TaborTalk Blog

Hey guys! I hope everyone is having a great summer vacation, and is ready to start out a great new school year.

I’m Eari Nakano ‘20 - a proctor at one of the dorms at Tabor. I want to say welcome to the new students and briefly introduce “dorm life” as well as the role of proctors.

Day 1-Thursday, March 14, 2019

We are tired! We left Marion this morning at 5:00am and it is now 10:00pm. In between those two times, we all made our flights, we lost a bat along the way, but was retrieved and handed to us just as we were pulling out of Orlando Int'l Airport. We drove for 30 minutes, stopped at Chipotle/Chik-Fil-A and had lunch, drove the remaining hour, arrived at 3:00pm, checked into our rooms, practiced at 4:00pm, had boxed dinners and changed into our game uniforms at 6:00pm, played our first game at 7:00pm in Holman Stadium vs. Loomis Chaffee School, returned to our rooms at 9:30pm, greeted by Mr. Heaslip with 10 pizzas...

Recently Rick DaSilva ’89, Associate Director of the Center for International Students, along with faculty Wes and MacKenzie Chaput, Kelly and Nate Meleo ’95, and Bert Nascimento traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark with Tabor juniors and seniors for a week of home stays, site seeing, and classroom learning at Rysensteen Gymnasium.

Each day Rick prompted the students with questions about their visit to Denmark and here are some of their thoughts:

Two groups of students will spend their March break in San Salvador, Bahamas, snorkeling and enjoying the warm waters and sunshine, and working very hard! They are creating Tabor Academy’s first coral reef nursery. This year’s REEF trip will catalog the species of coral in the area, do some genetic testing to find disease-resistant species, and then take fragments from these healthy corals to grow in our nursery on PVC “trees” anchored to the seabed. When we return next year, we will hope to “plant” these more mature corals in the seabed, rebuilding an area of damaged reef.

^{Excerpts from a Chapel Talk by Faye Parker ’19}

It’s winter break of Junior year, I’m home from Tabor and my siblings are home from college, and the local high school’s basketball team, which both my sister Ella and I had played on, had a game.

Imagine a great round community table. This table is the focal point for all school gatherings, looking a little closer at the grain, it reveals century old oak with years of history.

On October 31, Mr. Whitworth, an amazing photographer, photo teacher, and mentor presented me with a really interesting opportunity.

 Early Decision II. What makes it unique and sets it apart from other college application deadlines? First, there are just under 100 colleges that offer ED II as an option. Second, the ED II deadline for the majority of these colleges is in early to mid-January, giving students the gift of time -- time to visit colleges, to improve test scores, and to make decisions. In this scenario, a student will likely be applying to an ED II college, along with filing their regular decision applications. The difference is that students applying ED II will hear back from their ED II college in early to mid-February as opposed to March. Remember though, ED II is like its big sister ED I in that the language around commitment to the ED II school is the same -- ED II is binding and requires a non-refundable deposit in short order should a student be accepted. Besides students who simply need a couple of extra months to pull necessary application materials together, others may apply ED II if they have been deferred or denied admission to their top choice school and as a result are strongly committed to attending an ED II school as their next best option.

Everything we do at Tabor moves us closer to our mission, and both a lifelong love of learning and care for others and committed citizenship were pursued with gusto by our faculty this summer.

As we finalize preparations for starting school, it is always nice to celebrate the birthday of our founder, Elizabeth Taber.

The definition of a team is a group of people or players who come together to achieve a common goal. As the fall season comes to an end and a new winter season begins, the Tabor Academy boys’ varsity hockey team will be looking to make a lasting impact on New England prep school hockey. After graduating 13 seniors last year, there are plenty of new faces that will be wearing a Seawolf jersey this year. As a very new and young team, there is a significant amount of adversity the squad will need to overcome as a team, the key phrase being ‘as a team.’ One of the most essential parts of a team is the commitment to the common goal. In other words, one must be able to overlook personal statistics, achievements, and accolades and concentrate all focus towards the betterment of the team. This is a key piece in being an effective leader, and one certainly does not need a C on their jersey in order to do this.

I have been involved in Scouting since first grade, when I first joined as a Tiger Cub. While I have learned countless things through my experience that are integral parts of my personality, the most important thing that Scouting has taught me is a love of the environment. It only makes sense, then, that my Eagle Scout project was based heavily on an environmental focus in my hometown of Jamestown, RI – installing a water collection system on a greenhouse at a local farm, helping to conserve a vital resource on an island community. This project qualified me for not only the rank of Eagle Scout, but also for the Hornaday Conservation Award – a decoration for achievement in environmental stewardship and protection. The quest for these two recognitions has been a large part of my adolescence, and I hope to help those younger than me to find the same passion.