Rooted in Quaker Values: How SSFS Nurtured Brooke Carroll ’83, P’20 in her Journey from Learner to Leader

A lifelong Quaker, Sandy Spring Friends School (SSFS) alum, past parent, and former employee Brooke (Garrettson) Carroll ’83, P ’20 allowed her transformative school experience to launch a career in education—most recently coaching and advising the boards responsible for their schools’ oversight. From gaining confidence in her math skills to pursuing her doctorate, Brooke credits the School with not only preparing her well academically, but also allowing her to discover her identity and teaching her strong relational skills like conflict resolution that have served her all her life. Hiking over half of the Appalachian Trail, helping to start a residential charter school in Massachusetts, and publishing a book are just a few of the diverse experiences from an over 30-year career in education that we learned about when we recently sat down with Brooke. Read on for the edited excerpts from that conversation.

Tell us a bit about your time as a student at SSFS—what initially led you and your family to the School?

My mom grew up in Sandy Spring; her ancestors were among the first Europeans who settled in the Sandy Spring/Brookeville area. As a direct descendant of those Brookes, I have a deep connection to the area, although we didn’t live in Sandy Spring when I was growing up. 

I went to Camp Catoctin [one of four Baltimore Yearly Meeting Quaker summer camps spread along the Appalachian Mountains of VA and MD], where lots of the counselors were SSFS students. They were my heroes—I just wanted to be with them! 

I was a good student, but I wasn’t in a great situation in the public school where I lived. My parents knew of SSFS’s Community House Ninth Grade Program [an experiential program co-founded in 1973 by Anne and Barry Morley that offered students opportunities for deep learning and a long-lasting sense of belonging]. It was an immersive community experience, and they thought that would be a good opportunity for me to help get my confidence back—they figured I’d come home after that year and we’d move on. 

It was a transformative year for me. When my parents brought me home, I just wanted to return to SSFS; I was miserable, and I made them miserable. So, they let me come back to SSFS for 11th and 12th grade—the power of adolescence! When I returned, I lived in the dorm my junior and senior years. It was an amazing experience and formed the foundation for who I am today. How I saw myself as a learner developed at SSFS. At the time, I didn’t know I’d go on to get a doctorate, but Sandy Spring Friends School put that in the realm of possibility. 

What were some of your favorite memories from your time at SSFS?

At SSFS, the teachers and staff made learning fun and accessible. Like many other girls my age, I remember thinking I wasn’t very good at math. Anne Morley [founding faculty member, co-founder of the Ninth Grade Program in the Community House, and beloved mentor] didn’t tell me I was good at math—she led me to the place where I believed I was. That was pretty powerful. And it wasn’t just Anne…many teachers had a significant impact. Anne and Barry Morley were both amazing. Bob Hoch [former History teacher and current Board member] was my advisor, David Kahn and David Sinkhorn pushed me in writing, and Arlene Horowitz in dance.

I learned academics, certainly. I learned how to write—when I got to college, I found I was far beyond my peers in that area—and how to think critically about the books I was reading. But I also learned community skills like how to navigate conflict productively. It was just amazing. 

As a student, I also loved all the extracurriculars. I was able to be a dancer and a lacrosse player, to act in plays, to be a good student and dorm proctor, and to go on Intersession trips—I vividly remember snorkeling and playing lacrosse in Florida and hiking in the CanyonLands and Arches of Utah. I got opportunities to live into all of those powerful experiences. My experience at Sandy Spring Friends went beyond aspirational words; students were given opportunities to actually be whole people.

Tell us about your experience with Quakerism, before and during your time as an SSFS student?

I was born into a Quaker family, attended Quaker Meeting my whole life, and went to Quaker summer camp. When I got to Sandy Spring Friends School, I expected to go to Meeting for Worship, and I expected to be in a place where I was respected as a young person. Coming from public schools in Richmond, VA, where educators were so overwhelmed that they didn’t have much capacity to see students as individuals with their own unique strengths, arriving to Sandy Spring Friends felt right…like this is how all students should be treated—as valuable beings who have something to contribute and are worth the time and effort to get to know. You can find that at other schools, but I think this is a hallmark of Quaker schools, and I’ve heard the same from people who weren’t raised in Quaker homes.

What traditions at SSFS stand out to you most?

Intersession is one I look back on fondly. It’s a unique kind of learning experience that involves elements of service and gets people out of their norm, whether it's a local trip or a far-flung experience. I think that’s really powerful. And there is the tradition of Morley Games, which is about including people of various abilities, playing all together, and lifting each other up. I even enjoyed jobs on campus!

What were your next steps after graduating from SSFS??

