Education. Especially Rural and Public. – Rebecca Holcombe ’84
The map of Vermont’s school districts—more than 270—on Dr. Rebecca Holcombe’s office wall resembles a patchwork quilt. Rebecca is responsible for this mix of colors and overlapping diagonal lines, this complicated school system. A passionate supporter of public schools, Rebecca became Vermont’s Secretary of Education in January 2014. “Nothing is more important than public education,” says Rebecca. “If we cannot help children develop their voices and participate in civic life, help them make good decisions for our communities...
read moreWhat Is the Real Safe?
In the black box, six students shift quietly about the stage, taking positions to give public voice to the raw, or eloquent, or plaintive comments that emerged during more than 30 interviews. The actors, in their dark or neutral street-wear, recede physically, which isolates and emphasizes their words slicing through the air, riveting the audience. The script, which they sculpted from their transcribed interviews, sketches vulnerability in different shapes and sizes. It uses their narrators’ exact phrases. “Narrators” are those people...
read moreKnow Thyself: An Approach to Getting There
In the student lounge of Ware Hall one morning in late May, seventh graders were piecing together snack “necklaces” to represent what they’d learned about themselves. They’d just completed year one of the Middle School’s 360 program. A mini-Saltine cracker meant they knew their learning style, and could easily articulate it. Gummy candies and fruit loops in different flavors represented auditory, visual and tactile/kinesthetic learning. A Cheerio represented empathy, and a purple gummy ring was the sign of good time management. A...
read moreHungry? Here’s One Solution. Helson Taveras ’14 and Israel Moorer ’16
Helson Taveras, a sophomore at Columbia University, strides along West 116th, the heart of campus, passing students whose lives he has already helped to change. At an institution with a $9.6 billion endowment, students are hungry, and Swipes is a solution. Last spring, Helson and his friend Julio Henriquez watched classmates turn to Facebook to connect with other students who had extra meals on their meal plans, asking for an opportunity — coordinating times and locations — to be “swiped” into a campus dining hall. The two were...
read moreThe Big (Green) Room Ophelia Wilkins ’97
“I have always loved making things, craft-y sorts of things,” Ophelia says, “clothes, furniture, pottery — I was really into ceramics at Milton, for instance.” Slight and strong, both understated and definitively stylish in a textured black-on-black dress (“I wish I’d made it, but I didn’t,” she says), Ophelia explains how and why every detail matters in what she’s “making” today. An architect with the firm Kuth Ranieri in San Francisco, Ophelia is working on creating a space where ideas will ignite, and moving...
read moreTaking Risks and Keeping Cool, Jennie Dundas ’89
Making ice cream can be messy, albeit delicious, work. Jennie Dundas ’89 is dressed for a production day — jeans, sneakers, and a pink sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over a required hairnet. Large bags of organic sugar, tubs of pure maple syrup, and boxes of organic pecans line the walls. On this day, 44,000 mini-cups will be filled with four different seasonal flavors of ice cream for JetBlue’s first-class service. Jennie, CEO and co-founder of Blue Marble Ice Cream, based in Brooklyn, is at the production facility in Rhode...
read moreBuffering the Consumer from Hard Work, John Tucker ’96
In 2009, Trunk Club launched online. Its mission: create a better way for men to shop for clothes. Trunk Club wanted to make it easier for men to show up at work and on weekends looking good, especially if they had little time and even less inclination to shop. An early player in a burgeoning field, “Trunk Club was a problem solver when it launched, which accounts for its early success,” says John Tucker, co-founder and vice president of member experience. Trunk Club isn’t a designer-to-customer direct sales company. Nor is it a digital...
read moreCounting on You, Day and Night: The Look and Feel of a Boarding Faculty Member’s Life in 2016
“There’s something remarkable about getting to know a teenage boy over four years,” says Joshua Emmott, Wolcott House head, “to see him as a full person so completely that when life’s key questions come up, it’s natural for him to knock on my door and say ‘I just don’t see how it all connects.’” This year is Joshua’s twelfth — in the history department, and in Wolcott House. “I started on the fourth floor and have lived on every floor,” he says. “This is my third year as house head.” Fortunately, some adults...
read moreBuilding on Virtual Connections: Faculty Advance the Lower School Curriculum
This past fall, four Lower School faculty visited classrooms and children whom they’d only met over Skype. The Milton teachers spent six days in Spain, eager participants in the activities of Colegio del Pilar, a K–12 school in Madrid, and longtime exchange partner for Milton’s Upper School Spanish students. They were excited to explore possibilities for expanding the connections between Milton’s Lower School and El Pilar’s youngest learners, now that Milton is teaching Spanish in the elementary grades. El Pilar’s service-learning...
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