Don't want to see Ads? Register for your free dotSUB account here!
Windsor House
Duration:
16 minutes and 22 seconds
Country:
Canada
Language:
English
License:
CC - Public Domain
Genre:
Documentary
Producer:
Pacific Spirit Productions
Director:
Sherry Sakamoto and Terry Martyniuk
Views:
257
(7
embedded)
Posted by:
phobe on Aug 20, 2008
Democratic School in Canada
Translate and Transcribe
-
Sign In/Register for dotSUB to translate this video.
Share
- Embed Video
- Embed normal player
- Embed a smaller player
- Advanced Embedding Options
-
Embedding OptionsSize:Language:Embed Code
- Embed transcript
- Embed transcript in:
-
Invite a user to dotSUB
Your invitation to join dotSUB was successfulThere was an error inviting that user to dotSUB
Video Transcription
Show in new window
- When you walk in the front door its unlike any school you've ever encountered in your life.
- Such a community that it's so much more than a school.
- I feel like this is my second family.
- They get the freedom to make their own decisions and to create their own paths and to explore their own passion.
- What we have here is we have a culture of self-responsibility.
- An opportunity for kids to just be who they are, and without having to fit into the constraints of what somebody else thinks they should be.
- It is the most truely tolerant, celebration of differences setting I've ever been in.
- Windsor House is the village that raises the child.
- Humans are learners, born innate learners.
- It's a very comforting, reassuring, and accepting place.
- It's contagious, the interest in learning; and I think that's what education ought to be about.
- Windsor House has taken on a personality of its own.
- Windsor House actually has a personality.
- It's vibrant
- and I think that's the most noticable thing about Windsor House when you first come in.
- Is that everybody is lively.
- The urge to play is the same as the urge to learn.
- And that when were playing were constantly learning,
- were constantly trying to refine something.
- Whether its the ability to play hockey or setting up of a complex role-playing scenario;
- whether your 5 years old, and it's a fantasy game, or your 12 years old, and it's structured more
- and looks like you know, a particular set of rules, and maybe a book as a guide,
- but through that, play is an intrinsic motivation,
- to learn something, to pursue something about yourself, about your relationship with others,
- about information, about physical skills, about emotional skills, cognitive skills.
- It's constantly happening.
- Now of course is, sometimes people think it means you can do anything you want.
- And it doesn't mean that at all. What it means is that we don't force you to do anything academic.
- We also have various institutions which are the judicial council, the school council.
- The academic underpinning, which is every single staff person knows what the academic requirements of the provincial government are.
- We know what children in school are expected to learn.
- And so we know that when a child is at this place, the next step for them is going to be this place.
- When their ready, when they want it.
- We're there with it. It's all there.
- It's all underlined, not seen, but it's in the repertoire of almost every teacher.
- So of course it isn't that the kids come in and do nothing
- It's the kids come and develop into the people they really are.
- Rather than becoming the people that somebody else wants them to be.
- All this stuff we normally consider a public school education, sits on top of the ability to be who you are in the world.
- And that actually learning and education sticks better, when you have something to frame it in,
- and when you have a way to go after it from a place that's internally motivated.
- When I was in elementary school I found a lot that I was forced into
- forced to try and be what everybody else was, like try and fit in.
- Whereas, Windsor House, I've never really tried to fit in. I've always just found people who I have enjoyed being with.
- Like I haven't had to change to be with them.
- Just being outside of some of the social pressures that are excerted so heavily in the traditional school system;
- I think that as a teen here, my friends and I had a lot more room to kind of just be with each other, in a really genuine way.
- I can hangout with kids my age and talk about relevant stuff.
- Talk about sex, drugs, alcohol, and relationships. It was a really open relationship.
- Windsor House built me from so young, to be so proud of who I am and where I come from,
- that no matter what people think, or what people say, or whatever pressures of young people's oppressions,
- that I can get through it. I can be myself and be happy with who I am.
- I've noticed myself to be much more open, with me, with who I am, to other people and to myself.
- And I've also noticed that I'm just able to feel safe.
- Windsor House offers a safe haven for students emotionally.
- I've never seen a school where the older kids are so respectful and caring of the younger children.
- Everyone takes care of each other. There are some people who are older and don't hang out with other kids.
- But when they have too, they will protect and stand up for the younger kids.
- So we have a cultural of non-judgemental, welcoming, accepting people.
- The friendships are real here, and the kids aren't forced to be with anybody they don't want to be with.
- The relationships they have with the adults too, they are real relationships, and they all respect each other.
- Another thing that I think builds their self-esteem and leadership is the true respect between the children and the teachers.
- I don't think that I found something like this in all my life.
- Everyone was treated as a person.
- Nobody's point of view was ever just written off because you know they were a kid and you weren't allowed to talk back to the teacher.
- And that empowers every member of this community to act responsibly.
- My becoming a person that I like, began when I came to Windsor House and started to interact with this community.
- The entire community was just so there for everybody and every hardship,
- every trouble that anybody who is involved in the community; be it in the school,
- or a parent of a person who is in the school.
- Everyone was together and it's such a community, that it's so much more than a school.
- Windsor House is everything to me. It's much more than a school for my kids,
- because for my kids their just playing. I actually think I'm doing most of the learning here.
- It's a great place to learn how to deal with the world; as an adult; as a child.
- Basically, if you can solve your problems here, you can solve your problems anywhere.
- The philosophy of the school here was, nurturing, problem-solving.
