After The Flood is a chapter from Fairhaven’s first book “Like Water”, a collection of essays about Fairhaven and the Sudbury Model by staff member Mark McCaig.

Like Water is available for sale. Please go to our Bookstore for more information

After The Flood

Winter temperatures in our mid-Atlantic region often hover at or near freezing, leading to at least one significant ice storm per year. In February, 2007 freezing rain sheathed local forests in ice, breaking limbs and felling trees, causing power outages all over the region. Fairhaven School lost its electricity for three days. When the power returned, a faulty sprinkler main that had frozen burst, flooding the new building on a Saturday with thousands of gallons of water, rendering it a construction site for the next month.

In true Fairhaven fashion, one neighbor who’s a parent of two alumni followed the fire trucks and tried to salvage as many books as possible. Two students and one graduate also rushed in to help staff members and a former staff member mere hours after the flood.

Gathering as staff in our sodden office the following Monday morning was a grim experience; our newest and biggest building was soaked through and through. Furniture, carpets, books, office supplies and equipment were damaged and beginning to smell. The custom maple floor in the expansive Chesapeake Room was already cupping from its brief time under water.

Staff members and students salvaged what we could those first few days, piling less urgent objects on and under porches and covering them with tarps, and hauling necessary items to a temporary office in the dry old building. Two-thirds of our space had become unusable overnight. Over the next month as we dried out, the school’s culture and students passed a test of their resilience, accommodation, and resolve. So many of the qualities we ascribe to Sudbury-educated students manifested themselves, describing the episode provides a case study.

When the power returned, a faulty sprinkler main that had frozen burst, flooding the new building on a Saturday with thousands of gallons of water

Staff began the process, moving school systems like attendance sheets and JC record-keeping to new locations in the old building. The Aesthetics Clerk and Committee anticipated room uses and re-arranged accordingly. Intrepid members of the Digital Arts Corporation set up the school’s projector and hung a sheet for movie viewing in the Activity Room. The Attendance Clerk softened the attendance requirements for the first week After the Flood.

As Official Authorities Clerk, I spent most of my time navigating a second flood of insurance agents, insurance adjustors, disaster restoration workers, and contractors. We became a testament to paying for a premium insurance policy, ending the month with an improved building. Between calls and meetings, I waded through the crowded building, absorbing the remarkable actions of our students.

Some perspective helps. Our original building has five small to medium-sized rooms with doors that close, a kitchen, a round, common room in the middle (The Circle Room), a bigger, open room (The Activity Room, where the students watched movies), and three bathrooms. Enter 85 people with no clear end in sight.

To a person, we entered with upbeat, positive attitudes. “I love this new Fairhaven!” one younger girl declared on Day One. Of course, as time passed, the novelty wore off. However, the positive attitudes did not. At Fairhaven, the ultimate measure of whether people are not getting along is the Judicial Committee. Although the Committee did have to invoke the “No Dumpster Diving” rule when some teenagers tried to reclaim some damaged furniture for use by the stream (another story), never during that month was JC inundated by its own flood of fights, disagreements, or arguments. We simply abided one another.

Freedom to go outside proved essential during the protracted crisis. Imagine a conventional student body, stuck inside during such a circumstance. During the flood month, students played more than the usual organized outdoor games- capture the flag, four square, basketball, hide and seek, and football. They also played countless games with no names—girls being horses, boys wrestling, younger students just running around. Older students took advantage of the school’s open campus policy to leave during the busiest part of the day.

Freedom to relocate inside the building proved essential as well. Most days the Circle Room hosted four or five simultaneous conversations. Somebody would open a door to see whom they could write up for breaking the rule prohibiting loud noises in the building, only to find a general din. Freedom gave intolerance an escape valve. Too loud? Find somewhere else.

On cold days, sometimes there was nowhere else. Every room throbbed with activity and bodies. Porches and outside were too frigid. A conventional school would have ordered a temporary classroom immediately. The curriculum imperative. In the middle of the second week, staff and students vigorously debated whether we should demand a trailer from our insurance carrier. To some the bloom was off the rose: we were not conducting business as usual, and any other school would get a trailer. Yet many students were enjoying the togetherness as social groups rearranged through necessity and proximity generated new relationships and activities. They liked it. In the end, not getting a trailer prevailed, primarily because the insurance agent and contractors had worked overtime from day one. The end of reconstruction was in sight, and not insisting on a trailer would prove a valuable negotiating chip down the road.

