Dana Hall School

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Dana Hall School
Amor Caritas
Established 1881
School type Private
Religious affiliation None
Headmistress Blair Jenkins
Location Wellesley, MA, USA
Campus suburban
Enrollment 450
Athletics EIL member
Color(s) Blue and white
Mascot Dragon
Homepage www.danahall.org

Dana Hall School is an all girls school located in Wellesley, Massachusetts. The school was founded in 1881 by Henry F. Durant and Charles P. Dana. The school was originally meant to feed into Wellesley College located only a few blocks away. It is now made up of both a middle school and a high school housed in separate buildings on campus. In recent years, several new buildings have been built on campus. The Shipley Athletic Center boasts a student lounge, double gymnasium, work out room, squash courts, dance studio, fencing studio, and pool. Another new building is the Helen Temple Cooke Library. The oldest building on campus is now Bardwell, the largest theater. It is largly assumed that the next construction project on campus will be a much needed restoration of Bardwell. Mission Statement: "Dana Hall School is committed to fostering excellence in academics, the arts, and athletics within a vibrant, caring community. With emphasis on integrity, leadership, diversity, and service as well as on respect for self and others, Dana Hall provides its students with a unique opportunity to prepare themselves for the challenges and choices they will face as women and citizens of the world." The administration of Dana Hall is very concerned with the mental and physical well being if its students.

The high school is made up of roughly fifty percent boarding students and fifty percent day students. the middle school only has day students. The high school has roughly 80 students in each grade, while the middle school has 45 students each in the seventh and eighth grades and 30 in the sixth. Admissions has been known to miscalculate, the class of 2006 contained 39 sixth graders during the 1999-2000 school year.

The girls at Dana Hall are some of the most social, according to Boston magazine. One girl says that even though she is learning a lot, she is making as many friends as she is doing math problems. Another says that she learned more in her first week at Dana Hall than she had learned in all of her academic experience put together. In the experience of one alumna the girls at Dana are divided between those who are very social and those who manage to finish all the assigned work.

Academics: Dana Hall requires high school students to take four years of English classes, at least three years of math, and combination of five classes in social studies and sciences which must include two lab sciences, U.S. history and a non-western area study (this however does include Russian Studies). The school also requires a language through the third year level and one performing arts and one visual arts class. Students either take a computer fundamentals class or take a test to prove basic computer skills. some form of physical education is required in every trimester but the options include yoga and swing dancing as well as competitive sports teams.

Traditions: Dana Hall is also known for its traditions, some of which are secret to the outside world. some traditions include Step-Sing, Senior-Sophomore, Revels, Cabaret, and midwinter tradition. Traditions are a large part of life at Dana Hall and are some of the things many alumna remember most fondly about their years at Dana. many alumna save souvenirs from the traditions, many years later these sometimes end up in the school's archive. Other traditions such as the spade and the senior tree have largely died out.

In 2006 Dana Hall celebrated its 125th year, the year was marked by many special activities and retuning alumnae.

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