A Word from the Headmaster Before beginning my tenure as Cheshire’s Headmaster, I spent three decades as an English teacher and administrator at Phillips Exeter Academy. Had you visited my classroom at Exeter, you would have found an oval, wooden table around which sat twelve or thirteen chairs. There is, in the tradition of seminar teaching, no place for a student to get lost; at the Harkness table, there is no obvious head, no particular place for the teacher to sit. It is a meeting place for serious endeavor, a place in which the possibilities for collaborative discourse are rich and viable.



In the ACCESS CHESHIRE program, we have embraced the Harkness seminar pedagogy, a participatory approach to education that places the student at the center of the educational process. Here, students engage actively in discussion with one another. Teachers help students work through thoughtful conversations. Students articulate their own ideas, raise their own questions, and along the way, they develop strategies for thinking critically and for engaging one another in collaborative discourse. Discussion-centered teaching keeps the student at the center of all endeavors. At Cheshire, we continually remind ourselves that the proper object of the verb to teach is and always should be the student. Whatever the discipline, students are best served when they have hands-on opportunities to learn.



The six academic clusters offered in the ACCESS CHESHIRE program focus on helping students develop sets of skills that enable them to think critically and to act responsibly. In a world grown smaller through technological development and rapid communication, students must, more than ever before, be prepared for global citizenship. Students in our summer program study and live in a veritable microcosm of the world’s diversity. The very acts of living and studying together reinforce the fundamental principle that we are all part of the human fabric, that our lives necessarily impact upon the lives of others, and that we must live and work with one another in an environment rooted in respect, compassion, and care.