Author: Milton Academy

A new conference asks Independent School League athletes to be leaders in equity and inclusion. Story by Marisa Donelan Olivia Greenaway ’22 fell in love with the game of squash in middle school after following her older sister into the sport. By the time she reached Milton’s Upper School, she was the only freshman to make it to the varsity team—and the only Black girl in the program—struggling both off and on the court. “Even though I had always felt different from my teammates, by the time sophomore year approached, my inferiority complex was at an all-time high,” she...

Gretchen Johnson remembers her first days as a fifth-grade teacher in Milton’s Lower School. After spending several years just out of college working in marketing for the Boston Celtics and Bruins, she was ready and eager in 1995 to put her training in early education into practice.

“I dove right in,” Johnson says, about those early years coteaching fifth grade with longtime Milton faculty member Scott Ford. “I don’t think I realized how much I would love it until I really was in it. I found the students to be just so refreshing and straightforward. In the corporate world, everyone is very careful about what they say. Engaging with fifth-graders is so uplifting. That was the first ‘wow’ for me and it ran throughout the year.”

Johnson taught for several years, until in 1998, her passion for writing took her into the magazine world where she worked for Inc. and Boston Magazine. She also expanded a tutoring business she had begun in the summers while teaching at Milton. Miller Academy (Miller was her last name at the time) was a thriving business for many years as she married and raised a daughter. It also helped keep her up to date as theories and practices around education evolved.