By Meaghan Clark
School Without Walls Class of 2008

School Without Walls is the most unique school in the Rochester City School District. We learn and experience things in a different and more creative way than any other school.

Not many students fully understand how the school works. I’ve been asked numerous times, “What is School Without Walls all about?” and the truth is, while we are about education, we’re also about community. School Without Walls offers learning through community service and creative classes.

Every year, each student is required to complete 75 hours of community service. While it sounds scary, it is actually an amazing part of the SWW experience. You can work for any non-profit organization you choose, and the possibilities are endless. Many people have great fun with their community service and even continue volunteering over the summer. Working in the community helps us to become more rounded human beings, and discover things about ourselves that we wouldn’t have know about before.

We do, like other schools, have classes that we attend. We have your typical math classes and science classes but we also have something no other school has. Before school starts in September we are mailed a list of specialty classes, one of which we will be a part of for the entire year. We choose up to five of these “extended classes” based on our interests and are placed in one of them.

Every extended class has a topic. Some are about crime scene investigation, others about literature and film, and some are even about issues that teens face in today’s world. Extended classes run every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 10:30 until noon, while on Tuesday the class runs from 10:30 until 12:30. So not only do SWW students learn about traditional subjects but also about things that we want to learn about.

A lot of people ask what the best part of SWW is. There are so many answers. We have a one-on-one relationship with our teachers, which means that each student is able to learn in a way that is best for them. We also have advisors (the teacher of our extended class) who we meet with on a bi-weekly basis to discuss how things are going in our life. If we have problems at home, we can talk to our advisors about it. If you have any problems, your advisor can help you deal with them in a productive way.

We also make great friendships at this school. Because it is so small, we all know each other. There are no cliques, and everybody gets along.
We learn how to manage our time. We learn that we have to stay on top of things and that there are no extensions to the work given. If you do not finish an assignment, most teachers will not let you make it up. You have to learn how to use your free time wisely. If you have a break between classes, for example, you use that time to work on some homework, not to hang out with your friends. In the long run, time management will be the most important thing you learn.

And the last great thing, one that we as a school pride ourselves on, is that we do not take standardized tests to determine if we are smart enough to graduate. The only standardized tests that we have to take are the English Regents Exam and the Math 1 Regents Exam. We show what we have learned through a portfolio of our work which shows how we have grown over the years.

When you become a senior at SWW, you must complete a senior project in order to graduate. The senior project consists of a year-long study of a certain area of the student’s choice. Two teachers, two students and two experts from the community serve on each senior project committee, following student progress and determining whether we meet our goals. We work with our community experts to get the most of our experience.

Each senior does something different. For instance last year we had a student who wanted to learn to sing opera. For the entire year she took vocal lessons and learned about the history of opera and at the end of the year she sang for her committee. Another senior wanted to learn how to horseback ride and drive horses. So she went to the stable and took classes on riding and driving, and at the end of the year she showed her committee what she had learned.

The senior project takes up the majority of your time as a senior. You have to be completely committed to it and must realize that managing your time in a good way is the key to passing.

I love School Without Walls and I don’t think that I could have had a better high school experience. We are, in my opinion, the best school in the city.

Meaghan Clark, the author of this essay, is an active student both in and outside of school. “I have a job at a library where I work at three times a week,” she says. “For my community service I work with the Red Cross Kids Project, putting on puppet shows for third graders to teach them about children with disabilities. When I graduate from high school I plan on attending college and majoring in English and musical theater. I hope to eventually get my master’s degree and possibly even my doctorate in literature.”