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Selected Blog Posts

Staff Initiatives Update

Staff Initiatives Update

Circle School staff continue to advance our staff initiative as adopted in fall 2022: Increase the quality of life for Circle School students and staff, particularly through three initiatives: Increase students' access to resources. Increase staff's student-facing...

read more
Is This School Really “Self-Directed”?

Is This School Really “Self-Directed”?

Drag-alongs, tag-alongs, stumble-ons, and happenings The Circle School describes itself as “self-directed” education, but that term can be misleading. Talking about student freedom, initiative, and self-direction sometimes creates the impression that each student is...

read more
Finding Happiness In School

Finding Happiness In School

I want children in school to find happiness. Not momentary fireworks, but the saturating joy of purpose and meaning in life. Not someday, but now, as children. I’ve noticed that kids who live fulfilling lives as kids tend to build fulfilling lives as adults. I think...

read more
“Get to” vs “Have to”

“Get to” vs “Have to”

When I was 13 years old, I didn't want to attend The Circle School. My mom and stepdad had fallen in love with the school, and found my two younger siblings required no selling on the idea, but I wasn't buying. I was mostly happy in public school, though in hindsight...

read more
Chickens with missions

Chickens with missions

Concealed in a shipping container, six secret agents arrived in April -- unarmed, disarming, and charming. Their handlers, the Cool Things Outside Corporation, commandeered a lavatory and quartered the agents in an improvised barracks. Dozens of locals peeped in on...

read more
Community in Committee

Community in Committee

Over the past year, I was a member of The Circle School’s ad hoc Anti-Racism Committee, formed by the Board of Trustees in February 2021. I’m so grateful for the perspective I gained through this work, and in conversations with my fellow committee members (Kirsten...

read more
From Founding Furnace to Post-Curricular

From Founding Furnace to Post-Curricular

With retirement on the horizon, I’m feeling reflective. This morning I’m thinking about how different The Circle School is today from the way it was in its founding years. And how much the same it is. I’m thinking about changes to come, and how the cherished sameness...

read more
I feel peaceful here, Mommy

I feel peaceful here, Mommy

Hello Circle School Family! I became interested in the school many years ago when I started my family. I had begun delving deeper into research regarding what successfully existed globally based on the personal criteria I held. My personal criteria were heavily...

read more
No, Kids Don’t Rule the School

No, Kids Don’t Rule the School

At first glance, you might get the wrong idea from the title of my book, When Kids Rule the School. You might think kids are in charge in some sort of absolute way. It’s not that simple. The publishers didn't like my working title: "Kids Practicing Life," which I have...

read more
Marina’s cardboard spinning wheel

Marina’s cardboard spinning wheel

Sometime back in March, I made a cardboard spinning wheel at school. If any of you are wondering what type of school I go to where I can make a spinning wheel out of cardboard, it's called The Circle School, and it’s a self-directed democratic school in Harrisburg,...

read more
Arbitrary Milestones: a graduation speech

Arbitrary Milestones: a graduation speech

One of the most popular human figures to come out of Greek mythology is, arguably, Sisyphus. For those who don’t know his story, basically, he was a king who cheated death in his youth, and when he eventually died of old age and had to go back to the underworld, he...

read more
Gratitude in an Upside Down Year

Gratitude in an Upside Down Year

Jim's 2014 blog post "I connected my laptop to the internet and fire trucks came" was published shortly before I began my tenure here at The Circle School. In my early days on staff, one of the first things Jim told me was that "At The Circle School, something new...

read more

Other Writings

What Kind of School?

In conversations about schools and educational methods, we hear a variety of terms. Following is a list of some of the terms we hear, and a rough sketch of our relationship with that term. We identify strongly with some of these, others only a little…

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The Learning Edge

You have probably noticed two prominent themes at The Circle School: public government and personal freedom.The school is run democratically – part of the public government theme; and students direct their own activity – part of the personal freedom theme.

Focusing on the latter, The Learning Edge offers thoughts about how and why self–direction is important and effective in education, proposing a framework of ideas supporting the practice of self–directed schooling.
read more

Selected Newsletters

Staff Initiatives Update

Staff Initiatives Update

Circle School staff continue to advance our staff initiative as adopted in fall 2022: Increase the quality of life for Circle School students and staff, particularly through three initiatives: Increase students' access to resources. Increase staff's student-facing...

read more
Is This School Really “Self-Directed”?

