Dig in and root down during a Mountain School Semester
Farm
You’ll get your hands dirty as you plant, weed, and harvest crops on Garden Hill. You’ll also get your mind active as you take Farm Seminar and learn about agricultural practices, sustainable farming, and land use protocols. Time on the farm provides an opportunity for the shared work that establishes and sustains our interdependent community.
Farm, Food, Forest, Future
Food
At the Mountain School, you’ll engage with your food at every level: planting, nurturing, harvesting, cooking, and eating. This end-to-end experience with food fosters competence, confidence, and community. As you take Food Systems seminar, you’ll discuss the means of production, the modes of distribution, and consider real solutions to the challenges of feeding this planet. Culinary Studies students will have the chance to learn skills ranging from sauteing to fileting to fermenting. And, three times a day, we will all sit down together to enjoy the food and each other’s company. (And then do dishes.)
Forest
There are hundreds of acres of forest to explore on the Mountain School’s campus. Through Environmental Studies class, you get your own forest site to study - a place to engage with Field Science and Natural History. Afternoons provide the opportunity for woods crew: splitting logs, trimming limbs, and clearing trees, all while learning about forestry and fuel. Of course, there’s plenty of time to explore as well, and the Outdoor Program provides you with the skills to be comfortable in the woods, from knot-tying to stove use to how to read a compass.
Future
Understand the systems that shape our world. Engage in critical thinking. Do the labor that creates food and fuel. Discuss with your peers and sharpen your intellect. That’s what you’ll get in a semester at the Mountain School, and it’ll prepare you to find true, meaningful solutions in the real world. You’ll be a problem solver, ready for the future.
The Mountain School is a semester program for high school juniors located on a hilltop farm in Vershire, Vermont.
Each semester, 45 students gather here to live, work, and study with each other and our faculty.
The Mountain School provides students with way of connecting with the land, connecting with others, and connecting with themselves
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Who we are
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What we do
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How to apply
The Mountain School can take you where you want to go.
Get out of the grind. Put down your phone. Spend some time in nature. Challenge yourself with courses that will remind you why you love to learn. Connect with other students who want to understand the systems around them and become problem solvers. Whether you want to learn to read the forest, farm the land, work in the woods, become an engineer or run a non-profit or write poetry… the Mountain School can take you where you want to go.
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