- I got to see it modeled: "What is problem-solving?"
- Whenever students come to me with emotional difficulties,
- or whenever there are certain problems that arise..."conflict", you might say,
- we try to work it out in the moment or through the judicial process.
- Here at Windsor House, the conflict, when that happened the teachers really helped work it out,
- and they really tried to understand the conflict, before they just handed down a sentence.
- Even the teachers don't hand down sentences at Windsor House, it's all more complaint based.
- Which was really cool, it was really interesting to see how that worked.
- I slowly got interested in just how the school was running,
- because some of my friends would leave at pre-determined times every week and go to some meeting.
- And finally, I would start going to the meetings myself; which were the resolutions meetings.
- And then I got really into the resolutions meetings, not least because I could pass silly resolutions.
- They were apprieciated.
- It's about self-awareness. And it's not self-awareness where you just look at your own naval.
- It's self-awareness in connection with another person.
- So that I'm aware of who I am, in connection with who you are, in connection with this community.
- And that whole interplay of seeing how you affect a community, and how community affects you.
- And being able to be responsible, or acknowledge irresponsibility;
- that you actually do have an affect on the people around you, and your actions have an affect.
- Many people at Windsor House learn how to get what they want.
- What actually comes out of all this is people do whatever for however long,
- and then they wake up to the fact that actually this is my life,
- and if I wanna make something of my life, I should do something.
- I gotta chance to really think, "Ok, what am I interested in?",
- "How do I want to spend my time?", "How do I want to direct myself?",
- "And then, What do I need to do to put that plan in motion?"
- I really got to practice thinking about things.
- Expressing myself and arguing my point of view.
- Organizing people around different causes. That I've all found to be so incredibly applicable out in the world.
- It was my job to go after my education, and I so did after I left Windsor House;
- and it made me such a driven person; what Windsor House gave me.
- For me, the important thing wasn't math, science, or anything like that.
- And I think for everybody it shouldn't be the most important thing;
- how much knowledge you can cram into your head and remember for the next 30 days before this test.
- It should be more along the lines of knowledge for life.
- When I left Windsor House I was 13; cause that's how old you had to leave for grade 8, when I was at Windsor House.
- I walked into the regular school system. I got A's and B's in everything except for French, and even that I got a C in.
- And considering I had done almost no formal academics from age 8 to 13.
- I think I represent your typical average learner.
- I'm not particularly gifted especially at reading and writing.
- Like I didn't read early, and I don't write easily.
- I've always found academic writing and test taking very difficult.
- Yet I was able to walk into that system and deal with that aspect of it, the academic aspect.
- You can go to college without having ever graduated from high school.
- All you have to do is have the skills and the knowledge to cope with whatever course you want to take at college.
- You can go from college to university.
- You can get a Ph.D without ever having graduated from high school. So children need to know that.
- I didn't ever have to go back and do any high school courses, or any catch up.
- I got to just go straight in (to the university).
- I actually ended up being in the same year as all my friends who'd gone through high school and graduated.
- I finished at CAP, then I went up to Simon Frasier University and I just graduated last June
- with my first class honors degree Bachelor of Arts in English.
- And what were interested here is in lifelong learning.
- So we want, when we learn something, to actually learn and start using it and make it part of them.
- And they know that life is about is lifelong learning.
- So what goes on here in Windsor House is practicing that, the beginnings of that.
- And it looks all different ways, it looks like play, it looks like processing emotional stuff,
- it looks like imagining, it looks like creating, it looks like conflict.
- They are not doing something because someone told them.
- They understand that if they have to do (something) they have to take the responsibility.
- And I believe that this is the true and the biggest preparation for life.
- We want everyone to be engaged with what their doing.
- We don't want that sort of half-hearted (attempt), or just doing it for some extrinsic motivation.
- We want it to come from some intrinsic place.
- It is a very different school, but it's definitely democratic and definitely non-coercive
- and that's different to any other school that's available in North America.
- These are really exciting times for parents and students because a lot of students no longer fit into the mainstream schools.
- Windsor offers them an opportunity to experience something different.
- And Windsor is actually one of the forerunners in North America
- for demonstrating the newness of what schools can be for your children.
- Globally it's reputation is wonderful.
- People look at our website and go, "Oh if only we had that school in our town."
- Many people on the cutting edge of alternative education
- envy Windsor House so much because we have the widest range.
- We have non-coercive, democratic, parent participation, multi-age group 5-18 years of age,
- and here's the big one publicly funded.
- Internationally we've had groups come from Russia, Australia, New Zealand,
- England, France, Holland, Japan, India, specifically to see Windsor House,
- because they want to see how possibly it could run, doing the things we say we do on our website.
- What were doing here at this time and place in history is very unique.
- I don't think there are any publicly funded schools that are doing what were doing right now.
- There are democratic schools that are publicly funded, but their hallways are pretty much like regular hallways.
- Whereas were trying to fit this incredibly unique program into a pretty boxy little building.
- But we do have public funding; and I think that if other people are wanting to do what we're doing;
- for us to be able to do it under public funding is really useful.
- It makes it accessible for people who cannot afford private education.
- And in the end, I guess I believe in publicly funded education.
- I just feel like it needs to be broader with more choice.
- And it needs to be more representational of the parents and the community with which it is serving.
- So a closer connection. Ending on that, I don't think Windsor House is the answer for everybody.
- I think choice is, and I think community involvment. That those two pieces are what everybody deserves.


Report this video as offensive