TA News

Dear TA Families,

Remembering 9/11
We carved out time mid-morning today to come together as a school community to remember and reflect on the events of September 11, 2001. It was a brief but powerful gathering on the quad, led by social studies teacher Casey Huling. The short ceremony was modeled after the tradition created in New York City of honoring those who died on their birthdays by laying a rose by their name inscribed in the 9/11 memorial. You can learn more about this beautiful tradition here. 

For our version at TA today, we focused on six of the 9/11 victims who also shared 9/11 as their birthday. Six volunteers from our school community, who all have family members who are emergency responders, each read out one name and placed a rose in their honor in a shared vase. Thank you to students Greyson Beaucage, Wyatt Harlow, Lily Miller, Aubrey Phelps, and Matthew Whitney, along with teacher Amanda Gray, for taking on this special role. 

9th Grade Retreat & Creating Community
The Class of 2030 had a unique experience today, spending most of their morning in an activity-filled retreat on the south campus. This annual event is one of the many ways we strive to foster connections and camaraderie for 9th graders as they come together from a dozen different schools around the Upper Valley to start high school at Thetford Academy. The action-packed agenda ranged from silly games to serious problem-solving challenges, with plenty of team-building, snacks, fun, and hangout time mixed in. 

One of the many things that makes Thetford Academy an amazing place to teach and learn is our commitment to fostering a strong sense of community. That commitment means making time in our school schedule for joy and play like today’s 9th grade retreat – and it also means pausing our normal routines for reflection and recognition of hard things too, like our 9/11 remembrance this morning. 

In other news …

• Thank you for your patience and trust with yesterday’s power outage. We appreciated the positive feedback about our communications. Thank you, also, to the many parents and caregivers who were able to make it to Back to School Night.
• Welcome Dance hosted by the Class of 2027 is happening this evening from 7-9pm in the Vaughan Alumni Gymnasium. All grades are invited.
• Mountain Day is coming up on Sept. 25. We ask parents to complete the permission form by Sept. 17 to help us plan ahead. Look for the recent email from Scott Ellis for more details and links. 
• On the athletics front, the fall season is in full swing – with 3 games happening right now on Friday afternoon, strong wins posted by the MS and varsity boys soccer teams earlier this week, and a big cross country meet earlier this week hosted at TA on Tuesday featuring some amazing TA performances! Read more about the start of the season here.

Have a great weekend!

Carrie Brennan, Head of School