What makes Cushing, Cushing?
There’s a quality at Cushing that you can only experience when you visit our campus. Most visiting students and families notice it right away. It’s a feeling of friendliness and openness among our students, teachers, and staff at every turn – in the dorms, in the hallways between classes, during meals in the dining hall, and on the fields. Even in our most challenging and advanced courses, there is always the sense that the teachers are committed to helping their students understand the material, whether it’s during class, online, in an Extra Help session, study hall, or perhaps later in the dormitory.
Where does this sense of shared challenges and goals, willingness to help, and openness to others come from?
The right size
Cushing is small enough so that you can know everybody by name and large enough to allow for a variety of students. It’s a size that’s compatible with forming friendships and providing classmates with shared interests.
Campus life is the heartbeat
At many schools, students see their teachers once a day during class, and that’s it. Cushing really is a community of students and teachers. At Cushing, it wouldn’t be unusual for a student to take a class from a teacher, to be coached by the same teacher, to seek extra help from the teacher, and for that teacher to live in the student’s dorm. This can happen because a high percentage of faculty and staff live on campus.
The teachers’ availability to students deepens each teacher’s understanding of and investment in the students and creates a supportive and safe environment for the students to try out new ideas, seek advice, and to mature as young adults.
Variety is the spice
At Cushing, you’ll meet students from all over the world and the United States. New students are encouraged to join the community right away and Cushing makes sure the transition is a positive one. Class divisions and cliques just don’t seem to exist here; friendships formed in class, activities, or on the athletic field and consistently transcend grade level.
With a mix of faculty members who have taught at Cushing for upwards of 30 years as well as those new to the Academy, Cushing enjoys sense of continuity with the past as well as a fresh and diverse approach to academics.
Follow the leaders
Some of the strongest influences at Cushing are the students who emerge as leaders in their classes. They work hard in their studies, give 100% in activities or athletics, and are willing to help out others – whether it’s a charity walk-a-thon or a clothing drive or soothing freshman anxieties. Our seniors leave a positive legacy to which other classes aspire.
Differences that really make a difference
This sense of community didn’t happen by chance nor did it happen overnight. It is something all of us strive to promote every day. We’re glad that visitors notice our friendly atmosphere. But it can be an intense one as well: there are demanding courses, the thrills of victory or the agonies of defeat on the field or court, the tension of awaiting acceptance letters, and in general, the trials of adolescence. How much better it is to face life’s ups and downs within the context of Cushing’s helpful, supportive community.
As sophomore Yukyung Lee says, “There are challenges, but a challenge is nothing you should be afraid of. If you want to be part of a community and feel a sense of achievement, this is a good place. If you want to feel passion about your academics, people at Cushing will support you.”
Cushing Academy Admission Office
39 School Street
P.O. Box 8000
Ashburnham, MA 01430-8000
Phone 978-827-7300
Fax 978-827-6253
admission@cushing.org |
