"During the 1967 school year, on Wednesday afternoons when all his classmates go to either Catechism or Hebrew school, seventh-grader Holling Hoodhood stays in Mrs. Baker's classroom, where they read the plays of William Shakespeare and Holling learns much of value about the world he lives in."--T.p. verso.

Stephanie's relationship with her best friend, Rachel, changes during her first year in junior high as she tries to conceal a family problem and meets a new girl from California.

In this stirring account of a teacher and his fourteen students tucked away in the Green Mountains of Vermont, educator Tal Birdsey fervently documents the founding year of his small junior high school with wit and humility. Part memoir, part meditation on the power of art and poetry, and part criticism of standardized education, A Room for Learning evokes a spirit of change, in which students were allowed a hand in their own education. With no set...

I.S.318 is an inner-city school where more than 65 percent of students are from homes with incomes below the federal poverty level, that also happens to have the best, most winning junior high school chess team in the country. If Albert Einstein, who was rated 1800, were to join the team, he'd only rank fifth best.