"California Boarding School Blog"

Learning at Dunn School

More than just a varied curriculum, Dunn recognizes and serves a diversity of students with courses that fit different kinds of learners.

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Growing your school’s food

Katie Isaacson talks about the role that Midland School’s organic garden plays in the school community. Midland (a coed boarding school in Los Olivos, CA) cultivates 10 acres for both production and education. The school eats seasonally from the farm bounty putting-up by freezing or canning the surplus. A chalk board in the dining hall charts produce [...]

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A Guided Tour of Stevenson School

Learn from a Stevenson School junior about the opportunities & strengths of a Stevenson education.

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The Contributions that Chinese Students Bring to Boarding Schools

Over the break offered some quiet time to catch-up on reading and a chance to work on posts that might require some digestion and rumination. This brings me to Idylwild Arts Academy president Brian D. Cohen’s response to two recent articles, “Chinese Students Lose as U.S. Schools Exploit Need” and “The China Conundrum,” each of [...]

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Cate School Part Of Heart Health Study

You may know that we also cover items, topics, and happenings for the Western Boarding Schools Association’s blog. I call attention to a story on Cate School that I wrote this morning on the WBSA’s blog (Cate School To Study Adolescent and Young Adult Hearts). It’s just too interesting and important to miss. Briefly, Cate students [...]

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Don’t Become the Difficult Parent

The college placement office is one of the quiet, but most important support pieces of a boarding school education. Boarding school college placement offices, and the students they support, benefit from a bounty of resources and experiences. A boarding school college placement office works full-time; works with a very healthy (read low) officer to student [...]

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Chinese-American Student Exchange: It’s a mutual two way highway across the Pacific

We hear much about Chinese students looking to America for education options ranging from boarding school to college. An interesting short article in the Marin Independent Journal last week shows the pan pacific cross cultural and cross educational interest is a two way process. In “Marin Voice: Marin schools can lead the trend toward Asia,” [...]

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What Will You Do With Your Child’s Moment in Time?

I recently took at peak in the door of the Hall of Life in our (The Webb Schools’) Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology. Its renovation is nearing its end but I just couldn’t resist a look. Without divulging the details of what will certainly be a glorious new exhibit hall, I will say that I [...]

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Reflecting on His Boarding School Education

Watch the full episode. See more Morning Classical Music with Suzanne Nance. Maine Public Broadcasting’s Suzanne Nance visited with Liang Wang (Idyllwild Arts Academy ’99) at length in a 36 minute interview. Interspersed with performances, the ranging interview covers his work at Bowdoin International Music Festival, his coming to America, and his work. Wang came to America [...]

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Waiting for Your Private School Admission Decision: Lessons from the College Placement Office

Hector Martinez, The Webb Schools‘ (Claremont, CA) college guidance director, has posted a nice piece at Webblogs (The Waiting Game). Although, he’s speaking to seniors and their parents in the throes of the college admission process, some of comments apply to families working through the boarding school admission process. His high notes: No one likes to [...]

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Lest We Forget Our Teenagers Are Children

We have a wonderful tradition at Webb, just prior to our students leaving for winter holiday.  Our boys line the walkways to the girls’ dormitories with candles in preparation for an evening of caroling, hot chocolate and, of course, Santa Clause (actually one of our revered venerable teachers but, then, no one is telling).    They [...]

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Sam Radseresht: Stevenson School Singer-Songwriter

Stevenson School Senior Sam Radseresht talks about how his Stevenson experiences- not just musical but also in a larger sense- have helped him hone his talents. At Stevenson, Radseresht has grown into a multi-instrumentalist song writer who expresses a good command of the art of song writing. On his CD, “Vivid Mines,” Radseresht plays every [...]

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A Pendulum Too Far: Is it time to pay attention to boys education?

Lisa Wolfe published a thoughtful musing on the current state of boys education over at The Daily Beast, “Boys’ Self Esteem Problems.” She begins, interestingly, with a question posited by a colleague of mine about 20 years ago.  We had been sitting through faculty meetings, over a few years, with topic-after-topic, idea-after-idea, and speaker-after-speaker covering [...]

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So Exactly Why Do Boarding School Admission Officers Travel the World?

International trips are a piece of the boarding school admission world. International students are an integral part of the American boarding school fabric but, exactly how, and why, international students and families seek, connect, and choose boarding schools remains a little foggy. Stacie Grant, Director of Development at San Domenico School (CA) is blogging while [...]

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Engaged Faculty: The Not So Secret Formula of Boarding School Success

I remember those very large classes in high school where anonymity was more common than notoriety. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my high school – it was large, noisy, and just plain fun. But it was so easy to cruise by being in the middle where most of us lived. No, I am not [...]

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