A few days ago, NPR's Morning Edition provided a snapshot of a remarkable alternative ed program offered by Vergennes High School: High School Teaches Thoreau in the Woods.This snippet left me wanting to know more about the program, and the web brought me to Edutopia March 2007, which explains: The Walden Project is not school in the traditional sense. It is a community of nineteen students and two teachers who use this former farmland for what the founder calls a "great, living template for education." They spend three days a week outdoors, through fall, bitter winter, and spring. On Tuesdays, for Field Sociology class and writing, the students visit government offices, nonprofit organizations, and other institutions in Burlington, a college town of 40,000 located 20 miles away.Vergennes High School teacher Matt Schlein has developed a place-based curriculum that revolves around stewardship of the land, specifically the 260 acres the school uses for classes. For example, Joseph Clugg describes lessons learned from beekeeping: Since learning the importance of bees in Vermont and the rest of the world, I feel I care for the bees as I care for some of the most important things in my life.Starting in their sophomore year, students may spend up to three years in the Walden Project. A small number opt for this choice, and this is significant: Educators have decided that choice is important; they have decided that learning about stewardship of the land is important.The Walden Project gives us a vision of what school can look like in a Vermont Second Republic. The vision is not that everybody takes classes in the woods. The vision is that students can choose an education suited to their needs be it to remain at the traditional school, gather in the woods, or find another path. I have posted the NPR and Edutopia pieces on my website, as well as Joseph's essay on beekeeping.