Saturday, March 15th:
8:00 am: Twelve Students (Levi Jamison, Teal Larson, Owen Freese-Posthuma and myself from Harmony School; Amy Shaw and April Waltz from Bloomington High School South; Siri Larson, Valerie Valazquez and Salena Phillips from Bloomington High School North; Keren Deckard from Edgewood; and Christy Denny & Ashley Dismang from Aurora) along with six teachers and chaperones (Andy Alphonse (teacher), Barb Backler (the organizer), David Christman (teacher), Amy Norris (teacher), Becky Rupert (teacher) gather in the Harmony School parking lot to say goodbye to anxious parents and set out in two passenger vans on the 11-hour drive to Pennsylvania. Over the next week, we will separately or together visit some of the most exciting schools in the US, including the four that I will see: The Walden Project in Vergennes, Vermont; The Alternative Community School in Ithaca, New York; The Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Massachusetts; and Federal Hocking High School in Stewart, Ohio.

7:40 pm: Arrive at motel in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Sunday, March 16th
8:30 am: Leave motel and head east to Vergennes, Vermont.

7:00 pm: Arrive in downtown Vergennes to have dinner at "The Hungry Bear" with a few students and a teacher from the Walden Project. We'll be visiting their school early tomorrow morning.

Monday, March 17th
7:45 am: Arrive at Vergennes Union High School.

8:05 am: Head out to the land where the Walden Project holds classes. The Walden project is a school within a school. It is made up of 22 students from the high school who go to the school building every morning, but then take a bus to the land where they have classes. They have built a shelter where they have a campfire every morning they’re out there. Whether the weather is hot or cold - rain, shine, sleet, or snow - they are out in the woods two or three days a week. On Fridays, the students go to internships that have been arranged with people in the community. Every Thursday around the campfire, someone tells his or her life story. This aspect of the school brings the students closer to each other. I think the fact that everyone knows everything about everyone else makes the whole school community closer and makes the students more aware of what their peers have gone and are going through.

2:30 pm: Leave the Walden Project and head back to motel to get ready for dinner.

5:00 pm: Head out to Matt's house (a Walden teacher) for a yummy dinner.

9:00 pm: Head back to the hotel to sleep for the long day ahead.

Tuesday, March 18th
5:00 am: Barb Backler and I head to Massachusetts to visit Sudbury Valley School.

10:00am: Arrive at Sudbury Valley. Sudbury Valley is an awesome school. It gives students the chance to take control of their own education in a way that might be unimaginable for some people. The school day goes from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm. There is one half-hour on either end of the day when one room of the school is open for students who need to be there earlier or later because of their parents' work schedule.

The students can arrive any time before 11:00am, after the school opens. They can leave anytime after 1:30 pm, but they do need to be there for at least 5 hours each day. You may ask, "How can students show up so late and have no set time to be there with all of the classes?" The cool thing about the school is there are no set classes. The students can learn what they want, when they want. They are not dependent on teachers and people in authority to teach them. They teach themselves, or ask for help on their own time, which makes learning more worthwhile.

Sudbury Valley students understand what they need to learn, learn what they want to learn, and get education out of life experiences at the same time. The students there know more about life right now than some adults, I'm sure, simply because they have been able to live life from the start. Most high school students are not prepared for the responsibilities of life after high school because they have been dictated to all of their lives. The students of Sudbury Valley are living their own lives, with little help from others.

Sudbury Valley has a number of resources to offer students who are self-motivated. They have a number of music rooms, with an array of instruments; a photography studio; a weight area; video game rooms; a dance studio; an art room; and it is set on ten acres of land, bordered by a state forest. There is so much to do and everything done teaches something - though it may not seem like it, you are learning all the time.

2:45pm: Barb and I head west to Ithaca, New York to meet up with the rest of the group late that night.

Wednesday, March 19th
8:00am: Pack into vans and head out to Alternative Community School.

Alternative Community School is a public school that is set up as a democracy. The students have a say in everything that goes on by vote. They can also propose changes. The school holds Town Meetings once a week where the community decides on important decisions for the school. Two eighth graders chaired the meeting we went to and the awesome thing about it was that the whole school listened to them and respected their voice, even though they were younger than the majority of the other people in the gym. Thanks to this respect, the students and teachers share a mutual trust that is unusual in public schools. The students are not required to have hall passes when leaving the classroom for any reason. The teachers trust that the students are going somewhere that cannot wait until class is out, and the students appreciate that trust, so they respect it and don't abuse it.

You have to put in an application to get into the school. The applicants are split into groups by their ethnic origin, background and financial status. Then, the principal randomly chooses a certain number of applicants from each group, so there is a large range of people going to the school.

Thursday, March 20th
11:00am: Pack into vans and head to northeastern Ohio.

5:00pm: Arrive at hotel.

Friday, March 21st
7:30am: Head to Federal Hocking High School. The cool thing about our visit to Federal Hocking, was that the students from the school were the ones to plan the visit. They organized how we were going to spend our time at the school and were in charge of making the arrangements with the teachers from Bloomington. One of the classes we went to was a Senior Seminar class where a few of the seniors got together with Federal Hocking's principal to plan upcoming events in the school. It was a class where the students volunteered to take charge of an aspect of the weeks to come - for example, there is a week of all-school events called the Lancer Games. Students volunteered to run concessions and organize prizes for the winners. It is then their responsibility to make those things happen. The staff is just there to give advice when needed. Federal Hocking is a school based around the students and their interests. There is a school handbook that the students re-write every year so that the handbook is understandable for the students. It also helps welcome the students into the school by putting the rules and regulations in their language and in a friendly manner.

Students have voice in the school through their advisory groups every morning. One group that is particularly involved in the way the school is run is the Student Trustees group. These are students who apply anonymously for a position and are elected by seasoned members of the group. The day that we visited, the trustees were deciding on a new format for the application.

Another interesting aspect of Federal Hocking is the graduation projects. In
order to graduate, the seniors do a senior project to benefit the community
and they create a portfolio to exhibit the most outstanding accomplishments of their high school careers. The students get to pick what they would like to do for their senior project. For example, one girl is making a cookbook; a past senior made a stained glass piece to put in the office; and another fixed up the baseball field. Up until a year ago, there was only one format for the seniors' portfolios.

Now, through the use ofr student voice, there is a choice of 4 different portfolio styles to choose from.

Federal Hocking High School is a great example of how a public school can take an alternative approach. It shows how things can get done with everyone having a voice and workingogether.

2:30pm: Leave Federal Hocking and head back to Indiana.

7:30pm: Arrive back at Harmony School to excited parents and warm thoughts of home - as well as many new ideas to suggest to our schools in the months to come.