A tour of campus on a day in Week Three follows. Video gamers occupy the Mears Room, doing their thing. The dust has settled from an earlier television reservation disagreement. Across the hall a group is plugging away at a very difficult puzzle depicting a polar bear surrounded by monochromatic, soft pink snow and sky. Students and staff members have been working on it since the flood. When JC needs the table, they lay a cloth over the puzzle with much ceremony. The school’s administrative assistant is working on a relocated office computer in the same room. Leaving this room for the entryway, one encounters a student inviting people to view her newly redecorated cubby. Now a mod apartment for her stuffed monkey, complete with wallpaper, it’s fabulous.

In the Circle Room, many distinct groups occupy tables and couches. Some are knitting. A group of younger people are playing with a score of doe-eyed figurines. They are not quiet. The Law Clerk and a staff member are recruiting the steady stream of passersby to run for the next JC Clerks in the upcoming School Meeting elections. Three girls work on a laptop over the school’s wireless network.

In the small, sunny room adjacent to the Circle Room, several students are selling massages, makeovers and hair styling. Three young girls tug hair and rub hands as one staff member gets a new look and a massage. She also looks fabulous. Three teens are conversing over pizza in the kitchen. Someone’s popcorn pops in the microwave. Movies have given way to storytelling in the Activity Room. One student is composing, then reading aloud a wacky tale about doppelganger versions of her friends in the packed room. Another draws magic marker scenes as the story evolves.

In the temporary office, the Aesthetics Clerk is searching for replacement furniture online. A colleague fields an admissions call, scheduling a tour of the school after we reoccupy the new building. The Bookkeeping Committee is meeting in the Art Room, sharing the space with a teenager painting dots onto her yearlong pointillist piece and a younger student building Plasticene models on a tray. An extension cord runs out the back door to the amplifier by the swing set where students blast rock and roll to the forest.

Back in the Activity Room, the story is on hold as the scribe has left for French class. Several older teens are reliving their youths, digging in the Lego bins to build models. Their nostalgic enthusiasm is contagious, a fitting end to this tour. For four weeks, we invent and reinvent activities, we deal with each other, and, yes, sometimes we pull out our hair! Mostly, we abide the circumstances, just like our students will do when they leave Fairhaven.

Drastic change refreshes Fairhaven’s culture. Once or twice each year the Computer Corporation closes school computers for maintenance. Several years ago, a charismatic older teen brought a motion to School Meeting to ban all screens for a week. The JC often imposes room or activity restrictions. Flood month was the Godzilla of such shake-ups, and has had lasting, salutary effects. School Meeting members of all ages deepened relationships. New interests and activities flourished. Staff members relearned their jobs from different perspectives.

School Meeting mandated a half hour of labor before each School Meeting member could return to the shiny new building. Pent-up energy and excitement produced a blizzard of furniture moving, unpacking in the new building and deep cleaning in the old building. We marveled at the new maple floor upstairs and the new carpet, paint and bookshelves downstairs. People tested the beefed up soundproofing between floors. In a classic vignette embodying Sudbury sense of time and conscience, a full month and a half after the cleaning day, I asked a graduating student who’s a devoted old building denizen for help moving some boxes across a hall. Although I had no idea he had not fulfilled his obligation yet, he got up from his laptop, saying “well, I still need to do that thirty minutes, so I guess I’ll do it now,” and promptly left the old building for the first time since the flood.

Just after a student placed the last piece of the barely possible polar bear puzzle, and just before our annual fundraising Gala, we reclaimed the reconstructed new building with gusto, needing its spacious rooms after a very tight month. Like my box mover, some refused at first to leave the old building. We all looked back at its trusty confines with fond respect, its ample legend one chapter thicker. The Little Building That Hosted 85 one February. Back to normal, many yearn for those crowded days. So fond are they of the togetherness, two girls have brought a motion to School Meeting, hoping to declare Flood Week a school tradition each year. Amend it to Flood Day, and they’ve got my vote.

Copyright 2008 by Fairhaven School