That same year of beacon fires being lit, our ninth (2005), I became the third administrator for Chrysalis. I could add a chapter here but Roaming is an autobiography of my ideas, not of my life. The main reason for including a chapter would be to let you know that Chrysalis was not all easy. It included some very stressful times, the hardest one of which was trying to find a facility for our underfunded school at the height of the real estate bubble when the museum told us we could no longer use their classroom. The school almost died. I was worn down to the bone which led my heart into atrial flutter. Not a joyous time.
I believe the main thing that got us through was our conversion from complete teacher autonomy into a teachers’ co-op. Teachers had to negotiate, govern, and plan together rather than being able to do whatever they wanted. However, you were governing with your fellow teachers so there was a strong commitment to preserving teacher autonomy whenever possible. Working as a teachers’ co-op created a united strength that allowed our school culture to remain strong despite being a “real estate-refugee” tucked into two sites five miles apart that some parents had to drive twice a day. Two of our classrooms were only ten feet wide. Another classroom had to be completely disassembled and reassembled twice a week. The entire middle school playground was a small asphalt parking lot behind a small storefront.
Our “years wandering in the wilderness” came to an end in 2008 when we had the opportunity to lease our current facilities, a former church school. On a memorable day in June, three moving vans and 14 movers worked and worked, moving and setting up the entire school in one long day. That August, for the first time in thirteen years, Chrysalis began the school year with everyone on one site at the same time. For the first time in thirteen years, teachers had classrooms that were truly theirs, that didn’t have to be shared with others. For the first time in thirteen years, we had the security of a place to call our own, a place where we could develop into the school that we always wanted to be.
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