Conference call on the front porch

Last Tuesday I had a 9:00 conference call. The kids and I rode the tandem into school, and I was originally planning to just listen into it while biking in to work (I have a headset, so I wouldn't have been like one of those drivers holding a conversation with one hand and their steering wheel with the other)/ But it was a lovely morning, and I decided to just sit on the front porch of the Big Building and do the call there.

Afterwards, it occurred to me how unusual this would have been in most schools. In most schools, parents' presence is highly constrained. In the schools I went to, seeing your parents on campus could only mean that the principal had called, and you were about to be in big trouble. And indeed, I don't think my parents ever got the sense that they were welcome at my school during regular hours. You could call to schedule a meeting with your kids' counselor or a principal, but there was no such thing as casual contact between parents and the school.

At Peninsula, in contrast, there are parents on campus constantly: a few are employed by the school, but most are volunteers, or are hanging out in the parking lot, making phone calls or scheduling playdates for their children. This has two effects. The first is that it offers a chance for parents to demystify the school: those who have the time can see how the place actually operates, how the big kids help the little kids, how diverse it is, or how the kids make sense of progressive education.

The second is that for the kids, it contributes to their sense of the school as a community. My five year-old saw me sitting on the porch, waved reflexively, and kept on going: seeing me there didn't seem strike him any stranger than seeing me in our living room. Which, in a sense, is exactly what the front porch is.

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