Interviews

Welcome Sara Alt!

By Jasper Curtis ’22

Sara Alt (a.k.a. S. Alt) is a new and wonderful addition to the Hebron Academy Performing Arts department. Ms. Alt was taught to “think creatively and love learning,” which shows in her personal life as well as her teaching style. She enjoys expanding her palate in many fields, like reading and music, and by cooking dishes from around the world. Ms. Alt also loves to travel, and she has participated in many singing tours in the United States, Europe, and the British Isles, performing with the Bel Canto Chorus of Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, Skylight Opera, and the New Amsterdam Singers, to name a few. Her experience in music does not end there, as she has been teaching different fields of music across the East Coast and Midwest for twenty plus years, including: chorus, orchestra, band, general music, digital music, and music theory. Ms. Alt has loved getting to know everyone at Hebron Academy and sharing stories by the bonfire. She encourages students to explore music to its fullest and never holds us back from creation. For example, her audio recording class is full of students who prefer to work on projects as a group, as opposed to working alone. She is 100% on board with this type of group; not only is she okay with it, she happily encourages her students to create something they love. When asked about the upcoming Winter Concert, Ms. Alt gave a quote instead of an explanation: "Everything will be revealed at its proper time." Sara Alt is an encouraging and amazing addition to the faculty staff, and we can not wait to see what she, as well as the Performing Arts department, does in the future.

Interview with Ms. Southard

By Louisa Strong ’26

Ms. Southard works at Hebron as a sixth and seventh grade ecology teacher, and an eighth grade conceptual physics teacher. She has always loved science, especially because some of her most influential teachers growing up were her female science teachers. In her classes, Ms. Southard tries to spend as

much time as possible with her class working on projects and experiments because, as Ms. Southard stated, “lectures aren’t a fun way to learn, or a fun way to teach.” After studying biology at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, she went to the West African country of Ghana to teach science in a local village. There, she adopted her dog, Alfie, and soon after was forced to leave Ghana (and Alfie) because of the COVID-19 evacuation. After six months of separation, Ms. Southard and her dog were reunited. At that time, Ms. Southard was working for a Boston hospital, and thought that the constant screen time was not for her. Looking to return to her childhood state, Ms. Southard sought out a job in Maine and found Hebron.

Interview with Mr. Brouwer

By Louisa Strong ’26

Mr. Brouwer is the director of the middle school and teaches seventh grade pre-algebra. Born and raised in Potsdam, New York, Mr. Brouwer attended Potsdam College. There he studied music, which was good preparation for his time as part of the Gigolo Aunts, the band which played for the popular production Dumb and Dumber. After drumming for the Gigolo Ants from 1988 to 1994, Mr. Brouwer was “getting tired of life on the road, and it was a lot of not knowing what was coming next.” He wanted to have a stable job, and quit being the drummer for the band. After giving lessons in Boston, Mr. Brouwer was sick of the city. He and his wife moved to Hebron to be closer to family, and Mr. Brouwer drove past Hebron every day on his way to his job at Turner’s Tripp Middle School. After going to an open house in 1998, Mr. Brouwer submitted a job application and has been working for the Hebron middle school for twenty three years. Over the years, Mr. Brouwer has made sure to spread the importance of a growth mindset because, as he said, “challenge is an opportunity.”

Interview with Mr. Midd

By Robert “Cotton” Strong ’23

Mr. Steve Middleton has been working at Hebron Academy for almost twenty years. He’s been a history teacher, an advisor, and is now working as the Director of Alumni relations, after some time away during the 2020-2021 academic year. I sat down with Mr. Midd in his new office at The Red Lion to discuss his return, his new position, and most importantly: sea glass.

Question: How was your year away? That must have been a weird break to have with COVID.

Mr Midd: It was like a sabbatical, I think when I learned just how intense all the COVID—I don't necessarily want to call them rules, but I guess they were rules—how they were going to restrict teaching and campus, I was surprised. I thought that we were returning to what it was like preCOVID, but we couldn't, which is understandable. And, I just felt that the spring before had been such a challenge for me because doing Zoom teaching was so far removed from the way I was wired as a teacher.

“You know, I like running around chasing people and- and climbing on desks and doing all sorts of things.”

You know, I like running around chasing people and- and climbing on desks and doing all sorts of things. And to just sit there in front of a screen and see how many students were suffering. And there was nothing I could do about it, I just did not want to do that again. So it was a, you know, a sabbatical. Some people thought I had retired, but that was never the case. And because it happened relatively quickly, I didn't have a plan. So a life lesson is that, you know, when you're going to take a chunk of time off, have a better plan. So basically things I did- I made rugs. I started focusing on getting a cottage industry of making rugs going. I did a lot of work on our house in Brunswick, and started exercising. I started focusing on my health, and then I also started focusing on the next step in my career. I did work at a school called Harpswell Coastal Academy for the spring, and was contracted to work this year. But luckily, I ended up back here, so that's basically my last year.

Q: You’re one of the few people who has been a teacher here and come back after leaving, how does that feel?

