Carlbrook School
Halifax, VA

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Carlbrook School Continues
To Expand Experiential
Education Department

Dean of Academics, Dr. Chris Soto, M.Ed., Ed.D., believes emotional-literacy and passion are the keys to sustainable academic achievement.

After working for eight years to help bright at-risk teens to get back on track, Dr. Chris Soto, Dean of Academics at Carlbrook School, began to wonder, "why do bright kids with all the resources to succeed sometimes go off the rails behaviorally, emotionally, and academically?" So he enrolled at the esteemed Risk and Prevention program at Harvard University in an effort to find an answer.

"What I found during my graduate studies was simple but profound," says Soto. "Behavioral and emotional difficulties that emerge during adolescence often stem from an earlier developmental phase when the young person lacked the emotional language necessary to express their needs or problems. Being emotionally misunderstood or invalidated by others at an early age can 'clog things up emotionally' for the child, leading to dysfunctional social and emotional patterns that can profoundly affect social and academic performance later in life."

Armed with a better understanding of the problem that his students faced, Soto now needed a practical solution. He decided to pursue a Doctorate in Education at the University of Pennsylvania in an attempt to understand and craft that solution. His research and extensive classroom experience revealed the importance of teaching emotional-literacy "in much the same way that you might teach Math or English."

Teaching emotional-literacy helps students to engage socially, emotionally, and intellectually from a place of grounded identity and authentic passion. According to Soto, the fundamental competencies that help a student succeed academically are the same ones that allow them to thrive socially and emotionally. "Creativity, risk-taking, perseverance, grit and effective self-expression are equally relevant to both social and academic settings," says Soto. "These competencies are what enable a student to find and embrace a passion that will drive inquiry, expression, and achievement for the long term."

At Carlbrook School, Soto is building upon what he says is already an "unusually robust" combination of academic rigor and emotional-literacy. To this end, Soto has engaged the entire
Carlbrook faculty in a program designed for them to share their own passions with students through clubs, discussion groups, extra-curricular activities and mentorship. Activities range from round-table discussions of TED Talks, to culinary arts classes, to a stock-market club. Soto only requires that these activities meet two basic criteria: they must be enriching and they must be fun.

"Because passion is the engine that drives all true social, emotional, and academic achievement," says Soto, "we expose students to a lot of different things so that they can discover a passion and immerse themselves in it."


Carlbrook School is a college-preparatory boarding school for high-potential, college-bound students who would benefit from therapeutic support and structure. Our program of rigorous academics, character development, therapeutic support, and extra-curricular programming is designed to prepare students for competitive college admission and sustainable success.