As I sit here writing this paper, I think about what my life would have been like if I hadn’t enrolled in HVSS, and how things would have changed over the course of my high school years. I’m struck by the thought that I may not have even made it through high school if not for HVSS and its wonderful, accepting community. The fact that I have been able to be open about myself, my interests, and my sexuality is something that I sometimes take for granted, forgetting for a moment that when I was in public school I didn’t have that luxury. I remember how depressed I was even with all of the support I got from my peers and the HVSS staff, and I can’t help but wonder if I would even still be here if not for that. HVSS has also given me the chance to develop certain skills such as self discipline, resolving interpersonal conflict, and the ability to speak out when something is wrong. 

As a child I was bright and outgoing, always keen to make new friends and always up for an adventure. I have distinct memories of the eight year old me asking my peers if they knew that a piranha can replace its teeth. In retrospect, a lot of kids might have laughed at me behind my back, or thought I was a loser because of this. I didn’t care, though, I just wanted to talk about what I was interested in, and, at age 8, that was animals and karate. During the early spring of 2nd grade, the head of one of our local karate schools came to visit and do a demonstration during gym class. We learned a few basic blocks and punches and that was that, for then at least. Then one day the following summer I was having a particularly restless and energetic day. Now my dad, no doubt tired of me bouncing off the walls, suggested I try out the karate school that had come to visit earlier that year. For the next two years, karate, or Tang Soo Do Mi Gup

Kwan, as I learned it was called, became the center of my life. I LOVED it. During the same gym class where I’d first been introduced to it, I would now get up and ask to perform my karate for my peers. 

In the fall of 2013 I started middle school at J. Watson Bailey. This was a massive change for me as my elementary school had been relatively small (about fifty kids in my graduating class). I was suddenly thrust into a school four times the size and four times as intense as any social setting I had ever experienced before. It was also the first year that 5th graders were introduced from elementary school to middle school. The schools weren’t prepared and neither were the teachers, and least of all the students. When I entered Bailey, I was the same bright, happy, and outgoing kid I’d always been, but that soon changed. After the first couple of months I noticed that the kids who weren’t wearing the right clothes, or playing the right sports, or were even slightly different, got made fun of and bullied. I have distinct memories of being laughed at for liking less popular things such as karate and fishing. It didn’t help that I was a pudgy kid with glasses and braces. I soon retreated into my shell and I quickly became less social and much less happy. Though I didn’t know it yet, this was the start of my anxiety and depression, both of which only got worse as time went on. I no longer talked about my interests to anyone except a couple of close friends and my parents; I was terrified of other kids laughing at me. I also became obsessed with my appearance. I remember having panic attacks because I didn’t think I was skinny enough and falling into a deep pit of self loathing because of my glasses, or braces, or hair. Any and every physical characteristic became something to hate about myself. By seventh grade I was begging my parents not to make me get on the bus, saying I felt ill at the thought of going to school; I’d had enough, and my parents and I started looking for a new school. 

When I first heard about the Sudbury philosophy, it seemed too good to be true. I was very skeptical as it seemed like something out of an all too cheery fantasy novel. It is, however, one

of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Through searching online we found a small private school near Woodstock called the Hudson Valley Sudbury School, which proved to be a perfect fit for me. I remember being so blown away during my visiting week at HVSS because of the free environment and welcoming atmosphere. Everyone was so nice and so accepting; it was so strange and alien to me to not feel as if I was being judged at every second. I switched to the Hudson Valley Sudbury school in the fall of 2016, the start of eight grade. It was around this time that two other important things happened. I started fly fishing, and I started preparing for my black belt. Fly fishing was, and still is, incredibly important to me as a way to escape the various pressures of life as well as my own depressive thoughts, which were, for the first time, starting to improve after I switched schools. I started studying entomology as well, learning about the life cycles of trout and the insects they feed on. While I found fly fishing as an escape, karate became more stressful than ever. I was in the dojo 4+ hours a week; the exercise was grueling and the pressure was immense. No one from our school had ever failed the test before, and our teacher was rather determined to keep it that way. Preparations lasted at least 4 months and got more difficult as we went. Thanks to Sudbury, I was able to prepare in school as well. It was such a relief to be able to practice in school without being laughed at; on the contrary, my friends supported me and helped me prepare. This led to me being more than prepared for the test, even though it was over eight hours with no food or drink. At Sudbury I was also able to pursue my next passion, music. 

