1. That letting go strengthens trust and belonging in a community. Sometimes, in the democratic process, when the vote didn’t go my way, and then I let go of the defeat, really let go, later I realized that my sense of community was strengthened more deeply than if the outcome had different. It may seem at first to be counter-intuitive, but the experience of accepting diversity as a good thing expands the life of a community, whereas the experience of consensus can only confirm the life it already has.
2. I experienced that I could learn whatever I wanted to learn, and that the most acute learning was from my failures.
3. I learned, unequivocally, through mostly silent, even unintentional observation, that we adults have far more to learn from young people than they do from us. We are so often mired down in past truths, where they are creating the present and future truths.
4. And I learned that it is safe, and very sane, to do and to believe in what feels right, regardless of what the rest of society is doing and believing. There are no crowds on the leading edge, but there is extraordinary energy and satisfaction.

In 2004, when I was three years old, my mother started homeschooling me.  She taught me simple things like shapes, colors, how to spell my name, ect.  We traveled a lot, and it was the best option for my family. Around age seven I started going to a small  homeschooling group where I learned basic math and beginning reading. That summer I went to a camp at Hudson Valley Sudbury School.  I enjoyed it a lot and asked my parents if I could enroll. They were hesitant at first but decided to give it a try. When my dad started suffering from kidney failure in 2009, the structure of the school worked very well for us. We had a lot of appointments to go to and the school’s flexibility allowed me to stay with my father.   My parents wanted me to have fun at school and have a place that I could be myself. So this is how I started my journey at Sudbury.

For the last decade and one year, I’ve been watching students grow up, and have been surrounded by people who have watched me develop over the years.  It’s something I’m so used to. From the day I sat down for my enrollment interview, something felt instantly normal and right. There is something incredibly exciting about the fact that this is what the last eleven years behind me has lead up to.  I initially thought before I sat down to write this that I should probably have a solid idea of what I want out of life first, but I’ve come to realize I can’t precisely know just yet. I need room to explore more before I can pinpoint anything, and I am excited to go out into the world and see what it has to offer me, and what I can make out of it.  I’ve come to the point where I’m ready to explain through words who I’ve become, and who I want to be. What I do know is what I’m passionate about now, and that I’ve attained the skills I need to pursue those passions.  The ability to practice with motivation, to do things on my own, to know my limits while pushing to exceed them, and advocating for my needs or others needs.  Curiosity, problem solving, adaptability, independance, strength, understanding and acceptance of imperfection; These are just some of the skills I have worked to develop and will hold forever.  

When I tell people about how Hudson Valley Sudbury School (HVSS) works, they sometimes ask if it’s like William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. They imagine a vicious world of savage children struggling for supremacy, gnawing on limbs, and skewering random stuff with sharpened sticks.  They even bring up anecdotes from their own experience to suggest that we should expect brutality to rein under the conditions we maintain at our school; they’ll say something like, “in my high school, if the teacher ever stepped out of the classroom, even for a second, a fight would break out.”  I understand - I’ve even worked in a school where that was indeed the case. If not a fight, something transgressive would happen - a champion would emerge from the rows of desks to make some raucous gesture of contempt for authority, to the hoots and applause of classmates.  And when we attempted to have unstructured time, like a recess, there was almost always an actual fistfight. At that school, the adults micromanaged the students as much as possible. The more control a teacher was able to exert over students, the more highly that teacher was regarded; power, and the control it afforded, was the highest good.  The most effective teachers were known for directing students with military precision, drilling them in posture and guidelines which sharply restricted how they could move their bodies, even while seated, and where they could direct their gaze at any particular moment. In such an excruciating and oppressive environment, tense but utterly boring, people find ways to rebel - not because they can’t handle freedom maturely when they find or steal a moment of it, but because they are deprived of it.  Their “transgressions” are hardly evidence of immaturity; they are, rather, evidence of an unhealthy ecology of relationships. The boys in Lord of the Flies were cultivated within a culture of mistrust and assimilated into a brutal hierarchy at their mid-20th century English boarding school.  Left to their own devices, they recreated the ecology of their native psychological habitat. Lord of the Flies is not a cautionary tale about freedom; it’s a cautionary tale about oppression.