“You Have to Do It Again”
In January 2025, the dream of starting another Carolina Collegiate was fading. After two years of having facility options fall through I was beginning to believe that it was time to move on. We were out of money, had no building, and we were running out of time.
In a bit of an existential search for purpose I decided to start consulting for a close mentor of mine at his high school. It was him that got me into starting WTHS (now CCHS), but his hope was that I would eventually start working for him full-time. My hope was to bring back to life the energy that comes from working in schools and remind myself why I love this work. It only took one day, but that reminder came from an unsuspecting source.
At the end of my first day I was observing the dismissal procedures and in the distance I saw a *man* that I was certain I had met before. He was on a video call with someone but then picked his head up. We both looked at each other for a few seconds – I could tell he was thinking the same thing, we knew each other but couldn’t place it – then it clicked for both of us.
“Mr. Webb? What are you doing here?” He stated curiously.
“Teddy, What are YOU doing here? Holy cow, you’re a man now.” I retorted with shock.
The unfamiliar man gave me a big, unexpected hug. He was a man now, but I had spent years with Teddy as one of my former high school students. His enthusiasm for seeing me again was a jolt in the arm and a quick reminder of the meaningful relationships I had with some of my former students. Teddy was one of my founding students at the high school I started in D.C. He was heading into an after-school program where he volunteered here in Durham. He was a senior at NCCU and preparing to graduate. After a few seconds of catching up he grabbed his phone and pressed “call” and said “hold on, they’ve got to see this.”
If you recall, Teddy was on a video call when I first saw him. Turns out the people he had been on a video call with were his former “house mates” from our old school, students he spent time with every day in DC (a feature that will be part of CCHS). In an instant I saw some of the students that had come to mean so much to me. In a trick of the brain, it took no time for me to remember their names as I started calling them out: “Hannah! Lance! Brooke! Horace! Lasia!” With each name came a surge of memories of the work that we did in D.C. and the community we built. The emotions were hard to contain.To randomly see a dear student of mine, who was also still very close with his peers, was something to be very proud of.
It gets better… Teddy’s birthday was that weekend and all of them were coming into town from their respective colleges to celebrate. We quickly arranged to meet up and I committed to taking them all to lunch. That’s where the real fun began.
That lunch was transformative for me. The excitement at the table to share stories, give updates, and reflect was a real gift. What was abundantly clear to me was that these kids loved each other and loved their high school experience. What started as a catch-up though quickly became a focus-group and then design workshop. The kids (now adults) gave me feedback on the things that really mattered to them about their high school experience and how they would design it for the future. The feedback was clear: the house and advisory system meant so much to them; the academics were great WHEN they were either hard or applied to real-world topics; their computer science education has translated for them in both their college and work experiences (and why they’re making money now); they wanted more education on “adulting.”
I wasn’t planning on making this lunch into a group intervention, but when asked about what I was doing now I shared with them the challenges CCHS has faced over the last couple of years and finding our facility. I was pretty clear that I was ready to let the dream go. Hannah made it very clear to me when she said “Mr. Webb, this is who you are. Look at how it impacted us all. You have to do it again.”