Is This School Really “Self-Directed”?

Drag-alongs, tag-alongs, stumble-ons, and happenings The Circle School describes itself as “self-directed” education, but that term can be misleading. Talking about student freedom, initiative, and self-direction sometimes creates the impression that each student is...

read more
Finding Happiness In School

Finding Happiness In School

I want children in school to find happiness. Not momentary fireworks, but the saturating joy of purpose and meaning in life. Not someday, but now, as children. I’ve noticed that kids who live fulfilling lives as kids tend to build fulfilling lives as adults. I think...

read more
“Get to” vs “Have to”

“Get to” vs “Have to”

When I was 13 years old, I didn't want to attend The Circle School. My mom and stepdad had fallen in love with the school, and found my two younger siblings required no selling on the idea, but I wasn't buying. I was mostly happy in public school, though in hindsight...

read more
Chickens with missions

Chickens with missions

Concealed in a shipping container, six secret agents arrived in April -- unarmed, disarming, and charming. Their handlers, the Cool Things Outside Corporation, commandeered a lavatory and quartered the agents in an improvised barracks. Dozens of locals peeped in on...

read more
Community in Committee

Community in Committee

Over the past year, I was a member of The Circle School’s ad hoc Anti-Racism Committee, formed by the Board of Trustees in February 2021. I’m so grateful for the perspective I gained through this work, and in conversations with my fellow committee members (Kirsten...

read more
From Founding Furnace to Post-Curricular

From Founding Furnace to Post-Curricular

With retirement on the horizon, I’m feeling reflective. This morning I’m thinking about how different The Circle School is today from the way it was in its founding years. And how much the same it is. I’m thinking about changes to come, and how the cherished sameness...

read more
I feel peaceful here, Mommy

I feel peaceful here, Mommy

Hello Circle School Family! I became interested in the school many years ago when I started my family. I had begun delving deeper into research regarding what successfully existed globally based on the personal criteria I held. My personal criteria were heavily...

read more
No, Kids Don’t Rule the School

No, Kids Don’t Rule the School

At first glance, you might get the wrong idea from the title of my book, When Kids Rule the School. You might think kids are in charge in some sort of absolute way. It’s not that simple. The publishers didn't like my working title: "Kids Practicing Life," which I have...

read more
Marina’s cardboard spinning wheel

Marina’s cardboard spinning wheel

Sometime back in March, I made a cardboard spinning wheel at school. If any of you are wondering what type of school I go to where I can make a spinning wheel out of cardboard, it's called The Circle School, and it’s a self-directed democratic school in Harrisburg,...

read more
Arbitrary Milestones: a graduation speech

Arbitrary Milestones: a graduation speech

One of the most popular human figures to come out of Greek mythology is, arguably, Sisyphus. For those who don’t know his story, basically, he was a king who cheated death in his youth, and when he eventually died of old age and had to go back to the underworld, he...

read more
Gratitude in an Upside Down Year

Gratitude in an Upside Down Year

Jim's 2014 blog post "I connected my laptop to the internet and fire trucks came" was published shortly before I began my tenure here at The Circle School. In my early days on staff, one of the first things Jim told me was that "At The Circle School, something new...

read more
What Cool Things Outside means to me

What Cool Things Outside means to me

My name is Lily Compton and I started the Cool Things Outside Corporation at The Circle School five years ago, and I'm still the chair of the corporation today. [“Corporations” at The Circle School are like clubs or interest groups. -Editor] I didn't have a plan back...

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Planned Giving: “It feels good”

Planned Giving: “It feels good”

“It feels good to think that someday we’ll be making a gift to a place that is so special to us.” These are the words of Stacy Kuyk-White, parent of alumn Taylor Kuyk-White ’06. Stacy and her husband, Trustee Rob White, recently included The Circle School in their...

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Grow up, America! Polarized politics and democratic schools

Grow up, America! Polarized politics and democratic schools

I’m disappointed by America’s dysfunctional politics. And I bet you are, too. What really gets to me is the hyper-polarization and aggressive non-cooperation. I want to yell “Grow up, America!” -- but that might be insulting to the kids I work with. For me it’s...

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