.jpg "Junior Boarding")
Applewild nurtures a child’s love of music and art while giving students the opportunity to grow toward sophisticated artistic expression. Art, band, chorus, and drama are just as essential to an Applewild education as math, social studies, science, and language arts. We recognize that the arts are an integral part of every child’s emotional and intellectual development, so we’ve created spaces where our students have the opportunity to actively create and express themselves.
- Starting in kindergarten, our students participate in theater productions in our professionally equipped theater. Students learn about acting techniques, playwriting, and set design as well as practicing the more general skills of memorization and comfort in public expression.
- All of our students have important roles in our plays and all have the opportunity to take on lead roles as early as the 3rd grade, when students lead their younger peers in the K–3 play.
- Our 4th and 5th grade students all perform in a production geared towards their expanding abilities to perform.
- Once they reach the sixth grade, all students may audition for our annual Middle School Play. While a variety of genres of drama are chosen, we love to laugh so comedic plays are often our preferred choice!
These early experiences in drama place all of our students on a trajectory for ease in public communication, so that by the time they reach the eighth grade, they are ready to craft and deliver their own speeches in front of the entire school in our annual Eleanor Crow Public Speaking Competition.
ArtsWhen C. T. Crocker III donated his family home to start Applewild in 1957, he imagined “a school full of voices, of happiness, of music.” More than 60 years later, Applewild students still love making music.
- Students enjoy singing and Orff instruments in the early grades.
- In fourth grade, students join the recorder band.
- In fifth grade, each student chooses a musical instrument to play in our symphonic band.
- Our sixth through ninth graders have the opportunity to join our renowned Jazz Band if they are passionate about instrumental music.
Students also have the opportunity to continue their musical experience by creating in-school clubs around their musical interests. We have had clubs from ukulele to acapella to musical composition.
ArtsOur art teachers who are all active in the craft themselves are well equipped to instruct students in technique, but art at Applewild always has an element of personal creativity. As part of our visual arts curriculum, students learn about and engage in painting, drawing, printmaking, collage, ceramics, three-dimensional construction, and more. We want our students to understand their own process as artists, creators, and lifelong learners.
In art, like everything at Applewild, interested students have the opportunity to delve deeper. Students in grades six through nine may pursue their artistic passions through our robust club program in addition to traditional art classes.
ArtsArts Curriculum
Our arts curriculum includes studies of theory and history, but at its core, the curriculum is about doing and making. Hands-on and active creativity is one of the many ways that we keep the middle school years engaging for our students. And it doesn’t end in art class: the arts are often incorporated into our academic classes and broader school life as well. With our emphasis on the arts in and out of the classroom, we encourage our middle school students to develop imaginative and original approaches to problems and to express their ideas in creative ways. It’s no surprise that our students often go on to be leaders in the arts at their secondary schools and creative thinkers and problem-solvers in everyday life.
Meet our Team
The Arts Department faculty are experts in their fields and artists themselves. Their passion for the art community opens doors for our students, whether it be the opportunity to host our own local student art show or present a select instrumental student group at local events. Our dedicated faculty go above and beyond to nurture the unique talent that they see in each and every Applewild student.
After receiving her Masters degrees in both education as well as visual arts from the University of New England, Sara Sanford has dedicated her forty year career to being an educator. She has been an elementary homeroom teacher, an english teacher as well as an art instructor grades Kindergarten-12. She is a certified Responsive Classroom teacher. She has been a dorm parent and taught in both private and public school settings all over New England. When she isn’t working in the studio at school, she is writing or painting in her studio at home, or hiking and spending time with her husband Conrad, her 6 adult children and her dog Nutmeg.
Mr. Bonanno graduated from The Boston Conservatory of Music with a Bachelor’s in Applied Performance on Clarinet. He has been a dedicated music educator for over 30 years. Mr. Bonanno also teaches at Groton Hill Music Center and serves as the choir director at St. Bernard Church. Mr. Bonanno gives his students the tools they need not only to become good musicians but also the strategies they will need in core academics, socially and emotionally. Instrumental music is critical to building the children’s mind, body, and soul. Mr. Bonanno is also a freelance woodwind player in the Boston area. He has performed with various entertainers, including The Temptations, Four Tops, Frankie Valli, Johnny Mathis, Gladys Knight, Wayne Newton, Ben Vereen and also appeared with the New York Pops.
Sarah Powell is an art teacher and dorm parent here at Applewild. Prior to teaching, she received her bachelor’s degree in studio art at Willamette University. She is particularly interested in printmaking, painting, and textile art. She loves spending time in nature, and discovered her passion for teaching while working as an outdoor educator at YMCA Camp Willson in Ohio. Another interest of hers is traveling. She spent the past two years working as an assistant English teacher at a local elementary and middle school in Yamanashi, Japan. Sarah is so excited to finally combine her love of art and teaching.
Erin joined the Applewild Devens campus in 2018 bringing with her 15 years of experience working with children aged 3-12 and a bachelor's degree from Franklin Pierce College. She embraces the joy in children's passion for discovery and creating as she has focused on preschool and elementary art education for the past four years. She loves spending time outdoors with her ten year old daughter, husband and dog when she's not up-cycling found items into art.
.png)
