Independent School Partners

As a boys' boarding school, our programs are designed specifically to help young men focus on their development at a time in life when distractions abound. Although numerous opportunities exist for our students to interact with girls from Miss Porter's, Ethel Walker's and other nearby schools, boys are free to live and learn in our structured, supportive environment. In an all-boys context, our students embrace scholastic challenges and compete in the athletic arena while feeling safe exploring the arts, experimenting with poetry, expressing school spirit, and just being themselves.

Avon's academic program is anchored in the liberal arts and we require our students to explore fully the major disciplines in order to prepare for the intellectual rigor of college. The diversity of our student body is impressive, with students from some 30 states and over a dozen foreign countries. The rich array of cultures coexisting within our small community is charged with significant learning opportunities. The rapport that exists between faculty and students is exceptional, and the bonds developed among our students are lasting.

Canterbury School

Founded in 1915 and still guided by lay Roman Catholics, Canterbury is a college preparatory, coeducational boarding and day school for students in grades 9-12. The School prides itself on creating a community based on Catholic values, where students and faculty forge lasting bonds and every student experiences a broad challenging program in a small school setting. The School’s educational environment fosters academic rigor, athletic development, artistic enrichment and spiritual growth.

With its rigorous and humane approach to students, both in and out of the classroom, Canterbury's program inculcates vital intellectual and ethical habits of mind. The School sees all students as individuals, supports them as necessary, stretches them as appropriate, and inspires them to become moral leaders in a secular world.

Loomis Chaffee School

The Loomis Chaffee School is a renowned New England boarding school located on a 300-acre campus in Windsor, Connecticut. Chartered in 1874 by five siblings whose children all died tragically and who then selflessly determined to found a school as a gift to the children of others, Loomis Chaffee provides a superb education for boys and girls regardless of religious or political beliefs, national origin or financial resources.

Facts and figures, though, fail to capture the real spirit of this special secondary school. Like the two rivers at whose confluence the school is perched, Loomis Chaffee has a dual mission: to inspire in its students a commitment to both “the best self and the common good.”  Its excellent academic, athletic, artistic and social programs combine to cultivate the spirit, mind and body of each individual, firm in its attachment to the founders’ guiding principles that social equality trumps social standing, fairness conquers favoritism, academic and physical rigor invigorate and inspire, and a caring and trusting community breeds in the individual an abiding appreciation for the importance — and the means — of contributing to the needs of the community. In the wake of their personal tragedy, the Loomis family members inspired and compelled future generations in the very best of directions. Their story resonates in a remarkably contemporary, even timeless, way.