School Without Suffering

Polly: Um, and it very much affected my experience in school. A big part of that is when I was growing up, in and in school in the 90s and early aughts, for the most part, doctors weren't diagnosing migraine and children. And what I've come to learn as I've learned more about how my body works and seen it change through time is I think that part of that is that migraine doesn't present the same in children as it does in adults. My experience of my migraines has changed as I've gotten older and changed many times. And I think that that really is something that's gotten in the way of healthcare practitioners being able to figure out what's wrong. And for me, as a young person, this meant that I had a lot of days where I just didn't feel good. And, for me, the most troubling thing, the thing I would tell my mom is my stomach hurts. And I always had headaches, but I was kind of able to ignore the headache, but when it got bad enough that my stomach hurt, then I was I was really not feeling it not gelling. And I would want to stay home because I didn't feel good. And and, you know, the doctor's one of the things about migraines is that as far as tests and things like that are concerned, quote, nothing's wrong, nothing, your blood work is fine. Even I've had a couple MRIs done, your brain looks normal, your your any, any tests they can run, you present as a typical healthy human being. So I was just kind of labeled A complainy kid. And, and I spent a lot of time just kind of vaguely, quote unquote, not feeling good. And by the time I was an adolescent, you know, a tween. My mother, who's a therapist thought that I might be depressed and started having me see a therapist, and I honestly didn't even know why I was there. And they'd be like, do you want to talk about anything? And I'd be like, No, not really. And I was really vindicated. A couple years ago, I found an amazing neurologist, finally. And one of the things she said to me at one point is that migraines sometimes present as depression. Wow. And I was like, eye opening, oh my goodness, I've been on this whole journey of all of these things that were different in my life, because I was experienced these experiencing these migraines.  And ultimately, everything came to a head when I was in ninth grade. And in our district, the switch between middle school and high school meant you went to being the last kids to being bused to school to being the first kids to bus to school. So I all of a sudden had a very early morning. And among other things, also, if I don't get enough sleep, I tend to get a migraine. And all of a sudden, I needed to be a functioning human being at seven o'clock in the morning, and very frequently woke up. And also I was a teenager, so I was staying up late and distracted and the migrants might also contribute to sleeping disorders and who knows. But I wasn't getting enough sleep. I was waking up in the morning feeling very sick. And some mornings, a couple hours later, I'd be feeling well enough. I would let my mom take me into school I'd go in late. But I wound up amassing a large amount of absences pretty quickly this way. And I'm in New York State and in New York state we have and I know all over the country there are a lot of truancy laws about you have to be in school X number of days. And by the time we got to January in the school year. I had maxed out you know amount of legal absences for at least my first two period classes. The first to classes and right, because like I said, If I could, later in the day go into school I would. And that was that was more or less the beginning of a nightmare. And I think the thing I want to add, before I say anything else is I was also one of the one of those kids, you consider an exceptional student, I was a straight A without trying kind of kid. And none of this ever affected my grades. And part of the fact that there was no room for that, I think, is the problem that, that they couldn't see a student who was in no way being impacted, impacted academically and go, Well, how can we do things differently? There just wasn't the imagination, the room, the awareness for that at the time and the place that I was. So around January, which we're not, we're only like hitting midterms. I had hit the maximum amount of absences you can have for the year. And the school said, Well, if we don't do something, you're gonna fail ninth grade. And from a straight A student, that's not the thing you want to hear, you know, and the school went about trying to figure out what to do with me. And the answer became that they put me in a program that was housed in the same building that was intended for children who were too emotionally disturbed to be in a normal classroom environment. Which is not was not the case for me, and not really an appropriate place for me to be but my parents are, I believe my parents were told, and I was told that the only way I was going to be allowed to finish my ninth grade year, and move on to 10th grade was if I was in this program. And it meant things like, I was taken out of my classes and put in classes in the program. It meant that I was required to once a week go to a group counseling and an individual counseling session. And there were and at some point, I was allowed to return to some of my classroom because the the program they put me in absolutely wasn't meeting my needs academically. At one point, it was decided that they, I get the feeling they knew all along that this wasn't the appropriate solution for me. And they started putting me through more testing. And I was like, at one point I put on the brakes and I said, I want to know what you're testing me for and what the possible outcomes are of these tests are, I'm not going to keep doing it. And rather than communicating openly with me, they just stopped giving me the tests. And I think I found out years later, they were like trying to put me in a Gifted and Talented program, see if I qualified for a Gifted and Talented program instead. But there was so little transparency, there was so little communication. And I was Meanwhile, in an environment where I once missed a class outside of the program, because my books were in the classroom inside the program. And we were locked out because another student had thrown a desk. So it wasn't a particularly safe space to be in. I was talking weekly with a therapist who I didn't know and didn't trust. And at one point, he said to me, like, Well, do you ever feel depressed? And I, I was a very smart kid, and I looked at him and I went, you know, you work in high school, right? I was like, next time the bell rings go out into the hallway, and I want you to find one student who answers no to the question. Do you ever feel depressed? Yeah. Like we're 14. Sometimes I feel depressed, I didn't feel like it was getting in my way, just life is that sometimes when you're 14, um, so I did it, I went to the program. It was not the right place for me. I was not getting the instruction I was supposed to get. And then ultimately, at the end of the school year. I've somehow, you know, wrestled my way through these five months, six months of school. And several things happened all at once. One is that I didn't qualify to take the regents exam for biology, because with them pulling me out for all this testing and I had been told that I was going to take the history final for the program because I hadn't been allowed to return to that class. A week before the final, I was told, actually, I needed to take the test for the class I hadn't been in for five months. And to be honest, I refused. I didn't sit the test. That was too it was just too much that I felt like I had been betrayed, I'd been lied to. I didn't so that's test number two was my History test. Test number three was my English test, which was a class I had returned to, but part of the test was given in classroom time, instead of during the designated final time I was told you cannot miss finals time, you will not be given a makeup. But class time is different. And this teacher gave chose to give part of the final during classroom time when I was not present, and then chose to not let me make up that 40% of the test or whatever it was. So even though I had been in this program, I had done everything they had told me to do. I exited the school year having failed three academic classes and being told I was going to repeat ninth grade.

