Waterford — When Ettie Thomas Schacht began her teaching career in 1909, she could not have imagined what the school she and her family created would become, nor the impact it would have on so many lives. She was hailed as innovative and effective, and recognized for her ability to teach children with special needs.

This year, Waterford Country School celebrates its 100th birthday, and since its inception, school leaders say, it has challenged societal norms and expectations. In its early years in New York City, the school battled constant attempts to shut it down.

Accounts of the school's history indicate that when told that her students with significant disabilities could not learn, Schacht taught them. When the family was told they could not operate a school in a building zoned for boarding, Schacht taught students on the porch, and when neighbors complained about the type of students coming and going from the school, the Schachts fought prejudice with kindness.

Though much has changed since 1922, when the school was founded in New York City, its leaders say the dedication to students has remained. The educational philosophy of its founders that students learn best through experience, that nature provides ideal learning opportunities, and that every child can learn — given the right methods and opportunities for success — continues to inform what guides the school today.

All the students of today have learning disabilities, mental health diagnoses, or both, and many have faced obstacles in life that can lead to challenging behaviors. Some come to the school from juvenile detention, or through the Department of Children and Families; others come because their local school district cannot provide the educational support they need.

Chief Executive Officer Chris Lacey, a 24-year veteran of the school who accepted his new role in 2021, said, "They may have behavioral challenges, and they may be aggressive. They may run away. But if you go far enough back in their history, they are usually the same. ... They don't like school because they've never had success there."

The programs at Waterford Country School seek to provide a therapeutic environment for children to heal, grow and succeed. 

"For 100 years we have been here to help kids and families," Lacey said. He said the programs are a means to an end for the school, which prides itself on living up to its motto: "Doing whatever it takes for children and families."

Today, four locations

What began as a summer camp on a 98-acre farm in Waterford turned into a year-round school and in 1947 took over the boarding program for the New York City school. The summer program was renamed Camp Waterford and continued to run as a dual program for children with and without disabilities.

The Schachts' early version of mainstreaming was new, and they had no understanding of how to implement it, so they fell back on the initial philosophy of Ettie Thomas Schacht to create a novel program out of nothing. The flexibility and inventiveness required to educate children with significant challenges still guides the school today as they continually evolve to meet students' needs, according to school leaders.

The staff is constantly learning because, "If we know better we should do better," Lacey said.

Known today as The Waterford Country School Inc., the non-profit operates under a Board of Trustees. The school has 10 programs at four locations, including a therapeutic foster care program and children's mental health clinic in Norwich, and parenting centers in North Windham and Quaker Hill.

The main campus at 78 Hunts Brook Road has expanded to more than 320 acres, with all the modern necessities of a boarding school that has 79 K-12 students, including 18 in their residential program. The school has a staff of 225, with a maximum 8:1 student-to-teacher ratio.

It has come a long way since staff and campers lived in army tents and used a hand pump for drinking water, and Henry Schacht counted cards in poker games to earn enough to pay the staff. The school and its programs are funded today through local school systems, the state, private payers, and an endowment fund.

Animal therapy

The school continues to embrace nature and outdoor educational opportunities.

Lacey said that through a farm and wildlife rehabilitation program, student connections with animals can open the door to relationships with staff. Staff often bring their dogs to work with them, said Lacey, who can often be found walking his golden retriever around campus. From the expected cows, goats and pigs to the more exotic peacocks, or the baby owl or turkey that needs to be rehabilitated before being returned to the wild, the estimated 200 animals provide students with comfort, security and opportunities to be useful and feel good about themselves.

Students spend one 45-minute class period at the farm each school day. Elena French, assistant director of development, said it's a throwback to the founders, who emphasized real world learning and using nature as a teaching tool.

"Before they've decided that they want to be here and that they like us, they've already found an animal that they adore," French said. "That connection can happen instantly."

The school had a student who struggled with reading and hated to do it. In spite of that, he would go over to the farm and spend time reading to his favorite animal, a giant Vietnamese pig that patiently sat and listened.

The therapeutic nature of the farm and wildlife rehabilitation program is essential, according to Lacey, since every student at WCS has experienced some sort of trauma.

"We have kids who need help getting better, and we have animals who need help getting better. We connect them. The kids help rehab the animals and release them back into the wild. There is a parallel there whether they see it or not," Lacey said.

Trauma-informed model of care

Helping kids get better is an evolving process. Beginning in 2010, the school's long-used, point-based behavioral program was turned on its head by a collaboration with Cornell University on a model to improve services and outcomes for children in residential settings.

Over the course of two years, every staff member, including groundskeepers, kitchen staff and maintenance workers, was trained in Cornell's Children And Residential Experiences (CARE) model. They began with the premise that everything they do should be purposeful.

If they were taking a trip to the movies, they asked what the purpose was.

"If the purpose is to get to the movies, and that is part of their treatment — to go and be successful — then if you don't let them go because of something that happened last Tuesday, you are taking away opportunities for them to do well in treatment and be successful," Lacey said.

The idea that opportunities to be successful were essential to treatment was reminiscent of the founders' education model, so the staff threw out the decades-old behavioral modification system as they thought about the original mission and jumped headfirst into this new method.

French recalled a struggling student who ripped up a newly planted flower bed, which upset the head maintenance man. French said the worker was advised, "'Don't be too upset. This is one flower bed for you, but this girl is going to struggle with her own mental health issues and her own trauma for the rest of her life." She said putting that in perspective changed his mind.

The trauma-informed approach recognizes that challenging behavior often comes from a place of pain, and that when children learns to trust and feel safe, they can learn new coping mechanisms, develop healthy relationships, and find internal motivation for success.

As one of the first residential programs to adopt the CARE model, the school became involved in collaborative research with Cornell. Because the school had used its prior behavioral program for decades, they had plenty of data Cornell could use to check the validity of the program. Lacey said the data showed that use of restraints and the need for psychotropic medication dropped, and kids were doing better because staff were working with them better.

The school is an ambassador of the CARE approach, hosting visitors from national and international programs interested in adopting the model.

"It melds the Schacht history of how to work with kids and families with technical modern research, data-driven information," Lacey said.

During the centennial celebration, Lacey and French say they hope to draw attention to the work they are doing and the success they are having in changing the lives of the children they serve. In addition to the myriad events planned this year, they are working to increase their endowment because they have big dreams. Among them is a new school.

"We are bursting at the seams," Lacey says, "Our next building project will be — and we are just at the dreaming, envisioning phase of this — we are going to expand classroom space, maybe even farm classroom space."

Lacey talks of a fishing dock, a farm stand where students can sell farm products and a classroom attached to the kitchen.

"We want to formalize a lot of the work our kids do with our maintenance guys and on the farm, sort of a (vocational-agricultural) program," said Lacey. "Just like the work we did in the 20s and 30s."

These plans for the future seem to bring Waterford Country School full circle, back to Ettie Thomas Schacht's radical methods and the revolutionary school the Schacht family worked so hard to create.

"It started as a family giving life here, but it has grown into a large human service agency that we want people to know about because there is a need, and as the need grows, we grow," French said.

More information on programs, methods, and centennial celebration events can be found at www.waterfordcountryschool.org.