Convening: the radical women founders of Fire Mountain School

In August I was home where I grew up, in a tiny town on the Oregon Coast, for a week. It’s a place my parents and others moved to in the 1970s, part of the wider counter-cultural “back-to-the-land” movement of the time. Part of that tradition was questioning the dominant ideologies and thinking holistically, including about education.

A group of people, led by this group of women in the photo above, began holding conversations about education, leading to the beginning of an alternative elementary school called Fire Mountain School, in 1983. I attended this multi-age, interdisciplinary, non-graded or tested school from Kindergarten through 5th grade (around ages 5-11), largely taught by Lane DeMoll, pictured above. My parents were both very involved, having been part of a previous Free School in the area, with my dad entering into education through his alternative service during the Vietnam War (he was a Conscientious Objector).

As the school nears its 40-year anniversary next year, and as many of the issues in education I’m engaging with feel rooted in the pedagogy I was steeped in during my formative years, I asked the founding women to come together for a conversation. I knew many of the anecdotal and lived narratives of the school, but I was curious to talk to them about their personal backgrounds, impetuses for beginning the school, educational philosophies and influences, and lessons from being involved. I have been finding many of the topics around holism, community, social learning, communication, and empathy are rooted in ideas that were coming to the fore during the 1970s and 80s and I was curious to talk with them about their thinking on these issues particularly.

Much was discussed in the afternoon we spent together, eating lunch, walking through my mom’s garden, drinking tea, and ending with rounds of songs that we used to sing together in school, an admittedly emotional moment for us all to feel our voices blending together, and an example of the levels of educational engagement considered at the school: social, physical, emotional, spiritual, creative, and informational.

We began with people’s personal histories, experiences with school and education, and what about their stories led them to want to create a change for their children.

We have Lane DeMoll, who grew up in Pennsylvania and attended The School at Rose Valley, a progressive school Fire Mountain was partly modelled after, founded in the 1920s as part of the Arts-and-Crafts movement leaning heavily on John Dewey’s theories, featuring workshops and invested in mind/body integration. She went on to a conventional public high school and then Bennington College, a non-traditional liberal arts college. She has been steeped in this sort of holistic education since a young age, much as I have been.

Vivi Tallman grew up in Los Angeles and had a public school education before attending Radcliffe/Harvard where she developed low self-esteem in the male-centred debate model of education, despite graduating summa cum laude. Part of her recovery was being involved in physical work on the Oregon coast which also spurred her interest in more holistic education.

Then Barbara McLaughlin had a Catholic education and found that after school, she didn’t know who she was: her self-esteem was low. When she had a daughter, she wanted something different for her, to be able to “be who she was and be valued for that.”

Barbara Temple Ayers attended public schools in Seattle that were very logic-oriented. She attended Reed College in Portland, OR in the 1970s, going on to get her Master’s degree in Alternative Education, giving her a deep frame of reference to bring to Fire Mountain School.

As they narrated the process of beginning the school, building the schoolhouse, fundraising, and countless hours of board meetings and discussions, they all agreed that the first decision was to build a new school instead of trying to change the existing public schools in the area. And that the school “came out of the rich backgrounds and worlds of the people involved, bringing that” to strengthen the rather isolated, rural community they existed in, as Barbara Temple Ayers explained.

They also explained that there was an awareness that community was a huge aspect and that they grew together collectively as they learned. There was agreement that the school was “an experiment in people working collectively” that could be challenging, but one of the disciplines was to continue meeting and working. They adopted a consensus-based decision-making process for the board which meant an emphasis on the development of communication skills.

As we moved to discuss pedagogy, Lane pointed out that often the “best teaching happened when we didn’t know the subject,” because then there could be openness and curiosity as everyone asked questions and learned how to investigate something together. This was a core tenant at the school: to teach how to find things out, and how to learn, in order to support children in becoming lifelong learners and contributing members of society. To “follow your curiosity.”

But there was agreement that the emotional state of the child is the most important aspect of learning, and the ensuing communication around that: learning to deal with emotions. In multi-age classrooms, there was an emphasis on social teaching, including learning to express yourself and learning to have the patience to listen to other people.

Barbara Temple Ayers: “a really big part of our social teaching was listening. Listening to other people so anytime any altercation came up, or argument, or bad feelings or whatever, it was really important for us to gather the kids together. Listen to their stories. And if needed, have just the two kids that were in having an altercation talk to each other with an adult. I mean, just communication became really important and expressing yourself, but listening and learning to listen to other people as well. “

As I explained to them my current project and some of the frustrations it arose from within the system and structure of Central Saint Martins and the University of Arts London, they offered some feedback and insight.

Barbara McLaughlin identified that a large part of getting people out of their silos was a social understanding, of getting them to care about things beyond their specific purview. She also offered that there can be hope in planting seeds that can help tilt things into something new.

Vivi reflected that often what is invisible is the structure of the culture that exists inside of any school or society. And how difficult it is to change that culture, which is one of the reasons they decided to start something new rather than enact change in an existing system.

Barbara T.A. built on that to say, “and what is the structure behind something that’s invisible? I mean that’s what they’re gonna ask because ‘what is it that we need to fund.'” Vivi added, “yes, the social-emotional skills.”

I left with a deep appreciation for the wisdom of these women, a list of some thinkers to engage with: Silvia Ashton-Warner, John Dewey, Grace Rotzwell, John Holt, and schools like The School at Rose Valley, Summerhill School, and Sudbury Valley School to look to as examples of holistic education in practice.

As we would begin school with a song circle, bringing us together for the first half-hour of each day, I’ll end with a snippet of a round of song of peace from a Hebrew folk song that we closed with, the verses circling around to bless us all:

Love to your neighbour
And love to the spirit of all life