Jeff Liddle, Author at Eagle Rock Blog

New Faculty And Staff Members Join Our Ranks

We’re not exactly a revolving door here at Eagle Rock, but staff members do come and go on occasion, as was the case this summer when we said farewell to last year’s Public Allies Fellows and a handful of staff members.

And now we’re turning around and tossing down the welcome mat for eight new full-time staffers — some of whom we already know who have taken on new positions, and some who are brand new to our mountain side high school.

Without further ado, let’s introduce our new staff members, in no particular order:

Brighid Scanlon, World Languages Instructional Specialist, Ponderosa House Parent

Brighid has a Master of Arts degree in foreign language pedagogy (Spanish focus) from the University of Delaware Newark, Del., and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the same institution in Spanish studies and mass communication.

Recent Eagle Rockers will recall that Brighid was the World Languages Fellow two years ago, and this past year was the interim performance and music instructor after Ike Leslie moved on. She will be co-house parenting this year with second-year Public Allies Science Fellow, Sara Benge.

Dan Hoffman, Language Arts Instructional Specialist

Dan received his teaching certification in secondary education and social studies From Prescott College after earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Urban & Environmental Policy from Occidental College in Los Angeles.

Some of you will recognize Dan from his year as the Eagle Rock/Public Allies Societies and Cultures Fellow in 2009-10. Dan returns to Eagle Rock having worked at Voyager Academy High School in Durham N.C., as a curriculum specialist and social studies teacher.

Dan will join the Ponderosa House team.

Diego Duran-Medina, Societies Cultures Instructional Specialist

Diego’s impressive creds include a Bachelor of Arts degree from Colgate University; a Masters of Arts degree from New York University; and, a Masters of Education degree from Teachers College, Columbia University. While at Columbia, he studied educational administration at The Klingenstein Center for Independent School Leadership.

Diego has extensive experience with independent schools, having worked at the Punahou School (Honolulu, HI) and The Edmund Burke School (Washington, DC).

He will join the Juniper House Team.

Stephanie Dixon, Registrar and Life After Eagle Rock Counselor

Stephanie worked for five years as a career and post-secondary counselor and teacher in the high-need Denver Public Schools that featured a diverse population of young people between 14 and 24 years of age — most with multiple obstacles to educational success.

She was also a Continue reading…

News From the Rock — Summer 2014

Believe it or not, we just this month wrapped up our 63rd trimester and our students returned home on Aug. 9.

As a result, it’s a different atmosphere here on campus as contractors work feverishly to maintain our facilities, new staff members settle in, and our veteran staff begins planning for the upcoming academic year — when they’re not catching up on some well-deserved rest. While all this is going on, let’s take a quick peek at what I only halfway jokingly like to call, “The Summer That Was.”

Working with teenagers can be a messy business, and this summer was certainly no exception to that axiom. A few of our students made decisions that resulted in their dis-enrollment and some others struggled as that process played out. There were moments when it felt like things were falling apart.

However, true to the spirit that is Eagle Rock, the low points tested our conviction and pushed us into action. Our community has tremendous resilience and through hard work, well-placed hope, some good ideas, a little vulnerability, some forgiveness, and a few heartfelt apologies, we ended the trimester with a wonderful group of graduates and we’re headed in a positive direction.

As a side note, anyone who thinks the answer to all of the educational woes in this country lie in some sterile set of standards or one-size-fits-all solution to the “problem of the day,” has not spent enough time in schools. The answers, growth, insight — and ultimately the deep learning — often occur in the conflict. When we stay present with each other, magic can happen. Such is the messy but transformative nature of living smack dab in the middle of a community.

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Despite the challenges, some wonderful things also occurred this summer: Continue reading…

ACIS Accreditation: A commitment to continuous improvement

When I describe Eagle Rock School to folks who might be unfamiliar with our work, I often get a quizzical look and the question, “So do students get a high school diploma?”

Frequently, because we adults choose to live in the past and therefore fall victim to our own experience with school, it’s difficult to understand Eagle Rock’s unique and innovative approach. Eagle Rock is not alone in the quest to engage young people creatively and deeply. There are many schools – public, private/independent, charter, etc., – who are doing innovative work, and we partner with many of these around the country.

