Communication Office
The communication office develops, implements, and evaluates communication plans and programs that support the mission of the School. The office facilitates Milton Academy’s efforts to promote awareness and good will among its various constituencies and external public; to recruit students and faculty; and to raise financial and volunteer support.
Communication Staff
Sarah Abrams
Editor, Milton Magazine
sarah_abrams@milton.edu
Marisa Donelan
Associate Director of Communication
marisa_donelan@milton.edu
Eileen Newman
Chief Communication Officer
eileen_newman@milton.edu
Esten Perez
Director of Communication and Media Relations
esten_perez@milton.edu
Emily Sedgwick
Social Media Manager / Video Content Producer
Emily_Sedgwick@milton.edu
Greg White
Director, Web Development and Academy Graphic Design
gregory_white@milton.edu
Media Contact
If you are a member of the media in need of information or press materials, please contact Esten Perez at 617-898-2395 or esten_perez@milton.edu
Campus News
Connecting at Goodwin House
Dorm faculty and students are finding creative ways to maintain dorm traditions during this period of remote and hybrid learning. In Goodwin House, they’ve continued to celebrate each student’s birthday. However, instead of singing collectively over Zoom, one student plays a musical instrument rendition of “Happy Birthday” to share. So far, there have been oboe, violin, and beatboxing performances. In the most recent one, English faculty member Elaine Apthorp played her guitar and sang.
Each Goodwin advisory group plans and hosts a virtual event for the rest of the dorm to join. House Head and math faculty member Patrick Owens said his advisory group hosted a Jackbox game called Fibbage. Last week, science faculty member Michael Edgar’s advisory group hosted an “Among Us” tournament (see photo). “Among Us” is an online multiplayer social deduction game.
Owens said care packages were sent to all Goodwin students earlier in October, and in all the houses, a new student mentoring program was launched at the beginning of the school year. Returning students who were interested in serving as mentors applied and were then paired with new students. Mentors and mentees were also placed in the same dorm families who will meet over the course of the year.
Poet Richard Blanco Is This Fall’s Bingham Visiting Writer
A poem isn’t really done until it’s shared and lives in someone else,” said Bingham Visiting Writer Richard Blanco. Sharing his work that centers on ideas of home, identity, and nationality, Blanco read and discussed his poetry with students on a Zoom webinar.
“What is home? This idea grew bigger into what is a country? In my poems, I’m asking these questions for all of us,” said Blanco.
Blanco immigrated to Miami as a child with his Cuban-exile parents and said that when he was growing up he wasn’t sure if he was part of the American story. It wasn’t until he was asked to be the poet for President Obama’s second inauguration that he felt his personal story was part of the American narrative.
Exploring Mathematics With Both Numbers and Words
Writing about math is an approach used by Milton math teachers to get students to dive deep into the material and then articulate it—beyond just numbers, formulas, and graphs. Earlier this semester, Honors Calculus students researched, calculated, and wrote about the Gini Index, a measure of income distribution across a population, for a country of their choice.
“We wanted to make the study of calculus relevant, and income distribution and income inequality are topics we read about all the time in the news,” said math faculty member Jackie Bonenfant. “This was a way to allow students to explore an important and pressing topic, while also encouraging them to ask questions about their world. What government policies, practices, and laws might impact income distribution? Are we satisfied with current levels of income distribution and, if not, what could we do to change things?”
Students chose countries like the U.S., Italy, Australia, Vietnam, Greece, Brazil, Mexico, and India. Zoe Malouf ’21 researched the 2017 Gini Index for Switzerland.
Documentary Filmmaker Byron Hurt Speaks To Milton Athletes
Many boys in our society are conditioned from a young age to be tough, to hide their emotions, and to avoid any appearance of behaving “like a girl,” documentary filmmaker and anti-sexist activist Byron Hurt told student-athletes recently.
This mindset favors aggression, prevents boys from connecting with their emotions, and undervalues girls and women, sometimes leading to toxic masculinity and violence, said Hurt, who visited Milton athletes virtually as part of a series of speakers this fall who promote mental fitness.
“I grew up in a culture where you had to perform a certain kind of manhood and masculinity in order to be accepted by other guys and be seen as a ‘real man’” said Hurt. When boys and men feel like they can’t be vulnerable with their emotions, those emotions can be redirected in unhealthy ways: abuse, depression, violence, failed relationships, and out-of-control actions.
Keeping Connections at Robbins House
House heads and faculty are engaging their dorm communities in both synchronous and asynchronous ways as boarding students learn remotely during this phase of hybrid learning. In Robbins House, dorm faculty hold weekly drop-in sessions at various times to accommodate time zones. They are also hosting events such as Zoom Jeopardy! games or Netflix watch parties.
In September, each new student was paired with a returning student in their grade or the grade above. Then these pairs meet others over Zoom to increase their network of support in the dorm community.
“It has gone so well in Robbins that almost all of the mentors and mentees have made it a weekly occurrence to have a get-together and hang out virtually over the weekend,” said house head Nicole Hall.