Laura: What did that do to you?

Polly: Um, a lot of things out of things, um, for one thing, that that you that so at that point, my parents parents pulled me out of the school and sent me to a private school, which was a very good thing. And they allowed me to go to ninth to 10th grade and, and I graduated with one of the most heavy class loads that anyone ever graduated with. But I was terrified. I was really scared and I when I went to the second school, I had it in my head that I'm getting a second chance and that I must have done something wrong and I can't do that again. Hmm. And I was terrified to miss a day of school. And the good news is, I was in a very small private school, where you could walk into the headmaster's office and say, Hey, this is up with me. Like at one point, my, the next year, I got mono. And I was like I said, I went in and I talked to the headmaster, I said, I either can do my homework or be in school, I don't have the energy for both. And he went great be in school. And I had that flexibility. I was in a much more nurturing environment. But I was terrified to miss school, even I went into college. And I was like, like, I told myself, you can't slip once. If you get into a pattern of missing class, again, like I really thought something was wrong with me. And there was I had migraines. But, but I thought, like I have, I am a bad person, I did this thing, you know. And even like I said, even in college, I was I was terrified. There's one day, I don't know what was going on. But I was like, I do not want to go to this class. Right now. It's just one class, but I was like, but I have to go, I like I cannot get into the habit of letting myself miss. And I got there and there was a note up on the door, that class was canceled. And I thought it was like the best gift in the world that I had been rewarded for dragging myself across campus to this class. But, but, and that went into my professional life, and I work in the performing arts, and there's also a very heavy, you know, the show must go on, nothing can stop us. And I was sick all the time. I only in the past four years of my life started today to find a way find the right medications to control this in any way. And I was sick all the time. And I I programmed myself to ignore it to do really big incredible. And I'm in the circuit, sometimes dangerous things as a sick person, and it's not safe. And it's not healthy. And, and it it's not a good, you know, you wind up without boundaries. Like, like, I learned that I can't say no to things from that. I can't say no, I can't do that. And it's something that I'm just undoing in my life now and seeing what damage was there and how it impacted me and how much it's impacted my adult life.

Laura: Yeah.

Polly: And I mean, as a teenager, I was like, Well, you can't trust adults. Because they lie because they're gonna they're gonna put you in these terrible, you know, educators, we're supposed to protect you. We're gonna put you in these terrible situations. Yeah, it was a really. It, it still it has stuck with me.

Laura: Yeah. Yeah. And you just mentioned that you learned to not have boundaries, but it sounded like in ninth grade, you actually started out with some pretty good boundaries.

Polly: I I was a really smart kid. Yeah, I was I was the kid who went in some ways went above and beyond. Like, I remember this art project where we had to like, research an artist and then like, do something in the style of that artist. And I got Christo and the other kid who got Christo made a little diorama floating islands, I got permission to do an art installation in the lobby where I wrapped a desk. Like, I was always I have a huge imagination. I do things in a huge, vivid way. But yeah, I was like, I was definitely willing to be like, hold on. Something's not right. Yeah. But ultimately, I felt like I kept getting punished for that. Right. You know, like, I went to the social worker who I did feel I could trust and was given advice and tried to implement that advice, and had the support I needed taken away from me. And, and I played by the rules, and I went to the classes and I did the things. And I had this really awful experience so that I could move on with my life. And then was told to bad you didn't do enough. And, and it took away a lot of trust. And it did and I was like wow. Yeah, maybe maybe there's some boundaries. I can't have maybe I can't say no to things maybe. Because that's just going to hurt me.

