Time In Community
Jan 23, 2025 | by Greg Price - alumni parent, US History teacher, board member, and co-founder
Time In Community
As someone who spent nearly two decades building from scratch then fostering an educational community, two articles about community in the current issue of Time Magazine resonated. In the first article, comedian Roy Wood Jr. talks about his special, Lonely Flowers. “A group of flowers together is beautiful,” he writes, “But if you ever see a flower growing by itself, you go, Oh, what happened? As a society, we all somehow turned into a bunch of lonely flowers. A lot of places we used to be connected were at stores, in lines, in conversations with cashiers. And that’s been replaced by touchscreens, automated ordering, and DoorDashing.”
The second article discusses ‘third spaces’, informal spots where we gather socially outside home or work like coffee shops, bars, or civic clubs. The concern is that the role of these spaces has diminished in the American social landscape because of the increased hours at work and pressures from domestic obligations. As a result, collectively we are more isolated; last year, 17% of American adults claimed to have zero friends, up from 1% in 1990.
The article partially blames social media and online communities for this loneliness epidemic while also highlighting geographic polarization where “Americans are going through their days with hardly any interactions with people who are different from them, be it demographically, economically, or politically.” The article ends with a better New Year’s resolution than diet and exercise; that is, we should all cultivate a third life, “––a life with regular time for connection and glorious, unproductive leisure.”
The New Village School is my "third space," even after our twins graduated the 8th grade there nearly 7 years ago. The school remains a rare and valuable community anchor in an increasingly disconnected world. My wife Aimee sells her handcrafted, felted mice at the Winter Faire, and I enjoy teaching US History to the 7th and 8th graders and sharing our experiences with prospective parents. Like many NVS alumni families, we developed deep bonds with the community of teachers, parents and children over our years there, and those bonds continued with new parents, even though our children didn’t overlap.
From the school's founding, we grew a community to be filled with diverse families that hold a shared vision of allowing childhood to flourish. Through travel, outdoor education, and in the classroom, we reveal to the children multiple languages, cultures, and ways to directly interact with each other and the world whether sharing stories around a campfire in Joshua Tree or navigating a European city’s metro. The school calendar incorporates breaks roughly every six weeks so the children and teachers can enjoy 'glorious, unproductive leisure.' Parents gather at monthly parent evenings to understand the children’s journey and, frankly, how we can get out of their way. Unlike the metaphor of lonely flowers, at the New Village School, children across grades know each other and grow together, creating a vibrant garden of interconnected relationships that extend beyond the classroom walls.
Here, community isn't just an add-on program––it's woven into the fabric of the school itself. Whether alumni parents like us return to teach and volunteer, current families gather for seasonal festivals or bonfires at Muir Beach, or prospective parents who are welcomed into the Morning Circle and conversations about education and childhood, the school creates those increasingly rare spaces where meaningful connections thrive naturally. In an era where nearly one in five Americans report having no friends, our school community continues to nurture relationships that span generations, cultures, and life stages, proving that authentic third spaces aren't just possible––they're essential for our collective well-being. The New Village School remains a rare place where one can contribute to and benefit from a blooming community that grows more meaningful with each passing year.
