The Dwight-Englewood
School:
Neighbor Across the Hudson
by Sybil Maimin
Up on a hill in the back of the
Palisades near the Hudson River in Englewood, New Jersey,
sits Dwight-Englewood, an independent day school that offers
a rigorous, traditional education with a creative edge to
a diverse group of students from a broad geographic area. Founded
in 1889 as the Dwight School for Girls to mainly serve wealthy
local families, it grew and changed over the years and became
co-educational in 1973 when it merged with the next-door
Englewood School for Boys. Today, it serves approximately
1,000 students in pre K-12 who hail from northern New Jersey,
Rockland and Westchester counties in New York, and even from
Manhattan, although the greatest concentration, particularly
in the lower grades, lives within a 10-mile radius. Operating
in an educational landscape with few private schools, its
main competition is good suburban public high schools. Reflecting
its broad reach, it can boast of being the most ethnically
diverse secondary school in its county; sixteen to eighteen
students a year are products of the SEEDS program, an intensive
preparatory and scholarship opportunity for bright, low-income
minority youth. Its headmaster is Dr. Ralph Sloan.
Dwight-Englewood has a campus-like
setting that includes playing fields, tennis courts, a Nature
Center, a self-contained Lower School, various academic and
administrative buildings and, about to be built, a new Campus
Center with expanded performing and visual arts facilities
as well as additional classrooms. Unique to the institution
is the Math/Science/Technology program, which, in 2003, was
given the "Leading Edge Program: Curriculum
Innovation" award by the National Association of Independent
Schools. In a well-developed ninth to eleventh grade course
requirement, math, science, and computer technology are taught
as interrelated disciplines that build upon each other and
follow a logical sequence. "It is wonderful for kids who
are gifted in math and science and often leads to independent
work," reports Dr. Sloan, and "is good for all kids
because it shows connections and applications of what they
have learned." Proximity to the Hudson means the river
is an outdoor classroom for the Middle School where the science
program is built around trips to the waterway to explore, record,
test, measure, analyze, and appreciate the importance of this
ecosystem. Geology becomes alive with trips and learning on
the Palisades cliffs.
About half the seniors at Dwight-Englewood
choose to participate in the Focus program, which involves
independent study on a topic or question of consuming interest.
Subjects may involve library research or on-site experiences
and collaborations. Students have explored marketing at the
local Mercedes-Benz dealership, animal behavior at the Bronx
Zoo, and the United States incursion into Cambodia through
historical research. "This
is where passions are developed," explains Dr. Sloan, "and,
often, future careers shaped." At all levels, students
can pursue particular interests outside the classroom. "It
is a very caring place. The environment, the poor, AIDS awareness—no
cause goes unorganized," reports the headmaster. One of
his causes is character development, and he is especially proud
of the importance of ethics education at Dwight-Englewood.
Instructors in every department include an ethics component
in their teachings, and students have a required course in
ethics, become familiar with the vocabulary of ethics, learn
to think ethically, and write a paper about an issue in ethics.#
