Colorado Rocky Mountain School
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| School type | Private, Co-ed |
|---|---|
| Established | 1953 |
| Head of School | Jeff Leahy |
| Campus | Ranch, 360 acres |
| Religious affiliation | None |
| Location | Carbondale, CO, USA |
| Enrollment | ~170 |
| Faculty | ~35 |
| Boarding/day student ratio | 60% boarding to 40% day |
| Average class size | 11 students |
| Mascot | Oyster |
| School colors | Green, White |
| School website | www.crms.org |
Colorado Rocky Mountain School (CRMS), founded in 1953, is a coeducational boarding and day school in Carbondale, Colorado. CRMS educates roughly 170 students in grades 9 through 12. The curriculum emphasizes rigorous college preparatory academics, exposure to visual and performing arts, educational experience in the wilderness, campus work crews, and required athletics.
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[edit] Philosophy
[edit] John and Anne Holden
Colorado Rocky Mountain School, in the words of founder John Holden, is an "antidote to modern easy living." He, with his wife Anne, believed that an increasingly mechanized and apathetic society removed people from nature and failed to foster traits like adventurousness, tenacity, integrity, wit, and compassion. They believed that there needed to be an answer to this cultural gap and to that end they established CRMS, which combined experiential eductation, strong community bonds, shared household chores and physical work, and meaningful thought and discussion in the classroom. The Holdens' philosophy drew upon the ideas of Kurt Hahn, John Dewey, and Carmelita Hinton.
[edit] Today
Today the Holdens' philosophy remains in practice, upheld by the current faculty, administrators and staff. Over time, the curriculum of academics, arts, work, athletics and wilderness experience has been strengthened and more clearly defined. As a small community, CRMS tries to foster adventurousness, curiosity, passion, and growth, as well as lasting bonds and mutual trust between students, faculty and staff. The school's newest slogan, coined by a current faculty and administration member, is "Education Inside and Out."
[edit] Mission Statement
The current mission statement reads: Colorado Rocky Mountain School challenges students to excel in a college-preparatory academic curriculum balanced within a program of the arts, athletics, physical work, service to the community, and enriching wilderness experience.
[edit] Values
Along with the current mission statement, the Board of Trustees adopted nine school values:
- Perseverance
- Integrity
- Engagement
- Responsibility
- Growth
- Respect
- Acceptance
- Compassion
- Excellence
[edit] Curriculum
Colorado Rocky Mountain School combines five areas of focus into the educational curriculum:
[edit] Academics
Academics make up the most important focus of the curriculum. Classes are small, with a 5:1 student-teacher ratio. They follow the Socratic Method of teaching, although the material and work remains fairly traditional. Many teachers, in the tradition of John Dewey, attempt to bring hands-on learning and experiential education into the classroom, as well as break down barriers confining the work and discussion to the classroom. Contemplation of ideas is commonly extended into work crews, wilderness trips, and all-school meetings.
[edit] Visual and Performing Arts
The second curricular focus is that of the arts. CRMS arts classes include ceramics, painting and drawing, sculpture, silversmithing, jazz and bluegrass music, and photography. The school has one of the only blacksmithing programs in the country, founded by well-known blacksmith Francis Whitaker. In recent years, glassblowing has also gained prominence, with work crews and an interim week program dedicated to it so far. The school owns a woodworking shop, but due to limited student interest, there is no program. Theater is a major extracurricular activity with two or three productions each year.
[edit] Work Crews
Work crews are the third curricular focus at CRMS. For two afternoons a week, all students are required to participate in work crews that maintain the campus, work on new projects, fufill school services, and provide community service. Some work crews offered include gardening (providing food for the dining hall), electrical wiring, campus grounds maintenance, library, recycling, computer lab (network, website maintenance), glassblowing, ranch maintenance (fixing fences, clearing ditches, feeding animals), blacksmithing (for railings, gates, campus beautification), yearbook, construction, mentoring in the public schools, vehicle maintenance, and ceramics (for dining hall mugs). In addition a biodiesel work crew was recently initiated which now collects fryer grease from valley restaurants, refines it, and uses the fuel to run a campus maintenance truck. Many alumni express pride in their accomplishments on work crews and recall work crews as among their fondest memories.
