By Jec A. Ballou Reprinted with permission from The Upper Valley Parents' Paper, April 2001, Volume 2, Issue 3. The rooms, full of bright red and blue wooden chairs, stacks of books and anatomy charts, buzz with activity.
Kids work among themselves, their faces full of wonder and discovery.
There are no adults standing over them coaxing them through lessons. On a recent afternoon, two girls ran a makeshift post office, selling stamps to other students for ten cents a sheet. A group of kids worked together around a table to figure out how to balance mock bank accounts to pay for the stamps. In a different room, another group was spinning through gymnastic moves. Dozens of board games filled the gaps on shelves between thousands of books.