The student must see everything for themselves, compare and compare, and always respond to a three-part question: What do you see? What do you think about it? What do you make of it? And so on, to infinity. But that infinity is no longer the master’s secret; it is the student’s journey.
~Rancière
Somewhere on the South Side of Chicago last summer–in one of that city’s many adorable neighborhood parks–one of us was talking about democratic institutions with his friend, a nurse. This was a subject the editor and the nurse talked about often enough, but that day the topic had an unusual concreteness, a special frisson. They were both buzzing with energy from having, just the previous weekend, participated in the first-ever Dual Power Gathering, a large-scale unconference where libertarian socialists from across North America met to regroup after the rollercoaster that was the Floyd Uprising and the social movement recession caused by the pandemic. Organizers from the Symbiosis Federation, the DSA’s Libertarian Socialist Caucus, the Sunrise Movement, and other groups – as well as plenty of enthusiastic amateurs and first-time activists – set up camp in the Indiana Dunes to give workshops, speeches, skill-shares, report-backs, and strategy sessions on what it would take to build dual power and kick the anti-authoritarian Left into high gear.1For a more detailed sense of the difficult conjuncture the libertarian socialist movement finds itself in at the moment – not to mention a definition of what libertarian socialism is! – see our editorial “Socialism with an Anarchist Squint” in Strange Matters Issue One (Summer 2022). –Eds. Many people had presented on incredibly ambitious and successful local projects, which others took notes on how to reproduce in their home context.2Keep on the lookout for a detailed report on the proceedings of the first DPG, forthcoming (hopefully) sometime in the lead-up to the second. Apologies for not getting it out sooner! –Eds., specifically JMC Hence the conversation involved comparing their notes, trading contact info, and figuring out what new projects could emerge from what they’d learned.
After a long afternoon of aimless walking they’d settled on a concrete bench in the shade. The editor was fretting about something or other – gushing about the DPG’s remarkable self-organization, probably, or else moaning about how other anarchists don’t take institution-building seriously. But the nurse (free-associating, perhaps, from the sight of some kids jumping around on the playground in front of them) suddenly cut him off to say, “What about schools? People don’t think enough about building radically democratic schools. But it’s the perfect dual power institution, isn’t it?”
“Sure. Direct worker control of real resources, meets basic needs, organizes the community, prefigures socialism, yadda yadda. Only one problem: it’s too damned expensive. You’d need an Engels to be your patron”
“Nah, I don’t think so. My kids go to this anarchist school in Hyde Park and I’ve seen the budget – no red millionaires there – but they get by just fine.”
“What?” Somehow, it had never come up that the nurse’s two kids were both already enrolled in one of the more exciting dual power projects in the Midwest. From there, the best course of action was clear. Many emails, schedulings, reschedulings, and months later, this conversation was the result.
The Chicago Free School is currently housed in the old school building of the KAM Isaiah Israel Congregation, a Reform Jewish synagogue on the South Side. Depending on who you ask it could be said to be near Hyde Park but not quite in it – it’s right on the border with Kenwood, just a few blocks away from the mansions of various Chicago luminaries (including, amusingly, the Obamas). Sometimes, this proves a problem; the nurse reports that on occasion barriers on the street erected to protect VIPs can make parents late in dropping off their children in the morning.
CFS is an experiment in non-hierarchical education. Right now the project is still small. But its 63 students, half-dozen or so staff, and volunteer School Board of parents and community members have set off on a voyage of cooperative self-determination, where the entire school (from its curriculum to its daily activities to its budget) is self-managed through a multifaceted democratic process. CFS serves students aged from pre-kindergarten to eighth grade in public school years – but students are sorted into mixed-age cohorts where younger and older mingle, much as kids would in a neighborhood or extended family. Classes requiring a certain skill level sort students not by age but ability. There are standard classes on reading and math, but also independent projects, play spaces, group assemblies, and even classes designed (or led!) by students themselves. More often than not learning is hands-on, involving field trips to some exciting spot in the city or playing around with the fab equipment in the school’s own Maker Lab. And the kids themselves are utterly remarkable: they design entire curricula, tutor and otherwise help one another, resolve grievances through a sort of transformative justice process, make art or engineering marvels using 3D printers, pursue niche interests – but above all, they are empowered to make real decisions about what they’re going to do, both as individuals and as a collective organized into deliberative assemblies.
As a private school with no state subsidies, the Free School has to charge tuition. But it does so on a sliding scale, where the more well-off families effectively subsidize the poorer ones. As a result, despite financial limitations, CFS has managed to attract a student body truly representative of the South Side: a mix of working-class and middle-class kids, a majority of whom are people of color. Most of its students have gone on to excel in more conventional school environments, with many going to college. And remarkably, it isn’t just teaching kids academics – it’s training them in how to govern themselves in an autonomous community, so they can experience what it’s like to be free human beings.
So basically, libertarian socialism – though not officially. The point of the school is pretty clearly not to propagandize the children (indeed, quite the opposite); parents come from a number of political backgrounds; and the emphasis is on students’ individual journeys in learning. But this sort of institution has deep roots in radical social movements of the last two centuries. CFS models itself explicitly off the Free School movement of the 1960s, which was very closely tied to hippie culture, philosophical critiques of industrial authoritarianism, and the New Left. And this movement in turn was directly inspired by the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire, the Brazilian libertarian Marxist whose rural schools used highly egalitarian methods; as well as the Modern School movement of Francisco Ferrer, a late nineteenth-century Spanish anarchist who was executed for daring to teach boys and girls together in secular and self-directed classes.3The two libertarian socialist theorists mentioned above both left behind excellent books summarizing their pedagogical theory and praxis, namely Ferrer’s The Origins and Ideals of the Modern School (1913) and Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970). For a history and memoir of the free school movement in the later twentieth century, see Astra Taylor, “Unschooling” in n+1 Issue 13 (Winter 2012). –Eds. While such projects can on the surface appear apolitical, appearances can be deceiving. Libertarian socialists can’t underestimate the impact of turning a school into a small version of the society we wish to create, placing its real resources directly in the hands of its community. This is precisely how people learn how to live without rulers. One need only look to the example of the CNT-FAI, whose network of free schools played a massive role in growing the mass movement that eventually produced the Spanish Revolution.4Gaston Leval, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution (PM Press edition, 2018). –Eds.
