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COPPER CANYON ACADEMY
A Trailhead to Success
Rimrock, Arizona
Darren Prince, Admissions Director
928-567-1322
dprince@coppercanyonacademy.com
www.ccacademy.net
Visit by: Lon Woodbury, January 24, 2005
lon@woodbury.com
The approach to the main building of Copper Canyon Academy
is always impressive; a two-story mansion modeled after the
style of the old south. It has charm, plenty of inside room
and atmosphere. As an all-girls school, a girl's first view
of the school must be at least somewhat reassuring to her
that she is not going to be living in bare rooms of concrete
blocks. The reassuring thought might even cross her mind that
perhaps the owners of her new school have some taste.
When I arrived, the girls were scurrying around with mops,
brooms and carrying old carpet out of the building. Darren
explained that Arizona had just endured record rain with flooding
that had threatened the building, and resulted in a tremendous
amount of mud being tracked into the building. The result
was that since the old carpeting was almost ready for replacement
anyway, they decided it would be better to buy new carpeting.
The girls had enthusiastically jumped into the redecorating
project, helping pick new carpet patterns, and working at
cleaning out the old to make the floor ready for the new carpeting.
Their clean-up was in full swing during the afternoon I arrived.
On the little hill behind the mansion are the classrooms,
which are new since my last visit five years ago. The classrooms
are accessible by a skywalk from the second floor of the mansion.
The girls can easily walk from their dorm rooms across the
skywalk to the well-provisioned classrooms, which include
a number of computers. The school is well wired for computers,
with its own server, and of course strict control on Internet
access. The classrooms reflect the serious commitment the
school has toward their academics, and is accredited with
a college prep curriculum. Competitive sports is also an important
part of the program, and several of the girls at the time
of my visit were leaving for a sports event, and others were
just returning from another sports event. Copper Canyon is
very active in Arizona sports leagues in basketball, softball,
volleyball and soccer.
A major expansion of the school was represented by a pile
of rocks a short distance from the Mansion, close to an old
church currently used for activities and groups. This pile
of rocks represents the first step to laying the foundation
for a new building. It was explained that the school will
move into the new building, and the Junior School will be
moved from its current location in Camp Verde a few miles
away into the Mansion. Of course, having the two programs
close to each other has obvious administrative and program
advantages.
Copper Canyon Academy looks at helping girls within a whole
child perspective. The program is designed to help develop
improvement and awareness in five areas: emotional, mental,
physical, social and spiritual. Implementation of each of
these five areas is visible to any visitor. For example, by
focusing on building a sense of community, and I saw a real
sense of community while I was there, the girls are working
most obviously in the social and emotional areas. Or, in their
physical activities such as nature hikes in the surrounding
areas or even sports, they are not only working on physical
growth, but also use that for increased spiritual understanding
and can even earn academic credit. In the classrooms, they
of course are working on improving their mental abilities,
but even in the classroom, there are opportunities for increasing
awareness in the emotional, social and spiritual areas. Like
any well thought out program, you never do just one thing.
Any activity will touch the whole child, and thus have implications
in all five areas. The academy seems to have grasped that
concept very well, and does a good job of implementing it.
As I usually find in my visits, the girls' dorms and personal
space in the dorms varied widely. At one extreme was the rather
bare space of a girl who was still upset about being there.
Another space felt warm and cozy with a lot of stuffed animals
and family pictures by the girl who had progressed to where
she was comfortable with herself and ready to graduate. Come
to think of it, this measurement of progress is as good a
way as any to show how the academy is helping to create the
positive changes in the girls' lives.
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Copyright ©
2005, Woodbury Reports, Inc.
(This article may be reproduced without prior approval if
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