Longhouse School

by Lolita

My college mentor has my running permission to read and comment on my posts at the Longhouseschool.blog. I also email her additional short essays that explain our work more fully. In turn, she has given me permission to quote her emails to me as well as to paraphrase the one-on-one conversations we have.

She was very fascinated by my work on the Perimeter Forest and Sukhomslynsky’s description of outdoors education for little ones and its impact on health. She was also intrigued by Kitten’s Reddit post about our walk through the special trail at Letchworth Park constructed for people with autism.

Here are some of my mentor’s comments:

>I am *deeply moved* by how much your small group was *deeply moved*. How do we touch the hearts of children if we don’t first touch our own? I am especially drawn to Heidi’s decision to share her original music on the spot along the Autistic Nature Trail! It seems like she needed a special or magical trigger to release the music that was locked up tight inside of her. What type of power lies in woodlands? This particular woodland also carries within it the deep wounds of the Seneca nation whose people were driven out of their ancestral home. Add to that a carefully constructed pathway walked by so many people with autism. The questions alone fill me with wonder!

>But let’s go a bit deeper and ponder on the factor of time. She offered a song on a mythical Toad of Toad Hall from Kenneth Grahame children’s novel written in 1908. You do know that Letchworth State Park was opened just two years prior? This aligned closely with the end of the Victorian Era.

>George Bernard Shaw wrote his play Pygmalion in 1912. It was first produced in German in 1913, and, finally, on April 1914 English production in London. I believe, Ms. Goldstein-Thomas, you are familiar with the character Eliza Doolittle?

(Haha. In the prior school year my mentor knows I worked with a traveling company that put up productions of My Fair Lady along the Eastern US and I either played Eliza or coached talented students in the role.)

>By July, three months later, the two countries were at war and, within four years, some 38 million people had died. This horrific figure is multiplied more if one adds in the deaths from the resulting Spanish Flu, the excesses of the Russian Revolution, wars in the Balkans, genocides, and imperialistic wars.

>A place—even a spot—is influenced by time, nature, and history. Maybe that’s what unlocked Heidi’s heart. I certainly hope you can slow down time, observe carefully, and document this process.

I am even more excited. Many years ago, she shared, she was active in the formation of the [Albany Free School](https://thealbanyfreeschool.org). She asked me to study its philosophy, program, and history. One of its mottos is “leave no child inside.” That is very profound.

On another note, my mentor is familiar with the educational works of Makiguchi and Ikeda from when she worked with Guy who is a co-director the the school. Sukhomlynsky is new to her but she is reading along with me. She wants me to not get so “starstruck” with Sukhomlynsky that I forget about the Value-Creating Education ideas.

>From what I remember, Makiguchi was very concerned about the economy and efficiency of education. He suggested a half-day of academics to make time for community studies. He was critical of both traditional and progressive education as practiced at that time in Japan.

>Whether we like it or not, we live in a world of metrics. Even though Longhouse is a private religious school, you guys need to discuss metrics that assure parents and the curious public that kids are learning as well as–if not better than–their peers in other schools. You will certainly be under a microscope, especially, as I am reading,  the school is undertaking such big projects with the Town, District, and neighbors.

Hmmm. I think this is a major discussion. I imagine the first few days or weeks will involve a lot of “getting to know you” so the team will have some time to work this out.

One of the things that Sukhomlynsky did with his children was provide them all with pocket-sized sketchbooks to draw things that they observed on their long walks. (See pp. 62-63)

>My heart beat more strongly from a joyful discovery: creativity opens those secret corners of a child’s soul where kindly feelings lie dormant. In helping a child to feel the beauty of the surrounding world, a teacher unobtrusively releases those hidden springs from which humanity and kindness flow, washing away all the evil that is alien to a child’s nature.

That’s a powerful statement. Surely, we can get a quick Amazon delivery of such books and good pencils for little fingers. I’m imagining accompanying index cards so each child can build their own box of “sight vocabulary” words.

One day Sukhomlynsky’s children visited the local blacksmith and then drew pictures of what they had seen. He drew, too! But to his surprise, the students were far more interested in Larisa’s picture than his.

>My blacksmiths are wearing normal caps and aprons, with long beards and boots. But in [Larisa’s] picture, a halo of sparks blazes around the luxuriant hair on the heads of the mighty blacksmiths. And the beards are not just beards, but swirling fire. The huge hammers are almost twice the size of their heads.

>For a child this is not a departure from the truth but a most vivid representation of truth — of the truth about the fantastic strength and skill of humankind, and their fairytale connection with the element of fire. We should not try to make this wonderful language of children’s imaginations conform to our adult language. Let children speak to each other in their own language.

>I advised teachers of the primary classes: teach children the laws of proportion, perspective and proportionality — that is all right — but at the same time allow room for children’s imaginations; do not destroy children’s artistic language and their fairytale vision of the world….All the children wanted to talk about what they had drawn. In their accounts, bright images and similes sparkled like gemstones. Drawing helped children to develop their oral language.

>In the spring, several months after the life of our school began, I made a big album in which each child drew their favourite part of the surrounding world. I wrote little stories in that album. It constituted a whole page in the life and spiritual development of our class.

Here, in the form of sketchbooks and annotated albums, is an indication of the type of homegrown “metrics” we can construct for our school.