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Could this be America's most boring high school?
No football. No cheerleaders. No gangbangers or metal detectors.
Student Andrea Smith, 14, said that she studied mediation techniques this year to calm squabbling children. She took flowers to invalids. She volunteered at a hospital. "I don't really know what the other kids do after school, but me and my friends, we just get together and go to the library," she said.
Welcome to Alan Shawn Feinstein High School in Providence, R.I., said to be the nation's first public high school dedicated to community service. While many schools now have public-service requirements for graduation, at Feinstein-which opened this fall-the whole curriculum is built around volunteering in day-care centers, hospital labs, community gardens, zoos or soup kitchens. Each classroom displays the watchwords of founding philanthropist Alan Shawn Feinstein that could become-if it ever gets a team-a school cheer: "Respect. Courtesy. Integrity. Initiative."