ABOUT

Stronger Together

Moravian Academy and The Swain School: Solidifying a strong foundation for the future

To the Moravian Academy and Swain Community:

We know at the foundation of our school is a signature culture, an immersive lifestyle for students that propels each child toward extraordinary and inspired learning. This culture connects generations together through timeless values, shepherded, and adapted for each time period. This culture explains the reasons why education, life-long learning, and our school are so important to each one of us. These are many of the essentials that unite us as a community.

We also believe now is an important time to uncover and articulate these essentials, as we contemplate the future as a newly united school. Our school spreads across three campuses, from Swain to Moravian, from 3-year-olds to 18-year-olds, and from east to west. We share a common foundation, known to all excellent independent schools, formed in small classrooms with inspiring relationships, excellent teaching, and a commitment to learning. Within our school, there is also room - and a need - for different educational philosophies and practices to match the range of learners and families that are within our community.

We want to see clearly what unites us as well as what differentiates us.

To do this, we need your help! We are asking each of you to take a short survey to tell us what makes our school special from your point of view. This questionnaire will be open now through Tuesday, December 22nd. The links to these surveys are below. Please choose the survey for you, and we encourage you to complete out a separate survey for each of the roles you may fill.

Faculty and Staff
Current Student
Alumnus/a or Friend
Parent or Guardian

You can hear more about this initiative in our video message and by reading more information below.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

 

Jeff Zemsky                 Armistead Webster
Head of School            Head of School
Moravian Academy      The Swain School

Frequently Asked Questions

Why survey about who we are?
Schools like ours thrive when the community shares a common understanding of who we are and where we are going. This is because ambitious, excellent schools are in constant evolution, requiring both incremental refinement and creative growth, as they honor the essence of the school. To make the best decisions as we refine programs and innovate new ones, in our pursuit to educate our students for the future, we need to understand the full range of perspectives from across our diverse and passionate community. This is how we serve our mission as a not-for-profit, independent school.

 

Why now?
2020 has been quite a year! We embarked on an exciting and new strategic chapter in our school’s history with the partnership of Moravian Academy and Swain. The COVID-19 pandemic forced us to rethink where and when learning happens These major events prompted important reflections about our school and how important it is. This is the perfect time to gather these reflections so that we can turn them into strategic decisions that will benefit our entire community going forward.

 

Where will the responses go?
The Board of Trustees has charged a task force to synthesize community reflections and make recommendations on what the essence of our school is. This survey is a beginning to that process. The next step is to use the collected responses, without names, to frame follow up questions for small groups of community members to discuss. If you are interested in participating in the following step, please be sure to answer that question in the questionnaire.
Previous Communications: Community Letter 8.7.20

FAQs (as it relates to the Swain School in this partnership):

Contact

If you have any questions or you would like more information about this partnership, please email partnership@swain.org.