What is a school?

Is it a building or a location? Is it a group of people who teach and learn together? Is it an organization grouped around a unified philosophy of learning?

I work at a school I love, though I fumble about inarticulately when I try to explain why it makes me so happy.

My own children have been to a few schools in the quest for ones that feel like a “fit” for our family, and the struggle has left me questioning what it is that makes a school a school, what it is we seek when we look for ones for our kids, and why it feels so difficult sometimes. Is it that the cobbler’s children have no shoes, or something else?

I am an educator, yet it can be difficult for me as a parent of school children to navigate the world of “school” with them. Does anyone else have this experience?