Lowell Whiteman School

Jordan came to LWS because he said, he needed an academic challenge. Jordan is also very active, he loves soccer, mountain biking, camping and hiking. The Lowell Whiteman School seemed to be the perfect place for he and his identical twin, Matt.

Jordan’s family lives outside of Steamboat, so he attends school as a day student. Occasionally, when he needs to go to town, Jordan will ride his bike. Note, it’s uphill 8 miles to go home for him. You have to be in good shape to live in his neighborhood.

Jordan likes sports especially soccer and tennis. He lived abroad in France with his family for two years and is fluent in the language. He really enjoyed his time there, he says but he is happy to be back in Steamboat for snowboarding and to be with all his friends again.

“It’s a LOT different in France. Where we lived, it was big city and now it’s small, rural, town again. I didn’t like being with the smelly cigarette smokers. There was a kid in our class, younger than us, already smoking. Going to school there was hard, especially the first year, because we didn’t understand anything they were saying. It was really, really hard because they would just talk to you and you’d just nod and grin.” But he learned and admitted he was better for the experience. Goodness knows, his soccer game improved!

Jordan and his twin, Matt, both like the Lowell Whiteman School because of “all the outdoor stuff, Desert week, the three-day camping trips and foreign trips.” If you hand Jordan a pack and said here, walk straight up hill three miles, he’ll go for it. Leaders and teachers say that Jordan and his brother Matt are a treasure to have on camp or foreign trips or in class. Both dedicated students, they relish a challenge.

Jordan especially liked his LWS trip to Nepal – “It was really cool. The mountains were big and the scenery was awesome. I think the people struck me the most because they are just so different and so happy even though they have so little. We made two friends there that were our age and they were really cool. We met them on the streets every day in Katmandu and they taught us a lot about the culture and the people. Seeing all the McDonalds and fast food restaurants back in the states was different – I’m not a big fan of fast food. It was nice not seeing stuff like that over there, but it was really dirty and there was trash everywhere. The rivers were black with pollution. We saw someone take a big garbage bag and just dump it all in the river. There were pigs and cows just eating the trash in the streets. By contrast, the mountains were clean, they don’t let you take anything plastic in there because they don’t want you to pollute. All the contrasts were amazing.”

Seeing that and analyzing it the way Jordan has is what Lowell Whiteman intended when he first conceived of the foreign trip.