the Board at the time. Another older boy was elected as a general member and spoke up about as little as I did during our time serving. I’m pretty sure if anyone had made a point to regularly ask us what we were thinking, we would have been just as silent. In the mean time, I gained a crash course in Quickbooks and tax reports for 501-C3’s, skills most fifteen year olds would probably associate with some new cell-phone thing, like, right? I was so happy to have these skills under my belt at such a young age. This was better preparation for going out into the world than anything I could have hoped for. However, I shouldn’t bring down my fellow teens for being unaware of these skills because what do most fifteen year olds need with them anyway? I served my year and vacated my seat as soon as I could. I felt like a failed experiment, despite having learned so much. What a stamp of approval though for the community to vote for me in the first place, but by the time my dad had joined up, the thought of running for a position again had yet to re-enter my conscience.

            Usually the most entertaining part of the meetings, like so many aspects of my school, are when the youngest children are present. Daycare is always right across the hall, but some kids sneak back in to be with mommy and daddy, bringing their cuteness with them. One little boy in particular is prone to cussing, and loves to show off his vocabulary during large community gatherings, to the horror of his perfectly adorable parents. He’s my favorite form of interruption, but if I can’t have him, then the baby whoes diaper is twice the size of her body and who enjoys toddling across the circle between guardians will do in a pinch.

            Then, not to be outdone, the students get even more chances to excessively share with one another via morning meetings. These are one of the only few mandatory things about our school, and even then, no one truly cares if you don’t show up (if you haven’t already arrived on campus, that is). The advisors for each homeroom lead the meetings by sharing any announcements, sharing’s of their own, or concerns. Everyone is encouraged to chime in with their own information. This can be like an unofficial show and tell, but mostly the kinds of things that are mentioned include games of tag that students are planning or the cancellation of a class for that day. Someone then reads the daily standing plans and any newly added ASM proposals. I always liked the practicality of these meetings in an environment where you might never see your fellow students for the entire day because they’ll be hiding in a backroom, or on a field trip, or sitting under a table, or you might be sitting under a table; connecting with everyone and saying hello first thing in the morning always seemed like a nice community gesture. And if you’re sitting under a table all day, you might miss important announcements or plans.

            When my father first came to check out the VFS as a visiting educator, he dropped in on a morning meeting taking place in Room B. He reports that everything sounded entertaining and exciting, but not wholly unexpected, until a young boy raised his hand to share that his plan was to duct tape his butt to a chair. Heads nodded in approval and a few voices agreed to take part in this activity, as if he had proposed a game of Red Rover in the field or a painting session in the arts studio. Sure enough, directly after the meeting the duct tape was produced and for the next half an hour, kids welded themselves to little plastic chairs and waddled around the building. My father came home and later reported that he had found the perfect place for me! Even though I wasn’t enrolled yet, that story has always endeared me to the idea of morning meetings and the things they can accomplish.

            This last year was a big one for these meetings. First, Big All School Monday Morning Meeting was done away with. No one really wanted to convene downstairs first thing on Mondays anymore to appreciate each other’s company through a communal morning meeting. This came after everyone realized that most of the hour was spent listening to Room A students share what they had for dinner last night. It was decided that the Room A staff should really be the only ones who have to put up with that, so we went to only having private homeroom meetings each day of the week. Then, Room C decided that they couldn’t possibly handle getting up and arriving at school by ten o’clock and got ASM to exempt us from the mandatory meeting rule. Instead of meeting for twenty minutes each morning, we now have two meetings a week that last for two hours. Yes, I didn’t vote for that. Yes, my peers are a tad slow. And they still have to be there by ten o’clock on meeting days. Did I mention that they’re a little off in their figuring?

            On top of these various meetings, anyone can call an Emergency All School Meeting to solve any immediate problems that can’t wait until the next all-school gathering. It’s imperative that everyone drops what they’re doing and goes to solve this conflict, ASM-style. Sometimes these are short, sometimes they’re exceedingly long. Some are serious and some solve the case of the missing deck of magic cards. It’s always a gamble, which is why these meetings are actively despised and feared by the general population. A large number of Room B students like to over-use their power to call the entire community together to focus on their problems. This is the same group who got self-righteous over the HFCS issue and who get emotionally connected to earning a spot on J Board.  

