La Ferme des Enfants: The Ecology of Relationships

On Friday, we gathered for our weekly council. Pierre started by saying he felt excluded and hurt that people were calling him names. A conversation ensued about how the children were treating each other. Claire, one of the teachers, saw this as an opportunity to share the compost metaphor, “we are all human” she said, “we all stumble and fall into times when we insult each other or treat each other less than kindly. Each time we do, we throw more stinky stuff onto the pile of compost in the middle of our lives. We all live with this compost. It stinks, it festers and rots and messes up our lives. But we all have a choice, we can either continue throwing more and more junk onto our pile of compost, or we can start to work towards transforming this pile of compost. We can plant seeds and grow flowers and vegetables. Yes, from time to time, we’ll make mistakes and throw another pile of junk onto our big heap, but, little by little, as the flowers grow, we can see we are working to transform it into something more beautiful. We created this school for this reason. There are many other places, many other middle schools where no one is paying any attention to the compost pile. Everyday people throw more insults, more junk onto the compost pile, and no one is doing anything about it – if this is what you want, go seek that out elsewhere. But here we are working to move towards something different and that is all that matters.” After this council, the students drafted their school charter. They agreed to practice non-violent communication and respect each others differences.