ASHEVILLE, N.C. — A school in the North Carolina mountains is helping its students push past the fear left in the wake of Helene.
The French Broad River Academy is a unique middle school along the river in Asheville. It’s focused not only on academics, but on outdoor education and community involvement. Part of the mission was challenged when Helene flooded the area.
“We're a big river-focused school,” said Tricia Chan, program director for the girls school. “Which is why we're by the river and have sort of been really in tune with it before, during and after the storm.
During the storm, the water came up under the foundation, but it didn’t get into the building. The boys school down the road had more flooding. However, engineers built the campuses with flooding in mind and none of the classrooms had water damage.
“The river is changed,” Chan said. “It's not back to what it was before…. So obviously you can see kind of the scouring. But it's interesting, both the scouring of the river and the change of the riverbed, but also the depositing of junk.”
As part of the outdoor education component of the academy, students spend time in the field skiing, hiking, climbing and whitewater canoeing.
“As river experts, we keep a really close eye on the water levels and the rain,” Chan said. “And so we were really in tune with what was happening.”
She says being on and near the French Broad every day is helping students process their new surroundings.
“I think it's actually been really healing for students to be on the river every day,” Chan said. “They've had a chance to think about it and process what happened in a really real way and honestly get to see all of Asheville helping every day, which is pretty cool.”
Service is also a big part of the French Broad River Academy’s mission. A lot of efforts have been focused on cleanup, and the students are able to be a part of it. Although they’ve always had a service component to their learning, students say after Helene it’s been even more of a focus.
“It feels really good. I love helping people who need a little more support than I do,” student Liv Willard said. “I'm very fortunate after the storm, and I know some people weren't as fortunate.”
Willard says this stretch of river used to be a popular whitewater canoeing spot.
“It's actually insane,” Willard said. “Our town is so different than it was before. I remember in sixth grade we went to this park and it was like an island park, and it's just, like, gone now. Like it's just all gone.”
Cleaning up the area is going to take a long time, but every little piece of trash gets them closer to restoring the beauty of the river. Memories of the power and destruction of the river are hard to forget.
Willard says the river is a lot scarier now, but it’s something she’s trying to overcome.
“There really is no way to get over it. I feel like it just comes with the time,” Willard said.
Chan is proud of her students and how they are handling those emotions, but she’s trying to help students balance the perception and the reality of risk.
“What kind of fear and anxiety is the kind that we should listen to and what kind of it is like, ‘OK, I feel this way,’ and it makes sense… and I'm not going to ignore that or gloss over it,” Chan said. “But also the right thing to do is to get back on the river or go hiking on a trail that's totally different now.”
It’s not just something these students have to work on, but something the whole mountain community is learning to overcome.
The French Broad River Academy was one of the first schools to open back up after Helene. The storm hit western North Carolina on Sept. 27, and the school reopened on Oct. 15.
Chan says it’s all thanks to the outdoor community and the engineers who kept flooding in mind when building their campuses.