Two Strange Matters editors were eventually able to sit down over Zoom with two teachers at the Free School for a detailed conversation. Lauren Beitler, who teaches the fourth/fifth graders and attended a democratic school herself as a child, played a leading role in starting the CFS in the first place and provided many insights into its institutional history. Ephran Ramirez teaches the 6th/7th/8th graders and helps run the Maker Lab; a lifelong Chicagoan, he is also an avowed anarchist who participated in a number of social movements at the turn of the century and is eloquent about how he brings this perspective into his pedagogy. Readers are sure to be delighted by the blunt, honest, realistic, and irreverent way in which Beitler & Ramirez discuss the practicalities of running an egalitarian educational institution today. But we also hope that the knowledge and wisdom they shared with us can serve as a blueprint – or failing that, inspiration – for those interested in starting a free school themselves.
~
INTERVIEWER
What got you interested in education and why did you start the Chicago Free School?
LAUREN BEITLER
I moved to Chicago because I wanted to become a scientist. During college, I taught math to middle schoolers, and it was math that was kind of outside of the traditional curriculum. I decided that that was a lot more fun than the sort of monastic life of science.
So I pivoted toward wanting to become a teacher. And, you know, I attended a democratic school as a child – the school that I attended is called St. Paul Open School, which was founded in the early 1970s as part of this wave of alternative schools that were more democratic and more student centered.
I loved school as a kid. School, for me, was a place where I got to learn things that I wanted to learn about, I really felt like it was something that was for me, and not just something that adults tell you what to do. I think a lot of kids have a feeling and experience of school where the adult tells you what to do and either you do it, or you don’t do it. And that’s the control that you have. Just whether or not to participate. I had a really different experience at school, namely that I really felt like it was something I was doing for myself. And so I really wanted my students to have that experience as well.
But teaching in the traditional system did not accommodate that. I was really idealistic about it, and I wanted to be one of those people who’s changing the system from within; however, I started to feel like that was an impossible task, at least for me personally. I still have friends who teach in public school, and I admire their commitment, but I wasn’t able to do it in a way that aligned with my values.
So I felt like I needed to make a really big change, or get out. I met someone from the Free School in Albany, New York, which was also founded in the early 1970s.5According to Wikipedia, the Albany Free School was a direct inspiration for the Brooklyn Free School – socialists in NYC are likely to be familiar with the latter, as it was a frequent host of DSA events in the heady days after the Trump Bump. –Eds. And he gave a presentation about their school. It was like a real “Oh, that I need to get back to this kind of teaching and learning” [moment]. It was an “Aha!” moment for me.
So in 2012 I quit my job. And I moved to Albany, New York. And I worked as an unpaid intern for 10 months. And I lived in this apartment that the school owned, which was not a great living situation. But it was a great working situation. I really, really enjoyed working there. They had a wonderful lunch program where the kids helped cook. And they often were cooking things that they had grown in their garden. The kids were very self-sufficient, which was in total contrast to what I had been experiencing as a teacher in traditional schools. I just learned so much about that. And it really changed me as a teacher.
So I didn’t want to continue to live in Albany, and I came back here. I started getting together with people who were also just keen on this model. Other teachers, parents, people in the neighborhood. I spent a whole year just organizing full-time. I started telling people that we were going to open in the Fall of 2014. I didn’t know if that was true when I started to say it. But I believed we could do it. I felt like if you tell people “Oh, we’re maybe going to open someday and you maybe are going to have a school to send your kids to”, that’s not very appealing! So I decided we just needed to pick a day and go for it. And so that’s what we did. It was like a full commitment.
INTERVIEWER
We at Strange Matters know a lot about those missed deadlines [laughs nervously].
BEITLER
It had its real drawbacks, because we were originally slated to be in this church – that didn’t work out because of the fire code. And I can get more into the sort of very practical headaches that come along with stuff like this if you’re interested. But it turned out that getting open on that day was a real struggle. But we did it. And here we are in our ninth year.
EPHRAN RAMIREZ
My name is Ephran Ramirez Jr. I was born and raised here in Chicago – and I was a public school kid.
When I first went to college, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. So I was actually studying audio acoustics and sound engineering. I found it very boring, but met some cool people through it. So I stopped going.
Instead I started doing anarchist activist work and traveling and stuff. And I can’t remember the year but I think it was in the mid 2000s when I went to DC and there was this National Conference on Organized Resistance6It would’ve had to have been sometime between 1997 and 2008, since those were the years during which NCORs were held according to their old website. They were conferences dedicated to skillshares, workshops, report-backs, and presentations for a broad spectrum of participants in left-wing social movements. NCOR made a point of being “nonsectarian” but seems to have had close ties with various anarchistic/alter-globalization direct-action movements, the Institute for Anarchist Studies, and the International Socialist Organization or ISO (a defunct Trotskyist sect that used to own Haymarket Books). –Eds. – the Albany Free School was there. The kids gave a presentation. And I remember being struck by just how mature and well spoken they were; but at the same time, they were like not like brainwashed kids that had no, you know, childhood to speak of. And I thought that was really cool.
And a few years later, you know, I decided that I wanted to teach. And I thought, “Oh, Chicago could use a free school”. And it’s really funny, because, you know, like, I didn’t realize that somebody else was going to be starting one. So I actually started studying, teaching here with the intent of hopefully creating a free school. And after a few years of learning to be a teacher in the traditional, maybe slightly progressive way, that vision started to slowly kind of slip away from me.
I actually ended up teaching informally for the Chicago Public Library for an after-school program for both middle school and high school students. And you know, it was really cool because there’s a lot of freedom and choice and spirit there. With that and through that, I was involved in a few grant projects that were about assessing learning in formal and in Maker Lab type environments. And I also made a lot of connections to people for museums and stuff like that. And, you know, in the back of my head, I was always like, “Ah, I would like to teach in a school someday, but you know, this is cool for now.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic started, all the teachers and mentors were laid off from the library. And so I was suddenly in this place where I was trying to figure out what I was going to do. And I was looking for a job and somebody suggested Chicago Free School. And I was like, “What? There’s a free school in Chicago? When did that happen?” So that’s when I met Lauren. And they hired me as the middle school teacher. And that was like, three years ago. And yeah, it’s been awesome. Like, I’m really thankful that Lauren actually started a free school here. And I’m also really thankful that somehow our paths converged.
