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…

A Day In The Life of an Eagle Rock Student

JHP_0047Editor’s Note: Eagle Rock student Jaliza Perez walks us through a typical day for her – from sunrise to bedtime – helping future Eagle Rock students understand the routine here in Estes Park, Colo., on any given school day. Jaliza wrote this piece earlier this year and has since graduated. Her plan now is to start an apprenticeship with Public Allies in Los Angeles doing community-based work.

7:00 a.m.: The sound of an unpleasant alarm goes off and I have no other choice but to wake up. It’s 7 a.m. on a Monday and it’s time to get up and run the gate. I put on my sneakers and walk to the bathroom to brush my teeth.

Once I’m done I hurry down the stairs out of the girl’s wing and head over to where everyone meets to run to the gate that serves as the entrance to our school property and back. Sometimes it takes us only 30 minutes to do the gate and other times it can take longer. Breakfast starts at 8 a.m., so I try to make it back before then. When I’m done I walk into the lodge grab a glass of water and wait for breakfast.

9:20 a.m.: When I’m done eating I head back to my house to get ready for the day. It’s now 9:20 a.m. — just 10 minutes before class. I grab my bag, coat and hat. I’m taking this class called Learning Spanish where we teach Spanish to second graders who are also learning Spanish.

We teach the little kids Spanish one or two days a week, and today is one of those days. So we meet in the lodge before we head out so that my teacher can make sure we have all our materials ready for our lesson plans. After she checks everything we head out to the bus.

At the elementary school I teach three kids how to express their emotions in Spanish. Sometimes I need to remember to have patience with the little kids but for the most part they do a great job of staying engaged. Whenever we go see the second graders I leave in a better mood because they’re always so happy to see us and working with them makes me forget about other things.

11:50 a.m.: It’s almost noon and we’re back on the Eagle Rock campus just in time for chores. Sometimes we will just sweep and wipe surfaces, but if its really dirty we will do a deep clean and leave a note on the whiteboard reminding people to pick up after themselves. By now its 12:30 p.m. and time for lunch! I head over to the lodge and wait for Kitchen Patrol to yell, “Put down chairs.” After everyone helps take the chairs down we can all Continue reading…