A Message from our Head of School

Welcome!

The mission of The Sharon Academy is to nurture intelligent, independent and creative thinking in a small school community, awakening students to their immense potential and the difference they can make in the world.

The Sharon Academy’s active learning community can best be described as a hybrid of public and private education. As an independent school, The Sharon Academy has flexibility and nimbleness to respond to the changing needs of our community. On average, 85% of our students are publicly funded through rural sending towns without their own high school or middle school. Our students come from a variety of cultural and socio-economic backgrounds and enter school with a wide range of academic skills and talents. Our dedication to socio-economic diversity is reflected in our low tuition, which is significantly below most area schools and far below the tuition of most independent schools. Our model is not common.

At Sharon Academy, we are mission focused and mission driven and we start with some core building blocks:

• Students need to be articulate in communicating their knowledge, both verbally and in writing;
• Students need to work constructively in groups;
• Students need to be able to advocate for themselves and effectively utilize other members of the community in support of their learning, both social and emotional; and
• Students need to befriend the notion that hard work plays an essential role in all aspects of their growth.

Trust and respect are the foundation of our work with adolescents as we help them to negotiate the challenges of their teenage years—without those two essential ingredients, much of our work would be impossible. We work to know our students as individuals and seek to help meet their academic, social, and emotional needs. In order to know each student, we are committed to maintaining a small school community.

The staff at The Sharon Academy is composed of dedicated teachers who choose to work in a supportive atmosphere with small class sizes – where they are an integral influence on students’ lives. Teachers are committed to offering personalized instruction, maintaining small class sizes, performing authentic tasks, encouraging equitable student outcomes, following democratic governance practices, and partnering closely with their students and families, their colleagues, and the surrounding community. TSA prides itself on a significantly flattened hierarchy compared to most institutions. TSA faculty and staff are empowered to take ownership for the school’s running—and this shared ownership is often extended to students in significant and valuable ways.

Now more than ever, it is essential for us to nurture a generation of learners who are: confident of their own abilities, strong, effective communicators, and engaged team members who are committed to the betterment of the human condition. We hope you enjoy visiting us and online and think about coming to see us in person. We are always excited to welcome you to our campus.

Sincerely,

Mary Newman
Head of School