So how then do people know whether any of these schools are legitimate? Who ensures they are meeting the latest professional standards? Who governs their behavior? Who verifies what occurs on their campuses is worthy of a high school diploma?

The answer varies from state to state but the consistent theme is that schools meet a set of standards laid out by an accrediting agency. And accrediting agencies can be governmental, or they can be private entities.

While accreditations differ from agency to agency, becoming accredited is typically a multi-faceted process that involves the following steps:

Self Study: The program seeking accreditation – in this case, Eagle Rock School – conducts a self-study and reflects on how it is doing based on a set of standards from the accrediting agency. When complete, the self-study is submitted to the accrediting agency.
Site Visit: The accrediting agency assembles an evaluation team of educators and school leaders who are familiar with its standards. The team spends an average of four days on campus conducting interviews, reading documents, observing classes and other school activities – all with an eye toward developing its own assessment of the school’s strengths and weaknesses. In particular, the team is looking for areas of congruence and incongruence with the school’s self study. Every accrediting agency has a set of standards and the team will also be looking for evidence of compliance with those standards.
Evaluation Report and Accreditation Status: The accrediting agency generates a report based upon Continue reading…

Eagle Rock Gathering: A Daily Ritual for Coming Together

For those of us who work and learn at Eagle Rock School, community is at the core of our experience. And our daily “Gathering” has long been the centerpiece of that idea.

Every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, we sit in the hearth area of the Lodge to engage in a 20-minute conversation about community. On Wednesdays, Gathering is held in a number of different ways – but that’s a topic for another blog post.

We begin each Gathering with 30 seconds of silence; then we move on to a 10-minute presentation, followed by five minutes of announcements and five minutes of live music. Anyone can sign up to speak at gathering and the topics are as varied as the students and staff themselves.

A sampling of recent topics is in order:

Student Song Candea wowed us with a Dr. Seuss-inspired mid-career personal growth presentation.
Eagle Rock receptionist Susie D’Amico shared her knitting talents and talked about aesthetic expression.
Our College Tour Explore Week class shared insights from its Midwest tour of college campuses.
Sonya Stolmar and Ryan Powell addressed one of our 10 commitments – “Develop my mind through intellectual discipline, my body through physical fitness, and my spirit through thoughtful contemplation.”
Since every Gathering wraps up with music, Life After Eagle Rock Fellow Rebecca Fenn on ukulele, along with and wilderness instructor, Matt Bynum on guitar, brought down the house with their own special version of Outkast’s “Hey Ya.”

We’d like to think a successful Gathering occurs when we walk away thinking differently, inspired by live music, and most important, become reconnected.

Recently I asked Robert Burkhardt, Eagle Rock’s founding head of school, to share some of the history behind our Gatherings. Here’s what he recalls: Continue reading…

News From The Rock

Greetings from Eagle Rock School and Professional Development Center! While we’re currently well into our fourth week of ER 62, I’d like to take a look back at ER 61, our fall trimester that began the end of last August.

We kicked things off by welcoming a dozen new Public Allies teaching fellows to our campus, and a week later, we welcomed some rain. It was on a Monday, and we were all a bit giddy about the change in weather because, whenever it rains in Colorado, we feel blessed.

By that Wednesday, news reports promised we’d have at least a shot at receiving the average annual moisture total for the year, and that’s absolutely great news for a normally dry state.

True to the weather predictions, the rain kept coming. By Friday, Sept. 13, things began to turn weird. Wet and weird. Canyons were washed out. Estes Park was isolated. The Safeway market aisles were depleted. There was no gasoline in town. The public utilities were intermittent at best. We were in the midst of a 1,000-year rain and a 100-year flood. That, my friends, is how last trimester started for those of us who live or work here at Eagle Rock.

Somehow we made it through this damp deluge, and it was due in huge part to a lot of hard work on everybody’s part. And please believe me when I say that for some staff members, tremendous sacrifice was involved. Looking back, I have to say it was worth it. It was well worth it.

Eagle Rock students help with 2013 flood recovery efforts in Estes Park, Colo.

Harriet Beecher Stowe once said, “When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”

That quote exemplifies our staff members who live off campus and were highly impacted by the flood. Our accountant Denise Dunn; chefs Ed Perry, Mark Dougherty, Jay Halladay, and Thad Quesada; math instructor Karen Ikegami; visual arts instructor Cindy Elkins; Public Allies Program Director Mark Palmer; Professional Development Center associate director Dan Condon; and operations staff Linda Bieker, Terry and Kerri Tierney and Patricia Jobst; all went way beyond the call of duty with a simple commute to work that became a daunting daily undertaking.

