Something About Mountain Schools
By Chris Brueningsen
I’ve been thinking lately that there’s something special about a mountain school.
Over the past year, through my work with IndySchool Consultancy, I’ve had the opportunity to lead searches for four very different schools that happen to have mountains at the center of their identities: Killington Mountain School, Talcott Mountain Academy, The Mountain School at Winhall, and The Mountain School of Milton Academy.
They’re very different schools with different missions, programs, students, and histories. But the more time I spend with these communities, the more I notice some common threads.
Mountain schools tend to have a particularly strong sense of place. The mountain isn’t simply the backdrop for the school. It becomes part of its identity and, often, part of the education itself. There’s an independence, resilience, and closeness that seems to come naturally when a school and its community are so connected to the place around them.
For me, that connection is also personal. I live on Stratton Mountain, just down the road from Stratton Mountain School, so mountain school communities are quite literally close to home.
Our children attended The Mountain School at Winhall, and I now serve on its Board of Trustees. Some of our closest friendships in Vermont grew from that little school community. Like so many small schools, it has a way of bringing together students, parents, teachers, and neighbors in relationships that extend well beyond the classroom.
I’ve felt versions of that same spirit during my work with the other mountain schools. These are places where community really matters, where people tend to know one another well, and where the relationship between a school and its surroundings is hard to separate.
Maybe there’s something about being on a mountain that reminds a school that it can’t exist apart from its community.
At IndySchool Consultancy, we’re proud of the relationships we’ve built with schools of every kind and in every setting. But as a Vermonter, a parent, a trustee, and now a search consultant who’s had the privilege of working with four mountain school communities, I’ll admit I’ve developed a particular fondness for these places.
There’s just something about a mountain school.