                Despite my slight aversion to always taking part, it’s comforting to have a community always eager to help solve your problems and to include you in the way the school is run. There’s no iron curtain or closed doors anywhere, and any discussion can always be revisited if you feel the need to bring it up. I shudder to think of returning to a world where this practice of sharing is not seen as important or necessary to the running of the institution. How anyone can feel secure in those places, I can’t say.

            It’s really hard to describe my school to old friends and relatives I haven’t seen in years. Or new acquaintances. Or the people who have seen me through the whole transition and still ask me once a month to reiterate what it is, exactly, that I do. The idea is hard to get a hold on, clearly. Those who don’t care much about my general well-being or my sanity (usually new teenage associates) tend to ask more questions and show more curiosity. It’s harder for those who feel any attachment to me as a person to express interest in something that sounds like it a bad decision.

            The conversation usually turns when I tell about how I’m not actually required to do anything at this school. Ever. Nothing’s mandatory, not one class, subject, grade, or academic activity (things like clean-up and morning meeting are so far non-negotiable but one could vote to have them abolished so the truly lazy could see their day come.) This is when my school just starts sounding odd, so I begin searching for life-savers.

            There are a few key words that I like to throw out in conversations that I always hope people already know and can apply towards understanding of our existence . Phrases like, ‘democratic,’ ‘alternative,’ ‘free school,’ ‘progressive,’ ‘build your own curriculum,’ ‘non-coercive,’ ‘grass-roots funded,’ ‘non-profit,’ ‘right out of the sixties, you know, like Summerhill?’ Adults pleasantly nod their heads, while racking their brains for words that aren’t in their vocabulary. My fellow peers, however, aren’t too embarrassed to ask for definitions and even more explanations. “Shit,” I think, as now I’m forced to actually describe the words that were supposed to save me from having to do this. I don’t even know what half of them mean.

            So instead, I begin to explain the various workings of the VFS, from the standing plans board to what we actually spend our days doing. This is like taking a hammer to the nail for people who have already made up their minds against appreciating this alternative  model. I mean, this “school for slackers” (as it’s affectionately called by everyone close to me). We has that knick-name for a reason.

            Despite everyone having their own private agenda of fun and sometimes meaningless activities, we are a school and we do offer classes. We call them ‘Offerings’.

            Since there’s no prescribed schedule or required classes, we choose to offer every trimester based on the interests of the staff and students. The staff make up a big calendar at the beginning of every trimester that shows what continuous classes are going on during the week, at what time, and where. It’s a big deal to put this thing together, considering how ‘go-with-the-flow’ oriented our method of learning is. We set aside an entire week to collect class suggestions and ideas, gather all interested names for each course, and then compile the huge puzzle of a calendar into something that hopefully works for every person’s interests. Anyone can offer a class, as well, even the students. That means that over the years we’ve had many “Pretty Princess Dress-up Time”s and “Pokemon Epic Battle Arena Hour”s. You know, along with all of the math, science, reading, writing, history, and art classes. 

            There are classes that the staff members usually take on, in hopes that we actually learn something of academic value throughout the year. But seeing as there’s only five of them, we rely on volunteers to fill in the rest of the blank spots in the schedule.      Unfortunately, there’s no way to screen a potential adult volunteer for interesting hobbies or ability to bring some new skill into our school. I can only imagine: “I’m sorry, we already have an expert didgeridoo player coming in on Wednesdays. You can always try putting time in next year? Or, let me see. Do you speak Russian?” This wouldn’t do because we need as much help as we can get! Once you pass the background check and show up eager to participate, we’ll take whatever skill set you’d like to offer. What happens is we end up with a pretty eclectic talent pool, with retired math teachers coming in to tutor kids, belly dancers, tattoo artists (no children were tattooed, I swear!), carpenters and everything else you can imagine. All of this combines to create a fairly crazy Standing Plans Board.

