Putney’s progressive stance lets me be a teacher, poet, and philosopher as I work with students. I help students to listen to their own voices, to play with the language that lives in them, explore its possibilities, and learn to follow its lead as they use words to shape and express their ideas and feelings. Students write to unlock new ideas even while they are learning to think critically and carefully and pin their meaning to the page. At Putney, I can give students time and space to be agents in their own discovery of how they’ll use language to express the joy, pain, and passion of their experiences.
Agency is at the heart of happiness, so helping students authorize their own learning is joyful.