Laura: Yeah. And you learned fear and you learned that there's morally something wrong with you. Yeah, like you said, like, yeah. And you went to a private school, you got really good grades. You had a massive course load, graduate. We did, like, and probably everyone said, Well, what a success. 

Polly: For the most part, you know, it's interesting. Well, I applied to Yale, I didn't get in, but I applied to Yale. And at one point, I went to a second interview. And which I was like, Oh, wow, I got a second interview. And this gets into a lot of like, gatekeeping. In education, I feel like because I went, I, we lived in a different part of the county than where the interview was. And I went there, and it's a much more affluent part of the county. And it was like one of those houses where you feel like the living room furniture is never touched. Yeah, that was very much not my experience, and not my upbringing. And so I was already very uncomfortable. And like now that I'm an adult, and in education, I'm like, oh, that's gatekeeping. And I had this interview. And one of the questions she asked me was, what do you think changed between failing ninth grade and graduating? A straight AP student? And at the time, I was too close to the trauma. I didn't even want to talk about it. I didn't want to say it out loud. I hadn't I definitely hadn't processed it yet. I wasn't mature enough to be able to say, Oh, yes, this is what happened to me. i It was it was, it was only, you know, two and a half, three years later, but it was very fresh. It was very a part of myself, I had to hide that I felt shame from Yeah. And in my mind, even now, that's the question I didn't answer that kept me from getting into Yale. Maybe not. Maybe there were other things you have no way to know. But I know I didn't answer that question. Well, because as a as a 17 year old, I wasn't equipped to answer that question.

Laura: Yeah. I think that we do ask. We, I mean, like society, college admissions, all of that we ask, and almost demand for kids, because you're a kid, when you're applying to college, to be able to explain their trauma like that is a lot of times what an admissions officer is looking for in an essay? Certainly, if you have you have experiences like yours, and where it can be seen on your transcript, there was one year that was not successful. And then and then years that were successful after that success, by the way, being defined by grades, right. And, and adults, myself included, because I help students apply to college. And I have to constantly be watching myself, because because there is an understanding that if you can tell the story of what happened, that is going to be beneficial for you and your application. Right. But your firsthand experience makes it so plain that that can be a really unfair thing to ask a child to do. There's you're so close to the trauma, you're also still growing up like you don't understand it yet. And then, yeah, if you can't do it, then the college admissions officers not getting what they're looking for. And then you don't get the spot.

Polly: Yeah, and I feel like I feel like there's a there's a section of that process. That's really just how good of a storyteller Are you and I'm actually a pretty good storyteller, but that wasn't a story. I was ready ready to toe even able. Right, I think to tell at that point. I didn't have I didn't even have the diagnosis yet that I could say, I have chronic migraines, and I'm sick all the time. Right? Because that's a really key part of that story. But I couldn't tell for maybe 15 years after.

Laura: Right, Right?

Polly: Because I didn't have I didn't have those words. I didn't have that information.

Laura: Okay, so you have been through so much as a student in from the time you were young through college, you found your passion in college. And as you tell us, you were even being affected by like the fear and learning to not have boundaries that you had acquired when as a student in school. And yet you were being you were going you were doing what you wanted to do. And you somehow found yourself back working with kids with students. who were in the phase of their life when you were when you went through all of this trauma? How did that feel for you when you started working with kids? And what did it bring up for you? And how does what you went through shape? What you do with them?