INTERVIEWER
That’s really wonderful. I love stories like these – it’s funny the weird paths that life takes.
So I actually do want to follow up on something that Lauren said, but it’s a question for both of you. One thing that I was immediately curious about is what tradition or traditions your free school sees itself as a part of because there’s a lot of different sorts of models for democratic schooling. Like, you know, there was Francisco Ferrer, in Spain at the turn of the last century, who came up with a notion of free or modern schools, there’s Paulo Freire in Brazil, who has notions of radical pedagogy that are also radically democratic. And then there was this movement in the 60s and 70s, that was sort of a neo free school movement in the United States, sort of like the New Left, 60s social movement type stuff. Do you see the Chicago Free School having any direct line of descent from these movements? And in general, what teaching theories and stuff that y’all draw upon?
BEITLER
If you don’t mind me rephrasing the question, I think it would be especially interesting if Ephran talked about the work that he does with the kids in the Maker Lab, and where your sort of pedagogical philosophy for that comes from.
RAMIREZ
For me, I kind of take inspiration from a lot of different places and put them together. I think it’s very similar to how I view my general anarchist ideals. I don’t subscribe to a specific type of anarchism, right? I’m just like an anarchist. And if I feel like my perspective on something has changed, then that influences my anarchist ideals as a whole. And it’s the same way with teaching.
You know, I borrow here and there from all over the place. But I really believe that giving kids choice, and giving them the tools that they need to make those choices is really important. Because when you give them ownership of their own education, it sticks with them – it’s not something someone else is telling them to do. They’re not having to do all these things that other people expect them to do without their own personal choice. These are things that they have a say over, and so it’s theirs. And that’s the Maker Lab that we have in the school – it runs like that.
For instance, I have a whole closet that is just bins of random stuff from different places. Like, corks and plastic bottle caps and paper straws – just weird odds and ends from discarded board games and stuff like that. And then we have a 3D printer and a vinyl cutter for making vinyl decals and an embroidery machine and a sewing machine.
And so what I do is I train them to use those things, and then they’re able to train their friends once they’re skilled enough at it themselves. We use this system that I helped develop with the Museum of Science and Industry for keeping track of their progress. It’s similar to how a black belt system works in karate: there are different activities that they can choose to fall into, at different difficulty levels, and they can work their way up to getting essentially a black belt in a certain skill. And at that point, they’re able to fully take on the role of teaching somebody else how to do it.7Several of us, discussing this comment by Ephran, couldn’t help but notice that it bears a remarkable similarity to another historical training method: the guild system. A model like this has potentially interesting applications beyond the educational sector. One editor in particular has a very strong opinion that learning on the job from a formalized system of training and advancement ought at the very least to be an acceptable alternative to standardized tests, credentials, and certifications in making a candidate qualified for a particular position. –Eds.
I think it’s really cool, because a lot of times during our Maker Lab, I don’t really have to do much – if a kid has a question, I can just refer them to another one of their classmates. And, you know, they teach each other. And they make these really amazing projects. They’re always blowing my mind with ideas that they have and the things that they create. And of course, that translates to other things that we do in school, too.
INTERVIEWER
That’s all awesome. I want to hear more about a lot of those. But before we dig into those specifics, Lauren, did you have anything you want to add on pedagogical theories or principles that inspire you?
BEITLER
Yeah. For me, the most important thing is always that the kids are the decision makers. They’re the learners.
And that might sound kind of obvious – like, you can’t learn for someone else. But actually, if you think about the way that our school system is structured in a traditional school, it’s all about the teacher trying to do the work of learning for the child. But really, the child has to do that work for themselves. They’re the one who’s got to take the initiative. And they’re the one whose brain is sort of actively making connections between different ideas. So that should show up in how school is structured, right? They should be given lots of opportunities to take initiative in their learning, and they should be given lots of opportunities to make connections and to think about things in lots of different ways. So that’s essentially the first and foremost philosophy that we draw from. We call it being “child-centered”. There are a bunch of different philosophies that do that in different ways.
So on the more philosophical side: there’s radical pedagogy, which is just a great thing to learn more about as a teacher. On maybe the more practical side, in terms of things that I draw from in my pedagogy, the Reggio Emilia movement, which brings with it this idea of an “emergent curriculum” that’s based on the child’s questions and interests; and Montessori, which brings some great ideas about the way that kids can be self-directed so that they can learn from materials in their environment, from their own thought processes, rather than all learning having to be given to them by the teacher.
We do a lot of project-based learning, the way that Ephran was describing it. And I think in some contexts, project-based learning just means projects that the teacher comes up with. One of the things I love about our school is that there is room for the teacher to be excited about things and come up with important things that they think it would be great for kids to learn. But then there’s also so much space given to the projects that the kids want to do and their ideas and just however they kind of see fit to fill their time. And so I think our curriculum is kind of like a partnership or a conversation between the adults and the kids. Does that answer your question?
INTERVIEWER
It answers my question perfectly. This is really great. Maybe the best way of getting into some of the nitty gritty of it all might be if one or both of you could give an overall sense of what the Chicago Free School is as a structure and how it works? Both in the sense of how it’s similar to a typical public school or private school, and how it’s different. How does democracy shake out in the way things work day-to-day?
BEITLER
So we’re like a traditional school in a sense that kids come every day from 8:30 to 3:15 – and our building looks maybe more traditional than I wish it did in the sense that we have these, unfortunately squarish-looking kind of classrooms. (I often dream about what the building would look like if I got to design it from scratch. But of course, we don’t have that kind of money.)
We have people who we call “teachers”. I know in some democratic schools, they give the teachers other titles, but in our school we call ourselves teachers. There’s more students than there are adults. So I guess that’s another thing that we have in common with a more traditional environment. However, the ratio is lower: my home group of students is only 16 kids, and Ephran’s is 12. So we definitely have more of an opportunity for personal connection. And many more times the kids are interacting with peers of different ages. And so in that sense, there is more of an extended family kind of feeling.
