For Claire, from Heidi Watts, with thanks

About 1969-70 when I was working for the Antioch-Putney Graduate School up on the hill I went down to the Putney Central School to talk to Claire about taking Antioch interns. I had taught elementary school just long enough to know that I didn’t know much, but I didn’t realize, then, that Claire was going to be one of my teachers.

School was in session. We stood in the hall outside the door of her second grade classroom, which was glass about two thirds of the way up, and watched what was happening inside while Claire talked. Oh, Claire talked – we might have been in that hall for an hour.  She talked about her class, about individual children, about the interns, about the community, about how to teach reading, and while we talked I watched through the window a second grade class behaving like no teacher-less class I had ever seen.  Some children were reading, a few were working with the cusinaire rods, others were writing or drawing, all were busy. Occasionally a child would get up to ask another child for help, or to do something else. It was a model of self-motivated, self-directed purposeful learning – and they were 8 years old! That was the Claire magic – she had the vision and the skill to enable even the youngest children to be self-respecting, creative, independent learners. The other half of the magic was in the talking.

Claire talked, endlessly explaining to children how the world worked, often through questions; endlessly interpreting children to bewildered parents and teachers, interpreting to anyone who would listen the meaning of activities, the way children think, the diversity and uniqueness of children, and friends, and adults, whomever. Sometimes a single observation or anecdote would give me an insight which altered the way I thought or worked. Through talk her vision of a connected world emerged; a world in which schools were not just for children and parents but for everyone in the town. Claire connected children with the activities that engaged them, different activities for different children. She connected members of the community with each other, she connected rural Vermont with Puerto Rico, India, Ireland, places next door and halfway around the world.

I never lost the image of that self-sufficient second grade though I had many other opportunities to watch Claire in action; she taught two of my children; we served on state committees together; she worked with Antioch interns and with visiting teachers from Auroville, India. The partnership with Auroville was particularly meaningful because I could always count on Claire to respond directly, with curiosity and respect, to any type of visitor, and within minutes they might find themselves doing something with children.  There were never visitors standing around with their arms crossed in Claire’s classroom, only participants – and listeners.

– Heidi