RESIDENTIAL LIFE Boarding at Bement: Overview & Philosophy Boarding at Bement is much more than living at school. Located in Historic Deerfield and the beautiful Connecticut River Valley, just minutes away from the famed Five College area that includes Smith College and Amherst College, The Bement School connects our boarding students to unique local and regional resources in a transformative residential life curriculum. Our boarding experience is designed to prepare students for seamless transition to and successful experience in secondary school. Boarding students leverage the extensive time they spend and care they receive from teachers and dorm parents to enhance their academic progress, better understand their strengths and weaknesses, and become more responsible and involved citizens of the Bement community. Joining Bement’s residential community at a pivotal age, students gain an understanding of the wider world, cultivate respect, compassion, resilience and integrity, and learn both collaboration and independence. Our boarding community is immersed in, and a vital part of, our school population, resulting in deep, lifelong friendships between our day students and our boarding students. We offer a warm, nurturing, and grounded dorm environment. Each dormitory feels like a real home as students and dorm parents live, study, and eat meals together, creating strong bonds and a sense of shared responsibility. Bement encourages students to feel ownership of their living space, where they are able to, among other things, cook and bake together in their full kitchens, study in their rooms, organize activities in the common room, and play with dorm parents’ children and pets. Just as they would at home, students help care for their dorms with daily and weekly chores and attend dorm meetings. Each weekend, boarding students utilize the full campus, playing sports on our fields, reading in the library, and practicing instruments in our arts classrooms. We strike a balance between relaxing, studying, and exploring our location in small-group outings, like biking, hiking, visiting a museum, attending a concert, dining out, skiing, or taking a day-trip to Boston. Day students often join these excursions or invite boarding students to their local homes.
Allowance and Boarding Student Charges There are two options for a student to receive a weekly allowance which can be used for items such as dorm snacks, hygiene items, school supplies, and small personal purchases. We encourage families to secure a debit or credit card that the student would bring to campus with them in September and use for our trips to the store and any additional purchases for sporting goods, clothes, additional supplies, etc. If this is possible, parents will establish guidelines for its use with their child, monitor spending and purchases, and add more money to a debit card as needed. The card can be kept in 72 | Bement.org
