Rhoda Barasch is spending her summer like she has for the past 40 years.
While students at Londonderry School are out enjoying their three months of vacation, Barasch is in the classroom, stocking supplies, going over curriculum and preparing faculty for the next school year.
But by the time mid-August rolls around and the school bells ring to usher in young minds, Barasch will step down as director and walk into a well-deserved retirement.
When the school started in 1971, there were just four families who attended the school and two teachers—a married couple—who taught classes. When Barasch was hired in September 1975, the school had grown to about 24 students.
By the following year, financial obligations, often pushed aside to focus on education, were starting to become a real issue for the school, Barasch said. It was then that she took over as director.
“It was such a different time,” said Barasch, who remembers being a young married woman who had just moved from Ithaca, N.Y., to follow her husband to Pennsylvania.
Warm & Loving
In the early years, parents were very involved in the school, almost running it themselves. Because the school wasn’t well known in the community, leaders had a tough time attracting new students, Barasch said.
The original class setup was based on A. S. Neill’s Summerhill School, which encourages freedom in learning as opposed to traditional classroom settings. Students weren’t graded, and their parents often were in the classroom as much as the teachers, she said.
Today, the students still have a lot of freedom, Barasch said, but they gear their individual choices toward the classroom experience. Bylaws were eventually rewritten, and a board of trustees was created so that there was a deciding body.
“When the school went from 24 to 215 students, something had to change,” Barasch said. “You can’t run a school with that many families in such a relaxed manner. Things weren’t getting done.”
Despite the organizational changes, the fundamentals have remained the same, she said.
The environment is warm and loving. It fosters an environment where children learn at a rate regulated by their abilities. Students are taught to be comfortable around teachers and other adults while learning conflict resolution skills. The family feel of Londonderry School has never gone away, she said.
Even while working as director, Barasch could still be found in the classroom—the place where her career started. She always taught fifth- and sixth-grade history. And she worked each year with the third- and fourth-grade students on their annual show.
“I wanted to make sure I was in the classrooms in a real way at least once a week,” she said.
Grown Up
As she spends her last summer in the quiet school, Barasch knows she’s leaving her kids in good hands. One of the wonderful things about Londonderry School is that teachers who came never left, she said. Their connections with the students were too important to give up for a job elsewhere.
And she feels the same about her relationship with students, both current and former. Many of the kids will wander into her office and ask advice. Former students, some still in Harrisburg and others back in town, often stop to visit.
“I have to look at them and try to imagine how they looked as children,” she said, laughing. “They grow up so fast.”
While she hopes to still be involved in the school by helping out with extracurricular activities, Barasch said that she doesn’t want to get in the way of what new leaders will do within the school. She’s not quite sure what she’ll do with her new free time, other than visiting with her young grandchildren and maybe squeezing in some traveling.
Her four-decade career with the school has been celebrated in many ways.
A retirement party was attended by former students, some now in their 40s with their own children. A student living in London even made the trip.
In the thousands of days she’s spent in the school, the one she won’t forget was this year’s last day of school. The eighth-grade boys linked arms with her, walking through the double doors as parents waited outside to snap pictures.
“I think that speaks to how they wanted me to be family,” Barasch said. “They weren’t letting me walk out by myself. And that’s what I’ll miss—the daily interactions and conversations. We’ve all grown up together.”
To learn more about The Londonderry School, please visit www.thelondonderryschool.org.
