We all have cycles in our lives. At The Circle School, we know a better way to educate is one that works with these cycles, not against them.

Each day on staff at The Circle School includes dozens of interactions with kids seeking me out. Sometimes it’s questions (about the school, the world, or other), sometimes it’s help with something (Help me start a yoga class? Sign my field trip form? Can we go to the creek?), and sometimes it’s just interaction (Look at this! What are you doing? I’m bored.)

Early in my time on staff, I noticed these interactions would shift over time. Some kids would seek me out all the time, while others wouldn’t. Then a few weeks would go by and the cast of kids coming to talk would be totally different. I came to picture it like a planetary orbit. Each student with their own unique orbit: some swinging in close for a few days and then going waaaaay back out for a long while, others staying pretty close most of the time, and everything in between.

Cycles

Just as summer has given way to fall, our lives also have seasons and cycles. I have times when I have it all together: exercise, healthy eating, satisfying engagement with my hobbies and peers. I also have times when I don’t: when sleeping in is far more appealing than early morning exercise, when cheese dip and ice cream are simply too good to resist, and when couch time is my most treasured hobby.

I don’t really judge this. I’m probably happiest when I’m juuuust aligning back into my good exercise and health routines — which is interesting because it requires getting out of alignment now and then! There are times for work, times for play, and times for rest. In the right proportions, each makes the others sweeter.

I see these same cycles at play in the lives of my family and friends — and I see them in the lives of children and teens here at school.

Innate wisdom

There is an innate wisdom in each person – a nature-given impulse to strive, thrive, and grow in ways simultaneously universal and individual — and I can see it at work in these cycles.

We all gravitate, consciously and unconsciously, to the people and experiences we need as part of this growth. We are naturally drawn to participating in our life’s curriculum for growth — just as plants are drawn towards verdant soil, sun, and water.

Spirals

Take these wisdom-driven cycles and add one more component: recurrence. We often face one challenge, or grow in one area, and then, later on, it revisits us. Sometimes more challenging, sometimes less — either way an opportunity to cement our growth and extend it further.

There is, then, an upwards progression in these cycles. They are spirals.

Kids grow best in a schooling environment that allows for their own unique spiral to progress. Instead of the disruption of a one-size-fits-all, academia-only curriculum, each person is free to experience their own life’s curriculum — round and round, up and up, growing all the way.

Cody Unger ’09