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An Interview with Christopher Sblendorio
by Erik Bruun, Parent
When Christopher Sblendorio first walked into our school in 1978, we were the Pumpkin Hollow School, and Mr.
Sblendorio was Christopher Belski. Twenty-seven years and three classes later, Mr. Sblendorio has embarked
on teaching his fourth class this past September. During an hour-long interview in front of the school on a
recent sunny day, Mr. Sblendorio, 55, talked about his journey from then to now. He talked about how both
he and the school have changed (and remained the same) over the years, as well as various other observations.
 Let's start with some biographical information.
How did you first
come to the school?
I had gone to Farleigh
Dickenson University in New
Jersey to study education, and
some friends there introduced
me to Steiner. I visited an assembly
at the Steiner School
in New York City. I said, "Oh
my goodness, this is amazing.
These kids love what they're
learning. I've missed the boat."
And then I said to myself,
"I'm going to have my children
go to such a school when
I have children." But then I
realized, "Hey, I'm an education
major, I'm going to teach in a school like this."
So I did this independent study and found
out where I could continue my education, and decided
to go to Emerson College in England. I was
in Francis Edmunds' last class. Edmunds was a very
important mentor to the New
York City school. I was over
in England for three years.
When I returned to the United
States I was heading west to become
a eurythmy teacher. I was
so turned on to eurythmy, and
they were opening a new eurythmy
school in California. I
stopped at Waldorf schools on
the way, and they were offering
jobs. One school in Colorado
offered me a job, and I called
a friend of mine who knew
the school. He said, "Never
mind about that school, they
need you in New York City."
So I went to Manhattan and taught there for a year.
What did you teach?
I taught the eighth grade composition classes,
I was the high school librarian, I had a secondgrade playgroup, and I was general substitute for the
school. Towards the spring of that year, the school
offered me the next first grade, and I said, "Thank
you, but I am planning to raise my son in the country."
So I went to High Mowing for an interview
and to Hawthorne Valley, and they said, "Do stop at
Pumpkin Hollow School in Great Barrington." I came,
and I had an interview. When Jean Zay called and offered
me the first grade I thought, "A bird in the hand
is better than two in the bush." That was in 1978.
What was it like here in 1978?
Wow! We had this barn and this little attachment
and the foundation where we had two classrooms.
There was Mrs. Carr, Mrs. Kuzia, Mrs. Zay, myself,
Jo Savage, Jill Johnson, Pamela Giles, and Penelope
Nauman. It was very small, very intimate, very beautiful.
There were about 12 children in a class. It was the
seventh year of the school. We had five grades. It was
an amazing place. Where the May pole is, there was
a huge climbing apparatus, all made out of logs, and
there were swings. There was a big boat that came out
of the kindergarten. Betty Krainis had 30 kids in there.
I used to have kindergarten, first and second grade for
rest and recreation in the afternoon. They'd all take
naps. I'd lie down on the couch, and they would do the
same thing. Then we'd come out and just play. To this
day, I just love coming out and playing with the kids.
What was the sense, or anticipation, about
what was going to happen to the school?
There was a bold confidence. We just knew we
were going forward. We didn't have doubts that it wasn't
going to happen. We didn't have the sixth, seventh, and
eighth grade wing, but we just knew we were going to
have to do something about it. We didn't have any
space. We had the woodwork and nursery in the same
room. At a parent meeting with about 40 people we
said, "We need to get money to build more classrooms
and an auditorium." People were balking at the idea. I
said I'm only making $6,000 a year, but I can come up
with a donation of $300 to start it. Then a whole lot of
people put up their 300 bucks. That's how we built the
building; with that and a lot of people pounding nails.
There was a pioneering spirit that was the mode of
operation then. Everything was by a shoestring. We
built the building and the classrooms as if they were
our home. I remember coming here in the summers,
we couldn't afford anyone to mow the lawn, so I'd come
here and mow down 3 feet of lawn. We just did what
had to be done. I remember Jean Zay and I on our
hands and knees laying tile in the hallways downstairs.
 What about the first class that you had. Do
you remember your first day?
They were gorgeous! I had 12 little kids. I went at
it with such enthusiasm. I couldn't wait to have my first
class. I was just so excited, and they were so wonderful.