We do spend time on some of the subjects that you would see in a traditional school like math, reading, writing – those show up in lots of different ways in our school. Sometimes they show up, you know, in a totally recognizable way that you would see in a traditional school. But other times they show up in projects that the kids have conceived of, or elective classes that they’ve suggested or that they might even co-teach. So I would say our curriculum is a lot more flexible and dynamic than a traditional school could ever accommodate. I can also say more about the democracy in the school, If you’re curious about that.
INTERVIEWER
Yes, I definitely am. Let’s talk about that in a little bit, when we get into questions of administration.
So how do the classes fit together, though? Can you give me a picture of it? Because some free schools are way less structured than others. What is a typical student’s day like?
RAMIREZ
I can describe a typical day to you in our middle school. The students will arrive at the school, and they will go to Lauren’s class. And we have a cohort in my class and Lauren’s class, which means that it will be fourth through eighth grade together. They’ll have a free choice project time where they can work on their projects of their choice or other activities together. And that could be anything from making stuff, or coding, or playing chess with each other. (Chess is a huge thing with our kids.) After free choice time, my students come to our classroom. Just before that, I’m in the middle of my planning break for the day. So I get to prepare.
When they come in, we do an “advisory”. Advisory is usually a time to discuss current events, hold a social or emotional learning exercise, or have something like a cultural heritage event. This month is Black History Month. In general, we try to give a broader, more holistic experience, and each grade level usually works on something slightly different. Sometimes it’s focusing on a specific type of art. Black artists, maybe in Chicago. Sometimes it’s music, sometimes they’re looking at specific historical figures. The whole month was focused on Black cultural contributions to American culture – which is huge, since there’s really not any modern form of American music, for example, that has not been influenced by Black people. So we collectively learned about that last year. This year, we’re looking at predominantly Black neighborhoods and systems of institutionalized racism, and historical policies. But we’re not just focusing on negatives, we’re also focusing on what those communities have already. And also, like next week is going to be the last week of it. So they are going to be envisioning as city planners, and adding to their neighborhoods, and thinking about what makes a neighborhood healthy. And what does this community need? So they’ve already created these huge maps that take up the whole table, the community that they’ve been plotting existing resources in, and they’ll be working from there. That’s what we’re doing in the morning advisory during our advisory time.
Sometimes there are interdisciplinary things which tie into the next chunk of time or next two chunks of time [in the school day].
But the next chunk of time we work on is literacy. So depending on the day, it could be a free choice thing like silent reading, or creative writing. It is their choice. Sometimes we’re doing a class reading aloud together. Sometimes they’re working on very specific projects, maybe a passion project, with each researching something they’re really interested in that they could teach to the rest of the class.
And then after that, we do mathematics. They’re split into groups based on their current skill set.
Then they have lunch, and it’s the cohort together again – and as the cohort, they move on from lunch to recess. That’s when the first through third graders join us. It’s a large group with a wide range of ages. They get to choose between spending time outside, or inside at the Maker Lab. One day a week, we do board games instead of the Maker Lab, to give them some other experiences and activities to do.
Then after that, we do the electives, which are usually things that the students come up with themselves.
Finally, they will work together to clean up the classroom, taking on different roles in the cleaning – once the work is done, they are dismissed. I should also mention that on Fridays, we generally go on field trips. We don’t do a field trip every Friday because that would be next to impossible. But we aim to have a lot of field trips so they can get out in the city. There are also special school-wide events. Tomorrow is our school’s talent show, for example. So yeah, that’s generally what it would look like to be a middle school student.
BEITLER
I would say we’re not one of the least structured – in the sense that, you know, there are free schools out there who have a rule that every element of the curriculum has to come from the kids, that the adults actually aren’t even allowed to suggest anything because of their belief is that this limits the kids’ initiative. And I mean, I definitely have a certain amount of respect for that. But I would describe our school as a little bit more of a conversation or a partnership. So as an adult, I do get to have ideas for things that I think are important for us to learn about. And then I am also really keeping my ears open for what the kids are excited about, and trying to either help them make that happen – or oftentimes, just let them do it.
So there’s always a mix of things that are happening with a group of people all together, whether it is a class of students together, or other things that are happening just like one kid doing their own thing; or still other things that are like maybe a small group. So at different times of the day, you would see different sorts of configurations of people.
INTERVIEWER
Got it. Can you tell me more about the designated time slot where kids have their independent projects?
BEITLER
There are a few time slots throughout the day where that’s happening. So when they first come in the morning, there’s a significant chunk of time that we start our day with that’s independent. And then in the context of our more traditional subject time, there’s also time when they’re working independently on self-chosen stuff. And then after lunch, they have a long stretch of time where they can choose to be outside for an extended period of time or to go to the Maker Lab with a friend. And that’s very much a sort of individually structured time. Our last hour of the day is a little bit more formal, but it’s still very kid-driven, which are the elective classes. Every month or so, we switch up what’s on offer, and the kids get to choose which one they want to do. And some of those are things that they have requested. For example, the kids have been really gung-ho about soccer lately. And one of our volunteers used to coach high school soccer. So I recruited her to teach soccer as an elective. That’s going to start up next week. And this type of thing happens a lot – where the kids have things that they really want to as a more formally structured class, so we put that into elective time.
INTERVIEWER
That’s wonderful. You mentioned they’re grouped into cohorts – like grades?
BEITLER
We spend a good chunk of our day with a mix of ages, though there is still some age-segregation. So for example, there’s a first-, second-, and third-grade group. There’s a fourth- and fifth-grade group, which is my home group. And then there’s a different middle school group. But then, there are lots of times a day when people are more intermingled.
INTERVIEWER
How many students overall?
BEITLER
63.
INTERVIEWER
63, okay. And in the end, the grades go from…you mentioned, like, elementary school through middle school right?
BEITLER
They range in age from three year olds up to eighth-graders.
INTERVIEWER
What do you think the effects of the mixed ages are? Because it runs counter to one of the most characteristic elements of a typical public school system, where you’re only ever with people in your own narrow age group.
