The Sisyphus Comments

Learning Life Lessons From A Two String Guitar

On Tuesday, I traveled to Black Mountain, NC for a tour of the Stone Mountain School (SMS). Stone Mountain is a unique long-term boarding school for boys that is set in a remote outdoor environment. They specialize in helping pre-adolescent and teen boys with learning differences or disabilities, attention deficit disorder (ADD), or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

The school is nestled in the mountains, about 45 minutes east of Asheville, NC. I arrived around noon and, after a short orientation, I was assigned to the Pathfinders group. The group consisted of nine young men and two instructors. The lead instructor was retired from DuPont and, with his background in computers and data systems, he and I hit it off pretty well. The other instructor, who was a bit younger, had been a full time staff member but had recently dropped back to a substitute status. Although the two instructors came from very diverse backgrounds, different generations and had totally different personalities, they each brought a unique skill set to the table and they worked very well together.

The age of the students at the SMS ranges from 11 – 17, although the Pathfinders group consisted of young men in the lower to middle portion of this range. According to the boys in my group, most SMS students stay at the school for 12 to 18 months. Student progress is measured by tracking their personal advancement through the six tiers of the SMA Stage Model. At each stage, the student must complete several specific “requirements” in order to qualify for advancement to the next stage.

The SMS website provides the following description of the Stage Model:

”These requirements are designed for the student to demonstrate the behavioral changes they are making intrinsically. The stage model is designed so that the skills they learn become building blocks for later success. First the students learn the skill, then practice it, then maintain it and finally master it.”

It was very interesting to watch the students use the tools that they had learned to resolve conflicts within the group and facilitate interpersonal communication. SMS does not try to “mold” the behavior of their students like some of the other wilderness-based youth programs. Instead, they attempt to encourage the students to take responsibility for their actions and the consequences of their behavior, thus encouraging a more intrinsic behavioral change. Students learn to set and pursue goals, develop relationships, control their emotions and delay gratification.

However, don’t get the idea that SMS coddles the students. It would be generous to describe the living conditions on campus as “rustic.” The cinder block group cabins consist of a single room furnished with ten bunk beds. They have no indoor plumbing and they are heated using a small wood-burning stove. In addition, all of the groups (there were six groups at the time of my visit) utilize a single communal toilet and shower facility.

The students are awakened at 0620 hours and they have ten minutes to get dressed and start working on their group chores. In addition, each group is assigned certain camp chores on a rotating basis. For instance, the Pathfinders were assigned the task of cleaning the shower and toilet facility on the day that I visited.

Each group conducts group meetings at least three times per day. The purpose of these meetings is to afford the students an opportunity to vent their frustrations in a positive manner. The instructors facilitate the discussions but the students are free to bring up any issue that is on their minds. In addition, any student or instructor may call a group meeting at any time during the day if they have a need to express a concern or frustration. These group meetings serve as a positive emotional outlet for the students, many of whom have had anger management issues in the past.

Although the boys work each day to improve themselves, there are bumps in the road. SMS uses a variety of disciplinary methods to help keep the students moving forward on the road to success. Instructors can issue green, yellow and red cards for rules violations. The consequences of receiving a card may range from eating outdoors and not being permitted to receive “seconds” to being sent to primitive. The primitive area is exactly what its name implies, an isolated, unimproved camping area that is located away from the main campus. Although the student is under the constant supervision of an instructor, he is isolated from his group and sleeps in a sleeping bag under a tarpaulin shelter. His meals are also a bit on the primitive side. For breakfast, he is treated to oatmeal and both lunch and dinner consist of lentil beans and rice – everyday! The purpose of the primitive experience is to afford the student the opportunity to reflect on and reassess his behavior. Fortunately, the instructors use a broad range of intervention techniques to help the students improve their behavioral choices so going to primitive is generally a consequence of last resort.

As with any successful program, the staff is the fuel that makes the program run and the glue that holds it together. I read the material on the SMS website before I visited the campus so I had a little insight into their philosophy. While on campus, I got a deeper understanding of the SMS goals from my conversations with Eric Molino, the program manager and Micah Wheat, the recruiting coordinator. During my stay, I also met administrators, counselors, teachers and group instructors, all of whom shared a common purpose, to help the boys get their lives back on track, graduate and return to their homes.

However, I think Mr. Whitmeyer, the younger of the two Pathfinder instructors provided the best description of the SMS program. After one of the group meetings, it was raining so he and I were standing in the food shack. There was an old guitar laying on the shelf and he picked it up. I asked him who the guitar belonged to and he said it was an old school guitar. I noticed that the guitar only had two strings and I quipped, “Not much of a guitar, is it?” He strummed the two strings and responded, “I don’t know, both strings are in tune.” Then to my amazement, he started playing a song. When he was finished, he said, “I guess you have to work with what you have.” I think that would be a great motto for the Stone Mountain School.