There Is Potential in Every Child

Three children who help me picture the school I’m building

Is this really happening? I am founding my own school. I have known this for a long time, yet suddenly it feels thrilling in a way it never quite did before.

Why, when I have carried this dream for so long, does it now feel so alive?

Perhaps because I can finally picture my vision down to the smallest detail. I no longer think only in terms of concepts and values. I think of particular children and their potential, children we know, children in our own circle, and I imagine how our school could meet them exactly where they are.

I think of Max

Max is lively, wild, full of life. His parents find him too loud. They tell me he learns nothing at school and refuses to read. He doesn’t like being there.

But I think of Max and how much he loves dinosaurs, and I see something quite different. I see the two of us outside, playing with dinosaurs. We build shelters in the garden from sticks and stones, working out together which dinosaur needs which kind of home. I make little signs with their names, and Max reads them and matches each one to the right dinosaur. We look at dinosaur books together, reading the names, discovering what each one ate, how long it lived, why it vanished from the earth. Suddenly, Max is reading. Not because he must, but because he wants to know who lived where, and who ate whom.

We imagine how enormous these creatures were. We measure their lengths in footsteps and draw them in the sand. A Brachiosaurus becomes startlingly real when you have to count out twenty-five paces to show how long it was. We compare: how many Maxes fit inside a T-Rex? How many Triceratops would fit in our garden? And so Max does his first sums without ever noticing. Not sitting still at a desk, but leaping, counting, learning with his whole body.

I think of Anna

Anna’s parents find her easily distracted, unable to focus. Above all, they say, she is fearful.

But I think of Anna and I see how joyful and imaginative she is. How tenderly she takes my daughter Mila by the hand and gently draws her into her games. And the ideas she has, if only someone takes the time to listen. I see us building fairy houses from moss, bark and tiny twigs, with miniature furniture made of acorns and leaves. I see us putting on plays, Anna as an actress, or perhaps as the narrator, because she invents such marvellous stories. I see us writing those stories down and illustrating them. Perhaps a small book grows out of it, one we bind together by hand.

I see how brave Anna becomes when someone trusts her and encourages her. How open and curious she grows the moment she senses she cannot make a mistake. How she finds her own voice when no one corrects or judges her. Anna does not need to become braver. She is already brave. She simply needs a place where she is allowed to feel it.

At our school there are no milestones and no deadlines. Each child develops at their own pace and builds upon their own strengths.

I think of Chloe

Chloe is already a teenager, working her way through a homeschooling curriculum her parents have set for her. Chloe does not need to sit and work through more theory at home. She needs to step out into the world with all her ideas.

She loves to bake and cook, for instance. She develops her own recipes, writing them by hand with little arrows, notes in the margins, variations to try. Alongside each recipe she draws her own designs. The other day she asked me what I would pay for a banana bread, and whether I had any idea where she might sell hers.

I see Chloe at our school, testing her recipes, refining them again and again, setting up a small stall outside the school or at the local weekly market. I see her talking to customers, learning how to present what she has made. I see her working out what an ingredient costs, what is left at the end, whether it is worth buying in larger quantities. I see her designing labels, finding a name for her business, perhaps sketching a logo.

Chloe needs a school that helps her bring her ideas to life and put them to the test, whether that means learning how to make a product ready to sell, how to build a brand, or perhaps even how to publish her own cookbook.

At Schola Vera, we take children’s ideas seriously. A child who loves photography might spend two days a week in a photo lab, or plan their own exhibition. A child drawn to theatre might lead the school’s own drama group. A child who wants to start a business is connected with interesting people and given a place to make it real. There is no “you can do that after school”, because Schola Vera does not prepare us for life. It is life.

A school where difference is simply lived

With us, children of different ages learn together. Not as a pedagogical strategy, but because this is the natural state in which human beings have always lived alongside one another.

Arno Stern described it beautifully: where difference is genuinely lived, competition does not arise. Children do not compare themselves when there is nothing to compare. When one is four and another is eight, each simply does what they are doing. No one is “ahead” or “behind”.

This is exactly the space we want to create at Schola Vera. A space where Max is welcome with his whole personality. Where Anna need not become braver. Where Chloe need not wait until she is “finished with school” to do the thing she truly loves.

This is what I mean when I say there is potential in every child. We do not put it there. It is already there, waiting. Our task is to see it, to make room for it, and to trust that it will unfold.

Perhaps you know a child like Max, Anna or Chloe. Perhaps it is your own. Perhaps a friend’s. Perhaps the child you once were yourself.