Review of "A Room for Learning" in EDUCATION REVOLUTION

Reviewed by Ron Miller, Ph.D.

By Tal Birdsey

St. Martins Press (www.stmartins.com)

This is a beautifully written personal account of an alternative school for young adolescents in a small Vermont community. Tal Birdsey is an inspired teacher who reaches out to young people with humor, honesty and wisdom. He describes his students’ struggles and insecurities, often related to their public school experiences, and how they opened deeper dimensions of themselves in the caring, human-scale community they established together. The story is warm and moving; it evokes laughter and poignancy even as it embodies a brilliant critique of standardized schooling. It is no exaggeration to say that A Room for Learning takes an honored place in the alternative education literature with classics like Sylvia Ashton-Warner’s Teacher, George Dennison’s The Lives of Children, and Chris Mercogliano’s Making it Up as We Go Along. Like them, Birdsey shows exactly how authentic education, stripped of labels, methods, and standards, nourishes the minds and hearts of growing human beings.

http://www.educationrevolution.org/aeromagazine.html