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The 102nd Year of Walker’s is Underway

September 12, 2013

Walker’s 2013-2014 academic year is underway as campus buzzes with new and returning students eager to meet new faces, start classes, and kick off the fall athletic season.

Opening Days included orientation activities, field trips, parent dinners and special Chapel events to start the new year. During Opening Chapel on Monday, September 9, Head of School Bessie Speers welcomed everyone to the new School year and spoke about the importance of being an engaged community, committed to local, national and global issues. Student speaker Lauren N. ’14 encouraged her peers to recognize the power they have to shape and create their futures: “We forget that a painting does not start as a masterpiece and that revered sculptures start as nothing more than clay. It is a fact that we are all individual and original works of art, masterpieces in the making.”

Faculty speaker Sarah Edson, Dean of Academic Technology and Innovation, empathized with new students’ feelings of nerves, sharing personal stories of stage fright and the impact of feeling unconditional support before a challenge: “As the year gets underway and challenges arise — and they surely will in the classroom, on the fields, in the studios, on Dogswood Day, anywhere in your lives — remind yourself that you have what it takes to face those challenges. You do. And, no matter what happens, you will never be without support from all of us. Before, during, and after.”

Walker’s welcomed 65 new students this year from eight different countries, including the Bahamas, Turkey, Spain, the Cayman Islands, China, Germany, Mexico, and Korea, as well as domestically from San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C., Vermont, Chicago, and Colorado.