Jeff Liddle, Author at Eagle Rock Blog

Eagle Rock Blueprints Describe Both Physical and Mission Projects

A set of blueprints is most often construed as an architectural plan for a physical building project. And, in truth, we’re discussing such a construction project in today’s post that will see the first of two new buildings bringing a welcome — and needed — addition to Eagle Rock 640-acre campus in Estes Park, Colo.

But we’re also talking today about a second set of “blueprints” that specifically affects Eagle Rock School and Professional Development Center’s institutional planning process. Called Vision 2020, this blueprint enables our board members and staff to fulfill our mission by carefully planning for the allocation and use of resources.

As the result of a thorough planning process conducted several years ago, our board — assisted by students and staff — adopted an updated plan that incorporates seven major areas of focus (called domains) to be carried out over a multi-year period.

These domains range from one dealing with the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion; to another describing the implementation of an Continue reading…

Higher Ed Fund Offers Eagle Rock Grads a Leg Up on Their Future

Editor’s Note: Giving Tuesday is a global day of charity that follows Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Below, Eagle Rock Head of School Jeff Liddle presents a case for friends of Eagle Rock School to participate in today’s charitable event by focusing their end-of-year giving to our graduates — young people who many thought would never graduate from high school. Donations of any size are gratefully welcomed and 100 percent of these gifts go to support the higher education of our graduates. Gifts are tax-deductible and donors receive a letter that can be used for tax purposes.

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Few things bring me more joy than handing an Eagle Rock School diploma to a graduate. Sharing our Human Performance Center with mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, cousins and grandparents, aunts, uncles and sponsors is a great honor. We celebrate and hold space for renewed hope. Hope of a future once seemingly unattainable.

Three times a year at graduation we pause. We cry. We laugh. We celebrate. Three times a year Eagle Rock grads get to say, “Yes, I did it!” This, despite all the odds. Despite the doubters. Despite tremendous obstacles. All Who Dare is more than a cliché. Our graduates are living, breathing examples of it. They dare.

Graduates walk across the Human Performance Center stage with hope, plans, and a solid high school experience that launches them into the future. Unfortunately, the daunting reality is this: That next step — the pursuit of higher education — is often financially out of reach.

That’s why I’m reaching out today, on Giving Tuesday. As the cost of higher education continues to rise, these graduates’ financial needs have never been greater. At Eagle Rock, we send forth students who have the desire and are prepared to Continue reading…

Strategic Plan Update: Mission-driven Operations

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is the sixth in a series of updates in which we concentrate on segments of Eagle Rock School’s strategic plan, known as Vision 2020. Entitled “Mission-driven Operations,” this sixth of the plan’s seven domains that we’re reporting on today explores efforts to attend to our physical location — the Eagle Rock Campus — in Estes Park, Colo. This post, authored by head of school Jeff Liddle, describes the original conception and construction of our campus in the early 1990s, what has been improved to date, and future projects that are foreseen under our master plan. For an overview of the entire strategic plan, please see News From The Rock: Vision 2020.

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Strategic Plan Update: Mission-driven Operations

By Jeff Liddle, head of School

Environmental psychologists describe sense of place as the specific experience of a specific person in a specific environment. Feelings of joy while walking through a mountain community, or feelings of gratitude while watching students learn and play are two examples that come to mind. Along the same lines, a spirit of space is what gives some locales a particular feel or personality, like a childhood home or a favorite backcountry campsite.

With the Eagle Rock School & Professional Development Center, the American Honda Co. had a vision of an expansive campus situated in a mountainside setting, centered around a lodge, where meals are shared, classes are taught, and a highly specific mission is pursued in a thriving atmosphere where up to 100 students and 30 staff members reside.

Once our 640-acre campus was acquired, the master plan called for an accessible, site-integrated, walkable, environmentally friendly community. This was accomplished by developing a minimum of physical structures, thus maximizing the pristine setting. It meant installing passive solar systems, photovoltaics and high insulation. Material selection was based on Continue reading…

Strategic Plan Update: Diversity and Inclusion

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is the sixth in our series about the Eagle Rock strategic plan — Vision 2020. Below, Jeff Liddle, head of school, shares his insights and updates on our commitment to improving diversity and inclusion at Eagle Rock. If you’re interested in learning about the overall aim of the plan, please read Jeff’s first post in this series: News From The Rock: Vision 2020.

It’s no secret that inequity is a major issue in the United States. Clearly schools must think differently about how they recruit, select, develop and support staff and how they create inclusive environments that serve all young people. We count ourselves among those schools and are therefore also deepening our journey to become a more inclusive and equitable community. While cross-cultural understanding and living in respectful harmony with others have always been Eagle Rock values, our community has recognized that we have room to grow here.

