HOULTON, Maine – Jacob Tapley admits that before finding the Carleton Project he was a bit of a hoodlum. And he credits the Houlton-based private not-for-profit high school with helping him change his life and actually flourish.
“Before Carleton I was mad at everybody,” he said. “They gave me the tools to stay out of trouble. They taught me that when you talk to people to look at every situation from both angles. I don’t think I’d be the person I am today without them.”
Today, the 22-year-old is the kitchen manager and cook at the Shirewood Smokehouse in Houlton. He’s been a cook for five years and at the smokehouse for two. And while he dreams of someday opening his own mobile food truck, he said he still has so much more to learn before that can happen.
“I love cooking,” he said.
The kids who go to the Carleton Project are often the kids that everyone else has turned their back on. For the most part they are the ones that can’t make it in public school for whatever reason, including anxiety, depression, terrible home life, poverty, being bullied, an inability to connect with other students, can’t get along with teachers, suicidal or have gotten into some trouble with law enforcement, said Carleton school therapist Carol Westerdahl.
Generally, students are referred to the state licensed high school, located in downtown Houlton, by the Houlton-area public schools or the Department of Justice. The public schools or DOJ pay the tuition which is several hundred dollars lower than the state’s $1,800 per pupil reimbursement.
The number enrolled varies from day to day, depending on referrals. They like to keep the number below 20 and enrollment is generally about 12 to 15 students.
Starting on day one, the core team of five, including Westerdahl, school founder Alan Morris, school director Lilly Haggerty, and certified teachers, take the time to listen, to ask, to care about more than just academics and to start building trust and relationships with the students.
Initially, they spend a lot of time trying to find out why kids weren’t successful. If they can get them comfortable enough to talk about that, Morris said they can fix it.
“We don’t do education to them, we do it with them,” Morris said. “They are reshaping their own vision for their future.”
The Carleton Project began as a summer outdoor science project at Mt. Carleton Provincial Park in Canada, said Morris. For 13 years he would haul kids up to this mountain and they would measure the water that came into the park from two rivers, he said.
“‘I think that that’s where it all started for me,” he said about the Houlton program that’s been in the community for nearly two decades.
Flying low on the radar for years, few knew about the project-based learning school and even less understood it or cared to find out more, Morris said.
Morris said education is changing from assessment based learning to project based learning and states like California and Minnesota are on the forefront. Traditional education delivers content and assesses how well students retain it, project based learning is somewhat the opposite.
Every kid at Carleton has a different plan and strategy that is not just an academic plan, but a growth strategy. They get immediate feedback on their academic work from teachers and peers. And they often tie projects to their interests.
“We do business in a very different way from traditional public schools. When you take a kid out of a public school who is failing and they come into our school, we turn them around and send them off to college. Clearly we must be doing something right,” Morris said. “It’s not about what we bring to the classroom everyday, it’s about what they bring to the classroom everyday.”
That was key for Tapley. They taught him how to be a self manager and keep track of his own work, he said. They taught him that it’s OK to have authority figures and that it’s also OK to speak up for yourself with confidence and grace. Perhaps most of all, they taught him that there are people out there who care about the children and really want to help.
“They are taking these young people that don’t learn in a standard kind of way and really getting them off into the world on the right foot,” said Jane Torres, Greater Houlton Chamber of Commerce executive director. “They are doing a great job.”
Just last week, Torres announced that the Carleton Project had earned the Chamber’s Above and Beyond Award to be presented at the Chamber’s Annual Dinner next week.
“We don’t give this award every year, but every once in a while there’s an organization or a person that just does something very special,” she said. “Civics is not taught in school anymore and that’s something they excel at; they are teaching the kids to be part of the community while at the same time teaching them to go out and get a paycheck and explore other things.“
According to Torres, the Carleton Project goes above and beyond just by being the kind of school they are and the students are out in the community doing something at every town event. Whether it’s providing hot chocolate and popcorn for the Annual Holiday Parade, planting flowers in the downtown or helping set-up town events, they are a part of things, she said.
At Carleton the students want to be in school. There are no truancy or discipline problems, Morris said.
The school allows the kids to make decisions and allows them to fail without judgment. That’s where you learn when you can take risks whether academic or social, he said.
Whenever Tapley walked into school it was like being with family. He shares the story of a time that Morris drove 45 minutes to pick him up when he didn’t have a ride to school.
“When I would see Carol, Lilly and Alan, I would say, ‘I’m home now,’” he said.
There are many stories like Tapley’s.
Take 25-year-old Stephany McNally, who is now the Truckload Administrator for Canadian trucking company Day & Ross. She was sent to Carleton by a Hodgdon High School principal and guidance counselor when she got pregnant at 15.
“If it wasn’t for Alan and Lilly being there and being invested there wouldn’t be so many successful kids,” she said.
