What if there were no grades in school?

At The Clearwater School, children are trusted with the freedom and responsibility to direct their own education. Without grades, groupings by age or mandatory tests, children engage wholeheartedly in their passions, and find their own standards of success. Students spend years setting and achieving their personal goals, becoming resourceful, self-confident and skilled adults with a commitment to their own success.

 
Post by David Linder, Clearwater parent

Imagine at the end of every day at work, your employer handed you a card with a list of everything you’d done wrong and everything you’d (in their eyes) done right. 

Every PowerPoint presentation greeted with a thumbs up or thumbs down. All your email corrected for perfect grammar and sent back to you.

In a very short time, you’d learn exactly what your employer wanted and what they didn’t want.  After a while, you might even be the perfect employee, knowing exactly how to please them. 

And then you change jobs. Or get a promotion. Or quit to start your own business. And all of a sudden, you have no idea what’s right – there are different people to please, different rules to follow. You find it impossible to improvise, to be flexible, to be creative. Without the immediate feedback, you’re stuck.

This is the environment we often put children in. We evaluate their homework, their tests, their attendance, their attentiveness--even their effort. 

Grades teach kids how to react to someone else’s judgment. In a typical school, we grade kids for almost 20 years.  Then we send them out in the world and complain that they don’t know what they are doing, that they aren’t independent enough.

David is the dad of three Clearwater students and co-owner of Sublime Media in Seattle. 

Clearwater Students Star in Professional Music Video

by Shawna Lee
photos by Matt Garrity

In January, Clearwater staff member Matt Garrity, also a musician and 17th Chapter front man, heard from friend and music producer, Christian Hansen, that he needed two young people  to perform in a professional music video for the London-based duo, Still Corners. Matt offered to find a boy and girl from The Clearwater School to be in the video. He asked Lily and Arlo, both 13 years old, who enthusiastically agreed. Matt took some photos of Arlo and Lily and sent them to the director who approved them for the project. The shoot was two days later on a school day.

 Lily with her fancy skates

Matt drove Arlo and Lily to the set (Skate King in Bellevue), where Christian Hansen, producer, director and camera man, introduced himself and the two members of Still Corners, songwriter Greg Hughes and vocalist Tessa Murray. Lily said, "When we went there, we didn't know whether we'd get a big part or a little part. We thought we might just be background. It was a huge surprise when I found out I was the star of the video."

Christian took Lily and Arlo over to the costumer who had them try on a variety of clothes. Arlo tried on a pair of pants and a few sweaters, before he was ready. Lily reported, "we brought a bag of clothes, but the costumer only had me use one thing of my own--my socks. I tried on a few things he brought that were so uncomfortable that I said I didn't want to wear them. It took about an hour to find something that worked. The clothes they put on Arlo looked better than the clothes he usually wears."

Lily and the costumer putting together her video wardrobe

Trust, Spirituality & Raising Kids - Public Conversation

The Clearwater School presents a free public presentation and discussion, "The Practice of Parenting: Trust, Spirituality and Raising Kids."

The presentation will be Saturday, April 13, 2013, 6-8pm, at Two Dog Yoga, 12549 28th Ave NE, Seattle, in the Lake City neighborhood.

In practices ranging from Christianity to Qigong, we work to stay present, are challenged to let go, strive to be compassionate. Trust plays a key role as we open to the situations our lives bring. By taking trust into the parenting relationship, we allow our kids the opportunity to know themselves deeply--thus engaging in their own spiritual journey.

This lively presentation and discussion features Martha Hurwitz (qigong instructor and Clearwater parent), Stephanie Sarantos (developmental psychologist and Clearwater staff member), and Benji Janapol (musician, poet and Clearwater student).

Join us and invite your friends, neighbors and coworkers to this fascinating conversation. For more information, email or call (425-489-2050) The Clearwater School.

Clearwater Profiles - Emma

by Shawna Lee, Clearwater staff member

Eighteen-year-old Emma is relatively new to The Clearwater School; she has attended since January 2012. Before that, she attended Woodinville High School. One day, in Emma's English class, her teacher talked about different educational philosophies, including Clearwater's Sudbury philosophy. [Her public school teacher was Christine Traxler, whose 9-year-old daughter has been a Clearwater student since she was three years old. Christine recently gave a presentation at a Clearwater public forum about why she chose Clearwater.]