My first memories of music start when I was around three or four, when my Dad would sing me Johnny Cash and Warren Zevon songs to help me fall asleep. I’ve always loved music, and especially singing. I remember belting out Sammy Hagar’s “I Can’t Drive 55” in the car when I couldn’t have been more than 7 or 8. However, it wasn’t until I enrolled in Sudbury that I was really able to explore my love for music. I had been to see the Rock Academy’s tribute to the Rolling Stones and I was completely blown away. These were kids my age playing REAL music,

not just a shoddy school band farting away into trumpets. When I heard they were doing a tribute to my favorite band, AD/DC, I knew I had to join. I got my first guitar for my 14th birthday and enrolled soon after. Even though I originally wanted to be a singer, there was no denying that guitar came more easily to me. If I had still been in public school, there’s no way I would ever have had the confidence to get up on stage and play music in front of strangers. After just a year of playing, I was invited to join Rock Academy’s showband, a group of the best students who are hand picked to represent the school. We would play promotional gigs for the school and local events, and the best part, we get to go on tour. So in the summer of 2019 over the course of a week we played gigs in Maine, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York. I would never have been able to do this without being at HVSS; the fact that I had the opportunity to direct my own learning meant I could focus on pursuing music and bettering myself as a guitarist. I also had the opportunity to start an internship at Imperial Guitar and Soundworks in New Paltz during my junior year. A few months before COVID hit, I got a motion through school meeting to have one day a week count towards my attendance so I could learn how to set up and repair electric and acoustic guitars and basses. I learned how to fix wiring, adjust neck angles, and maintain fretboards. I used this knowledge to take an old beat up guitar from the 60’s and turn it into my own personalized instrument; it has all the right switches and knobs, and it plays exactly the way I want it to. It took me months, but I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. 

At HVSS I learned how much of a difference self motivation can make; this is particularly evident in my own band, Interference. At the same time that I joined the Rock Academy Showband I also joined a band my peers had started, a punk rock trio mainly focussed on covering classic punk and hardcore songs. The first couple of rehearsals we just jammed on some covers, but pretty soon we were playing our own tunes. Most of these took a lot of work to turn into playable pieces. it was frustrating at times, but I learned from HVSS–and JC in particular–that patience and teamwork are key. At certain points in my early days serving on JC

I would get easily frustrated, especially with the younger kids who had a hard time focusing and paying attention; however, I quickly learned that this got us nowhere. Patience and listening proved to be a key part of JC but it also helped my all around social skills, which have greatly improved during my time at HVSS. I have also been president of the Music Coop for my last 3 years at. During this time I organized several Music Coop shows, including when we brought in friends to play at the Open Orbit Festival in 2019. It was strange at first, to be in a leadership position, but I grew into it naturally. It helped that by this point I’d been at HVSS for a couple of years and for the first time in a long while, I finally had the chance to stretch my wings a bit. 

All of my musical experiences have taught me the importance of persistence. I don’t know how many times I’ve wanted to throw down my guitar and quit, but because of the self-motivation and improved self-confidence I gained from my experiences at Sudbury I was able to keep going and push myself to do better. I’ve learned that you can’t give up even when a task feels impossible. Similarly the Sudbury model has shown me the importance of student-directed government and social justice. Before I came to HVSS I’d never heard of student justice and didn’t even know that concept existed; I remember being confused in such a wonderful way when I first learned about the JC system. I was so fascinated and impressed that I clerked JC after just 2 months of being enrolled. Since then I’ve clerked at least 6 times and even served as back up school meeting chair. This taught me the importance of student government, social justice and compromise. It also helped me learn how to debate and articulate my opinions in front of a group of people. 

