End of Year Program

The End of Year (EOY) experience is designed to give students and teachers a learning environment that goes beyond the classroom.  With elements of service, leadership, perspective, and adventure, the EOY program is one of the most meaningful parts of the Carolina Friends School Upper School curriculum.  From trips to internships to on-campus experiences, EOYs often impact the lives of those involved in potentially life-changing ways.  Throughout the days or weeks of an EOY experience, a group of people is brought together to share laughter, create friendship, gain knowledge, see the world, change outlooks, help others, search for beauty, build confidence, find the inner-self, and make unforgettable memories.

The EOY program was started in 1991 as a way to create a community-building portion of the Upper School curriculum.  The EOY program was introduced by staff member Bob Druhan who envisioned an opportunity for students and staff together to explore in-depth subjects that are field based and could include service and travel.  The program has evolved from an original week-long experience into twelve school days.  Depending on staff and student input, the program is constantly changing and improving in order to provide the best experience possible.

All sophomores, juniors, and seniors are given the option to participate in an EOY or to create an internship for themselves during this time.  Students can generally join two off-campus experiences during these three years.  Freshmen are exempt from this process since their experience is already set.  Students rank their choices, and the staff work very hard to keep the program as fair as possible.  Once students are assigned to a group in the fall, they begin to plan, fundraise and prepare for their experiences.  The EOYs begin after final exams and are typically two weeks in length.

Either scroll though or click on the link to learn more about:
Internships; The Freshmen Trip; On-Campus Experiences; Off-Campus Experiences; Trips 2008

Internships

Students choose internships in order to try out a career path or focus on a certain aspect of study.  Students are responsible for setting up their own program, with help and advice from our internship supervisor, so that their internships reflect their primary areas of interest.  Some internships have involved travel while others are focused right here in Durham.  If you can think of it, there probably has been a student-designed internship to study it!  Some past internships have included students:

Working in an orphanage in Malawi, Africa
Volunteering with Durham organizations like SEEDS, El Centro Latino, the Ronald McDonald House, Man Bites Dog Theater, the Durham Arts Council, Planned Parenthood, the Durham Literacy Council, the Animal Hospital
Working at the Sallie Binghan Center – Duke University’s Women’s Library
Working with a photographer at the Durham Herald
Working for Habitat for Humanity
Writing and recording original piano and vocal compositions
Shadowing architects and attorneys
Volunteering for political campaigns
Working at one of the three Carolina Friends School Early Schools
Going to flight school
Learning how to rebuild an engine and doing it
Internships at the NC Aquarium, the American Dance Festival, the UNC Genetics Lab, the Duke Pathology Department, WCHL Radio, and the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center
Going to New York City and taking dance classes, working with a dance company
Going to Nicaragua
Working with a local photographer and developing a portfolio of pictures

The Freshmen Trip

In 2005 we took our first Freshmen Trip to Newton Grove, North Carolina were we began a relationship with Father Tony and the Episcopal Farmworker’s Ministry.  This relationship has continued through three trips and other scheduled time in the fall of each year to work with the Ministry.  For the past twelve years, Father Tony and the EFM provide vital services to the many migrant farmworkers who surround them in the Newton Grove area of eastern NC.  During this ten-day experience, the freshmen work at different Head Start programs with the children of the migrant workers, they work directly at the EFM most recently helping create a community garden project there, and they work with the donations for the migrant workers, sorting and distributing clothes and food.  The most meaningful parts of this experience come in the evenings, when the migrants return from the fields.  Students travel to camps to distribute clothes and wind up involved in intense games of soccer and volleyball.  This opportunity to make direct connections and have fun is one that both the students and the migrants remember for years to come.  This trip is a great opportunity for students to work on their Spanish language skills, and for the students who have no Spanish to learn a few words.  The trip is not all work and no play.  The freshmen, upper-class student leaders, and the teachers create many opportunities to explore the region, have fun, and create bonds within the class.  Traditions like a Talent Show and Thrift Store Prom have been established.  In addition to the entire freshmen class, four junior or senior students (usually 2 boys and 2 girls) join the trip as leaders and mentors.

On-Campus Experiences

These experiences are often based on the Carolina Friends School campus, but involved day trips to local places.  The on-campus portion can include some sort of service to the school.  Some on-campus experiences have landscaped portions of campus, have helped plan and cook for the annual Senior Banquet, have constructed the climbing wall and totem apparatus, and cleared trails in the woods.  Some of the day experiences might include service at local organizations.  Many on-campus experiences have been designed around the development of a particular skill.  Some subjects have been stained glass making and design, photography, sewing, and poetry writing.  One popular on-campus experience, the ABCs of Service, includes days of work at a variety of local organizations (from local farms to the animal hospital).  This year there will be an on-campus experience focused on strong women mentors in the community.  It will include a videography portion as well as work for Girls Rock NC.

