After an outdoor assembly at the Compass Charter School in South Kingstown, a group of kids insisted I see their “fairy-house village.” Together we trooped across the grassy field that doubles as the school’s auditorium and gym, to the edge of the woods. There, a darling neighborhood of small, fragile structures, made entirely of stems, bark and dried flowers, housed fairies.

While one fairy nut chatted about the inhabitants, the other kids talked — over each other, of course — about the importance of using natural materials. They love making art out in the woods. “It’s the best art,” squealed one girl.

All the kids I met that day are excited about the environment. Not just as an idea, but as their own immediate world outdoors.

Each of the school’s multigrade levels — K-1, 2-3, 4-6 and 7-8 — has its own compost, lined up against a rock wall. One class cleverly composts in a barrel that just rolls over when the organic materials need turning — no pitchforks needed. The other grades are eyeballing the wisdom of their strategy. The compost feeds the school’s garden.

The kids have visited the state Central Landfill, in Johnston, and are appalled by the scale of our waste. So some classes wash silverware rather than use plastic forks at lunch. A box near the front door collects plastic bags, near the recyclable grocery bags for sale.

Solar panels cover the roof, but the kids minimize energy use. On the overcast day I was there, not a single classroom had lights on. Granted, every classroom has generous windows and plenty of light. Still, it was odd. But very earth-friendly.

However, the eco-crunchiness is only the first impression. School director Allen Zipke says, “If there’s anything about this school that I would export to other schools, it’s the social responsibility piece. Our question is: how do you work with kids to get them to accept responsibility for their own learning?”

Social responsibility is the companion theme to environmental sustainability. And social responsibility has to start with taking responsibility for your own actions in your immediate community.

The day begins with a Morning Meeting (a responsive classroom protocol). Each class creates rules for behavior. So in this school’s culture both adults and kids expect to take care of their own community, as they work on caring for the environment. The kids themselves indoctrinate new students into the culture of community cooperation, because they helped make the rules and see them as working in their own interests. Messing with the rules messes with your community.

As the kids get older and into grades 7 and 8, teacher-advisers use the William Glasser questions to help young adolescents think through their choices. “What did you want from that behavior?” “What else might have been more effective?” Instead of handing down rules and punishments generated by adults, they deal with unwanted behavior as a teachable moment. So the kids learn self-control and self-motivation.

Zipke says, “If I keep you after school, I’m responsible for your behavior. But you need to be responsible for your own behavior.”

Compass never suspends students for misbehavior, but keeps them at school where they work out the issues together.

As Karen O’Malley, a first-grade teacher says, “We want them to develop their own moral compass and sense of ethics.”

And they do. So the school deals with far fewer serious discipline issues than most. Compass classrooms bustle and burble. Each room opens to the outside, so kids bail in and out of doors without causing any fuss among the teachers. No one was slumped over a desk.

To be fair, teaching self-motivation to middle-class kids from a university town is reasonably easy. Teaching it to kids from chaotic, struggling homes is much harder, but also far more important. Who else will do it? Teaching kids to make good choices is the essence of both child-rearing and academics.

Zipke says, “We do math and social studies, but within that, the kids have choices. And then we work on quality. If we have a top student who is not doing his best work, we hand it back and get the kid to improve the quality.”

Similarly teachers have choices, and much control over their work. Instead of plodding through a textbook, they choose high-interest topics the kids want to pursue, and then design ways for kids to learn the skills required to pass the state tests.

Zipke says, “Our teachers focus on what the kids need. And since the state tests are heavily skills-based, our kids do very well. They’re completely set up to do senior projects in high school. They do things like that now.”

And indeed, the state rates this school “high-performing” and “commended.”

Two hundred kids are on the waiting list to get into Compass. The school community badly want to grow beyond their current 150 students, and they should.

But in this economy, their lovely plan to build a super-green building is very much on hold. Just for the record, a suitably large and empty district school building languishes nearby. The state could recycle its assets.

What’s most striking about Compass is how happy a place it is. Teachers are happy. Their kids are happy, as well as high-performing. Go look at the school through the Information Works lens — www.infoworks.ride.uri.edu — to see what a happy-school story looks like in hard data.

Zipke says, “But shouldn’t school be enjoyable? Everyone learns better when the situation is positive.”

Without a doubt.

Julia Steiny, a former member of the Providence School Board, consults for government agencies and schools; she is co-director of Information Works!, Rhode Island’s school-accountability project. She can be reached at juliasteiny@cox.net , or c/o EdWatch, The Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St., Providence, RI 02902.