Polly: Yeah, there was kind of never a time that I wasn't working with kids. I kind of I worked with the same family all through middle school in high school babysitting their children and in college. I I was doing, I was already starting to do like summer camp programs and things like that. So it was a really natural progression into teaching into engaging with with young people in that way. And I've also gotten to have the experience of working with a lot of different populations. Working with autistic people working with people with different disabilities, some same as similar to me some with very different experiences. Working, you know, in New York City, we have vastly different populations, people from different cultural backgrounds, people with different economic backgrounds, and it's all layered right on top, you know, New York is a very big little place where we're all layered on top of each other. And, and I think my ability to stop and listen is really what served me the best in that is, why is a kid doing or saying the things they're doing or saying, and whether or not they can articulate that doesn't matter. Education is about so much more than you know. My life is about so much more than teaching someone to juggle. It's what what? What does that person need? It's you know? Or, or it is about teaching them to juggle I had I had I was doing like a workshop or someone's had come try before they signed up for for class. And a mom walks up to me, I'm like showing a juggling exercise. And mom walks up to me and goes, she can't do this. She only has one hand. I said no, she can do it. She's just gonna do it differently. She you can juggle with one hand, you can juggle with no hands, you can juggle with your feet, you can juggle rolling the equipment on your body. But the first thing you need to do is remove that boundary of she can't juggle because she only has one hand. Yeah. And sometimes you don't even you know, sometimes grownups put those limitations before a kid ever will, because the kid was already trying to juggle. Yeah. The kid didn't notice that she couldn't juggle. No one told her that yet.

Laura: Yeah. I mean, that even makes me think about you in ninth grade. Basically being told, you can't be in the regular classes, because you can't get here at 7am. Yeah. Where it's like, Okay. What we're talking about is, you just said, what if we think about things as not rules, but guidelines, maybe 7am works for the majority of our students. 70 m doesn't work for Polly. That doesn't mean that she can't take hard classes, mainstream classes. It means that she has to do it differently. And what does that mean? Now? I recognize that schools, public school systems are under just an impossible amount of constraints. And so maybe there are times where a particular school is not able to meet a particular need in a particular way. I do think that all of the human beings that work in the school, when we are able to take a step back and not get caught up and not live in our own anxieties, which is hard to do. Yeah. When I always want to acknowledge this is anything that I'm saying is is difficult to do. But it is possible. 

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Are you considering a different educational environment for your child?

School Without Suffering’s  virtual school serves students from elementary through high school, offering developmentally appropriate, comprehensive curriculum that aligns with academic standards while nurturing individual passions and strengths. During each step of their academic journey, we help students master their mindset and their lessons, cultivate compassion for themselves and others, develop their values, and acquire the skills they need to thrive. Our expert teachers employ innovative teaching methods and technology to create an engaging and interactive learning experience for every student.

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Download your free parent guide at www.schoolwithoutsuffering.com/guide. That’s www.schoolwithoutsuffering.com/guide.

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Polly: Parents are scared if I disclose that my kid has XYZ. You're not gonna let them in circuits class. I'm gonna let first of all I'm gonna let them in circus class. Any parents out there your kids allowed my circus class. I don't care what alphabet soup of whatever diagnosis they have your kids allowed. There's a spot for them here. But there's fear. And parents don't want to talk about it. They don't want to let you know what's up, because they're worried that that's going to lead to another exclusion, that that's going to lead to another othering. And that's another problem. But you know, I've come to parents, and I've been like, you know, I'm noticing this and this, and this works. And that doesn't work. And all of a sudden, the parent goes, Oh, yeah, they have that. And I'm like, Well, let's start the conversation. Yeah. Because you just made my job easier, because I don't have to guess any, right. And kids, and ultimately, the thing that was true for me is the true for all kids. No matter how smart you are, no matter how, whatever, no matter your upbringing, your whatever. We don't have the words yet. I didn't have the words, to tell my pediatrician if he would have listened or not. What it meant when I don't feel good, quote, unquote. You know, a kid who's having processing issues isn't going to have the words to tell you. But the only thing I can hear is that light buzzing right now. I can't learn right now, because there's a light buzzing over there. It loves that kind of that is very sophisticated communication. And it's asking us to communicate, it's asking even an adult to communicate clearly, in a situation when you're under duress, when you don't have those basic needs met, because you don't feel good, or you can't focus or you're again, you're not ready to learn, right? And and we have to as adults stop putting that responsibility on the learner on the student. And even if we don't know why it's why is almost not important. It helps. Because it means we can get resources, we can get answers, we can get tools. But the why is almost inconsequential. Until Until you have someone in an environment where they can learn.

