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The Winchendon School

The best college prep school for students with significant unrealized potential

Traditions

Our Mission Statement, Core Values, History, and Traditions.
We think you’ll want to learn about them.

Why do students succeed here? We like to call it “The Winch Way” and it’s why students find success here. Simply put: a Winchendon School education is a deeply personalized, highly collaborative, character-focused, intentionally varied, interest-driven, thoughtfully inclusive, community-based, learning experience propelling each student to become a confident, adaptable, self-directed learner.

Above all, at The Winchendon School, we are guided by real-world learning. In addition, we put an emphasis on the skills students need for the quickly changing world – entrepreneurship, critical thinking, math, science, coding projects, engineering, and robotics. Not only do we emphasize subject-based skills, but we give teens the opportunity to use techniques across disciplines mirroring the lessons necessary in the real world.

Mission Statement

At The Winchendon School, we equip each student with the essential skills and habits of mind to succeed in college and beyond.

Core Values

Moreover, we call our Core Values the “Great 8.” Similarly, at Winchendon, we are committed to supporting the development of each of our students into engaged, responsible, and ethical young adults.

Collaborative | Courageous | Adaptable | Resourceful | Responsible | Resilient | Empathetic | Ethical

Our History Runs Deep- History of The Winchendon School

Founding Head of School, Lloyd H. Hatch, Sr.

Founded by Lloyd Harvey Hatch, Sr.  in 1926 near Dexter, Maine as the Wassookeag School, the School was founded on the belief  “a scholastic program fitted to the needs and aims of each student” would benefit all students. From 1951 to 1961, the School was relocated to Newport, RI, and renamed Hatch Preparatory School before finding its permanent home and name in Winchendon, Massachusetts in 1961.

Convocation/Formal Dinners

The community gathers to celebrate the opening of the year with formal dinner in Faculty Hall and an evening activity that connects to the theme of the year. Advisee groups come together to create goals for the year ahead and to get to know one another.

Elliot Harvey Mountain Day

A tradition that dates back decades. The hike helps students become oriented to our spectacular region. When you’re on the top look for the skyscrapers of Boston and Mount Washington to the north.

Family Weekend

On a weekend in mid-October, families meet with teachers and advisors, attend college counseling workshops, and cheer on the teams and compete in a Color Fun Run led by the cross-country team.

Veterans’ Outreach: Wreaths Across America

Within walking distance, the Massachusetts Veterans Memorial Cemetery is a place where our students annually honor our fallen solders. The Veteran’s Outreach Service Learning Group participates in Wreaths Across America.

Baccalaureate

An all-school celebration in a beautiful setting where we reflect on the year–and the last four years–with the graduating class, and present underclass awards and recognition as we move from the past, to the present, and then to the future of the School. A special dinner follows.

Graduation and Walking Under the Bell

When weather permits, there is no more gorgeous setting than the lawn in front of Ford Hall and the front lobby of what was once a country inn overlooking Mount Monadnock. As a bagpiper plays a march, the students process through the faculty members to their seats on the grass, where the families of the graduates and the faculty also sit. But first, the graduating class rings the bell as they walk through the bell tower.

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