The Winsor School: Empowering Girls for more than a Century

The Winsor School in Boston, Massachusetts is an independent all-girl day school that hopes to equip and prepare young women to make valuable contributions to the world.  Founded in 1886 by Miss Mary Pickard Winsor, The Winsor School has always been ahead of its time in recognizing the valuable contributions of women and offering them formal education.

Vision and Mission

Miss Mary Pickard Winsor was a true visionary.  She dreamed of educating women in an effort to create individuals who were “competent, responsible and generous-minded,” according to The Winsor School website.  To that end, Winsor began teaching a small group of girls from her home in 1886.  Many of the girls Winsor instructed went on to attend universities.

In 1910, a group of parents set out to build an all-girls school with Winsor serving as their inspiration.  The mission of the school was clear from the very start: to prepare women to be self-supporting, responsible members of the community.  Furthermore, The Winsor School hopes to prepare women to be their best selves and to lead lives of purpose.  With these goals in mind, The Winsor School has attracted some of the nation’s most talented educators and enrolls approximately 430 culturally and ethnically diverse ambitious young girls in the grades 5-12.

Campus

Located on a modest seven acres, The Winsor School is fortuitously situated near some of the nation’s leading institutions including, Wheelock Colleges and the Harvard Medical School, and historical Boston attractions including, the State House, the African American Meeting House and Museum of Fine Arts.

The Winsor School makes excellent use of their space providing students with a library, multiple science laboratories, multimedia centers, an assembly hall, computer labs and even a recording studio.  Students of The Winsor School may passionately pursue their area of interest, whether it be arts or athletics and use all the resources available to them, both on – campus and off.

Programs

The Winsor School website describes its curriculum as “rich and challenging,” and asserts that the curriculum is “a designed continuum of developmentally appropriate learning experiences across departments.”  Departments include: English, Fine Arts, History, Mathematics, Physical Education, Health and Wellness, Science and World Languages.  Teachers work in tandem to ensure student success and to foster learning and growth.

The Winsor School has become nationally recognized for its excellence in curriculum development and attributes much of its success to its principle of “connected curriculum,” meaning, instructors work with one another to ensure that coursework is consistent and blends well from one classroom to another.  Students are regularly given opportunities to demonstrate their abilities and learn across multiple disciplines.

Additionally, The Winsor School is committed to global diversity regularly creating opportunities for their students to engage in cross-cultural experiences.  Furthermore, The Winsor School believes that learning is personal and unique.  Students are encouraged to think and learn independently in order to make sense of new systems and processes and to gain a unique form of self-expression.

Rachel Friis Stettler is The Winsor School’s seventh Head of School.  Stettler believes in empowering women through education and is proud of her role in helping Winsor women lead lives of purpose.  Stettler is quoted on the school website as saying, “what matters is the kind of women our students will become and that their futures are open to boundless possibilities.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrt-GxRpRd8

To learn more about The Winsor School visit the website. You may also follow the school on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

[contact-form-7 id=”4″ title=”Contact form 1″]