Jennifer, Tom, Max, and Jamal, a Saint Louis Sudbury School family, have organized a fundraiser to benefit our nonprofit school! Their son, Jamal, recently graduated from Sudbury and they are raising funds to help support the school’s Tuition Assistance Program so that more families can experience the life changing benefits of a Sudbury experience. Please consider making a donation of any amount. Thank you for your support!

About 60% of all students at Sudbury receive financial assistance. The school is largely dependent on undercompensated, talented, and dedicated staff and volunteers, as well as the generosity of community partners. We would like to ensure that more young people can have the opportunity to experience a unique learning community where students have the freedom, space, and time to pursue their interests, discover who they are, and develop life-long communication and decision-making skills. All of this freedom to learn and to be is bounded by school rules and policies developed and maintained by the entire community. Young people and adults help run the school together!

Jamal's story in his own words

"I spent the darkest period of my life at Sudbury. This was because as soon as I joined Sudbury, I was welcomed into the community by the staff and students, and for the first time in my life, I felt safe, trusted, and comfortable enough to feel my emotions. So I felt it all. I felt it all so much. I started writing songs about how I felt and recording those lyrics over beats I found online in one of the recording rooms at school. Then starting in January 2023, I began teaching myself how to produce my music with Pro Tools in the recording studio at Sudbury.

Sudbury trusted me to trust myself which was so wild and unheard of for me at first, because before Sudbury, I had never been somewhere where I felt trusted. Sudbury didn’t teach me anything. It provided me with a life saving environment to teach myself what I needed to learn for my own sake. So the most valuable skill I learned at Sudbury was not how to do the Pythagorean theorem, manage a pretty report card, grit my teeth through five hours of homework every night, memorize countless facts solely for a test, or how to get used to the habit of suffering through unnecessary pain.

The most valuable skill I learned at Sudbury was far more valuable than anything I ever learned in conventional school when I was younger. It was a skill that humans must use every day of their lives. At Sudbury, I learned to trust myself."

The family’s story in Jennifer’s words

"This is my 18-year old’s empty cubby at Saint Louis Sudbury School. He graduated in May. When I first saw it, I felt some sense of loss, but then the empty space felt clear, open, and ready. In fact, another student said that they want to have our son’s old cubby since it has good vibes.

Our son started at Sudbury in 2021—coming from several well-meaning and well-resourced conventional schools. These schools embraced and celebrated culturally accepted views of achievement, a viewpoint that works for some young people but not all.

Jamal arrived at Sudbury numb and shut down. We, his parents, felt lost, broken, depressed, unseen, unheard, and sad. Over the years, our family was handed a list of diagnoses and we researched everything and anything, dragging him to many experts, physicians, holistic service providers, and more. Nothing really helped. And yet, what we really needed to do was to stop trying to fix him. To let him be himself and know himself. Can you imagine being handed a treatment plan that says, “BACK OFF?” I wish we had. Much earlier.

Saint Louis Sudbury School welcomed him in a quiet and kind way. He wasn’t able to stay more than an hour or so initially due to years of camouflaging his true self to blend in a neurotypical environment and the anxiety that comes with that, but the students and staff came together in School Meeting and modified attendance requirements and supported him along the way. He sat at a table and made cardboard art for two weeks, not really talking with people, but watching and listening to all the activity around him. He eventually joined in, made friends, was trusted by students of all ages and staff, and served on nearly every school committee. He thrived. With no homework, tests, grades, or required classes, he got a chance to determine purpose that made sense for him and develop internal motivation.

He was responsible for big aspects of running the school, navigating conflict with students, and even helping with parent communications in collaboration with staff. He learned guitar, taught himself keyboard, figured out how to use the highly complex music production software, Pro Tools, and more. He cycled 30 miles a day roundtrip by himself to and from school—growing his sense of independence and personal accomplishment. And he started to figure out who he was, what he was good at, and how if you switch the framework of what achievement, happiness, and growth can look like, he was actually quite amazing. Not in a “he’s amazing for someone who isn’t typical,” but just, “he’s amazing.”

Life at Sudbury wasn’t always steady growth for our son and our family grew to be okay with that. There were periods when he couldn’t attend school due to health conditions and autistic burnout. Without the conventional markers of achievement, sometimes we felt a little untethered, unsure of what progress looks like. But what we did see and will forever be grateful for is that our child came back to life in many ways at Sudbury, could engage with the world again, and started to find what brought him joy—even when working through challenges.

Also, the Saint Louis Sudbury School community helped us recognize and leave the high stakes and stressful parenting world of relentless future planning, of believing that we could control so much, seeing childhood as a period of compliance, and accepting arbitrary success milestones.

At Saint Louis Sudbury School, he was treated as a full human in the present rather than an adult in the making who must wait until they turn 18 to truly start living.

Well, 18 is here. And, yes it’s still a bit scary, a bit unknown, and a lot exciting.

As a graduate of Sudbury, he’s had substantial practice understanding who he is, what he wants, how to get there, how to be a responsible part of a community, how to trust himself, and how to ask for help. Our family has no idea what he will do next, but we feel pretty good that he will find his way. And that is good enough for us.

Who knows what tomorrow could be?"