the field school of hvar

Phonetic Planet recently chatted with Carolyn Zelikow, Founder and Director of The Field School of Hvar, to learn more about her mission to develop a nurturing educational environment on a beautiful Croatian island.

Carolyn, it’s lovely to meet you! I see that we both have a connection to Vienna, Austria, where Phonetic Planet is currently based. Can you fill us in on your personal connection to this lovely city, and perhaps tell us a little about your childhood in general?

Yes, of course! I was actually born in Vienna, Austria, where my dad was stationed as a foreign service officer during the fall of the Iron Curtain. That “origin” has set the trajectory of my life in a certain way, but unfortunately I have no memories of the city as a child.

I spent my childhood in Acton, a small town 45 minutes west of Boston, U.S.A.. My mom was a public school librarian. She would bring home crates of books every week for me to “review,” and the many Caldecott Award-winners set in New England helped me treasure those surroundings, as did the English children’s books that my mom and I loved, which have a similar landscape of small towns, forests, and rolling hills.  

There are many memories: of fairy kingdoms that existed in the ferns behind our house; the woods between our neighborhood and the high school where my friends and I made lean-tos from tree branches; the magic of opening the milkweed pods that sprouted in the wetlands between schools that I and my best friend attended. I am fortunate that the outdoors was the default backdrop for most of my childhood.

Do you have some special memories from your own schooldays that you would like to share with us?

Actually, I was mostly adrift in school. I was bookish, but never quite figured out the rhythms of homework, teachers, lectures, tests, and so on.

I loved projects and remember those vividly: observing aphids, making a diorama of an Aztec house, doing Odyssey of the Mind-type things. By high school, I was usually cutting class to read about things that interested me in the library. I would read volume after volume of a series called “20th Century Views” that had great little essays on all the big authors and philosophers. Kind of like skipping to the answers at the back of the book! I was always a bit of a “Rushmore,” starting clubs and organizations. I started my school’s newspaper, a tennis team, a rock band, and various other misadventures.

How did you discover the school where you are now based, and what is your role there?

I came to live on the island of Hvar during the pandemic. It’s a deliriously beautiful island on the Adriatic coast of Croatia with Mediterranean ecology and a deep, sometimes tragic history. My husband is from a town called Stari Grad (literally Old Town), and we decided to raise our family here.

While there is a lot to love about our lifestyle, the schools here are very similar to the ones I grew up in. Far from bad, but not a great fit for all kids. I have met enough young people here who are struggling in life as a result of their educational experiences that I resolved to create something better.

 I also recognize that a school can be a powerful institution for nourishing community values and even driving sustainability. My goal is to found a school that will foster leaders in the green transition, equipping children with the moral foundation, civic literacy, and technical know-how to win the fight for their future. I hope that our institution can not only secure Hvar’s natural and cultural integrity for generations to come, but also serve as a light to other schools in Croatia and beyond.

Please tell us about the geographic area surrounding The Field School Of Hvar.

The island of Hvar is a submerged peak in the Dinaric Alps which run from Italy to Albania. That means that we have dramatic cliffs, canyons, and very diverse microclimates, ranging from sun-drenched beaches to forest valleys frequented by pheasant and wild boar.

The lowlands have a bucolic feeling. Imagine the Cotswolds, but with olive trees instead of ash. The landscape is a patchwork of orchards and vineyards, partitioned by high stone walls made without mortar. These are not big plantations like you might see in Spain or Italy. All of the parcels are all family-owned and tend to be quite small. In fact, our island is home to one of the oldest agricultural landscapes in Europe, the Stari Grad Plain, which was created by Greeks about 2,400 years ago, and still functions as it did then: without electricity, irrigation, or use of heavy machinery.

Stari Grad Plain sits adjacent to the bay of Stari Grad, itself one of the oldest port towns in Europe. It is a deep, sheltered bay and has offered refuge to sailors for many millennia, from the neolithic seafarers who left traces of their spiritual practices in the island’s caves at least 10,000 years ago to the pirate princes who battled Turks and Venetians throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Lavender fields cover hillsides at higher altitudes where the soil is poorer, a monumental grid of stone troughs created by hand. These furrows help the plants retain water in the long dry season and protect them from the strong winds which rake across the island. Nothing evokes the sacrifice and toil that characterized the lives of previous generations like this titanic stone mesh, but their efforts are all around us: in our carefully cultivated fields, our buildings and roads hewn from limestone, and even in our liberal institutions, which have been defended at great cost throughout Croatia’s history.

