It was a perfect day to stroll over to the farm and see what Megan Phillips and Lisa Beneman are up to... Read More

You can hold your phone in front of a fern and get an immediate plant i.d. Take your device into the forest at springtime, push a button to broadcast a cardinal’s song, and another cardinal will swoop into view. Type “turkey tail mushroom” into your browser and 21,100,000 results surface.  So why sit for hours, paper and pencil in wet hands, rain creeping through the seams of your slicker, crouched and tired, all to draw a twig? Maine Coast Semester alumni know the reason why. Read More

Maine Coast Semester math teachers Katie Curtis and Liz Burroughs had their precalculus students doing something fishy last week: calculating an equation to describe the curve of a pilot whale’s spine and then plotting points of the curve on a swath of graph paper. One student, Dylan Stachtiaris, went farther, using graphing software called Desmos to create the perfect outline of the whale’s entire body. Curtis and Burroughs, who co-teach the course, enjoy helping their students see how Read More

Most of us, consciously or unconsciously, carry in our heads annotated maps of the places we love. Maine Coast Semester English teacher Sarah Rebick asked her “Literature and the Land” students each to make a map of “the place they think of as home,” she explains, at the start of Semester 63 in September. Those maps included depictions ranging from a desktop to summer camps and family homes and even a New Mexico ski mountain.  That was then. Last week, Rebick asked those same students, now Read More

Six Maine Coast Semester 63 students got “the golden ticket”--a chance to hear renowned writer and environmentalist Terry Tempest Williams speak at Gulf of Maine Books, a Brunswick bookstore popular with Mainers thirsty for great writing and great writers. Semester English teacher Sarah Rebick, who uses Williams’s work in her course “Literature and the Land,” was angst-ridden when she learned that space was too limited to allow her whole class to attend the event. “I had to pull names,” she Read More

Saturday morning brought a dazzling blue sky to Chewonki Neck and set the stage for a much-anticipated event: the formal dedication of our new faculty housing building, formerly codenamed “Farmview 1”. Chewonki President Willard Morgan welcomed the assembled crowd of faculty and staff, alumni, and board members and invited them to gather around a shrouded dedication sign in front of the recently completed building. “I am proud and grateful to announce the names chosen for these two new Read More

Join us in Chapin Hall on December 10 for the 12th annual Chewonki Holiday Craft Fair! Dozens of local artists, crafters, and Chewonki students will fill the hall with a variety of unique handcrafted items made of wood, fiber, beeswax, paper, glass, and metal. We will also be offering hayrides in our horse-drawn wagon, hot cider, and refreshments! Questions? Call (207) 882-7323 or email info@chewonki.org Read More

Over the next few months, many Chewonki staff will be hitting the road to visit families, connect with alumni, and visit schools. Please let us know if you would like to connect when we're in your hometown: Maine Coast Semester School Visits: California 12/2/19 Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences12/3/19 Chadwick School12/4/19 Cate School12/5/19 Harvard-Westlake School (Upper School)12/5/19 The Thacher School Connecticut 10/21/19 Kingswood-Oxford School10/21/19 The Loomis Read More

This weekend the Portland Press Herald published an article featuring an open letter by former Chewonki staff sharing concerns about our facilitation of issues and conversations related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. I want you to hear about this issue directly from me so I can share a few thoughts on the subject. While I feel the newspaper article does not tell the complete story, I agree that Chewonki needs to evolve as an institution. It is for that reason we began a series of Read More