The Walkabout model has proved to be a perfect match for the goals of a charter middle school that has broken out of the constraints of a traditional curriculum. The authors describe how students at the school prepare for and embark on independent projects that push them to take risks and expand their engagement in the world. IMAGINE YOUR students planning and implementing their own projects -- projects that extend their abilities, challenge them academically, and make valuable connections to their community. Our middle school students at Chico Country Day School are doing just that. The projects the students have designed range from learning how to fly a helicopter to planning a toothpaste-and-toothbrush drive for a local homeless shelter. And all have come about through the Walkabout Program. In 1974 the Kappan published an article by Maurice Gibbons laying out the Walkabout Program. This article and a follow-up article by Gibbons introduced and then further explained the program and the rationale for the celebrated Walkabout movement.1 Gibbons based his ideas on the Australian film Walkabout, a movie that told an exceptional tale of rites of passage in the Australian outback. When a young man who was left alone in the wilderness over an extended period of time returns to his tribe, he is confidently announcing, by his survival, that he is now able to rejoin the tribe as a fully contributing member. In the same spirit, the tribe eagerly welcomes his return. Gibbons used the Australian Walkabout to make the profound point that we in North America do not seem to have an authentic rite of passage to mark the critical transition from adolescence to adulthood. Therefore, Gibbons proposed adapting the Walkabout as a way to help make up for the absence in our culture of a challenging transitional experience for our young people. The Walkabout provides a structure that enables students to make creative decisions about their learning that are based on their own needs and interests. As Gibbons remarked about young people in 1974, No one can give life meaning for them, but there are a number of ways we can help them to give life meaning for themselves (p. 602). Learning to initiate, plan, and evaluate one's own learning journey can be challenging and sometimes frustrating, but such a decision-making process also represents real life. Essentially, the Walkabout is based on five different challenge categories: adventure -- students demonstrate courage and endurance in an unfamiliar environment; creativity -- students use their imagination to solve a problem, expand their horizons, and stretch their abilities; service -- students show their responsibility to the school and community through volunteer work; practical skill -- students learn and demonstrate a new and practical skill; and logical inquiry -- students identify, use, and evaluate a variety of resources and present this information in an appropriate format. These five categories form the structure that students use to select challenges that either can be integrated into the school curriculum or can take place wholly outside the specified curriculum. It is crucial that a selected activity be a legitimate challenge for students and provide learning experiences that are original and involve reasonable risk. Students are fully aware of what are and are not authentic and worthwhile achievements, and sharing with peers, friends, family, and the wider community their pride of accomplishment is the very important culmination of the Walkabout. What follows is a description of how we integrated the Walkabout into the curriculum of a charter middle school. Matching the School and the Walkabout The Chico Country Day School opened its doors in 1997 as a K-6 charter school. Its main focus was on thematic instruction, small class size, and parent involvement. As the school's favorable reputation grew, so did its enrollment. …