S.C. classroom refuge | Teachers to get retreat

Developer donates land, $10 million for natural space to recharge batteries

By JAMES T. HAMMOND - jhammond@thestate.com

Pickens developer Jim Anthony is donating 355 acres of Jocassee Gorges land and $10 million in cash to create a nature-based Teacher Renewal Center, the first institution of its kind in South Carolina.

Partners Clemson University and the South Carolina Department of Education aim to use the center in South Carolina’s forested Piedmont region to renew teachers’ passion for teaching.

Anthony said his company, The Cliffs Communities, and foundation have been involved in teacher support work for some time, and he has been struck by the way teachers pour themselves into their work.

He said the concept for the Teacher Renewal Center came from a combination of ideas. But his own contact with hundreds of teachers had shown that “many of them were just empty after giving pieces of themselves to so many children.”

“There is an incredible need,” he said.

State Superintendent of Education Jim Rex said one in three new teachers leaves the profession within five years.

Rex described the present as a dire moment for S.C. schools, when pressures are driving young teachers away from the profession.

“We are getting close to having a demoralized teacher corps in South Carolina,” Rex said. “If we want our state to thrive, we’re going to have to start paying closer attention to our classroom teachers.

“One way to do that is to start treating teachers more like the professionals we expect them to be. And our new Teacher Renewal Center can help to do that.”

Anthony said he is having the property appraised and said he won’t know its value until it is finished.

In 2005, Anthony paid $550,000 for 99 acres of hills and meadows surrounded by the state-owned Jocasse Gorges, records show. But values for developed real estate in the area have soared in recent years.

In 1997, Gov. David Beasley negotiated the purchase by the state of 40,000 acres in the Jocasse Gorges, to preserve it for future generations.

On Thursday, Anthony described the 355 acres he is donating as “embedded” in the state-owned tract. It includes such natural features as the picturesque Pinnacle Falls and has access to the surrounding lakes.

Clemson president Barker said “a large component of this should be reflection, to look across the lake at a sunset and ask themselves why they became a teacher in the first place.”

Reach Hammond at (803) 771-8474.