After I graduate from HVSS, I plan to pursue music to my full extent. I see myself playing my own music with my own band all around the world, playing festivals and concerts for thousands of people. If that doesn’t work out, I plan to be a session player–a musician who is hired to play on records for various artists in different genres. The idea of being able to play on a variety of

records with all kinds of musicians sounds like an amazing opportunity, and one that I’ve been prepared for, in more ways than one, by HVSS. I’ve not only learned how to play music, but also how to read sheet music as well as learn songs by ear. As of April 30th I have been accepted into SUNY Oneonta, the College of Saint Rose, and SUNY Purchase, all for music programs. The SUNY Purchase Music Conservatory, which I have chosen to attend, is a particularly hard program to get into. I would not have learned any of these skills if I had continued in public school, because I would have been far too self conscious. In conclusion, HVSS has taught the value of persistence, determination, self confidence, student justice, and most significantly, how important it is to accept people for who they are without judgement. You never know how much of a difference acceptance can make to someone.

This week the staff has been buttoning things up around the campus and getting ready to (mostly) shut things down for the summer. Inevitably it is a reflective time, and I want to share some of what we’ve been thinking and talking about. In our day-to-day during the year, we often focus on what’s broken at school, so we can fix it, and we become ensnared in the details of our duties and relationships. We tend to forget why we’re running a self-directed democratic school – a school so radically different it could reasonably be called THE alternative to EVERYTHING else. And we forget how remarkable the place really is.

This school year presented special challenges, but spring was wonderful, and we ended the year with the largest and most successful event we’ve ever had and several days of school-wide outdoor activity and games, all ages laughing and playing together “in the natural way,” as one of our graduates called it. For me, it was a celebration of one of my favorite aspects of the school: the familial structure of our community, and the relationships that develop over days, months, and years. Rather than moving on to a new grade, a new teacher, a new school, we all stay together, and move on to a new year. It’s sweet, it’s powerful, and it’s challenging. Sharing resources, figuring out how to get along and set and keep reasonable boundaries, navigating social dynamics, and adapting to everyone’s ongoing development is hard, and inevitably it’s a lot of what goes on here. From the perspective of the school that’s quite appropriate, because so much of our experience in this life depends on relationships and our ability to cultivate and maintain them. In his thesis, one of this year’s graduates wrote that, at Sudbury he learned “how important it is to accept people for who they are without judgement.” The value of that lesson is immense, and in this age of social media, disinformation, and tribal polarization, more valuable than ever before. Living in a tightly-knit community, everyone makes mistakes and occasionally shows their less savory aspects. Everyone goes through annoying phases, everyone does something that offends somebody else. Being a community is fun, and it requires constant work.

Despite how hard the work is, our students do tend to focus on it, because it’s often what is most vital, and because personal growth and interpersonal skills are the foundation for resilience and fulfilment. And they are intertwined. As another of our graduates wrote in her thesis, “I started to find more courage to try new and different things. I soon found that all around me were people who, with kindness and compassion invited me into their community. I learned that, for me, trying new things is hard and tiring, but also incredibly rewarding and empowering.” The community here draws people out and encourages them or otherwise challenges them in whatever way they “need” to be challenged. We’re like stones in the river, clicking together and smoothing each other’s rough edges over time. We all want friends, the support of our community, and to be accepted and valued and loved. This school is about the most fundamental and important human things.

Over and over again, we witness that when students stay in a challenging situation, the result is growth, and a strengthening of relational bonds. When students preserve through enough of them, this school becomes a second home and a second family to them. It becomes the place they grew up, not merely the place they were educated. When yet another of our graduates said goodbye on the final day, she added, “Don’t worry! I’ll be back!” with tears streaming down her face. And we’re not too worried; we know that most of them will come back and remain a part of this community because they love it, and we know that they have a deep reservoir of real human learning to draw upon as they walk their paths.

Best wishes, and have a wonderful summer.