The Dwight-Englewood School: Neighbor Across the Hudson
By Sybil Maimin

Up on a hill in the back of the Palisades near the Hudson River in Englewood, New Jersey, sits Dwight-Englewood, an independent day school that offers a rigorous, traditional education with a creative edge to a diverse group of students from a broad geographic area.   Founded in 1889 as the Dwight School for Girls to mainly serve wealthy local families, it grew and changed over the years and became co-educational in 1973 when it merged with the next-door Englewood School for Boys. Today, it serves approximately 1,000 students in pre K-12 who hail from northern New Jersey, Rockland and Westchester counties in New York, and even from Manhattan, although the greatest concentration, particularly in the lower grades, lives within a 10-mile radius. Operating in an educational landscape with few private schools, its main competition is good suburban public high schools. Reflecting its broad reach, it can boast of being the most ethnically diverse secondary school in its county; sixteen to eighteen students a year are products of the SEEDS program, an intensive preparatory and scholarship opportunity for bright, low-income minority youth. Its headmaster is Dr. Ralph Sloan.

Dwight-Englewood has a campus-like setting that includes playing fields, tennis courts, a Nature Center, a self-contained Lower School, various academic and administrative buildings and, about to be built, a new Campus Center with expanded performing and visual arts facilities as well as additional classrooms. Unique to the institution is the Math/Science/Technology program, which, in 2003, was given the "Leading Edge Program: Curriculum Innovation" award by the National Association of Independent Schools. In a well-developed ninth to eleventh grade course requirement, math, science, and computer technology are taught as interrelated disciplines that build upon each other and follow a logical sequence. "It is wonderful for kids who are gifted in math and science and often leads to independent work," reports Dr. Sloan, and "is good for all kids because it shows connections and applications of what they have learned." Proximity to the Hudson means the river is an outdoor classroom for the Middle School where the science program is built around trips to the waterway to explore, record, test, measure, analyze, and appreciate the importance of this ecosystem. Geology becomes alive with trips and learning on the Palisades cliffs.

About half the seniors at Dwight-Englewood choose to participate in the Focus program, which involves independent study on a topic or question of consuming interest. Subjects may involve library research or on-site experiences and collaborations. Students have explored marketing at the local Mercedes-Benz dealership, animal behavior at the Bronx Zoo, and the United States incursion into Cambodia through historical research. "This is where passions are developed," explains Dr. Sloan, "and, often, future careers shaped." At all levels, students can pursue particular interests outside the classroom. "It is a very caring place. The environment, the poor, AIDS awareness—no cause goes unorganized," reports the headmaster. One of his causes is character development, and he is especially proud of the importance of ethics education at Dwight-Englewood. Instructors in every department include an ethics component in their teachings, and students have a required course in ethics, become familiar with the vocabulary of ethics, learn to think ethically, and write a paper about an issue in ethics.#