Off-Campus Experiences

The off-campus experiences are simply called “trips,” because that is exactly what they are.  Some trips stay in-state or in the region, some go across the country, and some travel to other countries or continents.  Many trips will include a component of community service and some trips are entirely focused around their service component.  Trips seek out opportunities for students to do meaningful self-reflection, to form bonds within a small group, and to get to experience another culture or lifestyle.  Trips deliberately take students outside of their comfort zones and ask them to exist in conditions that are not similar to their lives at home.  Trips tend to be small groups (usually twelve students) with two teacher leaders.  Some trips are focused on foreign languages, and those usually involve a homestay with a family in that country.

Here are some pictures from past off-campus EOYs:

Trips 2008

This year trips will be:
The Ecology of the Desert Southwest
This trip will fly to the desert southwest and then get into boots, boats and vans to explore several areas in the region.  We will link our excursions to topics in ecology with a particular emphasis on the effects of past, present and future climactic variability on water issues in the region.  Although no prior experience is required, students should be physically and mentally prepared for challenging backcountry camping: high alpine excursions, desert canyon backpacking, and river tripping.  We will begin with a backpacking trip then move to a 5 day canoe trip on the lower Colorado River.  We will end the experience with shorter daylong trips to National Parks.  Students will need to provide their own backpacks, boots, sleeping bags and sleeping pads.  Rental information will be offered if needed. 

Trinidad Trip
Trinidad and Tobago is an English-speaking, two-island nation that is the birthplace of the steel drum.  Trinidad is just north of Venezuela in the Lesser Antilles.  The islands themselves have beautiful landscapes of mountains and beaches and wonderful people.  We will be building on relationships developed last year on this EOY.  Much of our time will be spent staying at the Top of the Mount, an artist’s retreat associated with a Benedictine Monastery (with which it shares property) literally near the top of the Northern Range mountains.  With the island spread out below us, we will travel in small groups to the two primary service projects – an orphanage for HIV-position children and Habitat for Humanity.  We will also include trips to see steel bands play, to a Nature Preserve, and to the beach.  For the last few days of the trip we will relocate to the north shore of the island where we will volunteer with a sea turtle rescue organization headed up by two Duke faculty members.  The end of May/early June is nesting time for the large leatherback turtles.  We will help mark nests, patrol beaches, and tag turtles with this established rescue group.

Appalachian Adventure
We will be traveling with 12 students throughout the region of the Southern Appalachians, west to Tennessee, north to West Virginia, east to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and south back into North Carolina.  The goal is to explore the unique landscape of these ancient mountains, and the unique American folk culture that has existed there for centuries  We will be visiting the Museum of Appalachia (which has thousands of objects and stories, collected from the people themselves) and the Museum of Frontier Culture (which commemorates the first Europeans with three entire farms moved from Europe, complete with crops and animals).  We will also go to the Vandalia Gathering, a folk music festival in a tiny town in West Virginia.  We will visit traditional guitar-makers, and we will have a day of whitewater rafting, probably on the New River in West Virginia.  Along the way we will take in the beauty of these mountains, green with spring.

Costa Rica
This end-of-year experience will take place at the prestigious La Selva Biological Field Station, near Puerto Viejo. The station comprises 3,900 acres of tropical wet forests and disturbed lands. Some 73% of its area is primary forest. La Selva is one of the world’s premier sites at which to conduct ecosystem research and 240 scientific papers are published annually from research conducted there. The plan is to stay at the field station in comfortable 6-person dormitory rooms and we will eat in the central dining hall. The cost of meals and laundry is included in the daily rate to stay at the field station. We will take hikes into the forest by day and night and participate in activities that will help everyone to understand the complex interactions of flora and fauna of tropical rainforest. Our intent is to carry out some original scientific research over the course of several days. Situated within a kilometer of La Selva is the local school at La Flaminea. We plan to complete service work at the school during our stay, the nature of the work being unclear at present. This will connect us to the neighboring families and provide an opportunity to practice a little Spanish. We will follow our time at La Selva with a trip to the beach before returning to San Jose overnight and our flight home. We will use the very fine local public transport system to get around, so we will need to travel light.  This is a trip for 10 students – Spanish speaking skills are helpful but not required.

La Isla, El Salvador
For the third time in the last four years we will be taking a group to the remote and rural village of La Isla in the northern part of El Salvador. This EOY Experience is designed as a service project with an emphasis on cultural exchange and improving conversational Spanish skills. Pairs of students will eat, sleep, and interact with host families; and during the day we will all be manual laborers, working side-by-side with village residents on finishing the community center building that was started during our first EOY to La Isla. To be eligible for this EOY, students must have successfully completed at least Spanish I, be currently taking Spanish I, or able to otherwise demonstrate adequate fluency in Spanish, as well as be willing to assist with any CFS EOY fundraising activities.