Every inch of everything I did was so thought out. The
parents were right there with me. The children, their
ability to imitate, was far greater than it is today. When I
would start saying a verse, they would be one word behind.
They learned so easily. Life was so much simpler. There
was nothing happening here. Great Barrington was so low
key compared to today. Life is so much fuller today. It's
like what Kim Payne talked about, simplicity! There it was.
What is it like to take a child from six years
old to early adolescence?
It's the greatest thing in the world. It is so amazing
to watch these children grow. You look at the first
assembly of the year, and you see the first graders and
you see the eighth graders, and they're just such different
creatures. The little ones are so little and filled
with wonder, and the eighth graders are so self-confi-
dent. Physically, of course, you start with a class, and
you're looking down at them and they're looking up
at you. I'm short enough so that by the time they're in
eighth grade I'm looking up at them, and they're looking
down at me. It should be like that. They end up standing
on my shoulders. I think they climb up me. They
climb up my limbs, and they enter the heart realm. By
seventh and eighth grade they've entered their intellectual
realms, and they are so awake to their thoughts.
Here's something about class teaching that
I love. People say to me, "What's your favorite class
to teach?" And I say, "I love the first grade. No, I love
eighth grade, but I love second grade, too. No, seventh
grade is cool, but so is sixth grade." But really,
the two ends of the spectrum are really my favorite.
Why is that?
Part of it is the curriculum. I have an affinity for
the history and the fairy tales. I love the science and the
math of the upper grades. It's great to have little ones
look at you with such awe. It's equally great to have a
bunch of older kids and hand them a piece by Beethoven
and have them whip out some recorders and start playing
it. That's wonderful. In the middle, there are great
years, but I'd say my favorites are the top and the bottom.
There's nothing like watching those children grow.
Do you find that you learn yourself as they
are learning?
Oh yeah. It's a little hard for me. I learn so much
each time. In the course of the three cycles, I've been
able to move away from focusing on the curriculum
and move toward focusing on the children. In the first
round, my children were right there. Without that grace
of having the children right there, I couldn't have done
it because I had to work so much with the curriculum.
With each cycle I can spend less time with the curriculum
because I understand it and know where it is going
and devote more time to the children as they go along.
And I learn more about the curriculum each time.
There is actually a shortcoming in that. In the first
round I knew less. I was very economical with my words
and content. My lessons were very succinct. As I learned
more about the subject, I would go off on tangents and
then tell them some more. It was like I knew too much,
but they didn't need it. Yet the children in the first class
were able to do so much more. They learned hundreds of
songs and poems by heart. As time goes on the children
don't seem to be able to hold on to what's given to them
in the same degree. It's as if I knew less back then, and
the children were able to do more. Now I know more,
but the children
are not as able
to take in more.
Why is
that?
It's because
of the time
we live in. Everybody
is so darn
busy. There are so
many distractions
in the world. We
can't deal with it
all. The children
are certainly born
with the same
capacities. Although
they have
the capacities,
they lack a certain
level of concentration
that they had back then. I'm sure it was
the same if you went further back in time to Steiner's
days. People probably had huge vast resources to remember
and hold things. Life is just so bits and pieces
right now. There are too many things to keep up with.
How do you respond to that as a teacher?
Wow! I have had to trim down the content of
what the children are producing. I have changed in my
style. In the first round, I gave them much more and
they were able to take much more. With this last round,
I will give more and more space to work on their own
research, rather than me giving it to them. They are
coming into this world saying, "I want to do it. Don't
just give it to me. I want to do it." I have to adjust myself.
I point the direction and say, "Off you go." They
are doing more of their own writing, doing their own
research, participating in the science demonstrations.
It's not me sitting back and letting them do it on their
own. It's more that they want to do it themselves. It
makes me a better teacher, giving them more space. .
What kinds of things have you learned
about yourself in watching these transformations?
You must have learned a lot about human nature.
