Mission The Community School is a private non-sectarian co-educational day school serving 30 students in grades 7 to 12. Our students are bright, highly motivated young people from 15 towns in central New Hampshire and western Maine.
We believe learning is a rigorous and joyful pursuit which calls on each individual's talents and interests, and promotes appreciation of the interconnectedness of people and places. At The Community School, our mission is to support students on their individual learning paths within a caring and respectful community.
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 Harvest Class stores pumpkins in the greenhouse Wishing you could rekindle your middle or high school-aged child’s intellectual curiosity? Is your teenager missing the connection between school and “the real world”? At The Community School’s Explore the Possibilities Day, Wednesday, February 10th (from 10:30 am – 3:15 pm), interested parents and students are invited to consider the difference an experience-based, interest-driven curriculum can make. Attendees will tour the school, interact with current students, parents, and faculty members during a Q&A forum, enjoy a hearty lunch, and participate in afternoon block classes.
Block class options:
Cycles of Peace and War: Why We Fight
This is a course focusing on building critical thinking skills. Students worked together to create a game exercising the skills of diplomacy and conflict resolution in an attempt to understand the dynamics that cuase cycles of peace and war. Visitors will learn by playing alongside regular class participants.
Lab Science
What fun to spend an afternoon creating and observing experiments that might go “bam,” or “crackle,” or go up in smoke! There’s nothing more captiviating than “real stuff.” Students will work together to conduct experiments and decipher the results.
Religion and the Middle East
Taking a break from their research and interviews, students will gather around the table, share a Jewish Seder, learning the meaning of the different elements, and examine the importance of tradition.
 Teacher Suzanne Weil helping a student to put on a burkah in a sudy of the religions of the Middle East and their practices. Q & A Workshops for Parents
- Choosing a private school education/financial aid options
- Rural Sustainable Schools Project and the Green Schools Alliance: how they impact The Community School
- Helping students find their place: senior projects and the college admissions process
- Off campus learning: trip weeks and student exchange opportunities (Czech Republic & Costa Rica)
The Community School (TCS) is a fully accredited independent day school serving 7th-12th graders from the Lakes Region and the North Country, as well as neighboring communities in Maine. Located on a beautiful 310-acre campus–a thriving family farm a century ago–TCS sits nestled between the Ossipee and Sandwich Mountain Ranges. In addition to the standard fare of middle and high school curriculum choices, students are able to access unique opportunities for real-world problem solving in the environmental sciences and GIS mapping classes offered through the school’s partnership with The Rey Foundation for a Sustainable Future. TCS is a member of the Green Schools Alliance and initiator of the Rural Sustainable Schools Project, operating an onsite, certified organic CSA garden each summer.
Travel and self-exploration are important values at The Community School. Each spring and fall, faculty and students adventure together on week-long excursions into wilderness areas or into large-city settings, expanding on classroom studies. Study abroad opportunities in Costa Rica and the Czech Republic are available to sophomores and juniors and families may choose to host foreign exchange students. The TCS experience culminates in a Senior Project, an intensive, self-directed month spent off-campus in projects or internships that often take students far from the rural campus.
Rolling admissions; financial aid available; daily bus transportation from Wolfeboro, North Conway, and Cornish, Maine. For more information or to register for this year’s Explore the Possibilities Day, call 323-7000 or email admissions@communityschoolnh.org.
 Bouldering during Fall Trip Week
 Sustainable Community School Stewardship Class I (SCS) began the modeling The Community School with 3D computer models using Google earth and Google Sketchup (above). SCS II took modeling one step further and constructed a physical 3D model. The class had a choice of materials, and the consensus was to build an edible landscape (below) — though the nutritional value is suspect… Please note solar panels and wind turbine in both models. Farm manager Brady now must see if she can produce a crop of gum drops for next year’s CSA. The model will be up during the Holiday Fair, Saturday, December 5 and then will be swiftly recycled.
 Harvey Reid and Joyce Andersen in benefit concert, Sunday December 13th Internationally acclaimed acoustic musicians, Harvey Reid and Joyce Andersen, will be appearing in concert, 7 pm, Sunday, December 13, at St. Andrews in the Valley, Tamworth. Sponsored by the North Atlantic Arts Alliance, these southern Maine musicians will bring exuberant holiday spirit and unmatched musicianship to their 11th Annual Holiday show, the first in this area. Reid’s award-winning guitar and autoharp and Andersen’s fiddle and guitar will intertwine with their razor-sharp harmonies on a program of original, traditional, and contemporary music.
Admission charged at the door: $12/ticket. Proceeds will benefit The Community School. For more information call 323-7000.
To hear some of the musicians’ pieces, click here:
http://www.woodpecker.com/audio/mp3.html
http://www.joyscream.com/downloads/audio/audio.html
 Butterfly, selling her origami and a parent's velvet bags Every year The Community School welcomes the holiday season with a festive open house on the first Saturday in December. Beginning at 10 am, visitors stop by to pick up pre-ordered holiday wreaths adorned with lavish bows and an assortment of decorative cones and berries. Inside, they can warm themselves by the woodstove, have a hearty lunch, peruse the tables of fine art, crafts, and gift items, and create family memories in the friendly atmosphere of the historic Perkins farmhouse.
