Our Programs | Adolescent

The Young Adolescent - Intellectual Needs

Intellectual needs are met because the studies are rigorous, accountable, and in-depth, and are often connected to the hands-on work on the farm. The teacher-guides are prepared to offer clear, age-appropriate academic lessons with assignments, assessments, and evaluations that meet contemporary standards and go beyond. The students study language arts and literature; mathematics including and exceeding Algebra 1; interdisciplinary sciences that connect to the biology, chemistry, ecology and physical sciences of the farm and to the abutting land and water bodies; humanities and history; Spanish language; and visual arts, music, fitness, and other specials.

In keeping with the adolescents’ intellectual need for engagement through work and sense of purpose, the program merges hands-on experiences with theoretical, academic learning.

The Young Adolescent - Physical Needs

Physical needs are met as the adolescents get a great deal of movement as they engage with the campus activities. They start every morning with barn work that includes cleaning stalls and coops, filling water buckets, lugging hay bales, taking wheelbarrows full of manure to the compost pile, milking goats, leading sheep, maintaining gardens and trees, and building, sawing, chopping, and so forth. Adolescence is a time of rapid physical change and growth, and the adolescents need a great deal of movement for mental and physical equilibrium.

They venture outside every day after lunch for half an hour, playing different sports and games. Their physical education teacher regularly takes advantage of a network of hiking trails across the road in the Nepaug State Forest and often escorts them to the town of New Hartford’s recreational fields just a short walk from the farm. They skate on a pond and sled in winter, and they play Frisbee, tetherball, volleyball, soccer, kickball, Capture the Flag, and much more in the fall and spring.

Physical (manual) and intellectual work are closely connected, and the development of one enhances the development of the other for optimal development of the whole person.

The Young Adolescent - Community Needs

Community needs are met as the adolescents provide service and leadership in community meetings, weekly farm-to-table lunches, animal/barn care, cleaning shared spaces, and running a business that requires production, marketing, accounting, and exchanges with customers.

 Adolescents have a sensitivity to issues of justice and dignity, and in their adolescent community learn the importance of individual contribution as well as a just system of the division of labor. They learn the relationship between the human-built and natural worlds. and assume adult-like work roles that have implications for themselves and their community.

They gain a sense that all work is noble, for each person’s role on the farm and in the classroom is a cog in the wheel that propels the entire community forward. Students grapple with social and moral problems, such as the right use of the natural environment and the ethics of science, and they participate in council meetings that give everyone an equal voice in the classroom.

Further, they abide by a student-written compact that preserves the dignity and integrity of every adolescent and adult in the program and guarantees good stewardship of the land, animals and buildings.

Science

This area of study includes ecology, biology, chemistry, physical sciences, geology, botany, zoology, physiology and anatomy, and the students take advantage of the farm environment as a point of departure for many of the academic topics in this area.

We offer an interdisciplinary science course that integrates abstract study and purposeful work with the farm animals, honey bees, vegetable garden, fields, woodlands, ponds, and river. Accompanying the hands-on work are structured lessons, assigned readings and questions from a wide range of sources, written work including lab reports, sketchbooks, celebrations of knowledge, and student research with presentations. We cultivate in our students an environmental ethic that includes an understanding of the cycling of matter and the flows of energy essential to the planet’s wellbeing, as well as an appreciation for living in synchronicity and reciprocity with natural ecosystems and the human-built world.

Language and Literature

There are opportunities throughout the day for the students to develop language skills -- to express their thoughts, ideas, needs, and feelings, and to communicate with both peers and adults. More formally, discussions of novels, plays, short stories and poems take place in seminar format in order to foster a deeper, collaborative approach to understanding a piece of work and to encourage the adolescents to articulate their interpretations and to use evidence to support and develop their reasoning.

 
The students are asked to write almost daily, either on a given topic or one that they have proposed, and they are often asked to write multiple drafts. They write across disciplines and genre, including essays, poems, journals, letters, reviews, personal narratives, lab reports, research reports, histories, biographies, and literary analyses and criticism.

They become familiar with literary terms and concepts that they can use in their own writing and understanding of books, themselves, the world, the truth and human nature.

Spanish Language 

The goal is that the students be eager to speak, read, understand, write and enjoy the Spanish language. The hope is that they become appreciative of other languages and cultures, expand their understanding of the world and learn to communicate in a language other than their own. The students have structured lessons in small groups tailored to their level and do exercises that build vocabulary, grammar, and reading comprehension skills. They participate in dialogues, read aloud, listen to spoken Spanish, and converse.

Further, foreign language learning enhances intellectual growth and memory, hones sensitivity to language and an ear for listening, and improves a student’s understanding of the grammar and syntax of her own language(s).

Music 

Music study in the Adolescent Community encompasses the artistic processes of Creating, Performing, Responding, and Connecting within a global music context.  Thematic threads include ensemble work – in unison and parts, body percussion and movement, world musicians and music, and ukulele instrumental instruction, all while making cultural connections. Students explore ideas, meaning, and music within the context of culture through singing, playing instruments, moving, and analyzing and interpreting songs representing a variety of the world’s musical cultures.