Yeah. Of course, we all mellow with age. Maybe I
was a bit more wild in my younger days. Here's an example
of how I've changed my style: I would say something
like this to the parents in the first year. "Okay, the equinox
has passed. It's the 21st of September, the children
may not wear sneakers to school anymore. They have to
wear waterproof shoes because we can't have them going
out in the dew and get their feet soaking wet. And
that's all there
is to it." Bingo!
Back in the first
round, they said
"Yes, sir." The
second class they
said, "What! Are
you kidding?"
Now it's more
like saying, "You
know, I'd rather
not have your
kids sitting in the
classroom with
soaking wet feet,
so you might want
to consider sending
them with
waterproof shoes
so that won't
happen." It's
no longer direct command. That's about me learning
to respect other people more and more. That's
just about growing older, too, or at least I hope.
There must be something interesting,
though, about you just growing older, but when you
take a new class, you're going back to kids who are
much younger again.
The children really give to you. They take your
energy from you, as any parents know, but you're also
gaining so much from their enthusiasm. It's like they
give you life. Teachers tend to stay young because of that.
Do you feel isolated as a class teacher, all
by yourself in the classroom?
Sometimes it's the opposite. We're like little
kings and queens. In the sense of being lonely, we create our own loneliness. We have our little kingdoms
with our subjects, and we take care of them by way
of curriculum. Through the years, my first class was a
miracle and so wonderful, but my second class was so
difficult. Was it I or was it the group of children and
parents? What was going on? From the first class to the
third class, I did not think I had changed. But in the
middle, the children and the parents were just so demanding.
Part of that may have been a fluctuation in
how parents discipline children. In that second class,
the children just weren't used to having someone give
them direction. Now I think parents are more demanding
of their kids. They don't let them interrupt.
You asked about my first day of my first class, in the
first day of my second class,
I walked into the school,
and I had two kids tackle
me by the legs and a third
one grab me by the tie, and
floored me. I couldn't believe
it. Those same kids
went out to recess on the
first day and played tug of
war on a piece of rope, with
one of the kids pulling at it
with his teeth, and he ripped
out his two front teeth!
Whoa! That was a new one.
It's hard to come
back and start a new cycle
because parents hear
things about you. They
hear good things about
you, and maybe they hear
things that are less than
wonderful about you and they are wondering, "Is this
the teacher I want for my child?" When you're the
new kid on the block you have no history and everyone
thinks you're wonderful. On this fourth time
around, the children remind me more of the first class,
and the parents too, as if I've come around again.
Let's take a wild diversion to Italy. Tell me
about Italy.
I'd love to. When I first arrived at the school,
I came as Mr. Belski. My first two classes were by
that name, which was my father's name. My grandfather
Belski died before I was born, and my father
died when I was six months old. He was an only child.
I lived with my mother's family, where everybody
was a Sblendorio. We ate Italian food; they spoke the
dialect at home. I had Italian cousins come over, immigrating
all through the 60's. People would ask me,
"What's your background?" I'd say "Italian", and they'd
say "Belski?" Then my grandfather--who was like my
father--died. My children turned to me and said, "Papa,
who's going to be Grandpa Sblendorio now?" And I
stopped--he was such a figure in the family, the oldest
of nine children. I said, "I will." Right then and there
I went off to court and had my name legally changed.
This was during the second class?
Yeah. After seventh grade. When I told the class
after they came back in eighth grade, they couldn't believe
it. They were shocked, but I just owned up to that
heritage that I had grown up in all those years. No matter
how much I tried to be a New Englander and do the
Irish music and English country dancing, it just didn't
fit. On my sabbatical then,
Barbara Witschonke said,
"You ought to go back to
Italy", and so I went back to
my family's hometown way
down in southern Italy in
the heel at Toritto, near Bari,
and went to see my relatives.
They kissed me on both
cheeks and said, "The last
time we saw you, you didn't
have that beard." That's because
the last time I had
been there I was traveling
with my mother from
Hong Kong to Italy when
I was a year old, after my
father had died. He died
in a plane crash outside of
Hong Kong. So my relatives
in Italy knew me before
my relatives in America did. In the sabbatical, I
stayed for five months learning how to play the accordion
Italian style. As a kid on Long Island in the
Sblendorio family, I learned to play the accordion.
All kids with an "o" at the end of their name learned
the accordion, and I wanted to learn Italian style.
