If you think of Native Americans as people who once lived in New England and no longer do, History Department Chair Ben Leeming has a message for you. “Native people are still a vibrant presence in New England,” he told students and professional community members on Monday at an all-school meeting.

This year’s equity and engagement theme, “Engaging in Citizenship Together,” played out quite literally last Friday when Upper School students (and some faculty members) led more than two dozen workshops, all broadly focused on the topic of citizenship.

Difficult conversations are just that: Difficult. And few topics seem more difficult or fraught than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that escalated after the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023. But when Grade 7 humanities teachers Eitan Tye and Walker Anderson took a look at last year’s curriculum, they made a thoughtful and deliberate decision to lean into that difficult conversation with their students.

It was a great morning in Benson Gym on Wednesday, November 13, as the Rivers community came together on National Signing Day to celebrate the nine student-athletes who will be moving on to play in college at the Division I level, the culmination of years of hard work and commitment. Friends, families, teammates, and coaches came out to support these students—smiling from ear to ear while donning their future school colors—as they formalized the next step of their athletic careers.

It’s been another great fall season here at Rivers!

Almost, Maine, is an almost place that is almost magical. Almost, Maine is also the name of the Nonesuch Players’ fall production, performed in the Black Box Theater on November 7, 8, and 9. The play consists of eight short vignettes (plus a prologue, epilogue, and “interlogue”), tied together by the Northern Lights and by the theme of love.

Rivers welcomed close to 200 grandparents and special friends to campus on Monday, November 4, for the annual Grandparents’ and Special Friends’ Day for Middle School students. Guests were treated to coffee and breakfast, an array of musical performances, an opportunity to visit the classrooms of their students, and connect over a carefully prepared luncheon.

On Saturday, November 2, more than 100 members of the Rivers community—parents, alumni, trustees, and professional community members—came together for an exciting and important task: Imagining the future. Specifically, they were asked to spend the morning discussing, pondering, and creating a vision for The Rivers School of 2035, 10 years down the road. The Strategic Design Summit, convened by strategic planning co-chairs Head of School Ryan S. Dahlem and Trustee Alison Hall P’19, was a milestone along the path that will lead to the creation of a new strategic plan, targeting approval in June 2025.

Meghan Brown’s Grade 10 English class welcomed two visitors on Friday, October 25: authors Nadia Hohn and Jenn De Leon. The authors and educators were in the area and attended the Boston Book Festival on Saturday to discuss their recently published works. There was also a Rivers connection: De Leon and Director of Institutional Equity Jenny Jun-lei Kravitz have worked together in the past, both through AISNE initiatives and also in partnership delivering programming to students around the power of authentic narratives.

Hundreds of educators and administrators from independent schools around New England converged on the Sheraton Framingham on October 23 and 24 for the annual Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Conference hosted by the Association of Independent Schools in New England (AISNE). With workshop topics ranging from “Supporting Students Amidst Global Conflict” to “Justice in the Classroom,” the subject matter may have been challenging, but the mood was joyful, collegial, and collaborative, as peers from across the region greeted and embraced one another, ready to dive into two productive days of DEI work

This year’s Homecoming had something for everyone. Reimagined as Homecoming and Fall Fest, the much-anticipated annual event featured all the usual athletic competitions, along with the food trucks, pop-up shop, and Red Wings spirit that have been traditional in recent years. But along with that came a few family-friendly activities, including a Barn Babies petting zoo, a pumpkin patch, and face-painting for the youngest attendees. The day also paid tribute to the Navoni family, celebrating 75 years of their deep-rooted connections to Rivers classrooms, athletics, alumni community, and facilities.

Build a better mousetrap, as the adage goes, and the world will beat a path to your door. In much the same spirit, Grade 10 students in an engineering seminar were recently figuring out how to build a better toothbrush holder, using digital fabrication enabled by The Revers Center’s 3D printers.

