Alpha_Alternative_School_1972–2012-Yumpu

Morgan Jones-Phillips
“It wasn’t just kids running around
screaming and breaking things,
it was kids making the school into
what they wanted it to be.”
Morgan jones phillips
ALPHA 1975 to 1981, ages 4 – 9.
Stud ied Lan guages and
Lin guis tics at York Uni ver sity,
French as a Sec ond
Lan guage at Uni ver sité du
Québec à Trois Riv ières,
and Para medics at
Cen ten nial Col lege. Works
as a Para medic. Does
stand-up comedy.
ALPHA was a free school, which appar ently was quite differ ent for the
time, but as a kid it felt nor mal to me. I took for granted that it was different
from any where else or that there was any thing unusual to be aware of.
My under stand ing of what made it differ ent was a per ceived lack of for mal
struc ture. I don’t remem ber ever hav ing to do any thing. This may sound
like com plete chaos; cer tainly if you let the kids in a reg u lar school plan
their day, it would be chaos, but I think that because that was our nor mal,
we cre ated our own day. We, as stu dents, took it upon our selves to cre ate
the struc ture that wasn’t being imposed on us. We didn’t cre ate chaos to
rebel against the estab lished struc ture; we cre ated a struc ture where there
wasn’t one. If the struc ture that was being estab lished by one kid wasn’t
one that inter ested you, you fit into some one else’s, or if no one was cre ating
the day you wanted, you could cre ate your own and let oth ers join you.
It wasn’t just kids run ning around scream ing and break ing things, it was
kids mak ing the school into what they wanted it to be.
I remem ber play ing a lot of tag and being a pretty fast run ner. I remem ber
being able to fit inside the giant tires in the play ground. I remem ber acting
out Grease after school. I remem ber going to the park across the street.
I was there with some one and we found a patch of four-leaf-clovers. We
picked a shop ping bag full and brought them back to Alpha and some one
older than me didn’t believe me and said, “I used to do that trick when
I was a kid.” I remem ber wait ing for the street car to go home and going
to Bill’s Restau rant and order ing a glass of water and some crack ers for
free while we waited. I remem ber a giant air tight wooden box and tak ing
turns lock ing each other in it and tim ing how long until we asked to come
out. I remem ber we stopped after a kid passed out and couldn’t alert us
that he was ready to exit—to my knowl edge, no one ever died. I remember
an elec tion where every one chose a polit i cal party. I ran as NDP, which
was kind of a no-brainer. I made signs and thought my cam paign slo gan,
“Fill-up, with bet ter gas prices” was pretty clever, but it didn’t work on a
poster: it was purely word play with my last name, Phillips. The fact that
a school elec tion was using gas prices in a cam paign was lost on me. Given
the demo c ra tic nature of the school, I doubt that any power was wielded
by the win ner, if there was a winner.
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