FAIRHOPE, Ala. — It’s easy to forget you’re talking to first-graders when you visit a class at the Fairhope K-1 Center.

“It was really neat to see the middle school students doing the same kind of stuff we’re doing,” one student in Jenny Douglass’ first-grade class said last week, referring to a Fairhope Middle School creative writing class that visited a number of K-1 Center classes last month. Those older students read to the younger students from books they had written, illustrated and bound.

“I like how they co-authored the books they wrote,” another student said. And one student quickly added, that “showed the students were working together.”

That class had a striking resemblance to college except the K-1 Center students had more energy, and often gave more thoughtful comments.

“How do you spell co-author?” one first-grader asked.

“If you need help with spelling, you know what to do,” Douglass said.

One boy leaned over to the girl who asked for spelling help and whispered, “Sound it out.”

Then he sounded it out for her.

As some students wrote in notebooks, others asked how to spell various words that came up as they were writing.

Douglass wrote those words on a flip pad: “drew,” “print,” “purse,” “picture.”

Then Douglass misspelled “hilarious” giving it two “l”s. This was no exercise. She had to look the word up.

“What do you think students, do I ever misspell words?”

“Yes!” they shouted.

The Fairhope K-1 Center is a unique school of just two grades, where reading and writing are emphasized, and where a sophisticated marine science lab serves as an environmental education center for students up to the fifth grade throughout the county.

The charming campus is a rambling set of buildings on different levels with open-air breezeways and a white picket fence running along Church Street. A courtyard of benches is next to the front office, where flowers bloom in early May just a few weeks before the last day of school: May 22.

“We have really worked on producing students who are writers and readers,” Principal Pat Carlton said. “Last year we became part of the Alabama Reading Initiative, which allowed us to get a reading coach. Our students are learning to write, edit and publish their own work. I think we’re on the cutting edge.”

Across the ceiling of Kacie Hardman’s first-grade class is a large orange-and-black spotted giraffe cut-out. In the hallway outside Douglass’ classroom, an even larger truly life-size giraffe sprawls along the walls and up to the ceiling.

The students made these on their own initiative, as part of the reading and writing experience that students now receive at the K-1 Center, reading coach Lora Darden said.

“They read about giraffes having high-blood pressure, and they wanted to examine that fact up close,” Darden said. “Students here write about things that matter to them, just like adult writers do. That is authentic literacy. We are teaching them to read and write in the absence of being required to do so. The students have learned to give each other feedback on their writing. They self-select their own topics. This is working at a much higher level.”

On second thought., the classrooms seem more like graduate writing workshops than mere college composition courses.

But ones that are fun.

There is a lot of laughing in the K-1 Center classrooms — and a lot of energy.

“I took a trip to an elementary school, and it was just the eagerness to learn that the kids displayed,” said Assistant Principal Mark Doherty, referring to what convinced him to become an elementary school teacher and then move to administration at the K-1 Center. “They’re hungry for knowledge.”

Doherty came to the school two years ago, after six years teaching third grade at Fairhope Elementary School, where he set up a math lab.

“I was the first one to have a smart board,” he said, referring to the erasable white board that is linked to a computer, allowing a new level of interactive experiences that bring the whole wide world into the classroom. “We now have nine smart boards in classrooms that we added here this year.”

Carlton said the K-1 Center students soak up every innovation.

“They’re not intimated by technology,” she said. “The teachers have to stay on their toes to keep ahead of their students.”

While the students are often heard laughing, they also walk quietly between classrooms, the cafeteria and the park across the street for physical education.

Some students raise their hands in the “K-1 sign:” a “peace” sign with two fingers on one hand and one finger of the other across the lips. That sign means, “peace and quiet.”

The walls of the buildings that have heard that laughter as well as the hushed voices of students walking between classes have a long history in Fairhope. From 1925-53, all grade levels in Fairhope (first grade through 12th) were taught in the original building constructed on the site. The oldest school in town, circa 1909, had been located across the street. That site is now the location of Fairhopers Community Park where K-1 students have physical education classes, according to a history of the school at the K-1 Center.

A major school construction project will see the first grade move from the K-1 Center, but the Church Street facility will remain a kindergarten for the foreseeable future, Carlton said.

“I moved to Fairhope in the seventh grade and started school in the building where I (now) teach,” said Cassandra Jones, who returned to teach there in 1977. She has been in the same kindergarten classroom for 31 years, Carlton said. “In the fall the boys brought transistor radios to school to listen to the World Series during recess, and the girls sat under the trees that are now the parking lot beside Fairhope Inn.”

Down one of the breezeways from Jones’ class is the Pelican’s Nest marine science lab. It was designed and built as the first project of the Fairhope Educational Enrichment Foundation.

“There is not another place like it that I’ve seen in the country,” said Charlene Dindo, who helped set up the program and teaches environmental education there. “FEEF decided they were going to build this because of the close proximity to the bay.”

The lab is a popular field trip destination for elementary students throughout the county school system.

“We’d like to think that everyone has access to the bay, but you go a few miles inland and many of those kids have never been to the bay or river,” Dindo said. “Not every child will enter the sciences for a career, but they will play some role as a citizen. If they have this chance to learn about the bay and the environment here, they will develop a relationship with it. That’s an experience they will remember.”

Carlton said that the new reading and writing program at the K-1 Center has resulted in their students performing at very high levels for reading speed and comprehension.

“If they leave here with a love of reading and writing, then we will have been successful,” Doherty said.

It’s not many schools that have teachers who attended as students and now have taught there for 30 years.

“I have stayed teaching kindergarten because children at this age are sponges,” Jones said. “They love learning. The challenges of my profession do not come from the students but from the expectations of government programs and paperwork that teachers face. The students are the main reason that teachers stay in this profession. The K-1 Center is a great place to teach and learn.”