At an all-school meeting on Monday, October 7, guest speaker Michael Venturiello amplified a familiar message: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” The phrase, sometimes attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, was a fitting one for the occasion. Venturiello is the founder of Christopher Street Tours, a tour company that holds LGBTQ+ history walks, and as an expert on gay history, he knows that that history is deeply entwined with the efforts of everyday individuals who saw a need and stepped in to create change.

“Pay attention to the world around you.”

The words are those of Dr. David Chung, a pediatrician with a busy group practice in Brockton; they were shared with Lindsay Morin ’25 when she interned with Chung this summer, as part of the Summer Science Internship program.

A team of educators representing AISNE (Association of Independent Schools in New England) arrived on the Rivers campus on Sunday, September 29, for a three-day visit, as part of the school’s re-accreditation process. The team comprised independent school colleagues, representing a variety of positions and institutions, including nearby Dana Hall, The Winsor School, Walnut Hill School for the Arts, and Milton Academy, among others. The visit marked the next step in the re-accreditation process, following a year of work that included internal reflection, focus groups, and the drafting of a self-study report, which was submitted over the summer. On Wednesday, the visiting team shared initial findings with a small group of senior administrators to conclude the visit; Rivers will receive a detailed team report in several weeks.

Fall sports are off and running here at Rivers!

With classes and fall sports well underway, the moment recently arrived for the launch of another Rivers mainstay: The club fair. Dozens of offerings across areas ranging from science to art, community engagement to mindfulness, chess to finance, debate to pickleball made their pitches at the September 20 Upper School club fair, with club leaders hoping to attract interested participants by deploying persuasion, visual aids, and candy. Lots and lots of candy.

In each of the past several school years, the DEI Office—and now, more broadly, the Equity and Engagement team—has chosen a theme to give its year-long efforts a structure, direction, and goals. At an all-school assembly on Monday, this year’s theme was announced to the student body: Engaging in Citizenship Together. This throughline, which intentionally builds on last year’s theme, Engaging Across Differences, is especially salient in this momentous election year.

The Rivers community lost one of its oldest friends—and its oldest alumnus—with the August 26 passing of Robert N. “Bob” Cleverdon, Class of 1940. Cleverdon would have been 103 years old this November.

The 2024 Olympics may have ended, but last Friday, the spirit of the Games was resurrected on the Rivers campus for the first Red & White competition of the 2024–25 school year. The stirring sounds of the Olympics theme rang out over the Lank Quadrangle as the student body assembled for the traditional friendly competition, sorting themselves into red and white teams to vie for the bragging rights that are the contest’s prize.

A perfect September morning—blue skies, mild temperatures—set the stage for a joyful first day of school on Tuesday. Returning students embraced one another, greeted their teachers, and launched into the year ahead with aplomb.

It was back to school for the Rivers professional community on August 21 and 22, with two full days of programming addressing expectations, hopes, and plans for the coming year. All members of the professional community were briefed on topics ranging from the upcoming visit from the AISNE accreditation team to crisis management to the teachable moments sure to arise from the election season.

Leaders, it has been said, are made, not born. That philosophy was very much in evidence at Tuesday’s Leadership Retreat at The Rivers School. The day-long annual event, mandatory for all Upper School student leaders, gives students an opportunity to hone their skills, share their concerns, and gain insight into their new roles, in advance of taking the reins.

Rivers graduate Zoë Powell-McCroey ’24 was honored with a gold medal at the National ACT-SO competition for her original essay “Frying Up Freedom: An Examination of the Role of Food in Black Liberation.” At the national competition, held at the 115th NAACP National Convention in Las Vegas, NV, Powell-McCroey took home the gold medal for the “original essay” category and earned a $10,000 Write Your Future scholarship sponsored by Lancôme. Powell-McCroey will put her scholarship to use next year at Columbia University, where she plans to study writing as well as film and media studies.

Biotech has been in the news of late, and so has fintech. And if Bridget O’Connor Garsh ’00 has anything to say about it, famtech—technologies that support caregivers—will also be making headlines in years to come. Garsh, the chief operating officer at FamTech.org, recently spoke with us about this budding industry and her career journey.

