Upward Bound High School in Hartwick, New York was the first alternative education program in Otsego County, New York. Created by English teacher Mike Newell and principal Mark Rathbun, the school was first located in the basement of a Unitarian church in Oneonta, New York.
Created in the mid-1980s, Upward Bound strived to create an environment for "at-risk" high school students more conducive to learning than traditional publicly run school. By pooling together the students having the most difficulty functioning, regardless of the root of the problem, Upward Bound brought students together by eliminating labels. In classes of a maximum of eight students, each student could now properly be concentrated on.
Though the school has ostensibly disappeared within the last three years, the program still continues, though with less of an eye toward individuality. After the move to Hartwick, Upward Bound students had their own campus and building, providing a safe location in which to thrive.
Always a part of the Otsego-Northern-Catskills BOCES program, Upward Bound most recently joined the local occupational education center in their own wing of the facility. With this transformation, and more closely controlled operations by new BOCES management, much of the founding staff has been displaced.
Though now vastly different from the original concept, the school still represents a progressive approach to alternative education.
Famous quotes containing the words upward, bound, high and/or school:
“Some hours seem not to be occasion for any deed, but for resolves to draw breath in. We do not directly go about the execution of the purpose that thrills us, but shut our doors behind us and ramble with prepared mind, as if the half were already done. Our resolution is taking root or hold on the earth then, as seeds first send a shoot downward which is fed by their own albumen, ere they send one upward to the light.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We must remember when we speak of the “negativism” of the toddler that this is also the child who is intoxicated with the discoveries of the second year, a joyful child who is firmly bound to his parents and his new-found world through ties of love. The so-called negativism is one of the aspects of this development, but under ordinary circumstances it does not become anarchy. It’s a kind of declaration of independence, but there is no intention to unseat the government.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“The high plains, the beginning of the desert West, often act as a crucible for those who inhabit them. Like Jacob’s angel, the region requires that you wrestle with it before it bestows a blessing.”
—Kathleen Norris (b. 1947)
“Out of life’s school of war.—What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)