Letter from Our Director

Welcome!

As you visit our web site, I hope that you will begin to imagine yourself here. Set on a hill farm in central Vermont, the Mountain School is a place of intellectual energy, stunning beauty, spontaneous play, and unrelenting honesty. If you are looking for an authentic education among friends who truly want to learn, this program is for you.

The adults here have a deep and abiding faith in the ability of young people--when trusted and mentored--to make community happen. We need your hands, your intellect, and your voice to make this school and farm work.

We want to inspire you, to listen to you, and to learn from you. At the same time, we will help you hone your intellect, discover your gifts, and identify what is closest to your heart.

You will share this experience with forty-four other curious and motivated students from all over the country. Together you will come to know this place intimately--the forests, the gardens, the night sky. By the end, your experience here will inspire you intellectually, physically, and emotionally toward new places unimagined.

--Alden Smith

Mountain School Mission Statement

• Welcome students from different backgrounds and schools around the country, and challenge them to work together and learn from each other, as they explore the intersection of the school’s farm, academic program, and residential life. Return students to their schools and communities more clear about themselves and better prepared to become effective citizens.
  
  
• Build collaboratively a school culture that expects both individual and institutional responsibility, where students and adults develop a social contract of mutual trust, considering together the balance between the needs of the individual and those of the community. Model the values of simplicity and sustainability in practices such as food preparation, energy use, and the maintenance of facilities.
  
  
• Provide an intellectually demanding curriculum that balances hands-on learning and critical thinking; that links academic disciplines; and that inspires self-reflection and personal development, while pushing students to reach beyond the self and focus on the common good.
  
  
• Help students discover their own relationship with an evolving natural system, embodied in the farm and the forests surrounding the school. Through daily chores and farm jobs, have them experience the satisfaction that comes from meaningful physical work and understand the connections between our everyday actions and our world.

  Click here to watch our admissions video.