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Each fall, the school asks our community to contribute to the school by making a donation to the Salamander Fund, FBRA’s annual fund. Donations to the Salamander Fund go directly into this year’s operating budget, paying for things like staff salaries, health care benefits, outdoor programming, music instruction, and even the electricity to power the […]

Three weeks into the start of school, we asked 6th graders to share their impressions of FBRA with us.

Will Yeiser, FBRA Executive Director and Co-Founder   The FBRA Experamid is the brainchild of former Girls Outdoor Program Director and founding math teacher Emily Shanblatt, and it is essentially an infographic that communicates our collective purpose here at the French Broad River Academy. We have formally adopted the Experamid framework schoolwide, and if you

We get asked several times each week when the Maria Noakes Outdoor Center will be completed. Unfortunately, COVID 19 created problems with all sorts of manufacturing timelines and construction delays around the world. The good news is that we are almost there. Water has been brought to the building, plumbing roughed in, and the footers

The Salamander Adventure Camp took place from Monday, June 28, 2021 to Friday, July 2, 2021. The purpose of the Salamander Adventure Camp is to expose underserved fourth grade students in our local community to different experiences in the outdoors. The Salamander Adventure Camp provides structure, fun, and adventure to the lives of children. This

In late summer, we invited our alumni to come back to FBRA to join staff for a cookout and some catching up. It was great to reminisce and also find out what a few of our graduates have been up to in high school and college. We are looking to hold more alumni events including

Felix Dowsley, Boys Program Director   I’m willing to bet that when middle school boys hear the word courage, they picture someone like Davy Crockett or Samuel L. Jackson wrestling a grizzly bear while parachuting from a burning airplane. That, at least, is the male model of courage most often held up for them to

Jen Horschman, FBRA Girls Program Director   At FBRA we build character; it is part of our mission. However, it is one thing to state it and quite another to share the secret sauce, to explain how it’s really done. We know the teenage brain rewires during adolescence, making new synaptic connections all the time.