December 15, 2005

A photo from “Children of a Child-Centered School,” by Don Wallis. The book is about the Antioch School and features many anecdotes about the school’s students.

By Diane Chiddister

Some people who have read Don Wallis’s new book on the Antioch School tell him the book moved them to tears, he said, and he believes he knows why.

He said he believes the book moves people because it shows children thriving in an atmosphere of trust, respect and love that is highly unusual in education, as well as in life.

“I think what comes through and is moving is that the children reach a place that we recognize as important to human beings,” he said. “The children show us something about human nature, about authenticity. We see kids moving powerfully to their own truth, see them acting with such kindness that it reminds us of who we are or could be.”

Wallis published the book, Children of a Child-Centered School, this fall. It is available at the Epic Book Stop, Sam and Eddie’s Open Books, Dark Star Books, the Antioch School or on the school’s Web site, www.antiochschool.com. Proceeds benefit the school’s scholarship fund.

The father of three daughters who graduated from the Antioch School, Wallis said he has long been an advocate of the school’s philosophy and approach to education. Several years ago, when he found that the school’s teachers wished for a way to explain the school to others, he offered to write a book.

“I think it’s important, what the Antioch School does,” he said. “The school respects the child and trusts childhood in a way that is becoming rare in education. And the school goes beyond what we normally think of as education and encourages the development of the whole child. It helps the children and their parents move toward wholeness.”

Wallis spent two years visiting the Antioch School several times a week, taking notes as he watched teachers interact with children and children interacting with each other. While he appreciated the Antioch School before, he came away from the experience with a heightened awareness of the school’s value, he said.

“What surprised me is that every child showed such great strength and capability and expressed their character in such a real and satisfying way,” he said. “We tend to think the school works for some but not others. But it works for everyone. Every child is being served by being there.”

Describing the Antioch School experience in a clear and understandable way proved challenging, Wallis said, until he decided to just let the kids do it themselves. So instead of trying to analyze the process, he decided to simply show it, and the book includes many anecdotes of the interactions he witnessed.

For instance, he writes about a girl learning to ride a unicycle, falling off over and over and doggedly persisting until she mastered the challenge; about Older Group students learning through their mistakes and explorations, and then helping each other, as they build model rockets; about children working together to create the school musical; and over and over, about children being real with each other as they sometimes painfully but always truthfully work through their relationships, with gentle guidance from the teachers.

In a story about the entire school working together in “intense water play” for several days after they created a dirt mountain, rivers, waterfalls and castles, Nursery School teacher Ann Guthrie described what she saw in a report to the school community, which is quoted in the book:

It was great fun; and it was an adventure in learning. Think of it. Every time they carried a bucket of water and released it in the sand, they were discovering and experiencing:

• Weight, mass, volume.
• Gravity, force, energy.
• The heft and liquid properties of water.
• How they could work as individuals, and how they could work in a group.
• How to wait for one another, and how to forge ahead on their own.
• Randomness and predictability.
• How subtle shifts create big changes.

Those weeks of play on Dirt Mountain make a good metaphor for learning. As they build and excavate, the children are analyzing, theorizing, making predictions, creating, correcting.

They are sometimes surprised by the unexpected; they are wondering, making connections, and starting all over again in a fugue of discovery. They are up to their elbows and knees in their work, which is their play, which is their work.

The anecdotes in the book capture over and over such moments of discovery, in which children learn, through creative play or focused study, about the world and each other. The book also includes interviews with the teachers, who attempt to put in words what they do every day.

The basis of everything, the teachers said in the book, is trust in the child.

The teachers “trust in the child’s ability to learn and to change and to grow,” kindergarten teacher Jeanie Felker says in the book. “Their perpetual forward movement as human beings. I really have trust in that.”

Central to that trust is the belief that children love to learn, and will enthusiastically embrace learning if supported in doing so and allowed to follow their interests, the teachers said. And part of that trust is that children will learn at their own pace, and in their own style, according to Older Group teacher Chris Powell.

When asked about the school’s curriculum, Wallis said, he responds that the Antioch School has 75 students, and thus 75 curriculums.

“The children are the curriculum,” he said.

Teaching at such a school places great demand on the teachers, Wallis said, but the teachers stay year after year. Currently, the four senior teachers, Felker, Powell, Guthrie and Younger Group teacher Kit Crawford, have all been at the school around 20 years, with the newest teacher, Brian Brogan, a five-year veteran.

“We stay because we never get it right,” Felker said in an interview. “This is the only school around that lets us explore teaching. There is no other place like it. I learned over and over again how unique each human being is and how important it is to honor that uniqueness. I stay here because I grow every year, every year get another layer of knowledge.”

What she has gained from her years at the school, Felker said, is “a lot of faith. I believe in human beings. I believe we’re wonderful creatures, full of potential if our strengths are supported.”

One of the oldest alternative schools in the country, the Antioch School was opened in 1921 by Antioch College President Arthur Morgan as a school for the children of college faculty. It later became independent, and the school’s “modern era” began in the early 1960s, when longtime teachers Bill Mullins and Bev Price began their tenures there, Wallis said. Until that time, school teachers had tended to be recent Antioch College graduates who moved on quickly, but Mullins and Price stayed for more than 30 years, and honed the school’s philosophy. Their influence continues to be felt, according to the current teachers, along with that of former teachers Pat Dell, Martie Jensen and Faith Patterson, among others.

The Antioch School teachers believe strongly that the school works for children, they said. They believe it because Antioch School graduates come back — during high school, after college, as adults — and tell them how much the school meant to them.

And they believe it, the teachers said, because, according to Chris Powell, “We see it work, over and over again.”

Contact: dchiddister@ysnews.com