Operating under "free-school" principles, Earthworks students selected their own teachers from among those at the sponsoring Pioneer High School. In addition to three full-time teachers and one administrator, they recruited about a dozen tutors from the University of Michigan, as well as fifty supporting resource people in the community. During the first two weeks of operation, students and teachers worked together in a series of meetings and "rap sessions" to develop a curriculum – one that centered on allowing students to control their own education, work at their own speed, and follow their own interests; and which utilized "contracts" setting out individual student goals and methods to achieve them. As the "Huron Valley Advisor" explained, subjects ranged "from geometry, algebra, and American history to Russian literature, organic gardening and parapsychology (witchcraft) – which is taught by a student." Some in the traditional schools derided Earthworks as "a hippy kindergarten." But a 1972 "Ann Arbor News" survey reported that students were pleased with the freedom, power, emphasis on individuality, and ability to control their own educations, although a few disliked the school's unorganized nature and felt that some students failed to thrive with the radical lack of structure.