A message from our Executive Director
My 38 years at The Phillips Academy has enabled me to cultivate a long view of how our school has become what it is today. I met our founder, Dr. Phillips, as her career was ending and mine was beginning. We shared training in the behavioral psychology of the late 1970s and early ’80s, then a breakthrough approach that helped students build skills many thought were out of reach.
As the limits of that approach became clear, I watched education move through one “best practice” after another, often discarding the old for the new or recycling it under a new name. I embraced the promise of blended learning, technology, and brain-based interventions, and joined my colleagues in the search for the approach that would solve education’s challenges.
What we discovered is that there is no one best answer or approach to working with students. Each of the approaches I mentioned above has some benefit for some students under some circumstances some of the time. Our task as educators is to find the right fit for each student. We need to integrate the aspects from each approach and from each discipline (education, mental health, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy) that work for a particular student, and we need to adjust that fit as the student changes and grows.
Through all these waves and shifts in education, including changes in our understanding of autism, ADHD, learning differences, and neurodiversity, one thing has remained central to our work at TPA: relationships. Research has repeatedly shown that the most important factor in student success is a positive relationship with at least one adult who believes in them.
TPA is a relationship based program. We nurture students’ relationships with themselves, with staff, with their peers, with their family and with the community. We seek to create a climate of safety, belonging, diversity, acceptance and celebration and we help our learners develop a balance of self care and care for others. We emphasize and prioritize student’s mental health as a necessary condition for learning and growth. Students feel heard and understood, often for the first time. There is no need for masking.
We develop trusting relationships with our students by approaching them with inquiry and not judgment. We partner with our students in developing their support plans and in setting their goals for learning. We are teaching them to drive their own learning in their academics and in their social emotional development.
In my view, our most important job as educators is not to meet all the state standards but to ignite the light in our young people’s eyes, to keep their love of learning alive, to teach them to be kind to themselves and others, and to create the space for them to find their passion and purpose. I believe these are the things that will sustain them throughout their lives.
I invite you to learn about our program and see who we are and evaluate whether we might be the right fit for your child. We look forward to getting to know you and partnering with you in that process. Thank you for your interest in our school.