Introducing Eagle Rock School’s Latest Graduates

Springtime graduations are among our favorite times of year at Eagle Rock School. It’s an event that coincides with mother birds nudging their young offspring out of the nest, and no, the irony does not escape those of us who educationally nurture these young folks.

In the case of our latest grads — who take the stage starting at 4pm MT on Friday, April 10, 2015 — we’re celebrating the successful completion of the Eagle Rock experience for four inspiring high school graduates, including Song Candea, Sonja Stolmar, Maya West, and Hunter Gantz.

Eagle-Rock-School-Graduates-ER65

Below is a little background on each, and even a piece of advice from these veteran Eagle Rockers:

Song Candea joined us in ER 57 (the 57th trimester of Eagle Rock) and has been an active member in the Eagle Rock community ever since. He hails from Niwot, Colorado, and resided in Aspen House throughout his three years here.

Song has been described as an incredibly strong leader who leads by example, taking every opportunity given to him to grow as an individual. Because of this mentality, he was recently selected as the Student Wilderness Instructor for the incoming students of ER 64.

His success in his roles with the Outdoor Education department is paving the way for future student involvement. And with this passion for the outdoors he is seeking to major in Outdoor Education while attending Colorado Mountain College in Steamboat Springs, beginning this fall. Song also showed his talents as an active member of the musical improvisation ensemble, choir, as well as acting in the play In the Blood.

Song’s advice for all the educators reading this: “Teach students what they want to learn and they will learn it.”

Hunter Gantz is another Colorado native — from Boulder — who also joined us in ER 57. Hunter was immediately drawn to the multitude of music and performance opportunities on campus — from musicals to choir and a cappella, and poetry slams.

Hunter was in the Eagle Rock theater productions of 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…