Joslin House previously functioned as an additional building on campus for Keene State students to attend classes. As of July 2025, it’s home to a new set of students: Granite Valley Preparatory’s ninth to twelfth graders.
Granite Valley Preparatory (GVP) is a public charter school founded by Christopher Smith and Liberty Ebright, with a shared goal of preparing students for post-secondary education. According to GVP’s website, the school’s mission is to reward creativity, encourage collaboration and embrace failure, to build a community amongst its students.
The school was originally going to occupy Blake House; after Antioch University New England pulled out of the plan to construct a new campus building on the corner of Main and Winchester Streets, GVP was able to start its program in Joslin, located on 311 Main Street, according to the Keene State College website.
Granite Valley’s faculty includes several KSC alumni who have returned to their former campus to teach.
Abbey Hoye ‘19, the school’s math and science teacher, is one of them. Hoye graduated from Keene in 2019 with a bachelor’s in chemistry. Originally, she said she had not planned on pursuing education as a career but feels comfortable being a teacher who knows what college professors are looking for.
Hoye shared that she is excited for her students to interact with everything the campus can offer.
“In the science department, we have a lot of technical machines that only exist at Keene State on this side of the country, which a lot of people aren’t aware of,” Hoye said. “People from India send us samples to run in our lab because it doesn’t exist anywhere else.”
Prior to joining GVP, she had experience working for various companies in Keene, which she said has given her the ability to share with her students what professionals might look for in their future careers.
“All of the kids are having a really good time. Literally today, one kid was like, ‘We’re on a college campus!’ And we have other kids who are like, ‘Yeah, of course we are! Look at all these things we could do.’ They’re really pumped to find all these connections,” she explained, when asked how her students are adjusting to campus life.
On what her experience at KSC was like and how it has affected her role today, Hoye said, “Most of the math I teach isn’t what I learned at Keene State. And the chemistry I teach is also intro level. It’s really that feeling of support from the [chemistry] and math departments and really every professor I had at Keene, who offered such a nice support system. I really try to bring that into my classroom.”
Avril Miller ‘96, who teaches classes based in the French, culinary and literature departments, spoke highly of her colleagues.
“This team of people we’re all together with… we’ve been working quite closely for a while on this project. It feels really great,” Miller said. “This group of us, we call ourselves ‘The Dream Team’ because we’re all so happy with each other!”
Miller said she was drawn to Granite Valley because of its founders, after being under their leadership for two years at another school. She described them as supportive and appreciative and as having the ability to see their faculty as a whole.
“They’ve given us a lot of flexibility. But they’ve also given us a lot of guidance that we all trust, and I can’t tell you how fortunate I feel to be a part of the team they chose,” she said.
Miller graduated from KSC in 1996 with a bachelor’s in home economics. Her education experience since then has included about four years teaching, including working with preschoolers and with older audiences. She said, “I’m feeling like this is my passion now [teaching] and how surreal it is to be back on campus where it started.”
According to Miller, during the first week, everybody’s mindset was to be prepared. She said, “We thought, ‘There’s gonna be things that go wrong, and what we can do is look at them and figure out how to make it better.’ But it’s funny, at the end of that first week, we were like, ‘I think we did all right!’”
In regard to the KSC community, Miller said, “As much as we feel separate from the campus, we do feel really included. It’s pretty poignant in that way. We’ve felt welcomed not only by other faculty here, but also from [KSC President Melinda Treadwell].” She continued, “It feels like this is where we were meant to be with Granite Valley.”
GVP is currently the only public high school in the Monadnock region that prioritizes preparing its students for post-secondary education. The faculty aim for students to be innovative thinkers, as well as problem solvers with a commitment to excellence. The school offers a variety of classes, from English and math to fine arts and technology.
Christian Raabe ‘18, who teaches the music and film classes, graduated from Keene State with his bachelor’s degree in music. Raabe has also been playing live music in the Keene area for several years across rock bands, jazz combos and orchestras. Raabe has about five years of teaching experience, including time at St. Joseph’s at Mercy Academy, and it was the connections from his previous job that brought him to Granite Valley.
“It’s a network of folks who work well together and get good results doing so,” he said.
During his time as a student at Keene, Raabe worked on music composition, production technology and recording. He praised KSC’s music program, saying, “It’s large enough to be competitive but loose enough in a way that allows you to understand how to teach yourself, how to get things right on your own. It’s a handhold of experiences.”
When asked how his experience in college impacted him, he said, “Every time I’m writing a lesson or doing some prep … if I count the amount of times that I think back to or reference a lesson I had in college, it just would not be happening [without that]. It would be impossible. Whether it’s something a professor said [or] random wisdom, the whole college experience has taken me a lot further in managing the whole thing.”
“I never went through with the education degree, but I’ve worked in town as a musician and sort of figured I’d ask about it one day. I got curious. I didn’t really mean to start doing it full time, but it became something I realized I love,” he explained.
Raabe shared that he is most looking forward to performances from his students where they can have something to show for their work. He said, “With the kids, whether they’re nervous about performing or not, it’s really the night after the concert is all done, you can’t help but smile and have a good time.”
Danielle Moylan ‘07, another KSC alum, shared that her degree in graphic design enabled her to teach classes in the field. That led to her teaching a variety of technology classes, giving her 15 years of teaching experience that has brought her to the GVP team. Currently, Moylan teaches graphic design, intro to programming, advanced programming and a yearbook class where students have the opportunity to design yearbooks for the school. She maintains the Granite Valley website, as well as their tech equipment and network.
Moylan said, “It’s such a small school that we all wear a lot of different hats.”
Moylan said that she is still learning all the time, despite graduating from Keene in 2007. She is currently pursuing her masters and said what she is doing can be a lot, but it’s still fun.
“It feels right. I’m teaching but circling back to Keene State where it all started,” she said. She continued, “My kids walk from their school to here, every day, and having them walk through my college campus is so weird but so cool. Everything feels like it’s clicked, this is just … really good. Everything’s positive. We’re where we’re supposed to be.”
Moylan explained that she believes Keene State and Granite Valley could work together even more than they are now. She said, “It’s cool to set things up for kids that maybe I wouldn’t get to do in a larger school. I think it would be great in the future to maybe integrate more with Keene State … They have their education programs; why can’t they students teach here now that we’re right on campus? There’s so many different opportunities I’m excited to explore between the two schools.”
Moylan, similar to Miller, commended the Granite Valley founders: “I love their energy and vision. When they were making this school, I was like, ‘I have to be a part of that.’ And luckily, they needed someone like me too! It worked out really well.”
She described the group work environment as a team as opposed to a staff.
Hoye, on the subject of Joslin House’s new faculty, said, “A lot of us came from this other school together, and every single day all of us remark about how excited we are to do this. You know, everyone always says that sort of cliche thing that we’re like a family, but it really does legitimately feel like that.”
She continued, “When we’re shutting down our rooms and we all leave together, we all say, ‘Love you, have a nice night,’ and it has a family atmosphere. I really enjoy every single person I work with in that building.”
Samantha Menard can be contacted at