The result was I went back every summer over these
last ten years. I got into playing more music. I met a
group very near my family's town, and they adopted me.
I go over and play concerts with them. Over all these
years I've been gathering the most amazing experiences
in the folk world in Italy. In this last sabbatical I thought
of writing a book about that world and my experiences
with a CD to give examples. Then WBCR came into
existence, and I've got a program going on every Sunday
night from 5 - 7 p. m. on this radio station (FM 97.7)
playing all this music I've been gathering all these years.
The other thing that happened to me had to
do with Frederick II. He was a king, emperor of Italy
during the middle Ages. He's such a beloved figure, especially
in southern Italy. I wrote a play about him for
the sixth grade. On the sabbatical I wrote a children's
biography of Frederick II. It's ready now. The editor is
just about done with it. I've got an illustrator in mind.
I have a publisher who has expressed an interest.
How would you characterize yourself as a
teacher?
I love teaching, but teaching is a dramatic
art. It's a huge drama stepping into the classroom.
Here's one: I had just finished, my first,
first grade, and I felt so depressed and down.
I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. And then
the first day of second grade I went, "Ahhhh! That was
it! I missed my audience!" The children are there for
you. It's this drama through speech and movement and
song, all these things that
are part of dramatic art. It's
great theater and grand opera.
What I learned in my
teacher training all those
years ago at Emerson College
was how to tap into
my own creative font, how
to be able to approach any
subject with confidence
and say, "I can do this."
How would you
describe your creative
fonts?
One of the things that
kept me going came from a
teacher who gave some advice on how to avoid burning
out. He said to us, "You have to have an artistic endeavor
that you undertake on a daily basis that has nothing
to do with your schoolwork." Through practicing the
arts, you keep the creative fonts flowing when you walk
into the classroom and work with the children. A parent
asked me the other day, after looking at the blackboard
drawing, "That's wonderful! How do you do that?" I
said, "It's easy. You pick up the chalk, and you walk up to
the blackboard and you start going and step back when
you're done. If it's not very good, you step back up, and
you do it again and you do it again and you do it again."
You get better at it as you do it. All artists are not satisfied
with what they do. But it's through practice that you get
good at it. One day after assembly I told the children the
story about an artist who practiced a drawing 60 million
times until he gave one to the emperor who asked him
to draw a fish. It was all because he had to practice it.
That's what learning is about. You have faith in yourself,
knowing that it's not going to be perfect, and knowing
that you can do it. Anybody can do it. That's the
secret to teaching! That you can walk into the classroom
with that kind of confidence, and the children
will experience you say; "I can do it." It's not that
the teacher is so great or so wonderful. You know he
has his flaws and things that he is working at. But
the children see you striving and working at it. Before
you know it, they surpass you. They stand on
your shoulders, which is what they should be doing.
And here's my philosophy: People say to me, "Are you
ready?" Whatever it is, for first grade, for this lesson, for
whatever. "Yes! I'm ready. I'm always ready, and I'm always
preparing." It doesn't matter what grade I'm in. I'm
in first grade now, but I'm getting ready for eighth grade.
I'm always thinking, "Oh, there's something for fifth
grade?" or "That will be something for seventh grade."
Students from your
first class are now in their
30's. I know that there are
now parents at the school
who used to be students
here. What's that feel
like?
It is so wonderful! I feel
like a grandfather. I have
three children of my own,
but none of them have children,
so I'm not officially a
grandfather. But I feel like
a grandfather when students
from my first class are
having their own children.
Jen Van Sant with her son in third grade stops by and
says "hi" to me. Brooke (Kuzia) Redpath brings her
little ones (they go to the kindergarten), and says to
them, "This is my teacher." It's wonderful. It's so great.
Does having the same class teacher with
the students for eight years make a difference in
the way people think about the school?
Of course! The teacher is taking responsibility
for the students. It's not like in other schools where
you have the students for a year and then pass them
off, no matter what. As a class teacher, I am responsible
for the child's success. That's a huge investment.
How would you define success?
Success has to do with growing into
who you are, removing the hindrances of who
you are. That's a teacher's job - helping the children
grow into self-directed human beings.
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