Curriculum
 
CURRICULUM SEQUENCE AND SCOPE: The program will meet from 8:05 to 2:47 and will mirror the Addison Northwest Supervisory Union calendar. Students will engage in a diverse range of activities that are linked to Vermont Standards. The curriculum is inspired by the writings of the great American philosopher and thinker Henry David Thoreau and the tradition of social discourse and self-reliance that he advocated. To that end, students will be engaged in a number of different projects.
 
ARTS, LANGUAGE, AND LITERATURE: To create critical thinkers who can engage a broad range of intelligences, as outlined in Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligencies, is a central goal of the Walden Project. Therefore, students will be challenged to develop their competency through a variety of different techniques/activities.
1. Journals: All students will be required to keep a daily journal, recording their reflections, observations, and life experiences. Aside from the value of self-reflection, this will create an intimacy with written expression and prove a resource for their own formal writings.
2. Written Publication: All students will work on the production of their own publication that will include both written and graphic pieces. This will serve as an important foil to the self-reflective writing of the journal, and will help them to develop their own voice that they can share with the community. This activity will also allow the students to have an experiential understanding of writing as a process, as they consider the technical elements of written structure, editing, and revising.
3. Philosophy/Literature Groups: All students will meet on a daily basis with staff from the Walden Project to read a range of thinkers including Thoreau, Emerson, Plato, Kant, Dewey, Heidegger, Wilber, Niebuhr, Hegel, and other Eastern and Western philosophers. They will also consider a range of literary works which cover a diverse scope of cultural orientation points. Students will develop a strong foundation for looking at the literary and artistic underpinnings of any given work. They will also be asked to lead discussions on authors of their choice. Genres explored will include poetry, short story, drama, novels, and essays .
4. Independent Reading: Students will be required to read independently a range of works of fiction and non-fiction and intelligently discuss the seminal elements of story with the staff. Weekly progress will be monitored with an eye to encourage and develop each student's own intellectual curiosities and interests. 5. Public Speaking: The Walden Project is designed to foster a sense of individual voice. As a result, students will be required to participate in a range of exercises that require them to intelligently voice their opinion. Students will be asked to present to the group-at-large a synopsis of their weekly work and justify their efforts accordingly. They will also participate in deciding the weekly experiential activities of the school.
6. Cultural Events: Students will go to a variety of local art shows, including the matinees at the Royall Tyler Theater, The Fleming Museum, and other venues for the arts and humanities.
LINKED TO VERMONT STANDARDS: 5.1-5.15, 5.22-5.27
 
SOCIAL SCIENCES: Students will meet formally on a bi-weekly basis. The purpose of these meetings will be to create a conscious and shared sense of community. All decisions with regards to policy and rules will be generated by both the staff and students of the Walden Project. This will foster an active sense of democracy and consensus building by requiring students to take charge of their environment and to accept responsibility. Moreover, by creating a microcosm of the culture, students will have to look at the relationship between cause and effect, as well as identify logical fallacies. All the students will develop a formal understanding of power, justice, basic human rights,authority, and citizenship based on this discourse. Students will also be encouraged to participate in a social science project that will ask them to engage in a social issue outside the Walden Project. They will trace the origins of the issue from the past to the present and show its relationship to society as a whole. They will frame their discourse on this issue in the context of institutional access, citizenship, and the role of government. As John Dewey said, "Public schools are the laboratory of democracy." This civic piece is essential in this process. By being part of the "public", they will understand their relationship to their society. Finally, as noted in the section on literature, students will participate in reading groups that will look at social philosophers such as Dewey, Chomsky, Thoreau, and others. This will offer students a chance to frame their own experience at Walden in the proper socio-political context.
LINKED TO VERMONT STANDARDS: 6.1-6.6, 6.9-6.15, 6.20-6.25
 
SCIENCE: Students will not only be asked to pay attention to their cultural environment: they will develop an awareness of their natural environment. Students will participate in a number of projects including hiking trips, sailing, tracking, canoeing, orienteering, and other naturalist related activities to develop a sense of their environment and the natural forces that affect them over time. These activities will also allow them to gain an understanding of human organisms and their impact on the world, witnessing the interdependence of the various systems that support life. They will cultivate an awareness of the diverse plant and animal population within their ecosystem, working actively to understand effective means of conservation. They will also utilize the scientific method, generating hypotheses to describe, explain, and investigate natural phenomena. They will also experiment in order to validate or invalidate their generated hypothesis. In the spirit of Thoreau's vision of self-reliance and interdependence, students will also learn about the human body through an intensive first aid course. This will give students an experiential approach to understanding issues of body systems, heredity, immunity, and basic physical functioning.
LINKED TO VERMONT STANDARDS: 7.11, 7.13-7.15
 
