Powerful learning that isn’t pre-planned

This week so many things happened at school. It’s a dynamic environment that’s structured around healthy human inter-action and inner-action - and it’s purposefully and powerfully not pre-planned.

The days at school have their predictable elements: our Mini Morning Meeting, Restorative Justice Committee (RJC) problem solving sessions, usually a meeting or discussion scheduled by students, maybe a tour, always chore time, and then each afternoon the gathering of one’s things for parent pick up. Still, large chunks of the day are purposefully not pre-planned. There needs to be time and space for dynamic life and a fully pre-planned day would choke that out.

This makes me think of our week as a breathing being. Breathing in and out play, conversation, laughter, card games, art, coding, cooking, new ideas… being and becoming in the context of authentic interactions. If we focused, as most school environments do, on single and often isolated skills like literacy and numeracy, we might imagine we’re helping children “progress” - in fact, we’d likely give out “progress reports.” Reading and calculating are wonderful things. Unfortunately, when the adults obsess about their importance, it’s too often at the expense of the joy of reading and calculating, let alone all the other important elements that we believe a full “education” should have.

The Sudbury model doesn’t force any academic subjects in part because we don’t want them to lose their inherent value and potential to delight. The other part is that we know that human nature naturally gravitates toward the acquisition of all kinds of skills. We don’t need to force them and, in fact, don’t want to sacrifice their beauty to such force.

So we give the time and space for young people to engage with life, and along the way, as humans do, they pick up the skills they need. I would argue that I observe our students engage more authentically with a wider variety of integrated skills than those forced into narrowly-defined and artificially constructed activities to “learn” such skills.

This week we watched young people grab books from the shelf and spread themselves out on the floor alone or with a friend to read. No one was assigned or even encouraged to do this - reading has its own inherent value that actually gets subverted with pressure and over-justification. No one had to underline vocabulary words (though we have a lifelong Sudbury student who does underline words new to her just because she wants to). No book reports were required. As such, reading was done for what reading is meant for - reading!

We don’t have a public speaking class, yet as young people progress at The Miami Sudbury School they have regular, authentic opportunities to express themselves in public. It wasn’t assigned by any adult and isn’t a “class” or “enrichment activity,” yet our older teens took it upon themselves to meet, problem solve improvements to our community chore time, and then present their ideas at an All School Meeting that they scheduled.

This wasn’t a “pick a topic to expound upon” oration activity but rather a meeting about a real topic that really affects all the real people in our little community. The teens presenting their chore reform ideas had to hold the attention of an audience ranging in age from 5 to 45, and did so with gentleness and conviction. This wasn’t done for a grade - those come and go. This was done because it mattered to the people who made it happen. In our real lives, that’s what really matters.

Even the “subjects” of art and drama had their day in the sun this week at our school - without pre-planned lessons or adult direction. A group of younger students (note: “student” doesn’t need to mean someone passively subjected to lessons - it can mean someone learning by living) created their own makeshift hospital in our indoor gym this week. No adult assigned roles. The mixed age group made sure to always “scrub in” and cared for imaginary broken limbs - and I believe some imaginary open heart surgery!

On another day this week a group dressed up in clothes from the imagination room as undercover detectives, going around school looking for clues and clearly enjoying the freedom of expression and fun.

We’ve known for years from research and longer from human experience how important imaginary play is. Yet so many either expect it to end around kindergarten or be confined to “drama classes.” We delight at The Miami Sudbury School that our students of all ages have time at school to pursue the incredibly valuable subject of imaginary play.

Art! We have a new student who has found her solace in the art studio. It’s her safe space, and why shouldn’t it be? This week we also had students organize their own group art sessions.

A group of students met a couple of weeks ago with a local artist who wants to help with the designing and painting of a mural on one or more of our outdoor walls. Before the next visit from this outside artist, the group at school organized a brainstorming session where anyone interested could sketch ideas. They encouraged each other and there was no prescribed product or goal beyond imagination and creation. Arguably, that’s art for art’s sake.

On yet another day this week, a student called for another art brainstorming session, this time to design a poster for our Tech Den. Interested students discussed ideas that they’d want to incorporate and the organizing student drew a rough draft. Meaningful art.

We get so used to these student-led activities that we can often forget how unique they are in a school environment. At the end of this week we had two administrators from FIU (Florida International University) come visit. I felt I got to experience the unique power of our school through their eyes. One was the Dean of the College of Education and the other, from that same office, the person who helps coordinate internships and field experience for students aspiring to be educators.

They were toured around the school by a spirited ten year old, then spent time up in the lounge discussing educational philosophy and practice with me and a fifteen year old student. They were invited to observe our Mini Morning Meeting, facilitated by the same ten year old girl who had chosen to tour them around. They were then invited to observe an RJC discussion, watching young people problem solve things that matter to them.

We’d spoken in the lounge about process over product and how there’s often little to no time and space for process in schools when the focus is on product - measurable assignments and examinations. It creates a great pressure on educators that often doesn’t allow them to appreciate creativity, let alone differences of opinion in a classroom.

In just a two hour visit, I feel our guests got to watch our young people engage in public speaking, problem solving, leadership, and childhood - purposefully not pre-planned. In fact, we plan for this:

“We give the time and space for young people to learn who they are, what they like, and how to achieve their goals while working authentically within in a mixed-age community based on respect, responsibility, and self-direction.” This is from our mission statement and we take it very seriously.

It won’t be everyone who understands the value of learning that isn’t pre-planned. But we see the value in the growth and development of our young people and it’s exciting and delightful - the way we believe learning should be.