A River Runs Beside It: French Broad River Academy - TribPapers
Education

A River Runs Beside It: French Broad River Academy

Students prepare to take to the river. Photo submitted.

Woodfin – Most days it runs lazily through the mountains of Western North Carolina, but after a good couple of days of rain, it can rage out of its banks to threaten buildings and infrastructures along its river banks. The French Broad River is an age-old part of the mountains here and a significant part of the French Broad River Academy.

While the river has been here for time immemorial, not so with the school from where it draws its name and is part of the private school curriculum, the school started in the mind of its founder, Will Yeiser, a native of east Tennessee and former teacher in the Asheville School system.

One of the students’ overseas trips. Photo submitted

The approximately $21,500 per year middle school (including books, laptops, meals, overnights, uniforms and trips to foreign countries) is unique in its approach to education, including having a separate campus for boys and girls. Yeiser wrote a charter application for the state for the educational institution to become a charter school. Since they didn’t have a girls’ program at the time, the state said it would be discriminatory. The boys’ program started in 2009, with the girls starting in 2015.

“Yeah, as a former public school teacher that’s taught in a number of coed middle schools, I just learned over the years that they are significant developmental differences between boys and girls at this age,” said Yeiser

“You can produce really different outcomes, I believe. So, for example, one of the biggest benefits is that our students are more focused on the task at hand, especially with academic performance. Then our teachers can anticipate the typical classroom behavior and need of a split gender and curate their classroom teacher’s process and culture to best benefit our students,” he explains. “Though there are a lot of examples of things we do differently in an all-boys class versus an all-girls class at this age…One of the other great benefits, I think, is that we can actually deconstruct negative gender stereotypes, address things like toxic masculinity and surround these young boys and girls with positive role models and create a safe space for positive gender expression.”

Ask his definition of toxic masculinity, Yeiser said, “There can be generalizations obviously, things like telling a boy they’re weak if they cry. There’s shame in expressing emotions, or you have to be a real man or some of the things stereotype what it means to be a man.”

Asked how the program would handle a transgender student, Yeiser said they had not had one apply yet, but it would be handled on a case-by-case basis. “It would be a conversation with the parent and student.”

Yeiser said he had the school’s curriculum before they had the location on the river. “I think the access to the river is a big part of our curriculum whether that’s P.E. and my sixth graders taking canoes out to learn basic strokes or science class and doing water quality testing or monitoring aquatic invertebrates.” He said, “It’s pretty incredible on an aesthetic level for me and my staff to pull up to this spot next to the river each day.”

The school started in the River Arts District in Asheville, eventually finding its home on the river and then purchasing a second location for the girls’ campus just a mile away. “We were intentional about being on the river. I think that’s one of our selling points. We get on the water and by the water and incorporate it in almost every aspect of our program we can.”

The girls’ campus was an industrial site and had to be remediated by the state to become a campus safe for use in 2017. “That’s a story in itself,” he said.

The school has a 12-to-one ratio of students to teachers in the classroom with two classes per (6 thru 8) grade with 72 per campus for a total of 144 for the entire school. That ratio drops to 6-1 when the students are on the river or in a foreign country (mainly going to Costa Rica). “We have a three-year progression that includes culture and language…We are really intentional about working with the communities there. Building community, establishing and building upon relationships with these families over the years.”

Yeiser describes the curriculum as “relevant, rigorous, engaging. We think of all of our classes as honor level or beyond.” He said, with small classrooms, “It’s impossible for a student to slip through the cracks academically, socially, emotionally.”

Asked about the school’s motto, “Build character and Integrity for a lifetime of learning, service and leadership for boys and girls.” Yeiser elaborated on its meaning, saying he was frustrated with the college mission statements he was seeing, which he said were all very much the same. “I decided I wanted something short, and that could be applied to everything we do, and we came up with this concept that building character and integrity is really the key to happiness.”