by Leif Glomset
March 19, 2022
Howdy all; I’m Leif Glomset. I taught in the Open Classroom from 1972-79, the first years. I’m looking forward to seeing so many of you in May. I thought I’d toss out a few random good memories from those years as we get ready for the celebration.
The first teaching team was Sandy, Judy, Beth, Mario and I. But Open was integrally much more than the teachers and students. It was an entire community of valley teachers, parents, their friends, and the kids. I remember interweaving of people and topics; it was a golden small town America where everyone chipped in their ideas and skills. Large circles of parents and staff met regularly in the evenings, discussing the philosophy of raising kids beyond simply memorizing facts, encouraging the “whole child”, from interpersonal relationships to community outreach, to substantive skills. It was a dedicated, excited time, and ideas flowed around the circle. I still see faces from those circles often when I’m in the valley, and I still relish living a lifetime with such idealistic folks. Also, on social media, I’ve linked up with many of the “kids” in those rooms, seeing their own children and now grandchildren and relishing their successes and families.
I remember morning circles, which were really short discussion groups, when the kids would share what was important to them, and listen and respond respectfully to one another, while we planned the day.
I remember camping trips to Yosemite, sitting around campfires with the kids, and after their bedtime, continuing with the parents. Parents would take small groups on day hikes, focusing discussion along the trail on their main interests…nature, plants, animals, geology, history, integrating several subjects along with physical exercise, knowing that learning is often enhanced by movement. I recall day hiking from Glacier Point to the Valley, dropping 4,000 feet over perhaps ten miles. We were showered by mist from Nevada Falls along the way, and dropped, exhausted, into the fire circle when we returned. We could not have done these trips without such parental involvement. I think the ratio of adults to kids was 1:3 or 4 at every point during the days, so every kid received focus and care.
I remember Integrating many subjects into a weeks’ long study of the gold rush; science, math, history, geology, reading etc. were wrapped together, painting rocks gold and creating a miniature economy based on their value, buying and selling, keeping ledgers and records, searching for gold, building a small town in the wilderness.
Or paving an entire wall of the classroom with butcher paper, and painting gigantic planets and stars while studying the solar system; lighting a basketball with a flashlight in the darkened windowless center of the pod, and kids walking around, orbiting the basketball with peaches and oranges and peas, all lit by the flashlight beams, illustrating phases and gravity and distance and size; then carrying the peaches and peas out onto the property, trying to get far enough apart to imagine the huge expanses in our tiny solar system amongst our galaxy of stars.
I remember parents leading art projects… jewelry and painting and clay. I remember them leading small cooking groups and sports groups, and sitting quietly with children doing math and reading at their own pace, one-on-one. In every corner around the pod were parents engaged. Singing groups and plays led by parents were capped by elaborate celebrations.
In the evening parent circles, parents volunteered their expertise to set up such groups enriching what we teachers would have provided by ourselves in a traditional closed classroom of thirty.
The parents imagined and detailed the play structures outdoors, and came in on the weekends to make building the structures inexpensive, and further bonding together the valley community.
Words from that time that come to mind are respect and community. Teachers, parents, and students exchanged respect for one another’s talents, interests, and potentials. We did it together as a community. I was super pleased last week to run into one of those early students who grew up a lawyer, and now owns the valley’s favorite restaurant. I keep up on social media with a school administrator, a grandmother living in the same house she was born in, several who remain engaged with music, in real estate on the other coast, in loving their horses, each in varied lives, but each of us invisibly bound to that little valley and that little school and that Open Classroom.
See you in May.