Dalinda Ifill-Pressat ’05 isn’t one to wait for an opportunity to find her. Early in her career, stymied by the obstacles that kept her from advancing in the corporate world, she chose a new path that led her to a career she loves. Or, as she puts it, “If there's no seat at the table, you bring your own table.” We took a moment to connect with Ifill-Pressat this spring on her career journey and her pathway since graduating from Rivers.

Head of School Ryan S. Dahlem announced this week that, following a national search that drew a robust pool of candidates from across the country, Javier Caballero has been named executive director of performing arts at Rivers, beginning on August 1. In this newly created role, Caballero will be responsible for strategic vision and administrative oversight of The Rivers School Conservatory (RSC) and the Performing Arts Department at The Rivers School, including its signature Conservatory Program. This overarching leadership model will strengthen the relationship between RSC and The Rivers School to create a unified vision of performing arts on the Rivers campus.

School may be out for students, but a group of Rivers academic administrators jumped back into the classroom earlier this month for an opportunity to strategize, learn from peers, and imagine the pedagogic future at Rivers.

The evening of Tuesday, June 4, marked a milestone for the Rivers Class of 2028. While not a formal graduation, Grade 8 Portfolio Night is an annual rite of passage for students poised to move on from Middle School and enter Upper School. It is a moment to reflect on accomplishments, challenges, future goals, and—most visibly—skateboards.

Water, famously, is everywhere—and so, too, are issues that threaten freshwater sources around the globe. Throughout the year, Grade 6 students have studied humanities through the lens of water, and last week, the students gathered in Benson Gymnasium to present their culminating projects. Each student had chosen a body of freshwater somewhere in the world and spent the final weeks of the year delving deeply into the ways that water is affected by a range of environmental, economic, and social factors.

On a perfect spring day, diplomas were awarded to Rivers’ newest 93 alumni, the Class of 2024. The school’s 101st graduation unfolded under the tent on the Lank Quadrangle on Friday, May 24, amid the usual measure of pomp, circumstance, cheers, and good wishes for the class, a group that distinguished itself in the academic, athletic, musical, and artistic arenas.

Food, fun, friends, families: This year’s Global Fair, held on Monday evening, was all that and more. As Head of School Ryan S. Dahlem said in his opening remarks, kicking off the festivities, “This is Excellence with Humanity come to life,” adding that the annual event created a sense of belonging and community for all members of the Rivers family.

Students in Grade 8 at Rivers had an opportunity to peek inside the world of book publishing and writing in early May, with a special visit from writer and editor Marc Favreau. The class read Favreau’s book Unequal earlier in the semester. As an author of nonfiction, Favreau has focused on weaving history into compelling narratives for the young adult audience. Visiting humanities classes on Friday, May 3, and speaking before a special homeroom, Favreau (who is the brother of Middle School Latin faculty member Cathy Favreau) spoke candidly about his journey as a writer, fielded questions from students, and actively solicited ideas from the crowd on what his next book topic should be.

Even before the opening curtain, it was clear that the Middle School musical, Finding Nemo Jr., would transport viewers to an undersea world. The Black Box theater had been transformed into a colorful coral reef, and Beach Boys tunes filled the air as the audience took their seats.

What Rivers program is celebrating its 19th year, has taught hundreds of students about the power of philanthropy, and has given $200,000 in donations to more than 50 local nonprofit organizations? That could only be Rivers Givers, the longstanding group that helps fill the needs of the community and, not incidentally, gives students a comprehensive look at how fundraising really works.

Hundreds of parents and members of the Rivers professional community gathered on the turf in MacDowell Arena on Friday to enjoy music, delicious food, cornhole, and—most of all—one another’s company. A spring party celebrating the completion of another successful school year is a Rivers tradition; it has taken different forms over the years, but the throughline is always the joy of community and coming together. Friday’s party was no exception. Guests mingled and chatted late into the evening at the casual get-together while nibbling on lobster rolls, burgers, fries, and Cobb salad.

