SUDBURY APPROACH >     Overview of Sudbury Education     Mission     The Role of Staff     Staff Members     Other Sudbury Schools

Overview of Sudbury Education

Personal Responsibility
You will find that Sudbury education at Blue Ridge Sudbury School is unlike other models of education in the level of responsibility given to our students. Students are encouraged to make choices, take action, and then to be responsible for the outcome of those actions. We do this because it works. When children are given full responsibility in a safe and thriving learning environment, extraordinary things occur: Students develop meaningful personal character traits and social etiquette; they acquire knowledge throughout their day that covers a broad range of subjects; they are willing to seek out an expert or resources needed to learn what is of interest to them; they learn that there are multiple approaches to problem solving; they learn that they are capable of accomplishing what they put their minds to.

Democratically Run School
The underlying point of Blue Ridge Sudbury School as a democratically run school is the assumption of equality and mutual respect among people. Blue Ridge Sudbury School as a Sudbury setting uses the democratic system to establish clear rules and due process, and to protect the rights of each individual within the school. Students attending Blue Ridge Sudbury School learn quickly that they are equal to fellow students and staff, and that they are responsible to contribute to the community in a way that does not infringe on anyone else's peaceable existence.

Blue Ridge Sudbury School: A Sudbury Model
The Basics of Education

Blue Ridge Sudbury School, founded in 2003 in Lynchburg, Virginia, provides a self-initiated learning environment for students ages five to nineteen, dedicated to the Sudbury philosophy of education. The adults and children together assume full responsibility for the implementation and care of the following basics of education:

1. Intellectual Creativity
2. Professional Excellence
3. Personal Responsibility
4. Social Toleration
5. Political Liberty

Why Do We Go To School?
INTELLECTUAL CREATIVITY

The process of learning at Blue Ridge Sudbury School is dynamic and can be observed and evaluated along four major categories:

• Development of Personal Character Traits. Independence, self-reliance, confidence, open mindedness, tolerance of differences, ability to concentrate, ability to focus, resilience in the face of adversity.
• Social Etiquette. Being at ease with people of all ages, backgrounds and types; consideration of other people's needs fostered by the judicial system; fundamental acceptance that others have rights, needs and domains of their own that have to be respected; being articulate; traits of openness and trust; basic friendliness and courtesy which pervades relationships at school.
• Acquisition of Knowledge. Substantive learning covers a broad spectrum of conventional and unconventional subjects and in intriguing and diverse ways. Reading, arithmetic, current events, domestic arts, writing, management, painting, music, psychology, construction, plumbing and electrical, money management, etc. These are but a small fraction of the subject matter that students engage.
• Methodology. The complex notion of what problem solving entails is an everyday feature of the school. Students are encouraged to make choices, take action, and then be responsible for the outcome of those actions. As a result, students begin to recognize multiple approaches to problem solving, both small and major, and that some paths are better than others. In addition, if a student wishes to learn something, he or she will find an expert or resources needed; the idea of learning is firmly established in the culture of the school.

Back to top.

How Do We Best Prepare Students for a Career?
PROFESSIONAL EXCELLENCE

The future belongs to people who can stretch their minds to handle, mold, shape, organize, play with new material, old material, new ideas, new facts, old facts.
Daniel Greenberg, Co-founder, Sudbury Valley School

One cannot help but come away with the feeling that these people are an interesting, thoughtful, articulate, and varied group, who lead purposeful lives filled with challenge, hard work, excitement, and meaning--and who are comfortable with themselves and with the rapidly changing world in which they live.
-The Pursuit of Happiness, p. 12; views on the alumni of Sudbury Valley School

Because of our commitment to Sudbury education, Blue Ridge Sudbury School holds confidence in our ability to prepare students for good careers beyond graduation. With nearly forty years of proven success·, the Sudbury model has prepared students for adulthood and to pursue careers that are vast and varied. Graduates of the Sudbury model have gone directly into fields of their choice, attended trade schools, or gone on to colleges in a wide range of areas. By no means exhaustive, this list of career areas gives only a glimpse of the diverse fields Sudbury model graduates have pursued beyond graduation:

