A Sense of Learning

by Martha Bouchard ’98

Sitting. Contemplating 2,500 miles of open ocean between myself and solid land. And that space again between landfall and the first time I felt the weight of the tower looming above my small mind.

I was five. We had just moved to Groton, and my mother had just begun a new job; Lawrence Academy was to be ever-present in the next 11 years of my life.

Interestingly, the feature of that faraway place that is most present for me is not part of the school; it is an in-between place. To be precise, it is in between the Health Center and one of the dorms. It is in between the school and the road; in between solid ground and infinite possibility.

Why does my mind collect the snapshots of life ’ s captured moments without the captions I have become so accustomed to in our social-media-laden physiological tableau? Why do I remember the Congregational church bell tower with such fondness and mystique, simultaneously with the mystery of undefined meaning?

A lot of my childhood was spent looking up and looking out. What a lucky perspective. I knew the color of tropical sea by the time I was 5, had climbed a Mayan temple at 10, and had descended Andean mountains in the back of a pickup truck at 14. Always watching, I was the child who was quiet but knew what was going on and never wanted to miss a thing. My quiet observations became the foundation for my worldviews, my friendships, and my life ’ s path.

I carried this perspective of observation and contemplation into my educational career. I took opportunities head on and was always looking for more.

When I arrived at Lawrence Academy, the cornucopia I knew existed from being on the periphery for so long suddenly unfolded. Endless possibilities in the form of creativity, doorways opened through dance, theater, interdisciplinary studies, foreign language, science, and outdoors. Teachers in love with the process, as much as I was falling for the material, guided my way, recognizing that mine was not a journey of seeking approval or of walking a conventional line.

I only stayed at Lawrence Academy for two years, not because the school drove me away but because it drove me within. Since the beginning of high school through graduate school and more fully into my career life, there are certain elements that have felt imperative to my active engagement in learning and teaching. My journey to college at 16, to traveling and exploring the world in my early 20s, to graduate school in an intentional community on an old school bus, and to helping to develop an experiential curriculum based on sustainable growth and connecting to one ’ s life path through literal and metaphorical garden work has been a path of inspiration and of focus. Theme-based learning in the NGP at Lawrence allowed me to break out of the paradoxical sinkhole of the “ what meaning will this lesson have in the course of my life ” adolescent dilemma and drove me to dig deeply into the places that held the most intrigue to me. Two years of immersing myself in the theater and the arts gave me a creativity that encouraged me to search for more. Climbing, canoeing, and other active outdoor adventures helped to solidify my childhood connection with outdoor space as a breeding ground for inspiration.

I have found a direct correlation between the active involvement of one ’ s senses and the desire to be actively involved in one ’ s learning. Winterim and other creative and experiential learning structures allow for this environment at LA, though it was created through play-based learning at the elementary school where I completed my graduate studies and through garden-based metaphorical exploration of personal responsibility at the place where my learning currently resides.

When we interact with the subjects we are learning, the lessons are all the more visceral and become an innate part of our being. The flatness of the book disappears, and the lesson glows with four-dimensional aliveness that can even distract from the ever-changing landscape of a screen (not an easy feat in our modern world). LA has stretched its material and learning landscape to allow for such experiences, which in the end allowed me to truly understand that I needed to forge my own path.

Knowing that my time had come, I set off on a path of increasingly more alternative and experiential education that has led me to this place of contemplation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, reflecting on the seeds of my past. While my path was non-traditional, it was the non-traditional underpinnings of that first institution that inspired the process of the lifelong learner able to enjoy the vista of the faraway perspective of her roots, planted firmly

Martha Bouchard ’98

“Teachers in love with the process, as much as I was falling for the material, guided my way, recognizing that mine was not a journey of seeking approval or of walking a conventional line. ”