Laura: We talk a lot about it is important to not just stop at seeing a behavior and ask the questions. Where is it coming from? Why is this happening? But I think it's really important that we don't stop ourselves from taking action that's going to help the child because we don't know why yet. We don't have to know why. To take an action that's going to help. We can take an action, see if it helps. And if it doesn't, we can iterate. And and that's just as important to get the process going as it is to ask the question why? Because you might not know why for 15 years. But you that doesn't mean that that child has to continue to be in an environment or you know, be trying to follow rigid rules that just aren't going to work and is going to cause suffering. Another thing that you said that really stuck with me that i is one of the major reasons that we do this podcast that at school, that's something we want to do more than then tutor more than more than just help the kids out that come to us. We want to be consciousness raising about all of this because the law, as you said, is what directs at least public education. But I would say all education because all education is in some way related to public education. And that's because education is a social construct and contract, right? You come together to raise our kids, collective our kids. So that they have what we hope are what our goal is, is a basic set of knowledge and skills, so that when they become adults, they can contribute to society. That's the goal, overarching goal of education. Why we do it? Okay, so education is a collective constructed system. That's a social contract that we come up with together. How do we, in our society organize all of that, we do it through laws. And so laws are a reflection of our largest society as a whole, what we believe and what our values are. That's not to say, every individual in society agrees with how the laws are written. Lots of us don't, that's why we do things like protest and make petitions and all kinds of things. But on the whole laws come out of collectively, what we've set our values are. And so the way the laws are written now have come out of collectively, what we've set our values are. So rigid laws about seat time, attendance, funding, all of that stuff can't do come from us. While I also acknowledge that there are some of us with a lot more power than others, and there's a lot of things broken about our democracy, and all of that stuff, which we can also work together on. But if we acknowledge that our collective values play at least some role, if not a major role in where these rules come from, then, and and if we notice, there's something wrong with the rules, then that gives us an opportunity to look at our attitudes and our beliefs, and talk about these things, and make shifts. And so that's one reason that I think these conversations are so important is because if we can look at individual stories, and we can look at how things are working or not. Then we can understand, we can start to understand where our cognitive dissonance is, are between like, yeah, of course, school works that way. It's, you know, you know, it's, it's rough when there's an exceptional child, and it doesn't work for them. But, you know, that's just the way things are. But then think about, well, it's not just this one exceptional child. There are lots of ways in which these rules are causing us to not meet the needs of probably most children. And then we can start to think about, okay, well, why do the rules exist? What do we believe that's making that rule exists that way? Do I actually believe that? If I do, why do I believe it? If I have a question about that? Let me talk it out. Let me think about it more. And collectively, we can come to a place where we are doing things over time that are more and more going to be beneficial for more and more of us.

Polly: And, you know, in, in, in, in accessibility in the disability community, we talk about every time an adaptation is made for a specific group, it really helps everyone the most famous example is like Closed Captioning on TV. Everyone loves closed captioning. You love it at the gym, you love it. If you have trouble filtering sound you love it if, like everybody's whispering in this show, and you don't know what's going on. But it was put there essentially for the deaf community, but it helps everyone so any time if it really, if it's gonna help your kid, that's not selfish, there's a chance it's gonna help 1020 100 other kids, and maybe not even for the same reasons.

Laura: Yeah, when I was going through my teacher training, and we learned about, we learned about IEP s, we learned about accommodations, and even just differentiation in the classroom. You learn about, you know, all these things that you do, you can do for the child who's having the difficulty. And I would just sit there and be like, what, why can't I do this for every child? And that's gonna be so yeah, and I think what you just said about, you just said something about let go. When we get, so when we get afraid, we tend to want to clamp down and try to control things. And I think that if we can learn to let go of the control, a little bit more that can help the kids who are not being served by the way the rules are written. I also think that can help the kids who look like they're fine. Yeah, there are lots of kids who look like they're fine, and who are not. They're also kids who play have kids who are fine, but would still be doing better if we could have more flexibility. So I just wanted to highlight that because that's another example to me, of what works for one kid or what is good for one kid who seems exceptional. Can in the long run, be good for you.

Polly: And I was one of those kids. I looked fine until this one requirement came running up against me, I was a straight A student, I have an invisible disability, you can't look at me and go, that's a sick person. That's a disabled person, you know? And yeah. You don't know who who you're holding back.

Laura: You can't know. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Polly, for giving us so much time today. Thank you for sharing your experience and your wisdom. And I just really appreciate it.

Polly: I had a lot of fun sharing. I think it's a like I said, I think it's a really important story and a different perspective than we usually get on your experience in education.

Laura: If folks want to find you, especially our listeners in New York may be interested in your circus classes, where can they do that?

Polly: Um, so Polaris circus is what you want to look for. I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook. I have a YouTube channel that I started during the pandemic that's got like a playlist of circus at home activities that kids could do with things they had around their house for when they just needed to get up and move. So hey, just come in for free. You don't even have to, I'd love to meet you. But you can just watch the list on YouTube and have some fun activities at home.

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Join us for our final episode of the season, where I’ll be speaking with Lisa Richer, mom to two neurodiverse sons and founder of Journey 2 Bloom. With her work stemming from personal experience, Lisa helps parents of neurodiverse learners find and secure the best services, schools, and learning environments for their child’s unique needs. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed or at a loss about what step to take next to help your child, you won’t want to miss our conversation.