In recent decades, Hvar has become a magnet for holiday-makers. Our island is said to have the most sunny days of any in Europe, and Croatia has the cleanest waters on the continent. The shores around Hvar are a deep, glassy turquoise, inviting sailboats, swimmers, and sunbathers from all around the world.

On its website, the school is intentionally described as a family-friendly environment, with community housing and a high-quality series of educational enrichment opportunities. Can you use your unique perspective to describe for us the essence of the program, to take us through a typical day there, and to list some of the specific enrichment activities that have gathered particular attention?

The Field School of Hvar is not lacking in ambition! I will describe the two core elements of our program: the parent experience and the child experience.

I am a parent. I have personally experienced how the demands of care and career - as rewarding as they are - force out many other elements of life that I value greatly: my time outdoors, reading and, most of all, my ability to cultivate deep friendships. I know that I am not alone in this. In addition to reliable full-time childcare, The Field School of Hvar offers family co-living and a program of events for parents - to turn down the volume on parents’ daily obligations and create space again for rich social connection and personal pursuits.

For children. Right now, The Field School of Hvar is a seasonal enrichment program, rather than an accredited school. With that in mind, my single-minded goal at this stage in the school’s development is just for young learners to experience the shock, the wonder of actual discovery at least once during their time with us.

Children have a very strong natural instinct to learn about reality. We see that in the way they collect facts about topics like dinosaurs, repeat games that mimic real-life dilemmas, and strain to depict people and things realistically. The Field School of Hvar offers them a feast of reality - hours spent outside in direct contact with the subject of their curiosity - along with techniques of art and science that empower them to understand - and therefore love - their world more deeply. My hope is that children can carry some memory of how good, how riveting the real disciplines of knowledge are into the rest of their academic careers, as a kind of candle to guide them through seasons of tedium and repetition.

Our approach is nature and play-based, learner-led, and structured entirely around participatory activities. There are no lectures, textbooks, or worksheets. Instead, we have daily art class, a child-led seminar (Harkness Method), experiments, field games, and site visits. Each week during the summer focuses on a different theme, ranging from the music of the everyday to regenerative agriculture. In the fall and in other seasons, our “units” will last for a full month. You can see a typical day here, and check our all of our themes for this summer here.

Carolyn, we are sure that you must have some favorite books from your childhood! Since we are always looking for book recommendations, perhaps you can select a few of your most beloved stories for us?

Where to begin?! The Wind in the Willows, the Tolkien books, The Phantom Tollbooth, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, The Velveteen Rabbit. One book that is probably not on very many lists, but which has really stuck with me is Kim by Rudyard Kipling. It is a novel about a young orphan living in colonial India. I haven’t read it since I was young, and probably some elements have not aged altogether well. But the world it evokes is enrapturing: polyglot, overabundant, and laced with real geopolitical intrigue that reverberates today. Its protagonist is an unforgettable survivor - charismatic, cunning, but also vulnerable - rather than one of the goody-goody types who sometimes prevail on the pages of YA literature.

 One of my favorite picture books is/was Little Nemo by Winsor McCay. This was a comic strip published at the turn of the century, when options for entertainment were fewer and comics were a much bigger deal than they are now. McCay’s stories were allocated a full newspage, in glorious color. There are editions available now that reprint these stories at the correct scale and the impact of his dreamy art nouveau imagery is wonderful.

Thank you so much, Carolyn, for taking the time to chat with us. We hear that The Field School of Hvar is hiring for several positions. Would you like to let our readers know more about this, and to whom they should send an application if they feel that their skill set might be a good match?

We are currently looking for inspired educators to lead our Early Elementary, Upper Elementary, and Middle learner groups. Here is a detailed description of these roles.

If your commitments prevent you from joining us this summer but you think you might be interested in joining our team in the future, I’d love to be in touch. Please send me a note at carolyn@fieldschoolhvar.org with your current resume and a brief note about your interest in what we’re building.

We are so interested to discover this emerging program, rooted in an environmental and play-based approach. Many thanks to Carolyn Zelikow for taking the time to share more information about her life, her interests and her hopes for the future. We wish her the best of luck in her educational mission!