RAMIREZ
First off, kids are all at different stages of learning, different subjects and things that they can learn. Every kid is unique in the amount of skill that they have in each area. Public schools are designed in this very industrial way, where kids move up by rank based on age and it doesn’t necessarily reflect their different abilities in math and reading and writing. It’s different for each kid. I think having the mix of ages makes it so there’s less pressure to feel like, “Oh, I need to be this good at math when I’m this old, because everyone else around me is.” That pressure is eased a little bit. And we’re able to group kids together based on ability instead of by age.
It’s a little bit more natural and organic – kids don’t normally only hang out with kids that are their age. At our school kids are able to hang out with a bunch of other kids that may be close to their age, but aren’t quite the same. With my kids I’ve got sixth, seventh and eighth grade, and some of the [older] kids are really, really good with our youngest kids – the pre-K and kindergarten ones, who are right across the hallway. So there’s that chance for them to go across the hallway and practice their responsibility [skills] and take care of the little ones or act as role models, when they’re all together in a Maker Lab or in an elective or something. They can support each other.
INTERVIEWER
Yes, that leads me to another question. This is the second time that you’ve mentioned the kids helping out with each other. So in this context, it was the older kids helping out with the younger kids. In the Maker Lab context, you’d mentioned kids who had been trained up in the system, like reaching the black belt level and teaching the white belt level, stuff like that. Can you just tell me more about how – well, across the school it seems like the kids are participating in helping to teach the other students, right? I’m curious how that works, both in a formal sense and also informally in school culture.
BEITLER
I would say it’s pretty spontaneous. We don’t have an official tutoring or mentorship program – it’s just happening around us all the time. I think kids are naturally so compassionate, they love to help and lead each other. That makes them feel good about themselves too. And it’s really only when you spend time in an environment like this and see it happening all the time that you realize how much it is limited and prevented in a traditional system. Because when I first went to the Free School in Albany, it seemed really remarkable to me how helpful the children were to one another. And now it doesn’t seem remarkable at all, it just seems like that’s just how kids are.
My favorite example of kids as teachers was the student that came to me one day (a fourth-grader) – and she said, “Miss Lauren, I’m going to teach an elective, and you’re going to teach it with me.” And I said, “Okay, great. What is it?” And she said, “It’s called the All About Africa class.” Wow! This was a student who was born in Sierra Leone, but she wanted to learn more about other countries in Africa.
And so she and I sat down together and figured out how the class was going to be structured. The way that we ended up doing it was that each week we would pretend to visit another country and learn about people, their music, culture history, learn about all the different places. She was also really excited about cooking the different cuisines, which I didn’t know how to do. And so of course, I had to learn with her. That class turned out to be extremely popular – so much so that we offered it again the next year, and again after that. And that was just all her idea! Oh, so cool.
RAMIREZ
This year several of my electives have been co-facilitated by students. There was one on insects and another on cooperative tabletop gaming. It can be pretty spontaneous in the middle of class. Kids will often bring up what they’ve learned and then they’ll end up teaching the rest of the class about something related to what we’re studying.
Learning works in a lot of different ways. And teaching can, too. Sometimes it’s just about sharing unique experiences. Right now we’re looking at different predominantly black neighborhoods in Chicago – the history of redlining here and racially restrictive housing covenants and institutionalized racism. These policies have stuck a lot of these communities in these cycles of poverty for generations. Kids will talk about their own neighborhoods and their own experiences, [and out of that same process] they’re also teaching each other.
INTERVIEWER
What grade levels will they be dealing with those subjects?
RAMIREZ
Middle school: sixth, seventh and eighth grade.
INTERVIEWER
That’s really cool, and intense – definitely very different from the civics classes that I got at the same age.
INTERVIEWER
So interesting. You know, both those stories make me think of a few questions about student demographics. I’ll ask them rapid-fire, if you don’t mind:
Chicago is a very racially diverse city. What is the proportion of students of color in the school, as opposed to white students? What is the gender ratio?
What is the typical class position (in terms of income levels of the families) of the students?
How do these things affect the independence of the students while they’re at school?
Because it sounds to my ear like there’s a lot of working-class kids of color, and that the participatory elements of the school are in some ways kind of taking in knowledge from them as much as, like, putting knowledge in their heads. But I’m curious about whether that intuition is right.
BEITLER
I think the intuition is correct.
But I think on the other hand, like, let’s be real: we’re a private school and we charge tuition. So I would say that we’re a lot more socioeconomically diverse than other private schools, because our tuition is on a sliding scale based on family income. But that doesn’t mean that we are serving the same percentage of low income students that the public schools are.
In my ideal world, it would really be free. I think when we first started out, we sort of considered the possibility of working within the state system of Illinois, which has some authorization for charter schools funded by taxpayer money. And what we found was that even that still comes with the requirement of performing in a certain way on these standardized tests. And so then everything you want to do about having the curriculum be child-centered becomes impossible. So I think this is a place that many organizations find themselves in: namely, trying to navigate where resources are available versus where your ideals lie.
Anyway, that was a tangent. The racial composition of the school: it’s about 60% students of color. I would say that’s a bit higher than the neighborhood that we’re located in. But the neighborhoods that surround our school’s are all predominantly Black. And so our students come from the neighborhood that our school is located in, and then also from the neighborhoods in our vicinity a little farther away.
INTERVIEWER
Given the limitations that you mentioned, that percentage is impressive.
Ephran: You mentioned earlier that the kids from the Albany Free School at the conference you attended were very eloquent and mature for their age, but they also didn’t seem brainwashed, and that they seemed like they had independence and a real childhood. Could elaborate on what you meant by that impression, and whether you’ve found the same thing in your students? What does that mean in terms of how you think the school contributes to this model of the free, democratic school?
RAMIREZ
Well, I think that in general our society as a whole does not view children as being able to understand and process the world around them as much as adults. And they’re also usually not given as much of a voice to speak on those things. Because of that, there’s this idea that until somebody’s an adult they’re not going to be able to fully participate in the conversation.
