I often walked around the room during writing time and peered over the student’s shoulders curious about their stories. Every now and then I would offer a suggestion for a different word choice or add a comma where one may be missing. This little girl in particular always welcomed my editing and seemed to love showcasing her work to me. Not only had I known her, and taught her, for more than two years by this point, but she was the best friend of both my sons. Her mother and I had become close friends and I was at her house nearly every afternoon and weekend. She and I had become close and had built a trusting relationship over the years so you can imagine my surprise when she quickly covered her writing as I walked closer to her table. She kept her head down and would not look up for what felt like forever. I stood there, patiently waiting, knowing intuitively that she’d be hurt if I gave up on her and simply walked away. I waited for her to be ready to tell me why she didn’t want me to see her writing or to tell me she wanted privacy. I would have been fine either way.
She began to cry.
She looked up at me and said, “I’m so sorry! I don’t want to hurt your feelings”.
I chuckled at her tender heart and reassured her it only hurt my feelings that she didn’t trust me enough to share her words with me, but that I also trusted she had a reason for wanting privacy. I didn’t intend to pry any further. This reminded her she could trust me so she looked up, eyes twinkling behind tears and said, “I’m writing about how much I love my dirty garage school,” and she cried even harder and stood up to hug me. I hugged her back and we melted into tears together.
It was coming to an end. Two years of magic shared between the teachers, students, and their families was coming to an end in just two days. My school, Epoch, was closing.
I had asked the children to write a letter to their eighteen year old self telling them what they like to do, their interests, their hobbies, their goals and so forth and I told them to put it in a sealed envelope and put it in a safe place only to be opened on their eighteenth birthday.
This little angel was writing about how much she loves her “dirty little garage school”. I wonder how many more of them were writing about our school and the memories created there. I wonder if it meant as much to them as it did to me. I poured everything I had into this school- money, energy, resources. I worked seven days a week, full days at that, sacrificing sleep and self-care. I woke up at five am to check my plans for the day and often made a quick run to the supermarket in the snow, and below freezing temperatures, for glue or whatever odd-ball thing was requested for a science experiment or a dare made between students. I lost weight, lost sleep, lost money, lost friends while running the school, but I refused to fail. Failing at the school meant failing these kids and I’ve never failed a child.
I won’t.
And I didn’t.
I didn’t fail.
I succeeded far better than I even thought I would, or could, because I believe I was guided by something far greater than self. I believe this particular group of children were carefully selected by a greater power to teach me what I needed to learn about myself, the world, and about education. These students were my greatest teachers and I’m eternally grateful to them. Noone knows what occurred within the four walls of that dirty little garage school but us-
Until now.
In the fall of 2021, I was tasked with starting a Waldorf-inspired grades school in Bozeman, Montana. How I fell into this assignment from the universe will be explained in the book I hope to have available by fall, but the book is not just about the school. It’s about the lessons I learned from the children I served there. It’s about the children I’ve served in public school, hospitals and in homes. It’s about education and how children learn, but more importantly it’s about how children want to learn.
Something is shifting in our culture and I want to be a voice in the conversation. I want to be remembered as a firestarter. Someone who had radical ideas at the time and was not afraid to share them no matter what other adults may think. My life’s work has always been about the children.
I am the teacher who does not believe in school, but started a school.
I am the homeschooling mother who despises curriculums.
I am the educator who values education, but believes the students are actually the teachers.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it and if you’re brave enough to question the narrative and go down this rabbit hole with me…Oh, the wondrous things we’ll discover…subscribe now!