Walden Project      

 

 

The Walden Project

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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.