Green School – “Part Of The Transformation Process Of The Planet” Says New Parent Chris Thompson.

Chris, Joanne, Chayton and Chenoa braving the Ayung River on the Green School family fun day in late September.

Who makes up the Green School Community? Sit down and start to chat to any number of the parents waiting by the swings to pick up their children each day after school and you will be as surprised by the differences in people’s life experience as you will be by the similarity in the reasons they, like you, find yourselves here. In the first of an ongoing series on the people who make our community, new Green School parent Harriet Gaffney spoke with fellow new Green School parent Chris Thompson.

Chris Thompson is a corporate high flyer that left his job as the Vice President and General Manager Asia of Electronic Arts in January. Electronic Arts is an international developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games including The Sims group, Battlefield and the Harry Potter games. His wife Joanne Guelke is a yoga, health and fitness professional who has trained world greats such as Seiji Ozawa – one of the most prominent conductors in the classical music world – and Ake Bono, the famous 500 pound Sumo wrestler. Why did this couple, at the top of their game, decide to give it all up and move to Bali?

In late 2009 Chris and Joanne found themselves at drinks with John Hardy. Over the course of the evening they became hugely inspired by John’s descriptions of Green School, of the reasons why the school had come into being, about Green School’s desire to help create positive change in the world.

“We have been talking about this for at least 10 years – making a change in our lives. This time there were too many stars in alignment – meeting John, the Green School. We thought ‘If we don’t embrace this now we may miss our chance’. It was actually one of the easiest decisions of our lives. People on the outside think it is so complex, but there has not been a moment’s hesitation.

Singapore is a wonderful place, it’s safe, it’s clean, but our kids are in these high rise apartments, with these big pools in the middle and they are asked not to climb on anything. It was so great the other day when our kids come home with bags full of muddy clothes, you have to have that visceral connection with nature. Cities have their roles and they are functional and there are great cities around the world but they strip your soul. When I grew up there was a river running in the back yard, I was always getting into poison oak, there were dogs and animals around.

As human beings we can do a lot better with ourselves. Here at Green School you are kind of getting back to your roots, this is what our bodies and our souls are crying for, and we are constantly fighting it. I have lived in Tokyo, San Francisco Singapore, those are big cities, and usually when I am there I am trying to get out to the country. This is like going back to the Indigenous way of life– living off the land, literally.

The economic stratum [at Green School] is wide, there are single parents, people with a lot of money, people with little money. For us personally it wasn’t hard for us to come here but I have a huge amount of respect for those people that made a really tough choice to bring their lives here.

Yet the return that people will get on that is also huge. Not everybody has the time, but those people that do have some extra time they want to give back to the school, they want to be part of this, here there is a little bit more drive and passion to see this place succeed.

I wish every school in the world was like this! We all grew up in schools where they had the same industrial cleaner, the same straight hall, the same closed rooms, it doesn’t matter whether you grew up in Australia or America or wherever, it was all the same.

Our son Chayton went up to his Class 3 teacher the other day and exclaimed “That was the best recess I have ever had in my entire life! “ The attitude and spirit of the kids at this school in incredible.

I think this is a great model for the world and it is absolutely imperative that we create a generation of children and students that will drastically change the course of the world. It is hard to change the course of the world so the more that you have working towards that change, the better. But change happens – I never thought I would ever see a Black President in the US. People have to be hopeful… I believe that we can leave a great world for our kids, that they can leave a better world for our grand-kids, and so on down the line. I think that this school is definitely part of that transformation process”.