The 22nd annual Rivers School Community Golf Tournament, held May 6, 2024, brought together more than 100 golfers at the Charter Oak Country Club in Hudson, MA, on a perfect spring day. Rivers alumni, parents/caregivers, grandfriends, and members of the professional community reconnected with one another on the links and celebrated a first-ever hole-in-one for this event. Congratulations to James Kieyah P’30 for this amazing accomplishment!

As a Jewish child growing up in Nazi-occupied Hungary during World War II, Kati Preston experienced horrors almost beyond description. But her message to the Rivers community, delivered during Preston’s Monday appearance at an all-school meeting marking Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah), was not one of despair but rather of resilience, forgiveness, and hope. Despite all she has undergone, the 85-year-old Preston remains, in her own description, a “happy person” who believes that today’s youth have the means and desire to “save the world.”

With campus in full bloom, The Rivers School held one of the last all-school meetings of the 2023-2024 academic year on Monday, April 29. Head of School Ryan S. Dahlem challenged and inspired students to finish the year strong by asking: What will you make of May?

Chrismary Gonzalez ’18 says she cultivated a certain reputation at Rivers. “I was known as the person who was always going to say something”—something about racism, social justice, identity, or other issues that are often ignored or side-stepped. Today, in Gonzalez’s role as assistant director of intake for the equity department of Boston Public Schools, addressing thorny and fraught issues is all in a day’s work.

The Rivers School admission season has come to a successful close, reaching milestones unprecedented in the school’s 115-year history. The office of admission and financial aid reported record-breaking yield rates, lower admission rates, and unparalleled growth and diversity in Rivers’ incoming student body.

There are numerous lenses through which to view the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Last Friday at Rivers, there were at least 24 such lenses as students took the reins and led a series of workshops designed to augment, amplify, and support this year’s DEI theme, “Engaging Across Differences.”

For nearly 30 years, the Day of Silence, observed on the second Friday in April, has served as a way for members of the LGBTQ+ community to draw attention to their historical silencing—and to declare that that silencing is no longer acceptable. Participants refrain from speaking for the day, reflecting the many ways in which the voices of community members go unheard.

As much of the U.S. experienced a solar eclipse earlier this week, students, faculty, and other members of the Rivers community gathered on the Lank Family Quadrangle to witness this phenomenon. With eyes safely protected by special eclipse-viewing glasses, attendees were able to take in the sight of the sun gradually slipping out of sight—or 93 percent of the way there, at least. The eerie pall and the sudden drop in temperature lasted just long enough to remind everyone present of the beauty and power of this rare natural occurrence.

Spring is in the air, which means it’s time for winter sports awards to be announced. The Independent School League and NEPSAC awards, along with other forms of seasonal athletic recognition, were recently announced, and 31 Rivers athletes were honored. Coming on top of a great showing in the playoffs, including a finals appearance for boys’ hockey and a boys’ basketball championship, it was a successful season for Red Wings. Here’s a complete list of individual awards, and congratulations to all the winners!

Visual art and writing have always been serious pursuits at The Rivers School. Under the guidance of dedicated faculty members, students have the opportunity to express themselves creatively in a range of media throughout their years at Rivers. That creativity was recognized recently when the Massachusetts results of the annual Scholastic Art & Writing Awards competition were announced. Forty-three works of visual art by Rivers students were honored, and 12 works garnered awards in the writing categories.

English faculty member Mary Mertsch describes the Grade 9 Honors English Seminar’s Living Library event as “a sort of haunted house experience, but with books.” It’s an apt description: On Monday, as this year’s event unfolded, Haynes classrooms were converted into environments that ranged from spooky to gothic to dystopian to fantastical and beyond, each evoking a book that the students had read and analyzed in class.

After March break, the professional community came back for a full day of connection and learning. Gathering in Kraft Dining Hall on Monday, March 25, colleagues happily greeted one another and shared stories of their adventures away. For some, the break was a chance to reconnect with families and friends, while others accompanied students on trips to Italy, Greece, and Cuba. For many members of the professional community, work continued on campus and served as a time to prepare for the final stretch of the year.

