Tabor Academy
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Tabor Academy is a four-year independent preparatory school located in Marion, Massachusetts.
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[edit] History
Tabor was founded in 1876 as a school for children from Marion by a bequest in the will of Elizabeth Taber, a wealthy widow from the town. She didn't wish to name the school after her (last name spelled "Taber", so she named it after Mt. Tabor).Tabor was reorganized in 1916 as an independent secondary school by Headmaster Walter H. Lillard. Tabor was until the late 1940's a maritime military style school where uniformed "cadets" performed morning and evening drill amongst other military regimen daily. It then became a Naval Honor School with occasional military marching. Two other headmasters followed Lillard, James E. Wickenden and Peter M. Webster. The headmaster as of 1989 is Jay S. Stroud.
[edit] Academics
The Tabor campus in the small town of Marion stretches along a half mile of Sippican Harbor on Buzzards Bay leading to the Atlantic. Tabor offers a rigorous academic program that provides a solid foundation for study at competitive colleges. For a school of its size, the curriculum contains an especially broad spectrum of courses, from introductory levels to honors and 21 AP courses to highly sophisticated opportunities for independent work. Tabor offers classes in the traditional liberal arts fields such as the humanities, math and the sciences but also unusual offerings for a secondary school such as Greek, archeology, Chinese Language, lighting design and numerous nautical and marine science courses in the school's brand-new one-of-a-kind waterfront Marine Science building (opened for the first time for classes in September, 2005, this building was the winner of several architectural awards).
Tabor utilizes its waterfront location in a variety of ways. It is one of the few secondary schools in the United States to offer extensive programs in nautical science and oceanology. The school also owns Tabor Boy, a 98 foot Dutch Pilot Schooner, which is a certified school sailing vessel. Tabor Boy has logged tens of thousands of miles with her crews of Tabor students, from nearby Buzzards Bay to the Caribbean.
[edit] Athletics
Tabor fields 55 different teams in 23 interscholastic sports and another 15 instructional programs. The school has a large Athletic Center, which includes an indoor hockey rink and a fitness center. Tabor's men's ice hockey team, 3 time New England Champions, has produced over 2 dozen NCAA Division 1 and NHL caliber players over the last 20 years. Tabor also has extensive waterfront facilities, including the 92' schooner S.S.V. Tabor Boy. The Tabor sailing team is consistently strong, having won the Inter-Scholastic Sailing Association New England Schools Sailing Association (NESSA) Team Racing championship several times in the early 2000s. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the boy's and girl's basketball teams were consistently the champions or runners-up in Class B of the New England Preparatory School Athletic Conference.
[edit] Student life
Tabor is primarily a boarding school that enrolls approximately 490 students. About 70 percent of those students live in dormitories on campus while the remaining 30 percent are day students who live at home and commute to the school.
