When a new student joins The Open School virtual program they participate in two orientation sessions. The first session explains how things work in the virtual program; how to sign up for activities, how to participate in discussions, when and where to meet for School Meeting, etc. We refer to this first session of orientation as “what to do when everything goes right.”
The second session is all about what to do “when things go wrong.” We could start this session with a review of the rules and what happens when the rules are broken. We could also start this session by talking about all of the student’s rights and freedoms. After all, one of the defining characteristics of our school is our belief in the autonomy and personhood of students.
Instead, we begin by talking about the nature of the community that we want to create and maintain. The shorthand we use is “A Safe and Welcoming Community.” By this we mean that students should be free to be their true and authentic selves and still feel that they belong. In a safe community a student can participate without fear. In a welcoming community they can share their passions and interests, they can pursue their own goals and make their own choices and feel like they belong.
The various rights and rules can be seen as emerging from this description of our desired community. Freedom of speech and expression, the right to dissent or abstain comes from the desire for students to freely be themselves, to be welcome in the community as themselves. A safe community implies some necessary rules to preclude harassment, threats, bullying, coercion, and other behaviors that make a student feel unsafe.
This framing guides the activities of the Conflict Resolution Committee (CRC). Conflict in a community is to be expected. We know that mistakes and misunderstandings will happen. The job of the CRC is to try to help return our community to a safe and welcoming place. When a concern is raised, the CRC will do its best to understand what occurred and work with the parties to come up with a resolution plan that is in the interest of returning the community to a safe and welcoming place. It is not about applying rules and doling out punishments, it is about actively examining the impacts and consequences of behaviors and actions and finding ways forward to make amends, regain trust, and return the community to a better state.
In this regard, justice is not an empty concept. It has a telos, a purpose. Justice points us back to a safe and welcoming community. Granted, that purpose is aspirational and reaching it is often challenging. Safe and welcoming, as virtues, can come into conflict. Someone’s expression of their genuinely held beliefs could potentially make another student feel less than welcome. Someone’s fear of being perceived as hostile could temper their engagement. The CRC and the democratic process of School Meeting exist to try and resolve those conflicts to the best of our ability and to the satisfaction of the community. That isn’t always easy. Centering justice around being a community that is safe and welcoming at least gives us a guiding star to point towards.
Justice is not the only reason for this framing. It isn’t even the primary reason. Remember, session two of orientation is about “when things go wrong.” The first session or orientation covers “when things go right.” For things to go right, a safe and welcoming community is a necessary condition.
We are a school. We believe in self-directed learning which is built upon students having the autonomy to make choices about what they pursue. While having autonomy is empowering it can also be vulnerable. Learning, by its very nature, puts you in a vulnerable position. To learn is to start from not knowing, not being able to, not being good enough yet, or even being wrong. To learn is to change, to grow, to adapt, to become new. To be young is to not even know what you don’t know, yet. Compound this already vulnerable state with the responsibility for making your own choices.
To pursue self-directed learning a student needs to feel comfortable being their full self, pursuing their interests, following their curiosity, exploring widely, diving deeply, changing their mind, making mistakes, re-trying, experimenting, not knowing, asking questions, learning at their own pace, learning in manners that work for them, learning with other people, learning alone, self reflecting, being honest with themselves, not comparing themselves to others, following their passions, finding meaning for themselves. All of those things are normal and expected in our school. And all of those things require a level of vulnerability.
For a student to genuinely engage in self-directed learning, they must feel safe to be open and authentic. They must feel safe to make mistakes, safe to change their mind, safe to say I would rather not. Daring to be yourself requires a community that accepts you as a full and worthy person. It helps to be yourself if you have a community that is curious and interested in who you are and what you are like. Being yourself is not without risk. It requires a safe and welcoming community.
Truly orientating yourself to our school is not just about knowing the procedures and rules. It is about understanding the deeper values that make this community a place where you can follow your passions and invent your future.
