"It's not a school. There is no sign, no schedule, no exam. The kids don't call it a school. I don't either. But twice a week, the back room fills up."
The back room of the house I borrow from — the one with the wood stove and the window that doesn't quite close — became a classroom by accident. I was teaching my host family's youngest how to read, and her cousins heard, and the neighbor's two boys heard, and one Tuesday afternoon there were nine of us sitting on a long bench and on the floor, going through a primer. I didn't decide to start a class. I was already in the room.
What it is
Twice a week, in the late afternoon when the light goes amber through that crooked window, the back room becomes a place where people sit together. Some are kids — anywhere from five to thirteen, mostly local, a few from neighboring households. Some are travelers, passing through for a week, who want to learn a few words of Tibetan or to ask questions about how a household runs at this altitude. Some are adults from the village, who come with questions of their own, or who just want a quiet hour.
We don't have a curriculum. We don't have grades. The closest thing to a rule is: take your shoes off, and don't talk over whoever's speaking. That's it. If a child wants to leave early, they leave. If a traveler shows up with a question about prayer flags, we spend the hour on prayer flags.
What it isn't
Outsiders sometimes ask if this is the school where the village children learn. I have to disappoint them. The village has a school — the central primary school, where I teach in the mornings, with a real building, real desks, a real bell. That is one thing. The Wilderness Classroom is another. The school is a job. The Classroom is a practice.
I also want to be clear: the Classroom isn't charity. The kids who come aren't deprived of education. They go to the central school every day. They come to the back room because the back room is a different kind of room — looser, more curious, less hierarchical. They want to ask questions they can't ask in a classroom. So do I.
Why wilderness
I called it the Wilderness Classroom in my book because that is what it feels like. The walls are thin. The stove makes a sound. The wind moves the curtain. Outside, the yaks pass on their way to pasture. Inside, we are reading from a book. The boundary is soft. That is the point.
Real schools, in the cities I came from, are sealed. Climate-controlled. Beige. The Wilderness Classroom is the opposite. It smells like wood smoke and butter. It is honest about its smallness. You can hear the snow when it starts.
Who it is for
The first time a boy from the next valley walked two hours to come to a Tuesday session, and walked two hours back, I understood what this was. It wasn't a class. It was an excuse for a community of curiosity to keep meeting. The room was the reason. The room was always the reason.
I have written about the Wilderness Classroom in my book because it is one of the things that saved me here. Not the mountains, not the sky. The room. The fact that on a Tuesday afternoon, I can sit on a bench with a primer and a hot pot of tea, and a few people will come, and we will all be slightly more ourselves by the time we leave.