            A small sample of last year’s Standing Plans Board contained: cheese-making, bee-keeping, felt stuffed animal creation, vegan cooking, cultivating feminine energy (belly dancing), banjo playing, and under-water basket weaving (not really, but if someone would like to donate a pool…).When I talk about the VFS, these are the things my friends always thinks are the best part. I know how much I hated the classes forced upon me in public school, but seeing their eyes light up at my descriptions is kind of lovely. “And you can just go to these? Like, instead of chemistry? And the teachers know this is happening?!?”

            I remind them that on average, more than half of our classes are what one might consider typically academic. I even find these classes to be the most fun in general, because there’s nothing more fascinating than learning material from someone who’s truly passionate about what they’re saying. My personal favorites so far have been World History, Religion, and Book Club/Essay Writing. Go figure. I shouldn’t neglect to say that every kid eventually ends up taking these classes too, sometimes out of peer pressure and sometimes pure boredom. However, the ones who stick them out to the end do so with an eagerness that I’ve never seen in any standardized school setting. Before seeing it in action, I never would have believed that one could get students to willingly attend science and math and all of those academic classes on their own. Ooh- I just had one of those swells of pure appreciation and love for my school that shivers up your back. One moment, please.

            That’s not to say that the most popular courses haven’t been the more, erm, outrageous ones. Every year I write down the most attended classes just so I can look back in fond memory, and I share with you now, the runaway successes of the past three years:

            Blowing Shit-Up, where students blew shit up. And it really was listed on the schedule that way. Our population draws in parents who can pass that listed on the huge Standing Plans Board while walking hand in hand with their five year old and not become upset. (Maybe part of it is that they know that by the time their child learns to read at our school, they’ll have already been using these cuss words for years.) Taught by a volunteer, this class met once a week to discuss and experiment with what kinds of explosives and how much of them were needed to blow up various items that grew in size each week. They started small with exploding eggs in a microwave. Then they proceeded to blow up the microwave itself. My favorite aspect of this class is that while standardized schooling children have final exams, at free school we work towards the general goal of blowing up a car. Sadly, no one was willing to donate an old clunker to be exploded in an empty field nearby and we managed to avoid having law enforcement called on us.

            There was an age limit to this class which really created a schism in our student community: those who could attend the coolest class ever, and the dumb babies who couldn‘t. You had to be eleven years old to fully participate. With our influx of pre-teen boys, can you spot the problem? Most of them are pretty much at the same maturity level anyway, so allowing some of them to attend and their best friends not was a cruel twist that probably wasn’t necessary. At the time, out resident 10 5/6 year old was beyond upset. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a well executed tantrum.

            Everyone was allowed to watch however. One morning I saw thirty kids, over half of our student body, file out to the field, safety goggles flopping around their small necks, to watch their volunteered toys go up in flames. That was more impressive than the small balls of fire and wisps of black smoke popping up above their heads.

            Class Class will always be one of my favorites, although I didn’t attend. From what I understand, a group of Room B students requested a class where they could experience what it’s like to be in a real public school. The bewildered staff member played along and set up an instruction period where they were lectured on a prearranged subject of their choice (something dully academic, I’m sure) and they pretended like they were in a more traditional classroom setup.

            Now, our classes aren’t run too differently from standard schooling ones, but I suppose there are a few key differences. We don’t do desks. Sure, there are tables but mostly we arrange couches and big cushy chairs in circle groupings so that we can be comfortable. No one is forced to stay present in the class at any time. Kids can leave for whatever reason, and not come back if they want. Of course, respect plays in, but mostly you can do anything you want as you sit there. Eat, knit, draw, actually pay attention, sleep. Whatever. Some teachers make specific contracts based on the class (like the annual chemistry class asks that if you’re present, you’re not doing anything else). There’s no false pretense of not being human beings. Also, most of the classes are small. Really small. The average size of a class is about three people, which make sense considering there’s only 50 students total. You’re doing really well if you have upwards of four people, and a lot of “classes” end up being one on one tutoring sessions. That’s why it’s so freakin’ impressive when twenty or thirty kids show up to these favorites. We only ever have that many people in the same room during mandatory meetings or when someone’s offering free food.