I think the fact that these models of schools are giving children a voice and a choice makes it so that they’re able to practice that [level of independence] – because they are able to look at what’s going on around them, and come up with ideas, and analyze things, and come up with solutions or synthesize [ideas], right? And so really, I think a lot of it just boils down to that. We’re giving them the opportunity to speak, we’re giving them the opportunity to study these things, to have these conversations. And they are innately able to have these conversations. I don’t think we’re giving them any special advanced training – I just think that we’re giving them the platform to speak.
INTERVIEWER
That reminds me of something that we often say in the magazine, which is that democracy isn’t something that you learn from a book. Democracy, like real democracy, where you and your community are making the decisions together and then acting upon those decisions is necessarily learning-by-doing.
Would you agree with that? Do you think that that’s kind of what’s going on with the kids?
RAMIREZ
Yeah, I mean, I agree with that. I’ve always viewed true democracy – or anarchism – as very organic and natural, you know? And I think that it’s stifled by these systems of power and greed.
BEITLER
I also agree with you. But I want to bring up another point that, although it’ll seem like it contradicts what Ephran just said about democracy being natural, is to me – both are true at the same time. I actually think that living in a democratic community with others actually takes a lot of practice. I mean, Ephran, you and I have both lived in like collective houses! [knowing chuckles all around] So our own experience of that practice [informs our organizing].
And I agree wholeheartedly that kids have that [innate] capacity 100%. But a lot of the finer points of exercising your voice, getting along with others, and making decisions together – being part of a community that really respects everyone like that– that takes work. Traditional schools don’t really give kids the opportunity to do that work. Then they come into adulthood, not having had much practice. And I think that’s not setting them up well for participating in the kinds of communities that we want to see as adults.
I’ll give you the most basic, seemingly banal example, which is that we have this rule called the Stop Rule. And the Stop Rule is just if someone tells you to stop, you have to stop. Which doesn’t mean you can’t ever do the thing that they’re asking you to stop doing. But it does mean you have to stop [in that moment] and have a conversation with them. So it’s a way of framing consent for small children that’s hopefully very easy for them to grasp.
Except that it’s really not that easy. Because if you think about adults in relationships with one another – how often do adults have trouble with that? So teaching it to kids, in some ways it’s kind of obvious, but it does take practice to really learn to have those conversations with one another and recognize other’s boundaries; to recognize how best to be in harmony with them and work together.
INTERVIEWER
How do you balance decision making between teachers, parents and students?
BEITLER
I can give my diplomatic or my cynical answer.
INTERVIEWER
Both! The answer you gave already was students-first. But we’re sure there must be a lot of nuances.
BEITLER
Ideally, the teacher-student partnership is at the forefront. And I say that with a lot of respect for parents – especially a lot of respect for the fact that they’ve chosen to send their child to a school where they have to actually place a tremendous amount of trust in their child. It’s not always easy to do that. When you’re a parent – in a world full of anxiety over the question, “is my child going to be successful?”; or, “Are they going to follow the path that they need to follow to, you know, get by in life?”
INTERVIEWER
How would you respond to questions from parents about that?
BEITLER
I think that’s a very natural anxiety for parents. And at the same time, when a child is here, we kind of don’t want school to be about that anxiety – we want it to be about them making their progress on their own individual path in that moment. And that progress, ideally, is not going to be weighed against sort of outside ideas about where we think they should be, or comparing them to others, or thinking about their deficits rather than their strengths.
So the idea is that the parents give some trust to the student and to the student-teacher partnership. In terms of practicalities: parents are definitely involved in our school, like as members of our board as volunteers, and we go on a ton of field trips so we have a lot of chaperoning needs. But the day to day is really the teachers and the students managing what happens.
RAMIREZ
I agree with Lauren. Definitely, students first – and there’s always that conversation between the students and teachers. Parents obviously have an influence over the day-to-day decision-making in terms of how the school runs [though not the content of instruction], because [teachers and students are] the ones that are on the ground with the kids every day. But yes, parents do play an important role – for example there’s the board that handles the school’s finances and other boring stuff like that. [laughs]
BEITLER
Financial oversight, and fundraising. And making sure we’re checking all the boxes for our 501(c)3 status.
INTERVIEWER
Okay, here’s a lame neoliberal question for you: how do you interact with things like state accreditation and standardized testing?
BEITLER
This isn’t as challenging a question as you might imagine, because the state of Illinois (in its wisdom) has chosen to actually be quite hands off when it comes to regulating private schools. I don’t know if that’s a good thing in general…but it’s good for us. [grins]
INTERVIEWER
You have to take advantage of those cracks where you find them.
BEITLER
So we’re not accredited and we don’t have to be. We’ve registered with the state of Illinois, which is optional, but we chose to do it. We don’t give standardized tests, and we’re not required to. So the majority of the sort of – what I would call the “bureaucratic weight” that presses schools to conform to a lockstep of traditional modes of learning – is lifted.
INTERVIEWER
Okay. What if a parent asks you, “what are the outcomes for students?” In terms of, like, if they were to reintegrate into a public school into the Chicago Public School System, or to go into a traditional college track. How would you normally respond?
BEITLER
We get that question a lot. Parents want to know. We don’t have a high school program, either. Sooner or later, everybody’s gonna leave our school and be elsewhere, most likely in a more traditional [high school].
However – our kids do really well! They’re not having trouble keeping up with homework later on, even though we don’t have homework at all. So it’s great that they’re able to take that on. I think I can chalk that up to a few things. One is that our kids are advocating for themselves. And another is that they have sort of hopefully internalized this idea that education is something you do for yourself.
INTERVIEWER
That’s good to hear. I feel like that’s a really strong vindication of the free school model.
BEITLER
I had a great conversation with one of my former students who’s now considering colleges. They’re brilliant, and they said something that I wasn’t necessarily expecting, which is that they wanted to find a college that would balance academics and the opportunity to have fun, and not feel a lot of pressure or stress. They actually had a wise outlook on it, which is that even though they go to this selective, high-powered high school – and even though their peers around them are very ambitious and want to go to the “top colleges,” quote-unquote – they know what they want for themselves [even if it’s very different from their peers].
INTERVIEWER
That’s certainly wiser than I was.