The flood affected all of us. Yet not one soul missed a beat in his or her commitment and dedication to our mission. There’s no way we could have served students without them.

That mission remains one of re-engaging young people in their education. And while the flood presented “challenges” on campus — to say the least — our work across the country continued without missing a beat. Staff members traveled to Continue reading…

Reflections on the Past Academic Year — A River Runs Through It

Imagine peering over the edge of a cliff and staring down on millions of gallons of raging water the color of chocolate milk and knowing you’re going to be in the midst of that turmoil in just a few moments. Thirty years of white water paddling experience suddenly feels inconsequential.

Lava Falls is the largest rapid on the Colorado River in Grand Canyon. Sure, there are a couple safe routes, but finding them is certainly not easy. It demands a team effort and even then there are no guarantees. Even though you might pick what appears to be a solid route from shore, there’s much to be done once you enter the chaos.

A few years back — in 2009 — I found myself in just such a spot. Many questions ran through my head. Will the route I choose work? Will I have the skills to adjust to changing circumstances? Will I have the presence of mind to stay calm when a misplaced oar stroke could flip my raft — or worse? Is risking my life a good idea?

I remember looking at my 18-year old son Max sitting at the front of my raft. What would I say to his mom if things went wrong? I can’t explain the attraction to living life on the edge, but I know I’m drawn to that activity like a moth to flame. It’s a life where the course is unclear, where a lifetime of experience is called into question, where I must rely on others for safe passage. It’s a life where the spoils of defeat are not inconsequential, and where the victories are addicting. I always want more.

On Sept. 3, 2012 — the day I stepped into the role of Eagle Rock’s head of school — I remember experiencing the same feelings I did back at Lava Falls three years before. Truth is, just as I can’t run a river by myself, I require plenty of expert help to run a complex and meaningful organization like Eagle Rock.

Reflecting back on this past year, the biggest lesson I think I’ve learned is the vital importance of teamwork. I’ve worked here for 13 years and I understand the “path of the river” well. But it’s one thing to stand on the shore and talk about the right path, and quite another to be “at the oars” in the current.

I have a great executive team in the form of Philbert Smith, Michael Soguero, Susan Luna, and Jen Frickey, as well as an amazingly dedicated and talented staff that keep this ship afloat and on course. Our aspiration this past academic year was to “become more responsive to student needs, both locally and nationally.” We charted our course for the year by creating four overarching objectives to focus our work, which I shared in an earlier blog post, and in a moment I’ll share the results of that work.

But first, I want to acknowledge that we’ve accomplished a tremendous amount of work on campus and around the country that has been covered in previous posts and isn’t captured in our focused objectives. In addition to doing the “work” of Eagle Rock, we’ve also experienced the passing of two very dear on-campus members of the Eagle Rock community — Mary Strate and Rick Gaukel — and one graduate, Casey Whirl. Our thoughts and prayers continue to go out to Mary, Rick, and Casey’s families. You will always be remembered.

I won’t drag you through volumes of reflections from my year, but I do want to report out on how we’ve done with our four big objectives. Here’s a quick look at the highlights:

Objective No. 1: The Professional Development Center (PDC) /School relationship at Eagle Rock is inextricably interdependent.

Students are traveling with PDC staff externally and being used more intently on campus. In addition our staff has become more involved on campus and around the country, either traveling to work with networks of schools around the country or working much more intensively with schools visiting our campus. We’re connecting visiting educators in much more intentional ways to the experience of visiting Eagle Rock and we’re sharing more of our experience nationally.

Our two key PDC staffers, Michael Soguero and Dan Condon, have worked tirelessly this year to increase our professional development reach and have nearly maxed out their ability to work with other networks of schools. This capacity limitation was recognized by our board of directors and resulted in additional resources to add a new PDC position and some early brainstorming to increase our virtual support to schools via increasing Internet resources.