The Rivers Big Band, joined by members of Honors Big Band and Select 2 Combo, recently returned from a whirlwind cultural, historical, and musical tour of Cuba. While Rivers has offered travel programs with a music focus in the past, this is the first year a Rivers group has traveled to Cuba, with 21 students from the Rivers Honors Big Band participating in the trip, along with around 15 students from the Noble and Greenough School’s jazz band. Students took in the vibrant arts scene of music and art, playing and recording Cuban music with local conservatory students, learning and playing with master teachers and recording artists, visiting important cultural sites, and creating lasting intercultural friendships and partnerships.

If you’ve been to a performance of one of The Rivers School’s jazz ensembles in the last few years, it’s likely you’ve seen Ethan Kasparian Weisman ’24. A multi-instrumentalist from a young age, he has participated in the National YoungArts Competition twice—once for saxophone and most recently for clarinet, for which he was invited to National YoungArts Week in January with peers throughout the country. As a senior, his performance qualified him to be nominated as a 2024 US Presidential Scholar in the Arts, one of 60 nominees to earn this prestigious distinction, and one of the nation’s highest honors for high school students who exemplify artistic and academic excellence. We recently sat down with Kasparian Weisman to talk about his musical journey and recent successes.

This is the first year that the Equity and Engagement Department has been reorganized and expanded to oversee DEI, community engagement, and global education under new director Jenny Jun-lei Kravitz, but the impact is already being felt throughout the school, with enhanced programming, a sweeping vision, and an emphasis on the kind of environment and community Rivers values.

Climate change can seem like an intractable challenge—but not to Grade 7 students at Rivers. For Sustainability Night, which took place just before spring break, the focus is on solutions, and the students dove in with aplomb, coming up with creative suggestions ranging from rooftop gardens to 3D-printed devices to air-filter drones to stratospheric aerosol injection planes.

Evan Coleman ’05 says he was so quiet and shy while at Rivers that his yearbook superlative jokingly suggested that he’d be most likely to become a motivational speaker. So, he told a group of students and professional community members in a Revers classroom on Tuesday, there was a bit of irony in finding himself back on campus in something like that very role.

Sonia Nazario, this year’s Hall Family Speaker, says she was “born a rabble-rouser.” Her childhood nickname was “the troublemaker,” and the award-winning journalist, author, and activist still has a nose for trouble—good trouble.

It was a busy week for the Red Wings, as Rivers was one of only two schools in New England to have all four teams (boys’ and girls’ hockey and basketball) qualify for NEPSAC postseason play.

Senior year can be a stressful time, but Rivers seniors can feel good about their recent accomplishments: 100% of the school’s 93 seniors have received an offer of college admission, and, with ED2 now in, 65% are enrolled. These results, said Director of College Counseling Dave Lyons ’99, P’30, reinforce the college office’s approach of preparing students to engage with early admission rounds whenever these practices align with the colleges on their lists.

Four Broadway stars walk into a tense PTA meeting at a high school in Indiana, where a gay teen has been excluded from attending her prom by the town’s small-minded PTA leadership. The stars are in desperate need of a cause and some rebranding, and the student—well, she just wants to attend her prom with her girlfriend like any other student, yet finds herself in a crossfire of egos, town values, social pressure, and media coverage. Thus the scene is set for Rivers’ winter musical, The Prom, performed by the Nonesuch Players. The large ensemble cast, production team, and pit orchestra delighted the audience with the magic of show business, delivering big choreographed numbers, comedic timing, talented acting and singing, and a powerful, uplifting story of love and acceptance (and many, many sequins!).

Behind every immigrant, there’s a story. At last Friday’s Upper School assembly—the second session of programming created around this year’s DEI theme, Engaging Across Differences—attendees had a chance to hear immigration stories from a perhaps-unexpected quarter: Members of Rivers’ professional community who are themselves immigrants or who have close ties to the immigrant experience.

The Rivers School held an evening event for parents and caregivers, “Community and Connection: A State of the School Update,” on Wednesday, February 7, providing an overview through a range of lenses: strategy, governance, finance, development, academics, and more. The speakers painted a picture of an institution on an upward trajectory, building on the momentum of Head of School Ryan S. Dahlem’s first six months at the helm.