So much of the model that we do for a lot of schooling is designed around trying to get kids to conform. And they just need to keep on conforming to this very strict model of obedience and testing all their lives. And you don’t do that, and then they are still able to thrive when they’re put into an environment that challenges that. Again, that’s an enormous vindication.
BEITLER
Yes. I think we often conceptualize it as, like: you have to keep up, you can’t fall behind. I love that [in the free school] we have a brief opportunity to release that anxiety. Not completely of course, because we still worry about the future – but to the greatest extent possible, I want kids not to have to conceive of their own progress that way.
INTERVIEWER
I’m an uncle six times over; I see children who are a generation or so younger than me, and many of them are very anxious because they get told every single day growing up that if you’re not keeping up, you’re failing. Like: you need to be above average, everybody needs to be above average!
BEITLER
I had a student in our very first year who had gone to a gifted program. He was really unhappy in school. After he had been at our school for a couple of months, his mom said that he stopped grinding his teeth at night.
INTERVIEWER
Wow. Yeah. Deep-rooted behavior.
BEITLER
He was such an imaginative kid. He spent a lot of time drawing fantasy maps.
INTERVIEWER
It’s wonderful you got the chance to have that impact. It looks like you’re about out of time, Lauren, is that correct?
BEITLER
Yeah, maybe one more question. Okay.
INTERVIEWER
If you could start the free school all over again, what would you do differently?
BEITLER
Oh, I don’t know. So many things. This whole thing has just been a long, long standing exercise in trying to do things you don’t know how to do. Do you feel that way, too, Ephran?
RAMIREZ
Yes. It’s not like there’s really too much of a blueprint.
INTERVIEWER
Well, and there’s obviously a lot of resistance.
BEITLER
I would say that the longer we are around, and the more it seems that folks are interested in sending their children to our school, the more comfortable I feel telling folks, very honestly, what we are – and what we’re not. And not feeling pressured to [to justify ourselves]. To necessarily try to sell ourselves. I think in our first few years, parents had maybe kind of an outsized influence over the school’s internal operations, initially.
So I guess if I had it to do again, I would have sought out more clarity on that from the start and been more comfortable telling people “No.” I mean, those folks were involved in organizing the school. So of course, they absolutely and necessarily had a voice. And their work was invaluable. But then there were also times when I knew that what they were asking for either wasn’t practical, or was not in line with what I saw as the core values of the school. I would have had those conversations with them more candidly and honestly, if I had to do it all again. Perhaps I’d have been a little bit less diplomatic sometimes.
INTERVIEWER
If I wanted to start one of these schools in my area, what should I know going into it?
BEITLER
This is 100% connected to what I just said. You’ll need to have so many conversations about anti-racism. Like from the beginning. We did not do nearly enough of that initially, and had many difficult moments as a result. And I’m not saying that we could have necessarily avoided difficult moments, because to an extent it’s inevitable. There’s going to be hard moments when [people in the school confront racism], and hopefully they are generative conflicts when talking about racism within a community.
INTERVIEWER
Who should be prepared for these moments: the parents, the teachers, the students?
BEITLER
Everybody. I think we were best about it with the students. That was where we put more of our intention, which was good. But we should also have put more of our attention toward the other members of our community.
Jumping back: the more cynical question that you could have asked me was: “if I had to do it again, would I do it again?” And my answer to that is, I don’t know.
INTERVIEWER
Wow, interesting. I was fully expecting you to say “absolutely, yes.”
BEITLER
I’m glad that I did it. But I did not go into it with my eyes open, let’s put it that way. Ephran, do you feel like you went into it with your eyes open? Did you know what you were getting yourself into?
RAMIREZ
Not entirely. I probably knew more because you already existed as a school – like, you had already done all this work and I could look up what was going on. But there’s a lot of stuff you don’t really think about when you’re doing the work, for example these difficult [anti-racist] conversations and difficult interactions with parents. Before, I wasn’t really prepared for a lot of it even after studying education. There’s classroom management, interacting with the parents, and so much else.
[At this point, Lauren has to leave due to another obligation. The rest of the interview concerns certain practical administrative matters that might be of use to those interested in starting their own free school.]INTERVIEWER
I wanted to ask about discipline, about classroom discipline. That seemed like a sticky topic.
RAMIREZ
At the beginning of the school year, we spend the first couple of weeks talking about classroom agreements. The students are a big part in making the guidelines for respect, for how each of us will hold ourselves accountable and operate for the rest of the school year. Obviously the adults will contribute a lot to that, too, based on what we’ve seen previously. And so that means that they’re a part of deciding how we carry ourselves in school.
There are also other things built into our model, and one of them is the Council Meeting. If a student or a staff member feels like something harmful is happening repeatedly and not getting fixed, the child or staff member can call a Council Meeting, which brings the classes together for a discussion. There’s this whole process of students choosing a facilitator at the beginning; then, we talk about what the issue was, how it made the student or staff member feel; and then, all the students and staff present are able to give input and come up with a solution. There’s a proposal, the students vote on the proposal together, and then we move forward from there.
So we do solve some of our more serious issues in that way, with the Council Meeting, and the kids are very much a part of that. It’s not like a traditional school where you have detentions and suspensions – we don’t have detentions or anything like that. So that’s what we have. It’s a learning experience. Giving someone detention isn’t necessarily going to help them – all they did for me was make me hate school [when I was growing up].
I don’t know if this was mentioned earlier, but did we mention that we don’t do testing? We don’t do homework or assign grades, either. It helps the students with the anxiety that we were talking about earlier. They don’t have to compare themselves to each other as much. A grading system is also just not an accurate way to represent how much somebody knows, or how well they know how to do something, or their capacity to do something in general. We have other methods to assess a student. If a kid is moving on to a public school that requires transcripts, we will write transcripts for them based on their performance. And we do as well as we can to try to translate that over for the kid.
INTERVIEWER
Who has a say over the budget?
RAMIREZ
The budget is something that’s mostly handled through the School Board. And the School Board is a combination of staff, representatives, administrators, parents, and community members. Community members are people that don’t have kids in our school nor are they not staff, but they’re part of our broader community. They’re volunteering their time to help with the financial workings of a school. There’s a Treasurer on the School Board – that’s a parent at the school. Every meeting the Treasurer shows us what’s going on with the budget. We discuss whether or not we think anything needs to change. The School Board is also the group that handles the fundraising and grant-writing. Basically, the budget usually goes through the School Board. But staff and parents and community members are all involved in that. And it’s tuition-based.
