Director's Greeting

Welcome to The Putney School. If you are looking at high schools, I hope you will take the time to consider seriously what kind of education you want. When you enter high school you are a child, but by the time you graduate, you are an adult, and what kind of adult you turn out to be will depend to a large extent on how you have spent those years.

Here are some ways in which Putney is different from most high schools you may be considering:

1. We are a progressive school. This means we value experiential education, the idea that people learn best by doing, rather than by being told. It means we expect students to view their education as something they are pursuing, rather than something being done to them. It means we value collaboration more than competition, and regard education as the creation of an intelligence rather than the transmission of information.
2. We take seriously the need to learn to live sustainably. We have a farm, a garden, and many acres of woods and trails. We use both old and new technology to close the gap between what we take and what we give back. Here you will learn to do much more than homework, and be a part of shaping “a civilization worthy of the name.”
3. We have a powerful arts program, both for its own sake and because we understand the impact of the arts on all other fields of endeavor.
4. We are an international community, with students from 24 states and 13 nations. Our graduates are prepared to be useful citizens of the world by having lived and worked closely with people from a wide variety of cultures.
5. We are a school that takes its intellectual tradition seriously, but does not wrap it up in formalities. Here you will work harder than you have ever worked, but the work will be yours and you can have fun doing it.

This is not a new school. We have been here since 1935, when the visionary Carmelita Hinton founded The Putney School. In 2007 I became the 9th director, having previously worked in Botswana, Connecticut, Thailand and Oregon. We hope you will take the time to explore our website, which is both deep and broad. Nothing, however, can substitute for a visit to campus. We invite you to give us a call to set that up at 802-387-6219.

• Newsletter to Parents
• Learn more about Emily