The Circle School Blog

An occasional thing

The Circle School Blog

Adapted from a speech on June 7, 2025

Welcome, graduates. Warm wishes to each of you in this milestone moment. And welcome, all! Most of you are here today to celebrate the graduation of someone you love – a child, a relative, a friend. Some of you already know The Circle School inside and out. Others have heard a bit about this unusual school and maybe you’re going “Wait? What? Sounds like a Dungeons & Dragons campaign.” If that’s you, listen up, because for 40 years, I’ve been explaining The Circle School for “confused relatives,” and that’s my job today.

Conventional education has a design problem. It’s built on the idea that one size fits all. One size works okay for ponchos and party hats, but not so much for humans. We come in infinite variety. Education should, too.

Traditional schools focus a lot on academics – and that’s fine – but they often neglect the messy, marvelous complexity of the rest of life. Kids can end up smart but shallow, or socially disconnected, or they never develop their talents because those don’t fit neatly into the curriculum. Or maybe they end up book smart but they don’t know how to follow a passion. Or handle failure. Or collaborate with that irritating person who always disagrees. Here, they get all of that.

So no, one size doesn’t fit all. Life isn’t a multiple choice test. It’s a complicated choose-your-own-adventure – with detours and dead ends. And the occasional dragon.

The Circle School flips the model. We make school more like real life – with endless possibilities and endless challenges, with freedom and responsibility, with participatory governance and so many meetings that go on way too long. We value…

    • Ambition, consequences, and earned success
    • Public service and ethical conduct
    • Differing viewpoints and actual listening
    • Friendship, community, and respect

School shouldn’t be about children earning academic credits in a limited set of subjects. School should be unlimited learning about how to be your best and live well. Be your best and live well.

Looking at these graduates, there is no curriculum that would fit them all. They are unique. One of them…

    • Engineered a powerful computer to train artificial intelligence models, persuaded the foremost manufacturer of 3D printers to make their products available to schools statewide – and got one for the school.
    • Another overcame her fear of performing, sang three college auditions, and was admitted to all three colleges.
    • Another stepped up with no notice to fill the suddenly vacant School Meeting Secretary job—demanding skill and patience under real-world pressures.
    • Another initiated and led a comprehensive overhaul of the school’s complicated chore system, including substantial legislative work, and then managed its operation for three years with great grace.
    • Another built a spinning wheel, from scratch; and recently won an award in a national essay contest on youth involvement in social change.
    • Another organized a successful fundraising event, including a meal for 80 people. And won many cooking contests here, for both taste and presentation.

Significant achievements, very different from one another. And yet they all have three things in common:

    • Sparked by personal interest
    • Driven by initiative, focus, and hard work
    • Made possible by a school where students have the space to dabble, discover, and dive deep.

Dabble, discover, and dive deep.

In the end, what I want for these graduates is what I think every parent wants for their kids: a fulfilling life, meaningfully engaged in the world — in short, being their best and living well. Graduates, be your best and live well. That’s what you have gotten really good at.

They say to get really good at something takes 10,000 hours of practice. Well… that’s about how many hours kids spend in school over ten years. So imagine if those hours were used not to prepare for life in the future, but to live it, now, in the present, to be their best and live well.

Imagine that! Imagine that and you have understood The Circle School.

Jim Rietmulder

 

 

 

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