The Life Experience School: Curriculum

The Life Experience School

Philosophy & Admissions

Admissions Procedure | Philosophy | Curriculum

A Life-based Curriculum
Traditional school programs tend to examine real life, abstract it into workbooks, textbooks and courses, then present these abstractions in the artificial world of the classroom and expect young people with disabilities to apply what they have learned to solving real life problems. At The Life Experience School, we feel that acquiring the skills to solve life problems happens naturally through direct interaction with the community, and by responding - as peacemakers - to history as it happens.

In traditional schools, areas of knowledge and particular skills fall into neat categories; in life they blend together into a rich and complex texture. At The Life Experience School, knowledge and skills are explored as they occur naturally, within the context of life itself -- we use the community as the classroom, and the concrete need for knowledge and skills as motivation to learn.

Central to the curriculum at The Life Experience School is imbuing students with a desire to learn, a sense of fairness, and love of life. Our students develop values that connect them with one another and with all living beings. Our guidelines are cooperation, service to others, and the growth and strengthening of spiritual character.

Program areas include:

*Academics (individual tutoring and small group - see below)

English Literature	Money Management	Music
Nature Studies	Poetry	Peace Studies
World Music	Computer Literacy	Geography
Greenhouse Gardening	Horticulture	Drama
Environmental Studies	Culinary Arts	Dance
Animal Husbandry	Vocational Education (Community)

*Academic classes teach and review language arts, reading comprehension, mathematical computation and computer studies.

Mainstreaming: Life Experience Education
While traditional schools strive to mainstream students with disabilities into regular classes, we at The Life Experience School endeavor to integrate our students into the life of the community. For nearly two decades, we have found that involvement of our students in the mainstream of life addresses, in a rather poignant way, the community's special need to experience a side of itself that it tends to overlook, ignore and even reject.

Interacting with the community, our students require a measure of patience and sensitivity that is often missing in our everyday relationships. They are thus empowered to nurture inner peace in those whom they meet.

The Peace Abbey at Strawberry Fields
Two North Main Street, Sherborn, Massachusetts 01770
Phone : (508) 650-3659 Fax : (508) 655-5031 E-mail us!