|
THE CARLBROOK SCHOOL
Halifax, Virginia
434-476-2406
R. Grant Price, M.A., Dean of Admissions, 434-476-2406
Kelly Dunbar, Assist. Dean of Admissions, (off campus) 434-572-4496
www.carlbrook.org/home.htm
admissions@carlbrook.org
Visit On June 24, 2003 by Loi
Eberle, M.A.
 Carlbrook School is located a little north of Virginia's
southern border, yet the elegant well-manicured lawns and
lovely stone historic buildings of the Carlbrook campus definitely
gave the impression of being in the south. From outward appearances,
Carlbrook looks like a traditional boarding school, but my
interactions with the staff and students assured me that
in addition to being academically rigorous, this co-ed boarding
school also focuses on emotional growth.
 I met Kelly Dunbar, the Assistant Dean of Admissions, at
the entrance of Carlbrook's Administration Building. She
led me past a series of offices and attractively decorated
rooms with large windows, to an elegant porch. A large fan
gently spun overhead, making it quite comfortable on this
already hot day, as we settled into an over-stuffed wicker
chair to observe the greenery through the screened windows.
She
explained their mission and student profile while we waited
to be joined by Grant Price, the Dean of Admissions.
I asked Kelly why successful graduation from a therapeutic
wilderness program is a prerequisite for enrollment at Carlbrook.
She explained the main reason they require wilderness is
because students needed a "shared experience of public
accountability,” which I felt was an excellent description
of a powerful process. She went on to explain how wilderness
helps the students become more focused and motivated on the
work ahead, and more importantly, it acts as a "filter." It
tests their mettle, in a sense, to ensure that only students
who “present profiles suggestive of a successful experience
at Carlbrook are the ones selected to matriculate on the
campus."
Since Carlbrook is a relatively new school, I asked about
its origins. Kelly named the founders and deans of this school:
Timothy B. Brace, M.A., Dean of Students, Glenn F. Bender,
Ph.D., Dean of Academics, Justin J. Merritt J. D., Dean of
Faculty; John Henson, M.B.A., Dean of Administration, Jonathan
Gurney, M.S.W., L.C.S.W., Dean of Advising, Jason L. Merritt,
M.D., Consulting Physician and Grant Price, M.A. Dean of
Admission. Three of these seven had directed emotional growth
programs, and four had been successful graduates from various
ones. They had collectively dreamed about creating this school
for quite awhile, and eventually solidified their plans and
located this property, with its elegant buildings and large
grounds, which seems a perfect location.
When Grant joined us on the porch he talked about what it
was like to run the school with this team of directors. Grant
laughed about the length of some of their meetings, which
sometimes were heated discussions between those who had been
former directors and those who were the graduates of previous
schools. They would closely examine the vision of emotional
growth education in theory, and then would hear feedback
about what parts of it had actually been effective in practice.
Not only were these directors' credentials and backgrounds
impressive, upon meeting them, I found them to be very likeable
people.
According to their marketing materials, Carlbrook seeks
to recruit: "bright, underachieving adolescents between
the ages of 15 and 18 who have been challenging convention
and questioning authority." Kelly and Grant further
elaborate this profile, explaining that they will enroll
students who are experiencing difficulty in the academic
mainstream, having personal difficulties or challenges at
home. They do not accept applicants who exhibit psychiatric
features, are court adjudicated or legally entangled in any
way.
The academics are described as demanding, and they are in
the process of staffing the school with the quality of faculty
who can support student success. When I visited they had
89 students and 34 faculty members with Masters, ABD or PhD
level training, with plans to eventually have a fifty member
faculty. Their academics are traditional, with roundtable
discussions, and they offer some advanced placement classes,
including three years of Latin. Grant explained they are
eliminating some textbooks in the humanities classes in order
to cultivate reading primary sources. They also are working
towards fully integrating their academic program with the
counseling component of their school.
Their educational model involves the integration of "academic
excellence and character development." They also provide
cognitive, insight oriented therapy for the students, with
three group therapy sessions per week, along with individual
therapy and thematic workshops, that include such topics
as "Choices: Living Your Dream or Living Your Lie." They
consider their program to be different from what is usually
considered to be an emotional growth curriculum. They introduce
the concepts earlier in the program, and have what they call "vertical" peer
groups, so that they have a variety of levels of student
seniority together in one group. Their approach, they explained,
is not to break down students' defenses before building up
their sense of self, but instead, they prefer to help their
students look at "what's getting in their way of being
who they really are."
After our conversation, Kelly showed me the dorms and drove
me around the campus to the various classrooms. Many of the
classrooms are temporarily in modular buildings until the
construction of the large classroom building across the meadow
is completed. The teachers and students in each classroom
I entered greeted me warmly, and all the students came over
to shake my hand. This was relatively easy, since the classes
were between five and twelve students each. The students
were polite, smiled, and made good eye contact. The teachers
would take a moment to describe what they had been doing
in class at the point of my interruption. I was favorably
impressed by the level of energy in both the teachers and
the students, as well as their apparent interest in what
had been going on in class. They all seemed to acknowledge
that the school was in the development phase, and spoke about
where they were heading in their plans for the academic program,
as well as the physical campus.
Carlbrook enrolls what they describe as "lighter and
brighter kids" in this voluntary program, which is reflected
in their level of structure. For example, they have one person
monitoring the entire student phone bank, which offers some
degree of privacy. The students are able to save their emails
on disk, though only the teachers have Internet access. Their
dorms are large and open, with a number of students in a
room. They are still in the process of developing their program
guidelines. For example, they have learned that they must
search all the student's possessions when they return from
a home visit. Eighteen-year-old students are sometimes involved
in community service work off campus, and they are contemplating
allowing more involvement with off-campus activities. Grant
explained that some of their ideas are still evolving, for
example, they are still determining what to offer for extra
curricular activities. They need to make sure they are not
diluting their academics so they can create their program
in a way that colleges find will meet their academic requirements.
 During lunch, the students ate outside, enjoying a little
fresh air on the patio before their next class. I sat with
three young men: a junior and two seniors, one who was about
to graduate. The college application process was a large
topic of conversation; in all reality it was the primary
reason they were there. In fact, Grant had even referred
to the school as "transcript repair". The older
student had been accepted at his college of choice, so he
was pleased. The younger student was taking seven classes
to make up his junior year, and was feeling that the one
hour of study hall he was allowed per day wasn't enough.
When I asked staff about this, it was pointed out to me that
the teachers were often available for tutorials, and that
there weren't many distractions from having enough time for
schoolwork. I wondered if that was case for all the students,
since it was, after all, a coed school, though their counselors
stayed in fairly close contact with the students, I was told.
Since there was a larger proportion of males, it was possibly
the females who had the greatest likelihood of being distracted.
Certainly there is a lot more structure at Carlbrook than
in traditional boarding school settings, but less than I
find in many of the more controlled emotional growth school
settings. My conversations with Carlbrook staff gave me the
impression they are pretty clear about who they will accept
for enrollment, and for the profile they describe, their
level of structure seems appropriate. As long as the student
also has transcript repair and emotional maturity as a goal,
this is a very wonderful place for the students to do their
work. If the students lose sight of their goals, there is
a good deal of therapeutic and staff support to help the
students get back on track. To remain successful at this
school, they must be motivated. A key component of that motivation
is the students' future educational goals, and these need
to be in place, at least in part, when they enroll. |