In our Strategic Plan, Vision 2020, we committed to building a more inclusive culture and increasing the diversity of our staff. It is our intention to be a model organization in this regard, through long term, focused, intentional planning.

Recognizing the benefits of diversity and inclusion

Eagle Rock, which strives to be a model inclusive organization, serves a diverse student body with a diverse staff. It is our intention that staff and students, policies, practices, and programs all align toward the objective of contributing to a more just and equitable society. We are committed to diversity and inclusion for many reasons, including: Continue reading…

Eagle Rock Earns Continuing NCA CASI Accreditation

If you were in the market for a used vehicle, chances are you’d feel confident buying from a dealership that offered a “Certified Pre-Owned” program. Similarly, if you were looking to lease office space, buy a water heater, or take your loved one out to dinner to celebrate a special occasion, you’d be buoyed by a LEED-certified building, the Energy Star label, or a certain number of Michelin Stars.

Basic CMYK

Nearly every sector of society has a commonly accepted standard by which excellence is measured and attained. And in education, that standard is often tied to accreditation — the process in which certification of competency, standards, authority and/or credibility is presented.

Here at Eagle Rock, we’re accredited by a number of organizations, including AdvancED’s North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement (NCA CASI). If you’re unfamiliar with AdvancED, it’s the largest non-profit, non-partisan community of education professionals in the world.

The organization’s NCA CASI branch provides nationally recognized accreditation to schools like ours with a focus on increasing student performance. To earn accreditation, schools must Continue reading…

We’re Hiring: Eagle Rock Director of Students

As most of our readers know, Philbert Smith, our beloved and longtime director of students, is retiring at the end of this summer after serving our student population deeply — and with great commitment — these past 22 years.

Words cannot do justice to the gratitude Eagle Rock owes Philbert for his service. And while no one will ever replace him, we do need to move ahead and start the process of finding a new director of students.

We understand that the best candidates often come from the personal relationships we have with professionals around the country, which should help us generate a great pool of applicants. So it’s critically important that the Eagle Rock community kick into high gear and help us get the word out.

If you know someone who might be a good fit, please direct them to the Eagle Rock Employment page for more information on the position and the application process. In the meantime, here are some of the highlights associated with the job: Continue reading…

News From The Rock: Vision 2020

Editor’s Note: Like many leading not-for-profit organizations, the Eagle Rock School and Professional Development Center is guided by a strategic planning process — the end result of which is a document enabling board and staff to plan for the allocation and use of resources over a multiple year period in order to fulfill the organization’s mission and make significant steps toward realizing its vision. Today’s post, authored by Eagle Rock’s head of school, Jeff Liddle, focuses on the work of Eagle Rock’s board, staff, educators and students with respect to our strategic plan, titled Vision 2020.

Vision 2020
By Jeff Liddle, Head of School

Since our founding in 1993, Eagle Rock has developed a reputation as a leader in the progressive education movement with a particular focus on engaging disengaged high school students.

Our integration of relevant, engaging and experiential academic courses with personal growth and community living is unique and useful to educators around the country and transformative to our students. The Eagle Rock Professional Development Center (PDC) has worked deeply within the Eagle Rock School through numerous school improvement initiatives, supporting Public Allies’ fellowship program, as well as new teacher licensure programs and hosting visiting educators.

Over the past 22 years, the PDC has also worked with networks of schools, supported change efforts around the country and has produced two books and numerous articles on school reform. Our vision is that all of this country’s high school youth be fully engaged in their education.

We believe this will be better accomplished by sharing a coherent sense of where we are going and how we are going to get there, and for that reason we embarked upon a strategic planning process in 2013. A well-developed strategy helps ensure that our daily work fits in with the long-term results we intend to achieve. In particular, our strategic plan guides our board of directors, administration, staff and students in leading the organization.

Updating our vision and mission statements

Through our strategic planning process, our board crafted and adopted updated vision and mission statements and, along with Eagle Rock staff and students, incorporated seven major areas of focus into an updated version of our strategic plan. Within those areas, there were more than 30 specific initiatives from which to choose.

Through a thoughtful process, we selected a Continue reading…

Eagle Rock’s Headed on Spring Break — Here’s How To Reach Us

Come next Wednesday, April 15, it’s going to look like a ghost town around the Eagle Rock School campus as staff, instructors and students take a break from the world of progressive education. Of course, our Professional Development Center will continue work with other schools over the Eagle Rock School break.

Officially, we’re calling it a spring vacation and holiday period, and we’ll all be back in our places by Sunday, May 3. But before all that free time, we’ve still got some activities planned, highlighted by this Friday’s graduation ceremonies. If you get all emotional about pomp and circumstance, you can view the graduation ceremonies live online via the Eagle Rock channel on Ustream.