Until Emma was 12 years old, she wanted to be a veterinarian. "One day when I was 13, I thought, 'who helps the people who help the animals?'" She decided she wanted to be a medical doctor. "Until a year ago, it was a big dream of mine. [My parents and I] looked at medical schools."

To achieve her career goals, Emma planned to attend an Ivy League college, but in public school "getting a 4.0 [GPA] was not happening." She believed she wouldn't be able to be a doctor because everyone told her she needed straight A's. "I forced myself not to want becoming a doctor. I know now that I could become a doctor, but I don't want a doctor's lifestyle."

When Emma first enrolled at Clearwater, she studied SAT test prep materials for two hours every day to improve her SAT score and prove to her parents that she would put her freedom and unscheduled time to good use. "I took the SAT once and didn't do well. I didn't study for it and didn't care. I've never been able to take a test well, because of nerves and worry. It's something I'll have to face."

Build it and they will come!

by Matt Garrity, staff member

Gregory demonstrates how to build a really tall tower during Clearwater's Play Group program. The part time program is designed for younger students and is a great introduction into the school environment.

Family Information Nights at Clearwater

If you're curious--or know people who are curious--about how Clearwater students learn anything and become confident, capable and skilled adults when they are free to decide how to spend their time at school, Family Information Nights are for you.

The Clearwater School has scheduled two Family Information Nights this spring.

• The first is this week: Wednesday, March 13, 2013, 6:00-8:00 PM.
• The second is Tuesday, April 23, 2013, 6:00-8:00 PM.

Both Information Nights are at our campus: 1510 196th St SE, Bothell WA 98012.

Family Information Nights are free and open to the public. They are wonderful opportunities to get a basic grounding in Clearwater's educational philosophy and practice. In addition, students, staff and parents will be available to answer questions, and to talk about why they chose The Clearwater School and how it has affected their perspectives on learning and their family relationships.

Parents, children, educators, and the curious are welcome. Light refreshments will be served. For more information, call 425-489-2050 or email.

What It’s Like To Be the Parent of a Kid Who Doesn’t Bring Home Report Cards

by Karen Hyams, Clearwater parent
[photos taken at The Clearwater School]

I’m the mom of a 17-year-old who has only taken two tests since first grade. When, at 15, he took a test to see if he could take freshman English at Cascadia College, I was as curious to see the results as he was; we had no past test-taking experience to compare. He might have done well, he might have done poorly--nothing would have surprised me. When he did well, it further bolstered my belief that you don’t need to spend years “practicing” test-taking.

From the Apgar score on, kids in our society are measured, compared, percentiled, assessed, and sorted so much that we parents seem to have become addicted to a constant stream of data. When my family decided to stop getting that information, to change to a school that didn’t test, the decision was easy, but living with it later wasn’t so simple.

Leaving testing and homework behind had an immediate impact on everyone in our family. Free from constant comparisons to friends in class, my child was able to be himself and not contend with any hierarchy in the classroom. He got goofier and much, much happier. A “no testing” culture meant no running through tedious exercises designed for the test, no sorting by ability to read, no fights about homework.

All of that was good for us, and there are too many other good things to list. What I didn’t expect was to panic a little without that steady stream of mostly meaningless information. I wondered, is he learning to read? How is he doing socially? His days were unreported, his highs and lows private. The only way I was going to find out how things were going was to talk to him.

I wish I could tell you that talking to him made me feel better, but it did not. He didn’t tell me any of the things I was hoping to hear, and I didn’t hear the meaning of all of the wonderful things he did tell me. It took a lot of practice for me to stop looking for those things we’ve decided kids need to know, and to see the things that had room to grow once they had the space. Once I really learned to see my child outside the context of measured education, I was able to hear his stories and see the growth they represented.

Ten years later I still talk to my son to see how things are going, but I don’t do it out of worry anymore. Even though he is of the age to start seriously thinking about college, I’m not concerned with his lack of a transcript—I’ve seen plenty of kids like him get into school and thrive, and then thrive after school as well. And if he decides not to go to college when he graduates, we’ll all be OK. I’ve learned to trust his instincts; I learned that by listening. A report card wouldn’t tell me half as much as he does. And I’m talking about a 17-year-old boy, one who isn’t very forthcoming. He’s the expert on himself; he’s the one who knows how he’s doing. Why would I trust a standard list of grades more than I trust him?