Our primary strategy — or “hedgehog” as Michael fondly calls it — is helping other progressive schools get better within their own context instead of exporting practices. This year we’ve found a hybrid where we integrate the goals of the organization with the knowledge and expertise we’ve gleaned from our own school experience. For example, if a school wants to implement proficiency-based graduation requirements, improve their internship program, or design curriculum to support teaching for understanding, we not only do an asset-based assessment in their context and help them carve out an agenda based on their desires, we also bring expertise in those particular areas of reform to the table. As a result, we’re able to listen attentively to specific needs of the networks in which we work, facilitate change process for them AND bring our own expertise from working on similar initiatives in our own school. We believe professional development should be forged in real schools with real students and this year we’ve made some good progress connecting the efforts of our school with the PDC and visa versa.

Finally, we’ve Continue reading…

News From The Rock

Editor’s Note: One of the reasons we’ve chosen to publish a blog is because like many organizations nowadays, we’ve come to the realization that with a blog, we have access to a digital press of our own… one that’s capable of helping us share Eagle Rock’s news in a timely and dynamic format. And you may have noticed, our blog recently underwent a major facelift.

With that in mind, we’re pleased to introduce a new type of blog post and one that we hope you’ll come to enjoy and look forward to reading every month-and-a-half or thereabouts. Here, in our ‘News From The Rock posts, we intend to share some of what’s going on behind the scenes at Eagle Rock, both in our award-winning residential high school and our professional development center. Driven by our head of school, Jeff Liddle, these ‘From The Rock’ posts will replace many of the mass email messages we’d been infrequently sending to parents and other Eagle Rock stakeholders. (Note: If Email’s more your style, you can enter your email address in the ‘Get Blog Posts by Email’ box at the top of the right hand column, and we’ll send you an email message each time we update the blog!)

So now that you’ve arrived at “The Rock,” here’s what’s been happening lately:

Around campus…

To get us started, we’re happy to report that the Eagle Rock board of directors recently approved — and a dedicated group of Eagle Rock School alumni will soon launch — our own Alumni Association. For details, read our recent blog post Orbiting The Rock: The Eagle Rock Alumni Association Takes Flight, and stay tuned for more information on this exciting development.

Next up, we recently graduated eight more Eagle Rock students, comprising ER-60 (Eagle Rock’s 60th group of graduates since our first group in April 1995). Congrats to these new grads, including:

Axaria Campbell
Blayke Curtis
Jonathon Deras
Valentin Deras
Derek Gaines
Marwan Johnstone
Nyeema Lee
Valentina Ramirez

Farewell to this year’s Eagle Rock Public Allies Teaching Fellows – they did a fantastic job and we wish them the best as they spread their wings and carry what they experienced and learned at Eagle Rock into their next endeavors:

Eliza Wicks Arshack – Outdoor Education
Laura Baumgardner – Health & Wellness
Clay Chiles – Human Performance
John Finefrock – Societies & Cultures
Rebecca Garrison – Literacy & Literature
Catherine Graham – Visual Arts
Jeff Holoubek – Service Learning
Athena Jin – Math
Jaimie LaPine – Music
Laura Nolan – Life After Eagle Rock
Colin Packard – Professional Development Center
Brighid Scanlon – World Languages

After two full decades, the pool side of the Human Performance Center roof here on property is being replaced.

We recently installed photovoltaic solar panels to reduce our dependence on electricity from the grid, and the School’s solar panel class spent five weeks studying that technology.

Around the country…

Eagle Rock students Steven “Ray Cat” Legér and Song Candea have been away in Boston studying on a full scholarship at Berklee College of Music’s Five-Week Summer Performance Program, now in its 27th year. Better known as “Five-Week,” the Berklee Five-Week Summer Performance Program, with its diversity of study options, world-class Berklee faculty, visiting artists, and state-of-the-art facilities, is the premiere contemporary music summer program for young musicians. Each summer, approximately 1,000 participants from across the U.S. and around the world (70 countries) share in this unique summer experience.

Eagle Rock student Franco Casas just wrapped up a rafting, backpacking and climbing trip in Utah as part of an Continue reading…

Sharing Eagle Rock’s 2012-13 Leadership Team Objectives

One of the dozen or so focal points of the program and curriculum here at Eagle Rock is to instill in our students the importance of being of “use.” In a nutshell, that means encouraging them to give back to the community what was so freely given to them.

