Verde Valley School
| Verde Valley School | |
|---|---|
| Location | |
|
Sedona, AZ USA |
|
| Coordinates | 34°48′19″N 111°48′21″W / 34.805229°N 111.805959°WCoordinates: 34°48′19″N 111°48′21″W / 34.805229°N 111.805959°W |
| Information | |
| Type | Private, boarding |
| Established | 1948 |
| Head is School | Paul Amadio |
| Faculty | 26 |
| Enrollment | 120 total (102 boarding, 18 day) |
| Student to teacher ratio | 7:1 |
| Color(s) | Green and white |
| Mascot | Coyotes |
| Website | www.vvsaz.org |
Verde Valley School (VVS) is an international college preparatory boarding and day school for students in grades 9-12. The school is located in Sedona, Arizona, United States. It enrolls approximately 118 students from over 18 states in the US and more than 16 nations. The school owns 1317 acres (5.300.000 m²).
VVS offers the International Baccalaureate curriculum as its sole curriculum for 11th and 12th grades. It maintains an average class size of nine and an overall teacher-student ratio of one teacher per every eight students, rather than the national school average of twenty students in a class and a teacher-student ratio of one per every six students. The school's students' SAT scores are also higher than average. More than three-quarters of the faculty have advanced degrees.
Verde Valley school was recently featured in 2016 as The Best Schools "The 50 Best Boarding Schools in the U.S.," September 29, 2016 where VVS ranked top 15 in the nation. According to the ranking profile, graduating students attend colleges ranging from Cornell, Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins, Vassar, Stanford, Harvey Mudd, and Claremont McKenna, among others.
Founded in 1946 by Hamilton "Ham" and Barbara "Babs" Warren, Verde Valley School opened in 1948 with sixteen students and a handful of teachers and artists.
Hamilton Warren was raised in New England, a graduate of Harvard College. His mentor at Harvard was Clyde Kluckhohn, the first president of the modern American Anthropological Association, for twenty-five years the chair of the Department of Anthropology at Harvard, and one of the earliest group of Rhodes Scholars. Clyde Kluckhohn was the one who inspired Hamilton Warren through his reputation as a truly international educator and inspirational teacher. Kluckhohn learned Navajo by the age of fifteen and had set a standard for the importance and value of engaging with cultures different from one's own.
Barbara Warren grew up in Guatemala, the child of British coffee finca owners.
Other individuals who helped shape the founding generation of the school included Margaret Mead, one of the century's most articulate exponents of both anthropological studies and progressive education; John Collier, Commissioner of Indian Affairs during Franklin Roosevelt's administration; and Max Ernst, who lived in Sedona for two years in the 1940s when the school was being built. With the assistance of scholars and public figures like these, Ham and Babs determined to establish a school for talented young people. Mindful of the global horrors of World War II and the ravages of ethnocentrism and racism in this country, the Warrens believed that America — indeed the world — needed a school where the values of cultural diversity would be understood and celebrated, not simply studied and tolerated.
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Wikipedia