News
BUA Smashes Records on Giving Day
Thanks to our amazing and generous alumni community, BUA raised over $85,000 from 254 donors in 24 hours on #BUAGivingDay! BUA set a new record for participation, with nearly DOUBLE the number of gifts compared to our last Giving Day. We also placed 4th out of all Boston University schools and colleges on the university-wide participation leaderboard. With 143 parent and grandparent gifts and 120 alumni gifts, we exceeded both our Faculty Appreciation Challenge AND our Alumni Challenge, unlocking a food truck celebration for the BUA faculty/staff and an additional $30,000 for BUA, respectively. This outpouring of support is a testament to the strength of our community and the warmth, gratitude, and connection so many of us feel towards BUA. Watch this brief thank you video from Head of School Chris Kolovos:
BUA Students Earn Recognition in SISAL, Scholastic Awards
Kasia Perks '21 won the Digital Art category in this year’s highly selective Small Independent School Art League (SISAL) Virtual Competition with her stunning "Portrait of Madison." Also recognized for their submissions were Saoirse Killion '21, Michelle Lisak '21, William Liu '23, Charlie Minney '22, Irene Mitsiades '21, Sasha Tyutyunik '22, and Madison Young '21. BUA students also earned recognition in the 2021 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Rohan Biju '23 earned two honorable mentions in the art category; Tracy He '24 and Serena Lei '22 each earned honorable mention for their artwork. In the writing category, Alvin Lu '23 won two silver keys and a gold key for his essay, and Emmanuel Smirnakis '23 and Cassandra Swartz '22 earned honorable mention for their submissions. Congratulations to our very talented student artists and writers!
BUA Giving Day 2021
Wednesday, April 7 is Giving Day! #BUAGivingDay is a 24-hour online fundraising drive that offers donors the opportunity to make their gifts to BUA go further. If BUA receives support from 75 current and past parents, grandparents, and friends, a fellow parent will underwrite an end-of-year food truck celebration for the BUA faculty and staff, who've worked so hard this year to give students the safe, rigorous, in-person learning experience they deserve. Make your gift at the links below -- and thank you for your support! https://givingday.bu.edu/campaigns/boston-university-academy-fund#/ https://givingday.bu.edu/campaigns/bua-diversity-and-inclusion-fund-1#/ https://givingday.bu.edu/campaigns/bua-great-teachers-fund#/
Head of School Blog: You Are Not Closing Doors
Earlier this week, I had the great pleasure of joining a career panel where BUA graduates working in the medical field shared their experiences with current students interested in medicine. It brings a smile to my face to watch generations of BUAers together — alums eager to give back and offer some guidance to the next cohort; current students meeting lifelong mentors and seeing reflections of their older selves looking back at them. One of the great gifts of being part of a school like this is that you are part of a multi-generational family that will always be there for you. Many of the questions from current students were tactical: How can I find a doctor to shadow as a high schooler? How should I structure my college choices to get ready for medical school? Should I consider an accelerated, seven-year liberal arts/medical degree? How do I choose between focusing... More
HOS Blog: A School Schedule Built for Students
Earlier this month, we announced that BUA will be moving to a new academic schedule for the fall of 2021. For too long, schools have defaulted to schedules that reflect the priorities of a factory model, ignoring what decades of research tells us about teenage brain development, student health, and the preconditions for deep, sustained learning. Outdated schedules have driven pedagogical choices, when the reverse must be true. Students deserve a schedule designed for them. The new schedule incorporates two main innovations: a late start every day, and fewer, longer class meetings per day — all while preserving the full teaching time we enjoyed before the pandemic. Pediatricians and experts on adolescent development have been telling us for years that the teenage brain tends not to “wake up” until later in the morning and that adolescents need between eight to ten hours of sleep per night. With all of the competing pressures on... More
HOS Blog: Running Through the Tape
Tomorrow marks the beginning of a two week break for most of our teachers and students and a much-needed change of pace for our students enrolled in BU classes. I do not remember a year where the break was more welcome! You might think that things slow down in the days before a break. Not so at BUA. I’ve visited about a dozen classes over the last few weeks and have seen students and teachers working hard -- running through the tape, in runner’s parlance. But what really made an impression on me is the innovative teaching and joyful learning I’ve seen. I visited a 9th grade history class where students had written their own speeches modeled after ones they had read in Livy’s account of the Second Punic War. The exercise asked them to inhabit a historical figure and draft and deliver a speech in that person’s voice in a particular... More
HOS Blog: Partnering with Alexander Twilight Academy
On Wednesday evening, I joined a group of about two dozen students for an unusual Zoom call. Half were high schoolers from BUA, half fifth and sixth graders from Alexander Twilight Academy (ATA). It was the start of something really beautiful. Named for the first Black American to graduate college in the United States, ATA is an afternoon and summer enrichment program serving academically promising middle school students from under-resourced backgrounds, most of whom live in the City of Boston. Through afternoon programming during the school year and focused work in the summers, ATA “prepares middle school students to earn admission to and thrive at the nation’s top high schools” and makes a commitment to serve those students and families through college and beyond. For a few years, ATA has used BUA’s classroom spaces in the summer to run its programming. Now we’re taking this partnership to a new level. The meeting I... More
Head of School Holiday
Head of School Chris Kolovos shares an important announcement with the BUA community:
HOS Blog: Privilege and Left-Handed Scissors
Who knew that left-handed scissors could cut through the knotty concept of privilege? Last night, we had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Derrick Gay as part of our Parent Education Series. Dr. Gay is one of the world’s leading consultants on issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and cultural competency. A long-time independent-school educator, Dr. Gay has a particular gift for making the work relevant to parents and schools. He also frames conversations in ways that bring everybody in and allows us all to see our place in the dialogue. Dr. Gay recounted a story of a time when a college classmate, who was left handed, asked him for a pair of scissors. After Dr. Gay handed his peer a pair of (“normal”) right-handed scissors, his classmate launched into a litany of ways in which the world around us is designed for right-handed people — from doorknobs and spiral notebooks to computer mice, zippers, More
HOS Blog: Making Lemonade
Like many of you, I had the pleasure of being in the audience for our students’ virtual production of The Laramie Project this weekend. It is an important, powerful play about the aftermath of the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming, exploring homophobia and community responsibility. I was struck not only by how well our cast handled the mature material, but also with how well they translated the experience to the screen. Within a few minutes, I forgot that I was in my living room watching a teenage cast. For years, our students in Model UN have run a tournament for middle school students from around the region. Unfazed by the challenges, this year’s crew took to Zoom and ran the tournament remotely. They gave the 225 middle schoolers an engaging experience and kept an important BUA tradition going. I recently talked to one of our juniors who is organizing... More