This past Sunday, February 11, Grade 10 students had a chance to learn just what makes Special Olympics so special. As it has for many years, the grade hosted a Special Olympics of Massachusetts basketball tournament on the Rivers campus, with athletes from all over the state taking to the floor in Benson Gymnasium.

Tera Kull ’03 is no stranger to the lemonade-from-lemons process. Kull, who has a long track record of turning challenges into opportunities, shared her story on Tuesday, February 6, at this year’s inaugural Alum Speaker Series event. The lunchtime event showcases the efforts and accomplishments of Rivers graduates who are actively engaged in their communities and working to uplift social justice values.

More wide-ranging than a talent show, more inclusive than a polished concert, more improvisatory than a play or musical, the Rivers Coffeehouse is a place where anyone can take to the stage and receive a warm response. From first-timers to old hands, from nervous ninth graders to fun-loving faculty members, everyone in the Rivers community is welcome in the Black Box theater three times a year, and while the event itself can be freewheeling and unpredictable, a supportive audience cheering for every performer is guaranteed.

Late January was a great time to be a Red Wing! We’ve passed the halfway point in the winter season, and Rivers athletes are going strong.

No one seems more surprised about Brad Belin ’03’s career trajectory than Belin himself. Looking back on his years at Rivers, Belin—the most recent recipient of the school’s Young Alumni Achievement Award—says, “I wasn’t a model student or necessarily someone who thought of school as a place for education. School was a convenient place to play sports and hang out with friends.”

There are countless places the study of math might lead. On a recent rainy Wednesday morning, it led a group of Rivers students to Gillette Stadium, where the current cohort of McCartney Scholars met with members of the Kraft Analytics Group (KAGR) to learn about the use of data science in the sports and entertainment industries.

Eight delegates from Rivers Model UN, along with faculty advisor Arturo Bagley and faculty member Robin Sallie, traveled to New York City last weekend to attend the CMUNCE conference at Columbia University, which ran from Thursday through Sunday. In addition to spending many hours in committee sessions as part of the conference, participants also visited the Spanish mission to the United Nations and attended symposia featuring panels and interviews with UN personnel on Columbia’s campus, taking full advantage of its proximity to the UN Headquarters in midtown Manhattan.

As Carnegie Hall is to music, Boston’s TD Garden—with its fabled parquet floor—is to basketball. And on Sunday, January 14, Rivers basketball players lived out a dream by participating in the Andrew James Lawson Foundation Invitational at the Garden.

Joan Hall, this year’s visiting artist at The Rivers School, grew up in Ohio and never saw the ocean until she was in graduate school. But, as she shared with students at an Upper School assembly on Tuesday, the ocean—its beauty, its fragility, and the environmental threats it faces—has been the subject of her art for decades.

The national holiday that commemorates the birthday of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. falls on the third Monday in January. But at Rivers, it is observed on the second Monday of the month, in an all-school assembly that serves to inspire the community and remind them of King’s legacy.

Climbing Antarctica’s highest peak—where average temperatures hover around -20F and base camp is reached by taking two unusual flights from Punta Arenas, Chile’s southernmost point—might not be everyone’s idea of a good time. But for Head of School Ryan Dahlem, who scaled the Vinson Massif years ago with a team that included his father, John, the challenges of the climb were part of what made it a life-changing experience for him.

It’s not unusual for middle school students to learn about the water cycle: Evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and so on. But at Rivers, students in Grade 6 Humanities go way beyond that to a broader “water cycle” that studies humanity’s relationship to water, both past and present, and looks at the role of water in global conflicts, power struggles, and opportunities.

ChatGPT appeared on Michael Schlenker’s radar last November, when it first became available to the public. The Rivers science faculty member reports, “A student who had taken my AP computer science course the year before said, ‘Hey, Mr. Schlenker, have you checked out ChatGPT yet?’ And I said, ‘No. Have you?’ And she said, ‘Yeah, I just asked it to write my video game project from last year.’”