Category: On Centre

After 24 Years, a Return to the Classroom

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.

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TEDxMiltonAcademy Takes the Stage

The inaugural TEDxMiltonAcademy event filled King Theatre with ideas about belonging, health, climate, identity, and psychology, as six speakers from the Milton community shared carefully crafted and passionate talks on subjects of their choosing.

Benjamin Siegel ’24 had the idea to bring TEDx to Milton after attending a TEDx conference years ago. Siegel, along with Bea Becker ’25, Grace Grady ’23, and Alexa Burton ’24, organized the September event, licensing it through TEDx and soliciting applications from potential student, alumni, and faculty speakers. Together, they narrowed the speakers to six.

“Tonight is about community,” Siegel said as he introduced the event. “We were inspired to put on this event to shine a light on all the talent, creativity, and knowledge in the Milton community. Milton is full of people with diverse backgrounds and inspirational stories, some of which we bring to the stage for you tonight.”

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Aimee Nezhukumatathil Visits as Bingham Writer

Upper and Middle School students enjoyed a visit from poet and essayist Aimee Nezhukumatathil, the fall’s Bingham Visiting Writer, who told them, “Wonder is when you’re learning and it makes you smile.” She spent time in classrooms with creative-writing students and shared some of the work from her collection World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments.

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