Overview

Adolescence is an age of explosive growth and change when young people are seeking to understand and assert themselves. It is a dramatic and challenging time, both for young people and for those adults, parents, and teachers who work with them. In the Montessorian view of adolescence, teenagers have three commanding needs: 1) the need to do meaningful work that makes a significant contribution to their community; 2) the need to form social groups and to be involved in social and political issues; 3) the need to have a first-hand experience with the land in order to cultivate, sow seeds, and harvest the bounty of their work. Caring for the land and animals helps them to discover the ecological connection between all living things.

The first goal of the Junior High program at Lake Country School is to provide a setting where adolescents are respected and loved, a place where they can struggle, work hard, be challenged, be responsible, and have repeated opportunities to test themselves. Through flexible, stimulating and supportive learning environments, this goal can be realized in many ways.

Our second goal is to maintain a community within the classroom. Each student accepted into the program signs an agreement promising to deal honestly and sincerely with the conflicts and tensions of interpersonal relationships. In recognizing each other as valuable people, students accept the struggle of dealing with conflicting points of view as a central learning experience.

Our third goal is to create a diverse curriculum that focuses on the wider interests and needs of this age. Because early adolescence is a time of testing and responding to challenges, it is essential that their education be broad and personally expanding and that it stretch them physically and mentally. We seek to prepare students to be aware of the ideas and values that are their common heritage and to help them become reflective and intellectually independent. This age is a time of consolidation of experience and self-discovery, and it is important that the school environments that challenge them be nurturing and safe as well.

Odyssey

The Odyssey trips at the beginning of each year set the stage for the formation of the community and the academic tone for the first semester of the year. The Odyssey East to Williamsburg and Washington, D.C., focuses on the creation of a nation, the foundations of democracy, weather, phenology and human genetics, early American literature, essays, and political thought. The Odyssey West, to Crow Canyon, focuses on the first humans in North America, the needs of early peoples, the effects of climate in their lives, the science of archeology, geology of the western United States, the art and literatures of early cultures. The Odyssey South to the J.L.Scott Marine Educational Center in Biloxi focuses on marine biology, slavery and the Civil War, and 19^th and 20^th century American literature.

Program

The Junior High curriculum is configured in a yearly cycle. In most instances, the work of the students is focused on their own research and projects. Each year some projects are integrated across disciplines. The following courses are offered at the Junior High level.

• Humanities (Writing and Literature, Philosophy, Latin, Seeing with the Mind, Social Studies)
• Mathematics (Pre-algebra, Algebra, Geometry)
• Science
• Art
• French
• Music and Drama
• Physical Education, Health and Sex Education
• Woodworking

The Lake Country Land School offers Junior High students unique opportunities to connect to a rural experience. Each student may elect to participate in a Land School residency during one of four six-week sessions over the school year. Residency programs vary according to the season, but include academic, economic, and physical work. In addition, each student assumes a role as a manager of an occupation on the farm or on the land. Occupations involve both deep physical work and a pertinent focused study. When students live at the Land School during their six-week residencies, the art of self-teaching and self-direction comes into play.

There are four full-day experiences at the Land School over the course of the year for all Junior High students. During visits to the Land School every student participates in some aspect of stewardship and preservation of either the natural environment or the agricultural environment. Stewardship activities include trail and bird feeder maintenance, development of the camping areas, planting trees to prevent erosion, and tipi maintenance. Land School projects may focus either on farm related or natural or environmental science areas, with a focus on real-world application.

In summer, Junior High students may apply to participate in a 4-day residential apprenticeship program to support and maintain the community supported agriculture (CSA) gardens at the Land School.

January Interim: Mirroring the experience of the Odyssey and supporting the adolescents developmental need for self-expression, January serves as a month-long drama experience that offers an immersion into another time and place through theater.  Working in crews, students participate in every aspect of creating, staging and acting in a major performance for the school and parent community.  An annual rotation of genres generally include Shakespeare, a musical, and an original or adapted script.

Town and Country Days offers a week-long exploration of the Twin Cities and rural areas surrounding the Land School. Each field trip focuses on a place or topic of social or historical significance and supports the adolescents developmental need for broadening their sense of belonging and community perspective.

Bike Trip: The Junior High students take a five-day bike trip with the staff in the late spring of every year. The trip is physically challenging and ends the year with a bond of shared experiences and memories.

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