The first floor reception area, hallways, and sunlit classrooms will be filled with crafters’ and artists’ tables, offering a wide selection of unique creations. Upstairs, the Theater Room will be awash in lights and music. Here you can tour the Festival of Trees — beautiful 5-8’ freshly-cut evergreens, with theme-based decorations like: “Fairies,” “Birds,” “Camping Adventures,” and more! Choose one you’d like to have grace your home and take a chance in the raffle.
Kids will enjoy the Curious George “chalk talks” sponsored by the Rey Foundation in the school library. Later they may shop in the Kids’ Bargain Bazaar, filled with reasonably priced gifts to buy. Complementary gift-wrapping is available. All that’s left to do is a visit to the craft room to make a gift tag for each present.
The whole family can enjoy a delicious lunch from our kitchen before a taking a swing around the Cookie Walk. Purchase a container and choose an array of homemade Christmas cookies to take home for later.
There will be door prizes and raffles all day long. Plan now to join us for this fun event, 10 am – 2 pm, Saturday, December 5th! Call 323-7000 for more information. The Community School is located at 1164 Bunker Hill Road in South Tamworth, near the junction of Route 25 and Route 113W.
 Parent Nancy Calnan with a huge variety of hand sewn items
Join students, faculty, parents and community members in a series of free workshops presented by parent and PhD candidate in school psychology Rebekah Bickford.
Wednesday, November 18 from 1-2 p.m. at The Community School
The first adolescent development session, Brains & Bodies, will focus on cognitive and physical development. We’ll explore the changing structure of the brain and how that impacts adolescent behavior. We’ll also talk about the metamorphic physical changes that take place in adolescent bodies.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 from 1-2 p.m. at The Community School
The second session, Friends & Feelings, will be about social and emotional development. We’ll explore the role that friends, families, and communities play in teen development. We’ll discuss the social needs of teens, and how we can make sure that they are met. We will consider how we can honor and understand the impassioned emotions that teens often feel, and why teens are sometimes on an emotional roller coaster.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010 from 1-2 p.m. at The Community School
In the third session, Skills & Scaffolding, we will apply what we know about teen development to organization, study skills, teaching, and learning. We’ll discuss things that teens can do to improve their organization and study skills. We’ll learn about ways to apply what we know about adolescent development to better teach and parent teens. We’ll discuss strategies for helping adolescents learn the skills they need to be successful and explore how we can structure homes, classrooms, and schools to facilitate the development of academic skills.
Above: Rey Foundation Research Director Chris Hilke discusses The Community School’s recent timber harvest with students in Nat’s Stewardship class. Below: Students discuss water quality monitoring with Tara Schroeder, Program Director for the Green Mountain Conservation Group.
 Nat Scrimshaw of the Rey Foundation is working with students from The Community School “stewardship class.” Entitled “Designing a Sustainable Community School,” the class combines discussion and reflection on the idea of sustainability with hands-on projects. For example, students started by designing and building a chicken coop only from recycled materials found at the school, and when the gardens needed harvesting before a frost, the class pitched in.
The class is a looking at sustainability holistically, considering environmental, socio-cultural and economic dimensions, and directly exploring food, energy, biodiversity, shelter and community. Students are helping identify research plots to monitor climate change and exploring ways the Community School building could be more energy efficient and perhaps even generate its own power.
Continue reading Designing a Sustainable Community School
 Brady's enthusiastic harvest class unloads organic pumpkins grown off campus.  Pie and carving pumpkins will cure in the greenhouse.  These pears will appear at Farmers' Table lunches throughout the year. Harvest Fest is coming right up! Join students, parents, and garden staff to celebrate a growing season marked by rain and blight, but also community spirit and appreciation for the land.
Saturday, October 3, from 10 to 2, drop by for a bowl of homemade soup and pies of all sorts. Cider pressing, kids’ outdoor activities, school tours, bobbing for apples will be accompanied by the music of fiddler (and student) Will Streeter and then Ben Cooke and friends.
The Perkins’ Farm awaits the arrival of twenty-six students, grades 7 through 12. Returning students are about to reconnect after a long summer and to meet 11 new schoolmates at the Family-Staff Potluck. They’ll be making the trip this evening and during the school year from Cornish, Parsonsfield, Hiram, West Baldwin, Lovell, and Porter, Maine; from Wolfeboro, Tuftonboro, Moultonborough, and New Durham, New Hampshire; and from Conway, Madison, Chocorua, Tamworth and Sandwich.
On hand to meet them are thirteen equally excited full- and part-time faculty and staff who have been tending to their curricula, facilities, and school land in preparation for a new and vibrant academic year.
 The Community School seen from across the fields  Parents and students looking through course schedules at the Family-Staff Potluck  Gess introduces Monteverde Friends School exchange student José Continue reading Summer Ends, School Begins
Camp leader Heidi Fayle, with assisting counselors Schyler and Grace (both in TCS’s Class of 2010), created a great space for play, exploration, friendship, and reflection at school’s summer day camp. Twelve children, ages 8 to 10, made trips to Jackman Pond to collect bugs, wrote poetry, painted, played tag, sang, baked scones, and took part in a final scavenger hunt.
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