Curry School of Education

A recent knock brought Bob and Libby Wilson to their front door, where they found a young man flanked by his wife and two children. “You literally saved my life,” the former student of the Little Keswick School told them as they sat on the front porch and reminisced.

Visits like this are not unusual for the Wilsons, but they are always welcome. They remind the couple that their school for special needs boys and all their hard work over the past 48 years have been more than worth the effort.

Bob and Libby, both originally from the Baltimore area, married in 1952 after Bob had finished his tour in the military. Both of them completed their undergraduate education at the Curry School—Bob first, on the GI bill while also teaching full time at Fluvanna High School, then Libby while simultaneously raising three children. When Libby finished in 1959 and took a job teaching in Albemarle County, Bob began working on his master’s degree at Curry.

In 1963, while Bob was still grinding slowly through his graduate program, the couple decided to earn some extra money during their time off by hosting a small summer camp on their sprawling 25-acre plot in rural Keswick. They targeted boys with learning disabilities. Six boys showed up that first summer, all from the Washington DC area and all struggling in school. They boarded in the Wilson’s two-story home, eating around the table with the Wilson’s children Beau, Mark, and Susie.

“We taught the boys how to organize and how to study. Most of them were hit or miss, doing this or that,” Bob says. “Organization was a big part of that first program.”

“Of course, being from the city, they all loved it here in the country,” Libby adds.

At the time the Wilsons had no idea what their summer venture would become—“Never in the wildest stretch of our imagination,” Libby says. “It just got to be a rolling stone after that.” Little Keswick School was born a few years later, after a group of pleased parents asked the Wilsons to extend their effective program into the school year.

Although the Curry School had provided the Wilsons with a “good basic educational foundation,” Libby says, “nothing really ever prepared you in life for this kind of endeavor.” They consulted frequently with University of Virginia psychiatrists, as well as special education and clinical psychology experts at the Curry School. They benefited from the help of Curry School student interns over the years, as well.

One of the boys attending those first couple of summer camps was Marc Columbus. Libby remembers him as “not very interested in school but very athletic.” When it came time for college, Bob took Marc under his wing and helped him navigate his way into Lynchburg College, where Marc became an All-South All-American soccer player.

Marc met Terry Bruce there, and they married in 1976. With a little encouragement from Bob, Marc and Terry both chose the special education program at the Curry School for their graduate work, which they completed in 1979. They both also began working part-time at Little Keswick School.

Now 35 years later, Terry is the director of admissions for the school. Marc spent some time in private business, then became headmaster of the school in 1993. Although the Wilsons began stepping back from the administration of the school several years ago, they made it official last January, and now Marc and Terry “pretty much run the show,” as Libby puts it.

The “show” at Little Keswick continues to be extremely successful. The Columbuses keep the school focused tightly on its greatest strengths. Boys are accepted between the ages of nine and fifteen. They keep enrollment small, around 34 students, to maintain the family-like atmosphere. "Institutional" is the last impression the Wilsons ever wanted to give their students, so they developed an idyllic, camp-style setting on their property, complete with a stocked fishing pond, horses, and a soccer field.  

The boys accepted at Little Keswick have a variety of learning, emotional, and behavioral challenges, Marc says. They are average to superior intellectually, but come with complex challenges, including learning difficulties, social difficulties, mood disorders, or executive functioning problems. They do not accept students with extensive histories of legal involvement or conduct-disordered behaviors.

Tracy Missett, a doctoral candidate in the educational psychology/gifted education program at the Curry School, has a 14-year-old son who enrolled in Little Keswick School last year. “LKS has been wonderful not only for Christopher, whose emotional and educational profiles make public school untenable for him, but also for my family,” she says. “The educational model established by the Wilsons to set high goals and expectations for their students but to also treat them with kindness and dignity is being admirably followed now by the Columbuses. I am so comforted knowing that he is in such capable and caring hands.”
 
The school’s staff of 40 includes teachers, clinical psychologists, therapists, and residential counselors, as well as housekeeping and kitchen help. Marc says the school is always growing and changing and that what the school offers to the boys is different from the experiences they could have anywhere else in the country.

“Every detail of the program revolves around our mission of enhancing our students with academic and social emotional growth,” Marc says. “By creating an environment where things are predictable, safe, and engaging, it allows our young men to develop competencies and to problem solve through their journey as students at Little Keswick School.”

Apparently, the school is still accomplishing its mission. “About 2 weeks ago,” Libby remembers, “I was playing with our dog Wiggles in the evening after supper, and a youngster and his friend came up and talked to us. One of the boys said, ‘You know, I really wouldn’t have made it without Little Keswick.’”  

by Lynn Bell