            Based on these differences, I enjoyed the idea of Class Class. Some of our students have been in alternative education their entire lives and had only seen television shows or books depicting those other bizarre forms of learning. They showed up to this new experience with so much eagerness that it was hilarious for students like myself to hear them excitedly tell about their “classroom adventure”. And our staff member was not going easy either. They were told to not talk during class (something that we encourage in our discussion style classes), to raise their hands to ask questions, and to ask for permission before leaving the room. No eating or nodding off was allowed. This, I heard, was the hardest part. Sometimes they were even denied access to the facilities if it was the middle of the period and these pampered students were shocked at such a reality. “Cut it out, Paul. That’s not funny!” they whined. This only earned them detention, which was itself an equally exciting prospect, so they quickly forgot their troubles. 

            The whole operation was treated as something kind of like a Civil War reenactment; it was something to be viewed with amusement, as a historical and inferior relic with pity that such barbaric methods were ever used to “educate” children. Like taking a tour of the Tower of London, the kids gasped and shrilled at the sight of separate wooden desks lined up in rows. I never dreamed of sharing with them my own stories of public school - that would have been as bad as the tower tour guides explaining how awful the beheadings were, and you can see for yourself next week.

            JedI Mind Training was the popular one this last school year. Like with everything, it’s exactly how it sounds. There was a bit of real life mental training that a trapeze artist, fir breathing mother knew something about and chose to share with the students. Therefore, I avoided this class like the plague, but all of my spiritual peers really dug it. I came downstairs one morning, and walked in on twenty of the more rambunctious students sitting in a large circle, completely still, eyes closed, hands in a meditative position over crossed legs. You could have heard a pin drop. I don’t know if they ever learned how to fire dance as was promised in the course description, but whatever that lady did, sure kept them captivated. I then got to spend the next two months of the year telling my fellow teenagers to not practice their stick twirling samurai moves in Room C two feet away from my face.        

            But what if you don’t like classes? Hopefully, if you’re not into classes or staring at a wall all day, you have enough creativity to find something else to do with your time.

            There have been lots of activity fads at school, some more enjoyable than others. I’ve gone through stages at school where I’ve only done certain activities for long periods of time. Everyone has, like with the gaming closet, or the epic light saber battles that used to go down, or playing guitar, or playing four-square. Four-square, in fact, was so popular that our staff had to come up with a new version of the game so that it could be accessible to the most kids at one time. We don’t believe in excluding anyone, which can of get in the way when you have a line of people waiting to play a game and our morals don’t exactly allow for a huge line of kids to form because it pains us too much. Yeah. Unfortunately we only have one rubber ball, so we couldn’t just have multiple games going at once (which would also take away from our sense of unity). So we created Nine-Square. This is like four-scquare, except, yeah, you get it. On sunny days when there are a lot of kids outside (more than nine, shall we say), we play Twelve-Square.

            I never really joined in with the four-square trend too much; I got enough of that in elementary school. I did, however, join in when ping-pong became the next greatest thing. We had one ping-pong table downstairs and it became the spot for Room B and C kids to hang when there weren’t any classes happening. Like with swing dance, it was an activity that could be done at any time and would often take up entire afternoons once started. You might be wondering - we did play two person teams for a while until the teenagers declared the staff’s idea bogus and told the younger kids that they can wait in line or go cry about it somewhere else. We had an intern extraordinaire at the time who set up a challenge to beat him at ping-pong and win a prize. No one ever did beat him, but we played for so many hours that we had an entire ranking system worked out with each of us moving up and down the scale each day. It was quite the entertainment source.

            This same intern also got us all started on using the industrial grade kitchen sitting right in our laps completely underappreciated. See, like myself, many kids are enticed by the idea of being able to cook whatever they want on a whim, but once that lifting sense of do-nothingness kicks in it’s impossible to remember such goals. I had forgotten about making my huge batches of pancakes within a day, along with the rest of the school’s culinary desires. Mostly, we used the toaster. That was, until the intern started a cooking class. Practically everyone piled into the kitchen to see what healthy, vegan concoction was being created (he was vegan and refused to teach us anything else. We all now have a pretty skewed menu of meals set in our heads.)

