Today is the first day of my post, but everyone must have the first fateful jump-off-and-do-it day. My 15 year old dog, Elizabeth is curled up by my side. I have a year to follow my quest. My mission is to write about a year in the life of a teacher explorer who looks at all kinds of places of teaching and learning, from the great outdoors to libraries to travel to other school settings. My travels will take me to my own public elementary school in Portsmouth. NH to a Boston Public Middle School (Bill Gates school), a Quaker School in Princeton, NJ, an MBA program at the Flagler school at U. of North Carolina, a garden learning center, a preschool nature's classroom school. You'll see it all this year right here ... coming soon. At Plymouth State College in New Hampshire I am taking a course to get up to speed with technology. Pictures are the key and pretty soon I'll get some good ones up to brighten this forlorn looking blog. I really want the web site that can be run and designed each day ... in its time. Monday I am going to Princeton Friends School in Princeton, NJ www.princetonfriendsschool.org (K-8) where I taught some time ago (c.1993) when the school was only 3 years old with 21 students. It now has a new building and is expanding with about 100 students. Friends schools are Quaker, like the one the Obama girls go to in DC. The first day I walked into the school it was obvious the school would do well with the kind of deep thinking and active curriculum they were doing. This place is special, truly remarkable because of what they do: imaginative fun curriculum that is centralized around a year lon theme , how they teach: intensely, intelligently, actively, and what they expect: homework, memorization, acting, thoughtful math problem of the week, and family involvement academically. Some of the highlights of the school are its central study theme that is carried through the year. One year they had rivers and streams, another was bridges and walls. Pictures are necessary and I will get them on Monday. The director of the school is Jane Fremon who began the school with an idea after graduating in the first coed class from Princeton University. I'll keep you posted. Deb