Da Vinci Academy for the Gifted and Talented is one of those schools that’s always getting experimented on. This year’s major experiment was what Mrs. Maxwell, our principal (and a good lady), called the Independent Learning Project. Any kid who wanted to get extra AP credit could pick a subject, learn it on his or her own, and get the credit. The catch was that you had to convince a teacher that you really had something going on to begin the project and, after you learned whatever it was you had volunteered for, that you knew the subject well enough to deserve the extra credit. It sounded like too much work to me. “But you will think about it, won’t you, Alexander?” Mrs. Maxwell asked me. “Yes, ma’am.” I was going to think about it, but if I could get out of it I knew I would. Anyway, a lot of kids were all gaga over the program (that’s why they’re at Da Vinci), and there were kids walking around school all day talking about how they were going to learn everything from Plant Biology to String Theory.