MATHEMATICS: Although not a subject formally set aside for study, mathematics is recognized as an integral part of life's daily activities and would be emphasized as it relates to various projects. Part of the Walden Project includes the designing and building of the necessary classroom structures. To that end, students will be dealing with relations, differences, proportions, proportional change, measurement, money, budget, predictability, extrapolation, sequence and other related concepts. Mathematics will also be addressed as it relates to activities such as cooking, map reading, budgeting, etc. While no official efforts will be made to teach geometry, calculus, and trigonometry, the Walden Project staff will address those areas within the scope of individual inquiry and if necessary students will be directed to the appropriate resources for gleaning a more comprehensive knowledge.
LINKED TO VERMONT STANDARDS: 7.3, 7.5-7.7
 
PHYSICAL EDUCATION: Students will be involved in a variety of outdoor activities, including skiing, snow-shoeing, hiking, sailing, orienteering. Students will be encouraged to be physically active, with an eye towards developing a life long commitment to physical well-being. Nutrition and cooking will also be studied through collective meal planning. Students will also learn about nutrition through the study of gardening and food preservation
 
ASSESSMENT: Students will be assessed mainly from the Gardnerian perspective of Multiple Intelligences as well as group participation and contribution. Although quantitative assessment will not be used as the primary measurement of achievement, students will be expected to be actively engaged and productive in their individual studies as well as group projects. Staff will meet weekly to discuss each student's progress within the scope of their individual abilities. The aim of the Walden Project is to foster group participation as well as personal pursuit of knowledge rather than fierce and divisive competition. By this method students will learn to value and rely upon the diversity of individual abilities and therefore understand that a sense of community often affords the most broad based and inclusive approach to problem solving. On the other hand, students will also be encouraged to excel on an individual basis without the constraint of group consensus or limitation. Students will be encouraged to explore how individual and group study inter-relates.

THE SEVEN INTELLIGENCES: as conceived by Howard Gardner
VERBAL/LINGUISTIC: This intelligence deals with words and language, both written and spoken.
RELATED TASKS/INTERESTS: reading, vocabulary, formal speech, journal/diary keeping, creative writing, poetry, debating, impromptu speaking, humor/jokes and storytelling.

LOGICAL/MATHEMATICAL: This intelligence deals with deductive thinking/reasoning, numbers and the recognition of abstract patterns.
RELATED TASKS/INTERESTS: using formulas, outlining, graphing, number sequencing, calculation, deciphering codes, showing relationships, problem solving and pattern games.

VISUAL/SPATIAL: This intelligence deals with the sense of sight and being able to visualize an object and create internal mental/pictures.
RELATED TASKS/INTERESTS: guided imagery, active imagination, color schemes, patterns/designs, painting drawing, mind-mapping, pretending, sculpture and pictures.

BODY/KINESTHETIC: This intelligence deals with physical movement and the knowing wisdom of the body, including the brain's motor cortex, which controls body motion.RELATED TASKS/INTERESTS: folk/creative dance, role playing, physical gestures, drama, martial arts, body language, physical exercise, mime, inventing and sports/games.

MUSICAL/RHYTHMIC: This intelligence deals with the recognition of tonal patterns, including various environmental sounds, and a sensitivity to rhythm and beats.
RELATED TASKS/INTERESTS: rhythmic patterns, vocal sounds/tones, music composition/creation, percussion vibrations, humming, environmental sounds, instrumental sounds, singing, tonal patterns and music performance.

INTERPERSONAL: This intelligence operates primarily through person-to-person relationships and communication. It relies on all the other intelligences.
RELATED TASKS/INTERESTS: giving feedback, intuiting others' feelings, cooperative learning, person-to-person communication, empathy practices, division of labor, collaboration skills, receiving feedback, sensing others' motives and group projects.

INTRAPERSONAL: This intelligence deals with inner states of being, self-reflection, metacognition and awareness of spiritual realities.
RELATED TASKS/INTERESTS: silent reflection methods, metacognition techniques, thinking strategies, emotional processing "know thyself" procedures, mindfulness practices, focusing/concentration skills, higher-order reasoning, complex guided imagery and centering practices.