[edit] Outdoor Education
One curricular focus which draws many students to the school is the outdoor program. The first thing that new students do upon arriving at CRMS is embark on a ten day wilderness orientation trip. The trip constists of three days of trail maintenance work, and seven days of overland backpacking in the high mountains of the Fryingpan and Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness areas. The outdoor program has two annual school-wide outdoor trips. Fall Trip primarily goes into the mountains for everything from mountaineering to fly fishing to mountain biking. Spring Trip provides a welcome release from the winter as the whole school heads out into the desert lands of the Colorado Plateau. During the winter, several weekend trips skiing and snoeshoeing into backcountry huts are also available. The outdoor program is partially responsible for Interim, a ten day to two week period between third quarter and spring break. Interim replaced Project Week, a week at the end of each semester for intensive individual study of one subject. Interim accomplishes similar goals, except that subjects are studied in groups rather than individually, and Interim tends to be focused more off-campus. Recent interim offerings have included service learning, ecology, and language study trips to Costa Rica, Mexico, Nicaragua and New York City, on campus projects in music, art, and renewable energy, and community projects such as one with disabled skiers in Aspen.
[edit] Athletics
The final focus in the CRMS curriculum is athletics. CRMS is well known for success in kayaking, cross-country and downhill skiing, telemark skiing, mountain biking, and rock climbing. The school also has programs in snowboarding, canoeing, cross-country running, soccer, and hiking. Most students play sports on two afternoons when they are not doing work crews. During the wintertime, two days a week are shortened to accommodate afternoon snowsports at the Aspen ski areas.
[edit] History
[edit] Founding
Colorado Rocky Mountain School was founded in 1953 by John and Anne Holden, former faculty at the Putney School in Vermont. Wanting to fulfill a longtime wish of theirs, the Holdens loaded up a big green International truck, and headed out west. Their pilgrimage of sorts landed them in Carbondale, a small town of farms, ranches, and mining 30 miles northwest of Aspen. They were able to buy a small piece of land and the school settled into the Big House (now called Holden House). The school was somewhat of an experiment when it was founded. The Holdens, with the first several students and faculty members, had to build much of the early classroom and dormitory space themselves.
[edit] Stability
When Harald "Shorty" and Patsy Pabst, donated the Bar Fork Ranch to the school, long-term success became more achieveable. The greatest landmark on the ranch was a large, one-hundred foot square hay barn built in 1897. Today the main space in the barn hosts all-school meeting, theater productions, student music peformances, and events for the larger town community. The library, music classrooms, and the main computer lab are also housed in the building. The barn, along with Mt. Sopris, a mountain to the south of Carbondale, serves as a symbol of the school, incorporated in its logo.
With plenty of work on their hands fixing up the ranch for school buildings, CRMS thrived. Soon the school had founded the nation's first kayaking program, attracted some well known athletes and academics to the faculty, and begun annual trips into the mountains and desert lands that were practically at the school's doorstep. In addition to kayaking, distinguished athletic programs in downhill and cross-country ski racing, climbing, and soccer were started.
[edit] Growing Pains
The school experienced some growing pains throughout the 60s and 70s, and was certainly not isolated from the social changes wrought during those decades. In addition, the improvised programs at the school were reined in a bit; today, the school's active programs incorporate a redoubled emphasis on safety.
Throughout the '90s, large growth in the day student population, increasing financial stability, and an end to many of the drug and discipline issues that had been occasionally associated with the school in its early years helped CRMS retain a positive image and become more connected with the surrounding community.
[edit] Present
CRMS's relationship with the town of Carbondale was tested in the late 1990s when the school decided to sell a parcel of its ranch land next to the main road through town to a developer. The sale touched off some local conflicts as the developer proposed several major commercial projects, including a "big-box store" and strip mall that eventually gained local approval on a scaled-down level in 2006. Much of CRMS's 350-acre campus remains undeveloped, representing one of the last underdeveloped major parcels near the rapidly growing downtown of Carbondale.
In late 2005, the board of trustees selected English faculty member and Dean of Students Jeff Leahy as the school's new Headmaster.
[edit] Prominent Alumni
- Susan Meiselas, photojournalist
- Tamim Ansary, author, activist
- Oliver Platt, actor
- Topher Delaney, landscape architect
- Chris Landry, avalanche scientist, skier
- Conrad Anker, climber
- Peter and Michael Olenick, "new-school" skiers