ER 65 — the 65th trimester in Eagle Rock history — ends for students on Saturday, April 11. Teachers and staff members have meetings and planning days through next Tuesday, and the break begins on Wednesday.

Eagle-Rock-School-Spring-Break-2015

If you find yourself with a burning desire to reach out and touch someone here at Eagle Rock, here’s your best bet: Send them an email, because some of the staff and instructors will occasionally check their messages during the spring break.

Chances are, most of us are taking advantage of this vacation time to, well, vacation, and will have very limited availability by phone until Continue reading…

The Latest News From the Rock — December 2014

Having just wrapped up our 64th trimester, a blanket of quiet has settled over our campus. And looking back, it proved to be a busy and productive trimester for all of us here at Eagle Rock.

We kicked ER 64 off by welcoming eight new full-time Eagle Rock staff members, 10 new Eagle Rock Public Allies fellows, and one wilderness intern — Jack Bresnahan — to our mountainside community. Add it up and that’s just about 40 percent of our staff. Considering all the newness, we’ve done pretty well.

As expected, our students continued to deepen their understanding of our five expectations — making healthy life choices, communicating effectively, practicing leadership for justice, being an engaged global citizen and developing an expanding knowledge base. Much of this was absorbed through engaging classroom discussion.

And, of course we’re proud to have sent our three newest Eagle Rock School graduates — Gigi Hagopian, Isaac Holmes and Cat Leger — out into the world.

In addition to classroom activities, we’ve been working hard to improve the quality of student life elsewhere at Eagle Rock, and this trimester we had a lot going on, thanks to a large extent to The Magnificent 7 — an elite group of veteran students who help out with evening duty.

This trimester, the M7 put on an exciting house versus house Olympics, and when the dust settled, Aspen and Lodgepole were tied for first place. To break the tie, student Ziyad Johnstone, representing Aspen, and Isiah Gonzales, representing Lodgepole, played a nail-biting game of egg roulette for the tiebreaker.

If you’ve never seen it, egg roulette has each person work back and forth through a Continue reading…

News From the Rock — October 2014

Things are off to a great start this trimester here at Eagle Rock! How great a start, you ask? For one thing, our eight new staff and 10 new Public Allies Fellows hit the deck running — right alongside our dedicated veteran staff.

On Wednesday, students Chemi, Cha’Asia, Barbara, Faith, German, Nigel, Myles, Elias, Cortez, Ella, Stacy, Bethzaida, Alysha, Ember, Miriam and Katie-Lynn completed our new student wilderness orientation course in the Gila Wilderness in N.M. They wrapped up the trip by running five miles back to campus where a raucous crowd of family, friends, staff, faculty, students and Eagle Rock board members greeted them.

Add to all this the fact that classes are now in full swing, the weather’s just amazing, and the food — as per usual — is delicious! Life at Eagle Rock is good. But I digress.

We often opine on in our blog posts about the deep learning, inspiring graduates and fine work we’re doing around the country to improve our nation’s schools. But not a bit of this would be possible without a premier, top-of-the-line facility and operations staff that keep it humming along.

The focus of this particular post is to give you a glimpse into recent projects we’ve been working on. But first, some fun facts about our property:

Eagle Rock School sits on 640 acres, about 500 of which can’t be developed under an agreement with the Estes Valley Land Trust.
The remaining “development zone” is made up of 26 buildings — including a half-dozen student houses (Piñon, Juniper, Lodgepole, Aspen, Spruce, and Ponderosa).
There’s Willow house, which houses our 12 Public Allies Fellows, six stand-along staff houses, a library and classroom building, art/woodshop building, science and math building, the Schoolhouse (music building), and a human performance center (home to a full basketball court, competitive swimming pool, climbing wall, an aikido dojo and exercise room).

Check out one of our most recent blog posts — Take A Tour Of The Eagle Rock Campus —for more information on our buildings. We are blessed with the support of the American Honda Motor Co. in maintaining these facilities and are pleased to share with you a few major projects that we have either recently completed or are well on the way to completing.

Newly Paved Road

If you’ve visited campus, you know that our driveway is a more than a mile long and is subject year-in and year-out to the harsh Colorado weather. In September, we chip sealed the road and it is looking beautiful. The Monday and Friday gate runs are much smoother now!

Before

After

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Flood Repair

In September of last year, we experienced what was described as a thousand-year flood. Just our luck! Fortunately we didn’t experience catastrophic damage, although as we’ve told you before we didn’t escape unscathed (see: The Mop-up Continues — as Does a Flood of Emotion). The dirt service road and our emergency exit road out the backside of our property were washed out. Our Professional Development Center’s crawlspace flooded and after giving it an intense blow dry, we installed a vapor barrier to mitigate future moisture issues.

Service Road

Before

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After Continue reading…