All right, fess up. Who made this?

It can be loud. The noise level and the lack of desks are the first two things you notice when you walk into Patricia Murphy's seventh grade classroom at Bormann Academy where the desks have been removed to fit 108 students into classroom originally built with a capacity of 36.

As Ms. Murphy began her lesson on geometric patterns in math, 2 girls were sketching shapes on their notebook, while another boy was using a needle and several blue pens to give another student a geometric tattoo of a skull on his left arm.

“We don’t know what we are supposed to be doing, but we are learning about math,” Robby Burnett, 13, said.

Across the room Luis Cabrera, Ms. Murphy's teacher aide and custodian was lecturing some of the slower students on the need to improve their scores on the district's standardized tests while Ms. Murphy continued teaching her lesson at the chalkboard.

Ms. Murphy, a 23 year old Amherst graduate with a passion for public policy, describes life in the unconventional classroom as chaotic, but rewarding, "I was the students' third teacher when I arrived in November and it took me awhile to get their trust, even after they realized Mr. Boddicker wasn't there anymore."