            I stopped cooking when all of Room A decided to join, and the class became more about teaching small children knife safety and how to avoid miniature moving targets while walking with boiling hot food. After cooking, and ping-pong, and swing dancing, I began taking on fads of my own, as per my usual state. I figured out that I could watch my favorite TV shows on the school’s wifi and had a pretty wasted month of doing nothing but. Then, you know, teenage boys occupied my thoughts, which I don’t suppose ever changed. Except now I don’t have to fawn over them at school. Actually, it’s pretty odd having my first boyfriend who hasn’t been at my school and always around. I probably spend far too much of my time sitting with my diary on the couch, doodling something like, “I thought about him today. It was magical. I’m going to go think about him again.” That can take up hours right there, what with all of the thinking involved.

            To come up with an actual example day is a surprisingly hard task. We fall into patterns, but there’s nothing concrete about what we do on a daily basis. Let’s say I arrive at nine in the morning. The school will be mostly empty, I’ll sign in, plop down with my backpack on a couch, and read for the next thirty minutes until it becomes too loud. Then there’s usually some textbook I pull out to keep me going for another hour or two, something like US History or Beginning French. Maybe I have a class at second block in Room C and other people will join me on the couch. We have whatever scheduled learning opportunity it is, and then get our half an hour ‘lunch break.’ No one over ten really uses this time for eating since we can eat our food at any point that we want to. This is just a courtesy time we give the staff where they have an excuse to say, “I can’t help you right now, I have to eat lunch!” Maybe there’s another class during third block, but I make a point to avoid classes during the fourth so that I can leave early when I desire to. If there isn’t anything in the afternoon, I might read some more or do some more textbook work until I become too tired, and call it quits for the day. There’s usually an hour long  bout of cussin’ and discussin’ with the other kids in Room C, generally about something like a giant robotic monkey or Lady Gaga being a man thrown somewhere into my day. Although this will be mixed up from day to day, there are no days when I don’t have anything pre-scheduled because that’s just how I roll. I frankly don’t see how some kids can handle that, but I would go crazy without some kind of group activity. Sometimes I wish we had more of those being automatically offered by the staff, but then that cool art project doesn’t get finished on time or that nifty impromptu talent show is still going on and that class is cutting into my free time all of a sudden. That always happens the second you try to add more things on- you forget to account for the discovery time ay school. After all, that’s why we run on this system: so students can have the time to do what they want and not have to stop when the bell rings and the arbitrarily assigned learning time is up.

            Otherwise, how could the Room B students experiment with the boundaries of physics and the possibilities of molecular break-down? Maybe they were inspired by Blowing Shit Up or chemistry class, but someone came up with the great idea for the Microwave-Video Camera Experiment. Now, like you, I too would have guessed that they had learned enough about the effects of microwaves on metal in their favorite class, but we’re both sadly mistaken. The ringleader of this operation was actually a pre-teen boy who had not made the age cut-off for the class the year before. Oops! His slightly older friends didn’t have their thinking caps on when they let him put a turned on video camera in the downstairs microwave to get an up-close view of what their food saw while it was heating up. This is actually a fairly cool idea, with the unfortunate effect of being disastrous. But A for effort.

            After the fire started, they ran around like chickens with their heads cut off for a few seconds before pulling the alarm and triggering a school evacuation. Once outside, we watched the kids huffing and puffing, calming themselves down, until a staff advisor asked them why they had pulled the fire alarm. “Oh, well, the microwave’s on fire,” one replied, finally able to catch his breath. One of our interns pulled a slow walk backwards that turned into a sort of concerned jog half way through, back towards the door. We were lucky the entire building wasn’t up in flames by the time this conversation had finally transpired. Ten year olds, I tell ya’.

            This whole thing got even funnier when, the next year, one of these same boys put a metal mug in our new microwave that was right in front of the charred streaks on our café wall. Microwave Evacuation Day is becoming an annual event, kind of like Leg Day, where we all sit in the hallway with our legs out, or Pie Day, where we hold a huge pie swap. Unofficially, there’s also Donut Day, Venting Day (where the entire school decides to hold a temper tantrum at the same time), Mustache Day and Halloween Day, which is like Halloween but celebrated a few days early out of anticipation.