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By Matt Pelkey
Rappahannock News Staff Writer
Students at Belle Meade will soon be able to tell you all about second-class levers. This year they will get to know them very, very well.
A key tenet of the new Sperryville school’s philosophy is the idea that there are just as many educational opportunities outside a classroom as in one, and for Belle Meade’s teachers, the school’s working farm doubles as a physics lab, where students can learn by hauling dirt with a wheelbarrow — a second class lever.
"They'D know and understand levers more than looking at a picture in a classroom,” Belle Meade teacher Greg Garrison said.
Students spend about 45 minutes twice a day on the farm. Garrison said the work draws no complaints, and the kids are sent home with fresh vegetables and meat — the fruits of their labor — each week.
Susan Hoffman and Mike Biniek, who run Belle Meade Bed and Breakfast, opened Belle Meade school this year after the Mountain Laurel Montessori farm school moved to Flint Hill leaving empty the 1914 school house neighboring their bed and breakfast off Route 231.
Teaching is a lifelong passion for Hoffman, who has taught for more than three decades. Last year she and Biniek joined on ratings the 20 seventh-, eighthand ninth-graders at Mountain Laurel Montessori farm school.
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