One of the beautiful things about this new school year is the collaboration and crossover between the Upper School and Middle School. Whether it’s volleyball, cooking, scrap-building, or four square, X-days, or tailgates, we are seeing more “togetherness”. Mr. Follet and I often put the following hashtag on the bottom of our emails to each other: #OneSchool. […]

With the ongoing global supply chain disruptions impacting key technologies that Cary Academy students and staff rely on daily, 2021 has been a year of challenges. Director of Technology & Innovation Karen McKenzie offers a—dare we say it--promising update and reflects on how challenges have become opportunities for learning and community-building. Read it on CA Curious.

Community has been central to the Cary Academy experience since its founding, underscored by our campus’s very design. Our open Quad, glass-walled multipurpose meeting spaces, and innovative collabolounges invite us to connect, to see each other, to look out for one another. As Entrepreneurship Director Palmer Seeley explains, The Hub – CA's new on campus cafe and store offers unique opportunities for students to strengthen the community and to learn about how to start and operate a small business. Read it on CA Curious.

When it comes to creating healthy, tasty meals for more than 900 students and staff members daily, you'd be forgiven for feeling a little like you're on the set of a culinary competition show. And that was before the added challenge of COVID-safe cooking. Chief Financial Officer Debby Reichel whips up the details of how Cary Academy's meal program is a key to prioritizing student wellness and how we've adapted to the needs of our students and community during the return to full-time in-person learning. Read it on CA Curious.

Every five years, Cary Academy engages in a strategic planning process. In 2020, this process was upended by the COVID pandemic. As students returned to the classroom, CA could have simply established a plan to return to the way things were. However, as Dean of Faculty, Martina Greene explains, we start this school year looking resolutely and optimistically to the future. Read it on CA Curious.

How do you eat healthily if you live in an urban food desert? How do you prioritize unexpected expenses when you're barely making ends meet? When you don't have the funds to do both, how do you choose between paying the bills and putting food on the table? Recently, the 6th grade was faced with these sorts of difficult challenges plucked from real life. As Director of Equity & Community Engagement, Danielle Johnson-Webb explains, asking students to sit with these uncomfortable realities reveals the power of experiential and service learning and the lightbulb moments they can provoke. Read it on CA Curious.

How do we find an even keel in moments of stress or challenge? As Head of School Dr. Mike Ehrhardt explains, cultivating purpose is the key. But how, then, do you empower students to find an authentic sense of purpose? To find out, read it on CA Curious.