I went to Bates College in Maine—I wanted to be close to skiing, study psychology, and participate in a good dance program. After college, I worked for LL Bean for a couple of years in Portland, which was a great introduction to customer service and the working world. I hiked a little over half the Appalachian Trail (illness and weather kept me from completing it, but I was a thru-hiker for a while). Then I went to the University of Minnesota for a doctorate in educational psychology. I married one of my best friends from Bates, and we came back east. I’ve been working in schools my whole career—all kinds of schools including public, private, charter, and boarding—and I helped start a residential charter school in Massachusetts. 

I worked at Sandy Spring Friends as Director of Residential Life and taught for six years (from 2001-2007). It was a great opportunity—such a wonderful place to raise my young children, in community with all those dorm babysitters from all around the world. It had a powerful impact on the start of my children’s lives, and I’m grateful they had that experience. It was a little weird at first to suddenly be a colleague of some of my favorite teachers, but they were so gracious and wonderful that they made it easy. It was when I came back as faculty that I realized that a key essence of Sandy Spring Friends is the relationship between adults and students—how young people’s voices are valued and how they’re allowed to explore all aspects of their identities.

Then, I was looking for a role in school leadership and became head of school at Seneca Academy [an International Baccalaureate World School for ages 2–Grade 6 in Darnestown, MD]. If I couldn’t have my kids at SSFS, I wanted them in a similar environment and Seneca was a lot like SSFS—a small, close-knit, hands-on community that felt like home. I started in 2007, but then the economic bottom fell out around the world and small independent schools were hit hard. It was challenging to be a new head during those years. We ultimately made it through, and it was a wonderful place for me to put into practice everything I’d learned about leadership and progressive education. We all grew a lot there.

After nine years, the arc of my work at Seneca was coming to an end, so I decided to step aside and start a consulting business. I’m currently a consultant and coach with a niche in small independent schools around (as well as outside) the country. I’ve done a lot of different things, but I now primarily focus on strategic planning and governance. I’m a leadership coach for board chairs, senior administrators, and other school leaders, and I do individual and team coaching, which I enjoy very much. And I have the opportunity to practice what I preach, having served on eight school and non-profit boards.

The book you published in 2022, Governing the Small School: Strategies for Boards, is about effective board governance for small schools and nonprofits. What do you most hope school leadership and trustees will take away from it?

There’s a lot of people writing about governance, but I wrote this book to highlight the unique challenges and benefits of small schools. I’ve been asked, ‘What is a small school?’ and my answer is that it’s more about a feeling than enrollment numbers. The principles in the book can apply to bigger schools as well, but the stories are ones that people at small schools can especially relate to. My drum beat in the book and a lot of the consulting work I do, whether it’s workshops with individual boards or presenting to associations, is that, first and foremost, independent school governance is hard. There’s nothing quite like it in the wider world—we ask trustees—who are volunteers—to take on so much responsibility (legal, social, and financial), in most cases without much training. My goal for the book was to make the elements of effective governance accessible and understandable.

In light of your diverse experiences with the school—student, employee, parent, and alum—how would you describe the value of a Sandy Spring Friends education?

Because Sandy Spring graduates haven’t been put in a box—like being a ‘sports person’ or an ‘arts person’—they’re able to do exactly what we want our young people to do: try different things and see what fits. It leads to a sense of self knowing. They leave the school with the confidence of authentically knowing who they are and an ability to navigate relationships in the world. When I was in college, I just walked up and talked with my professors—and I’m still friends with many of them. My daughter, Molly, who graduated from SSFS, feels the same way. In contrast, my husband, who didn’t go to SSFS, felt like professors weren’t accessible to him and didn’t approach them as confidently.

Any final words to the members of our community?

The core mission of the school is more valuable and needed today than ever. It’s providing opportunities for young people to practice living in community, guided by Quaker values, while taking part in a really strong academic program—you have to have both, and Sandy Spring does. To the students, I’d say now’s the time: try out for a sport you’ve never played, take a dance class, write poems if you’ve never written poetry. You’ve got these incredible educators who are there to support you—including your new head [incoming Head of School Dr. Sean Hamer]—don’t take them for granted!

To the board of SSFS, I’ll share the thing I say to trustees at any school: you need to deeply understand your role, stay in your lane, and serve well. While it's enticing to get involved in the amazing day-to-day operations of the school (curriculum, student activities, and those kinds of things), trustees need to have their eye on the long-term viability of the organization. The role of the board is to make sure that Sandy Spring Friends is here for my grandkids and my daughter’s grandkids. 
When I’ve been engaged in alumni events in the past, I’ve heard so much about the transformative nature of SSFS. I know it’s hard because people are far-flung, but I’d love to see the School create more opportunities for alums to come back to campus and even meet up in other cities to connect with each other. Sandy Spring Friends has been such a huge part of my life, and I'm very grateful for everything that the School has done for me. I'm hoping that it can continue to thrive and grow and keep doing amazing work with both the young people and the faculty and staff who also learn and grow in this special environment.

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