And it certainly doesn’t hurt for those of us on the administrative leadership team here at Eagle Rock to keep that notion of service forefront in our minds as we go about the work of implementing our theme for the 2012-13 school year:

“Be more responsive to student needs, both locally and nationally.”

By focusing internally in order to better serve our own students, and externally though the work we do via our Professional Development Center, we are truly re-engaging youth.

Toward this end, we’ve established four objectives that we aim to achieve by the end of this academic year (Aug. 31, 2013):

The Professional Development Center (PDC) / School relationship here at Eagle Rock is inextricably interdependent
Our admissions process is aligned with the capacities of our school
The quality of student life at Eagle Rock is improved
The daily schedule and human resources are reallocated to best align with organizational needs

While it’s true that these objectives are broad in nature and could be interpreted as all encompassing — requiring more than a year to accomplish — we’re limiting them in scope in order to complete each objective this school year.

With that in mind, the purpose of this blog post is to update you — our stakeholders — on the progress we’re making toward each objective.

With respect to the first objective — The Professional Development Center (PDC) / School relationship here at Eagle Rock is inextricably interdependent — I’m happy to report that we’ve piloted a process that utilizes our own students as facilitators of external professional development at other schools.

We’re also working on creating a model that demonstrates how the PDC team supports our own school’s internal improvement initiatives in ways that can be replicated for ongoing school improvement projects.

What remains to be done is to Continue reading…

Inheriting A Legacy Of Learning & So Much More

Welcome to the first of what I hope will be many blog posts spotlighting what’s happening and what makes us tick at Eagle Rock. If we haven’t met yet, allow me to introduce myself… my name is Jeff Liddle and I’m the Head of School here at Eagle Rock. In short, I’d like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude for inheriting such a great position and share what you can expect from me by way of future blog posts.

First off, I say “inherit” because I’ve stepped into a job that already features a highly dedicated staff, an amazing organization that is well supported by you — our stakeholders — and an established educational edifice that has a nationwide reputation for accomplishing what many often feel is out of reach… educational reform at both the micro and macro levels.

Most importantly, I’ve inherited a position within an organization that has clarity in its mission. All that’s left for me to do is peek a little closer into the corners to see where we can become even better at what we do. And what we do best as a school is re-engage our students in meaningful education, and through the work of Eagle Rock’s Professional Development Center, provide facilitative services to high schools who are similarly re-engaging youth. I’ve acquired a visionary project that is already well tuned, borne out of Honda’s commitment to contributing to society.

I find myself following in the footsteps of a founding Head of School — Robert Burkhardt — who was intimately involved in every aspect of this institution and never wavered for a moment from his No. 1 commitment — students. As a result of his efforts, I now lead a school that was most recently recognized as one of only 24 National Schools of Character by theCharacter Education Partnership. As a result, we’re well positioned for the next stage in our development.

I see our immediate focus during the early stages of my tenure as one of recognizing where we fall in the continuum of organizational maturity, and then leading accordingly. Instead of pursuing the status quo or resting on our laurels, I see us revisiting the core aspects of our organization. And by revisiting, I mean making slight innovations when necessary in regard to our vision, our mission, our PDC services, and the basic structure of our educational community.

And it could be that during these second — or third, or fourth — inspections of our organization, we may find a need for major alterations in our game plan. “What can we do to make this aspect of our program better?” Introspection is a healthy thing, but without action it has no value.

Change is necessary and sometimes it is accompanied by discomfort or growing pains. But discomfort is good and when in pursuit of excellence, it is extremely healthy. It creates the potential for new patterns of interaction and that quite frankly drives us toward excellence.

My predecessors had a vision for an innovative approach to learning back in 1993 and they put it into action with all of the excitement, participation and planning such a unique undertaking requires. Two decades later, we remain at the peak, with most functions running smoothly, which is pretty much the description of a well-oiled machine.

Now what’s required is to ensure that we remain viable in a world that is constantly changing. And that will require the same enthusiasm, energy, courage, and creativity that got us here in the first place.

And speaking of tomorrow, in about seven to 10 tomorrows from today, I’ll be back with a new blog post updating you and the rest of the Eagle Rock community on what the Eagle Rock leadership team and I are doing specifically to continue the legacy we’ve been granted.

To that end, I can’t wait for tomorrow because we get better looking every day. In the meantime, I invite you to leave a comment sharing what you hope to hear from me as the head of school.