• Accounting
• Forest Science
• Air Conditioning & Refrigeration
• Higher Education Administration
• Architecture
• International Relations
• Astronomy
• Law
• Ballet
• Maritime Law Enforcement
• Business
• Medicine
• Biological Sciences
• Photography
• Criminal Justice
• Physics
• Culinary
• Religious Studies
• Dress Making & Fashion Design
• Research Economics
• Economics
• Science and Automotive Technology
• Education
• Spa Sciences
• Electrical Engineering
• Television Broadcast
• EMT
• Theater

Back to top.

How Do We Produce "Good" People?
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

At Blue Ridge Sudbury School, students experience personal responsibility resulting from three great freedoms:

• Freedom of choice
• Freedom of action
• Freedom to bear the results of our actions

This is ever present amid daily interactions of the students and staff, within the judicial system and school meetings, and in the final year of schooling where a student must convince a committee of fellow peers that he or she is ready to be responsible to enter the adult community at large and graduate from the school.

Back to top.

What Is the Most Important Social Attribute?
SOCIAL TOLERATION

Blue Ridge Sudbury School creates a nurturing and caring environment in a unique and powerful way:

1. Ensuring justice and freedom within the school.
2. Complementing the child's family but never superseding it in importance.
3. Providing a democratic structure and respect for children's rights.
4. Giving children the freedom of how to spend their time, which allows children to explore and discover their inner selves.

The process of developing nurturing and caring qualities within a student can be identified in the following ways:

• Successful problem solving. Throughout the day, children will take a problem, think about it, analyze it, and somehow come up with a solution that is valid within his or her model of reality. Children are continually challenging their ability to interact with others, formulate plans of action if they are to spend time with differing people, and adjusting in accordance to the events that occur as a result of those interactions.
• Ability to deal with one's surroundings. Providing a free flow of interaction among people of different points along the maturation process, there will always be someone just a few steps ahead and a few steps behind. Children are learning from those ahead as well as refining their understanding of something just learned by explaining and re-explaining to someone else who is asking. Children develop comfort and confidence in knowing that they can both contribute to and learn from others.
• Noticeable lack of fixed cliques, preening, showing off and bullying. Once a child recognizes that he or she is among individuals of equal stature in both learning and contributing to his or her surroundings, the need to show off, bully, or depend upon the approval of a limited circle of friends seems to dissipate.

Back to top.

How Is Citizenship Fostered?
POLITICAL LIBERTY

As a Sudbury model school, Blue Ridge Sudbury School is democratically run, governed by clear rules and due process, and individual rights of every person are protected. The significant underlying point of the democracy at a Sudbury school is the assumption of equality and mutual respect among people. It is defined at our school by the following five factors:

• Political Neutrality. The idea that people of divergent political and social views can work together in a common enterprise where they have common goals other than politics.
• Existence of Rules of Order. The chief function is to protect all views and to give them as detached and thorough airing as possible. Rules constitute the main protection for reason, intellect, objectivity, and detachment in a group context, as opposed to feeling and emotion… because rules ritualize the equality of all views and all people.
• Rule of Law. The rule of law is generally acknowledged to be a cornerstone of orderly, organized society. In our school, laws are always promulgated in writing, and careful records are kept of the body of precedents surrounding each rule. There is a simple process for the adoption of new laws and repeal of old, obsolete laws—a democratic process accessible to all members of the community. There is no opening, however small, for arbitrary or capricious authority to step in.
• Universal Suffrage. This is the idea that everybody, every citizen, has a vote.
• Protecting the Rights of Individuals. This is not an absolute concept; it's a much more subtle one, that involves a great deal of judgment. Which rights, how far they go, where the boundary line is drawn between individual and community, these are all things that have to be decided and worried about day in, and day out, year in, year out… where the line is drawn between community interest and private interest is a matter of constant judgment.

  Back to top.