INTERVIEWER
Is tuition primarily where most of the money comes from?
RAMIREZ
Primarily, yes. It’s on a sliding scale, which is great for families though it still has its own challenges. Because sometimes we’re cutting it close, and that’s where fundraising and grant-writing comes in.
INTERVIEWER
I’m guessing it’s the Board that writes grant proposals?
RAMIREZ
Yes, that would be the Board members, some of the Board members that work on the grants. You know, there hasn’t been too much of that in recent years. But that’s something that we’re really trying to push, because during COVID it gave us a lot of difficulties budget-wise. We lost some – we lost some families. Naturally, a lot of parents wanted to keep their kids at home. We were doing virtual learning, but we were also doing it in-person for some of the classes – but outside. We built outside spaces to keep them safe.
INTERVIEWER
Yeah, the money pinch. We’re a small cooperative, ourselves. So I understand the feeling.
You mentioned that COVID-19 was a major challenge. What were some other challenges?
RAMIREZ
Well, I’ve only been here for the last three years. But one thing that comes to mind is the ideological diversity of the families. Our families are wonderful, and many of them are coming from an anarchist or radical viewpoint…whereas others definitely do not. And a lot of people have their kids in our school because their kids are neurodivergent in some way that doesn’t really align with public schools too well, and our school model really works well for that.
But the challenge that comes with having so many different kinds of families is that not everybody has taken the time to really think hard about racism and work to fight against it. Part of what we’re doing right now as a school is to emphasize social justice through our Committee on Social Justice. The committee is in charge of educating the school community by putting out newsletters, holding reading groups, and doing training for the families. But there are challenges that come along with, you know, families that aren’t all coming from the same place, ideologically. I think while I’ve been here that’s something that I’ve seen.
INTERVIEWER
That makes sense to me. It’s been one of the things that has been in the back of my mind this whole time. I have three nieces who are all between the ages of two-and-a-half and four years old. And I think if I told any of their parents about your school, I know what they’d react with. They would say something along the lines of: “All my kid wants to do is eat batteries. I’m not I don’t want them to have any decision making power because they’re going to get themselves killed.” So I understand that a lot of parents are not going to be coming at this from the same perspective. And then there – well, I would politely call them “D.C. education lobbyists” – and they’re not thinking about school at all as a place for student empowerment. They’re concerned about test score boosting. It seems like you guys and your model of schooling stands in strong contrast to that neoliberal public school system model.
RAMIREZ
Yeah, exactly. And we’re talking about kids being more comfortable and less anxious, and having more of a voice.
But you know, in the time that I’ve been at the school, I’ve also seen a lot of really uplifting moments where kids were truly able to be themselves and thrive. I have students who are non-binary, and they feel empowered to be themselves in the school. We have these pronoun charts and they’ll put their pronouns up and [teach the] other students. We have students that are openly queer or trans in the school who feel safe in our school.
INTERVIEWER
That’s wonderful, especially since I often feel like when I look at changes that are happening in schools around the nation it often appears like they’re less safe for trans, non-binary, and other nonconforming students, overall.
So kind of turning that around. You say you’ve seen a lot of students that thrive in this model. Do you ever see students who don’t thrive? With this kind of freedom, I can think of people who I’ve known who were young and would find it anxiety-inducing.
RAMIREZ
I think the way that we run the school, and our model in general, it’s not so much that it causes students anxiety. For those who are struggling, it’s usually the case that they have an unmet need [we have not yet addressed as a community].
Being such a small independent school means that we don’t have access to all of the resources that a larger school or a more well-off private school might have. We don’t have a nurse. We don’t have a mental health specialist. There are these roles that we really wish we had. If we had more money we could have [these specialists at the school] and, who knows, hopefully that will be a thing that we will have sometime in the near future if we’re able to get to that point because we definitely have a lot of discussions about it. But yeah, because there are some resources that we’re not able to provide quite yet, there are some students that we aren’t fully able to serve.
When that happens, we have a conversation with those kid’s respective families. We try to find solutions together. And if it seems like either the family is not making any effort to pursue these solutions, or if it seems like the solutions themselves just are not enough for the kid, then they ultimately might be better off somewhere else that is more specialized and will have those resources. Now, this doesn’t happen too often, to be honest. Almost all of our students thrive – they do really well in this environment!
INTERVIEWER
I can see how, for example, a child with mobility issues would be presented with some unique challenges at your school versus another better-funded school that has support staff trained to help.
RAMIREZ
We are slowly starting to get more access to some of those resources. This year, we have in-school, academic tutors who are there Monday through Thursday, and they take different groups of kids at a time. And so we’re actually starting to get some of those resources. But yeah, there are some limitations.
INTERVIEWER
Following up on something you said earlier, it’s good to know that when students are introduced to the more traditional educational environment after attending your school, they aren’t foundering.
RAMIREZ
In my first year, I had this kid who went on to attend a public high school, and right now I’m teaching his sister. So I see him occasionally. When I asked him how he’s doing in school, he was like, “Math is so boring. They’re teaching me stuff that you had already taught me.” And then he said that his school had a Maker Lab. And he’s like, “I already knew how to run the 3D printers and everything.”
INTERVIEWER
Ephran, is there anything you’d like to part with?
RAMIREZ
I really think that the solutions to many of the problems we face can come from ensuring every child has a decent education. And a decent education does not necessarily mean a “prestigious” education; but rather, it just means that the child is given all the tools that they need to be their best self – future generations should be able to look back on that child’s life and participation in society and be able to say, “They were a good ancestor.”
INTERVIEWER
I’ve been thinking this entire time – growing up, I was always told that the backbone of democracy, the backbone of a good civil society, is a good education system. And the education system that I got, as a public school kid, had nothing to do with that. It did not facilitate that at all. And what you’re doing does facilitate that – you’re simply following through on what we were promised.
RAMIREZ
Yeah. And we’re learning too – we’re all students, together. ~
