December 2022

Creating Beauty

At Thomas MacLaren School, students undertake a significant study in the fine arts, which includes thirteen years of music, two years of drama, and a deep immersion in studio art. This month, students showcased their capabilities in creating beauty through performance, painting and drawing. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, —that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know," Keats famously wrote. In the fine arts, students found truth in the beauty they created and explored the breadth and depth of their imaginations. 

Winter Fine Arts Night has been a well-loved tradition since Thomas MacLaren School's beginning. As each orchestra came to life with music, the audience experienced a sense of wonder and beauty. We were delighted to see how well students performed and the joy both music and poetry recitations brought to the audience.

“You were invited into this conversation not because you are string prodigies, but because you are human beings. And in this conversation you grew to be more fully human. That is the work of a lifetime, and it is your work.”

—Melissa Musick Nussbaum

Upper School seniors performed the final two plays of the year: The Mistakes of the Night by Oliver Goldsmith and The School for Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Seniors explored dramatic storytelling and left the audiences roaring with laughter. While seniors performed comedies, sixth grade boys performed Jean Valjean by Victor Hugo. They skillfully displayed the earnestness of their characters and brought to life the story of an ex-convict's moral redemption.

Performers from The Mistakes of the Night charm

the audience with the comedy of manners.

The School for Scandal brings physical comedy to the stage.

The performers of Jean Valjean threw themselves

wholeheartedly into the production.

Students are fully immersed in studio art throughout their time at Thomas MacLaren School. This semester, second grade students explored drawing skills by applying a variety of lines and textures within animal outlines. Students then draw self-portraits at several stages of the studio art program. By the time they are seniors, students will not only see how their artistic skills have grown but come to view themselves as lifelong learners.

Second grade creates beauty by drawing shapes and animals.

Fifth grade creates self-portraits.

Seniors paint Master Copy paintings in acrylic.

Our Vision

We believe all students should be immersed in the best our tradition has to offer. We believe all students can be active and useful participants in the ongoing and enduring conversation that is a vibrant civilization. We believe all students can be formed in a habitual vision of greatness that makes lifelong learners of the doctor and the mechanic, the homemaker and the professor. Thomas MacLaren School strives to build a lasting community of learners in which each student is the agent of his or her education.



Our Mission

From the seminar to the science lab, from the music room to the playing field, we begin with the conviction that all human beings can know truth, create beauty and practice goodness. To that end, we expect students to develop basic tools of learning, ordered basic knowledge, moral seriousness, breadth and depth of imagination, artistic ability and sensitivity, and a sense of wonder.

We believe all students can be active and useful participants in the ongoing and enduring conversation that is a vibrant civilization. Jacques Maritain, the French philosopher, described education as a human awakening. The goal of Thomas MacLaren School is to develop young men and women who are fully human and fully awake to the world.