A Room for Learning: The Making of a School in Vermont follows the first year of teaching and learning with adolescents in a small two-room school tucked away in Ripton, Vermont. The book focuses on teacher Tal Birdsey and his twelve students, as they set out to start a new school in the fall of 2001. The book is part memoir, part critique of contemporary educational systems, and part meditation on the deep teaching of art and poetry. Isolated from mainstream culture and with complete freedom to chart a unique curricular course, the book records how a diverse group of kids grew together, how a human and literary community was created, and how students and teachers learned to love and celebrate each other, showing how a classroom and a small school can become a place of authentic and transformative power.
