Eagle Rock Virtually Celebrates 7 Graduates

Going virtual has become commonplace in this era of COVID-19, but this — Eagle Rock School’s 80th trimester, saw our staff and administrators organize a Celebration of Graduates for seven of our students unlike any preceding event of its kind.

Normally, such ceremonies take place in our Human Performance Center on campus but, due to the health pandemic, our mountainside campus shut down in early March, with all students returning to their homes in order to prepare for remote learning and ongoing student support.

As a result, we did not have a graduation ceremony last trimester. Instead, we had a Celebration of Graduates.

That meant the 80th trimester Celebration of Graduates, was delivered online via Zoom, on April 10, and featured a prepared video of faculty speeches, shout outs, virtual journals, remembrances, and even advice from the departing grads to their friends and current Eagle Rockers.

Those graduating last trimester include Xavier Hagood-Edmeade, Alizja Serret, Dalan Farris, Burgess “Bea” Cotham, Ay’Niah Rochester, Jacob Israel, and Joyce Page. And while these students missed out on a “regular” high school graduation ceremony, all seven were invited back to “walk” the next time a graduation is held on campus.

What was important for these grads to hear was praise from family members, instructors, and fellow students — all of whom poured themselves into a full-on commitment to earn their high school diploma. For some of these students, graduation did not seem at all like a possibility just a few years ago.

Immediately below is a photo of the seven students who participated in the Celebration of Graduates, followed by a biography of each graduate, which includes information about their major learnings, campus involvement, achievements, and future plans.

Editor’s Note: At the end of today’s post is a video that was presented at the Celebration of Graduates.

Xavier Hagood-Edmeade

Xavier, who arrived at Eagle Rock in the fall of 2016, is from Ormond Beach, Fla., and was a member of Spruce House. He spent much of his time at Eagle Rock committed to leadership and service learning, as well as wilderness education.

Xavier completed his new student wilderness orientation course, a National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) horse-packing course in Wyoming, as well as an Eagle Rock veteran-student wilderness course in the fall of 2019. His leadership and service roles included being an intramural captain, a Lead Student Ambassador, mentor, and member of the Mag 7 student leadership team, among many other things.

Xavier recounts the lessons learned at Eagle Rock, many relating to his personal development. He explains learning how to advocate for himself, becoming more patient, and discovering his independence all helped him grow during time with us. All the while, he has held onto a conversation he had with L’Tanya Perkins, our admission associate, during his admission interview. She asked him to “promise me something… No matter how hard this place is, you have to be true to yourself and remember your why.”

And to this day, Xavier says he has committed to discovering and refining what his “why” is in all he does and maintaining his resilience.

Looking ahead, Xavier hopes to spend more time in the wilderness by volunteering for a national conservation organization and completing trail work and maintenance. Following several years of conservation work, Xavier plans to enroll and serve in the military. After all his time at Eagle Rock, he advises new students to “avoid all the drama” and to focus on themselves.

Alizja Serret

Alizja, who arrived here in the fall of 2017, is from Lynn, Mass., and was a member of Spruce House. She says a defining point for her at Eagle Rock was getting involved and taking full advantage of the opportunities presented to her.

Among her major goals and learnings was developing confidence and leadership skills. In line with this, she jumped into numerous leadership roles and classes. She has served as the Continue reading…

Utah’s Rugged Desert Areas Host 7 Eagle Rock Student Explorers

For a full month last trimester, we offered a new experiential outdoor adventure-based course for sevenveteran Eagle Rock School students — a wilderness course that entailed navigating inner and outer landscapes in the pristine desert areas of Utah.

We approached this exploration by focusing on three modalities of backcountry travel — backpacking, climbing, and rafting — which ultimately offered ample opportunities for participants to learn more about themselves nature, and where the two intersect. In addition to a human-powered outdoor adventure, students engaged in a rigorous academic experiences that included creative non-fiction writing and ecological earth science.

Among our group were students Angel Resendiz, Ay’Niah Rochester, Carter Raymond, Dauntay Acosta, Jacob Israel, Sequoia Masters, and Xavier Hagood-Edmeade. Support came from our amazing instructor team, which included Jack Bynum (Adjunct Outdoor Education Instructor), Leila Ayad (our 2017/2018 Public Allies Teaching Fellow in Outdoor Education), and Amelia la Plante Horne (our current Public Allies Teaching Fellow in Outdoor Education, and Eagle Rock graduate). And as you’ll read later in this post, we connected toward the end of our trip with Nia Dawson (Student Services Program Manager).

We also had support from Song Candea, a snowboard instructor at Steamboat Resort and Eagle Rock graduate who has assisted us on our wilderness classes for several years, and myself — Outdoor Education Instructional Specialist Eliza Kate Wicks-Arshack.

And, following a week on campus to ground ourselves in the course curriculum, and packing for the trip, we headed to the desert.

Our course began with a seven-day loop in Escalante-Grand Staircase National Monument. Our route took us down the Twenty-Five Mile Wash, then 14 miles to the Escalante River, and up and out of Scorpion Gulch. We backpacked down massive slick rock domes, bushwhacked through forests of invasive tamarisk (a small shrub that the USGS says “favors sites that are inhospitable to native stream-side plants…”), waded down the frigid water in the Escalante River, and exited the canyon via a  Continue reading…