M: Well, having been here a while, I can name a number of people who, over their careers at Hebron, have left and come back. Ms. Roy downstairs, and even Mrs. Midd worked at Colby for a year and came back five years ago. So, a lot of people do it. I was here for eighteen years before I took that year off. Maybe nineteen. You lose track. I mean, this place is a part of you. When we first came here, my kids were seven and five. So, you know, you raise your kids on a campus. Everywhere I walk around campus, there's a memory that’s personal, but also school-related. You develop a real-think intimate is the right word without, you know, thinking about other things. But it’s an intimate relationship with the school. I mean, I see my kids everywhere. I see my life all over the place, and all those memories are a lot of fun. So it feels good to be back, it really does. I mean, there's a lot of new people here, but I also have a lot of people still here that are friends of mine that I work with. And, yeah, it's great to hang out and see the school moving forward and getting fired up at lunchtime for games and weekend activities and seeing last words and all that stuff. So returning is good. It feels great. It's good. I mean, if somebody had told me in June that I'd be working at Hebron again I would have been a little skeptical. But I met with Mr. Lundblade in the archives at the end of June, and I had so much fun in there with him for a couple of hours, just seeing the history of the school. It just reminded me how much the school meant to me. And then I was thinking, okay, well, who else is on campus? So I came over here to see if Ms. Roy was here, and she was here and we had this great conversation and she started talking about how she really needed help with alumni and some of the publications.

Q: For people who don't know, the Director of Alumni Relations is a new position, right? What exactly do you do?

M: Yeah, no, the school has not had a Director of Alumni Relations for four years, and it’s completely new for me. I've been in education since 1989, but it's always been as a teacher. And, you know, this role is completely new, but I love it, because what's better than calling up, emailing and communicating with the students I've taught for the last eighteen, nineteen years and coached? It's so much fun to hear their stories and where they are in life. So basically, as the Director of Alumni relations, I am responsible for, not solely, but still, communicating with alumni through the quarterly Hebron Now newsletter. I'm responsible for setting up different receptions over the course of the year to meet with alumni all over the country. You'd be amazed how many alumni, just in the last six weeks, came to campus, and they just want to visit the school.

9 For example, in September I met with Gigi, whose father graduated in 1924. And she wanted to just see the school where her father came for one year. And I went into the archives and I found her a photo of the basketball team he was on. I showed her where he signed the registrar, she was so happy to see that. They tell great stories and are so glad to be on campus. Anyways, the big news is we just launched alumni social media pages on Instagram and Facebook, which we’ve wanted to do for a while. The Instagram has over 300 followers, because we actually took the Hebron history page and just turned it into the Hebron alumni page. But the Facebook page we just launched this morning. It’s the first time we have an official page, and already 50 people joined in the first hour. So, pretty exciting. A lot of times, alumni think it's all about money and asking for money, but there's so many things that alumni can offer. I mean, they can volunteer to help out at things like career day. They can recommend the school to other people. They can host receptions. They can do all sorts of things.

Q: Everyone one knows you like sea glass, but no one seems to know why. Do you have a reason?

M: I think for me, it's kind of the perfect storm, because I love colored glass. Like I've always loved stained glass, and I love a treasure hunt. Doesn't everybody love a treasure hunt? I love history, and believe it or not, there's a lot of history in sea glass—trying to figure out what bottles go with [what] glass and when and where it’s from. A lot of times there's embossed writing and you can actually match this tiny fragment by the couple of letters on the piece, and you can try to figure out what bottle it came from. So color, history, and treasure hunts. And I love the ocean, you know, so to take a day and walk a mile long beach is so cool. You find this color, you're thinking about history, and you’re on the beach, so again, for me, it's kind of the perfect storm. Because of those four things.

Q: Finally, do you have a favorite piece of sea glass?

M: Oh yeah. The second time I ever looked for sea glass, I found an aqua bottle stopper from the 1920s, completely worn and weathered by the sea, but somehow not chipped or broken. It was like magic. So I think that got me hooked. I just picture that bottle stopper in a much larger bottle that ended up in the ocean eight years ago, not breaking up into little pieces, and eventually ending up there on the beach waiting for me to find it, it was incredible.

Interview with Ms. Warner

By Nola Goodwin ’23

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Ms. Warner in her office to discuss writing, its importance, and the impact it has had on her life and career so far. In college at Harvard University, Ms. Warner was able to write for The Harvard Crimson, Harvard’s student-run newspaper, for three years.

Ms. Warner explained that, before becoming an official staff-writer for the newspaper, she went through a trial period of sorts. It gave her the opportunity to learn the ropes of the organization, as well as the different elements and styles of writing in news articles, as compared to the essays she had written all throughout high school. When I asked what drew her to the Crimson, Ms. Warner responded that she “was always a student that really enjoyed reading and writing and critical thought. When I got to college, I realized that I really knew how to write only one way. I was a very good essayist and that, really, is what I did in high school. I wrote a lot of essays. But when I got to college, I realized that there were a lot of different ways to write. And at The Crimson, it was a big challenge.”

Throughout our conversation, it was clear that Ms. Warner had fond memories of her time working for the newspaper, and had carried what she learned there into her professional life. I asked her what her favorite and least favorite things about the experience were, and, laughing, she replied: “The best thing about the Crimson was definitely the people and the sense of mission. We all worked in The Harvard Crimson building. We basically lived there, which was not always so great for your grades. But we had offices and did the print runs, which sounds crazy, but we did the print runs and bundled the paper ourselves. So at 3:00 A.M. in the morning, we were all in the basement, bundling papers and tying them with string. We got to see the whole process, from the germination of the idea to the editorial meetings and all the way through to the actual bundling of the papers and putting them on the curb for pick up.”

I was particularly interested in how Ms. Warner felt writing had impacted her life, and what advantages she felt her skills and experience had brought her. When asked about it, she was very quick to respond, “Writing has been one of the greatest tools I’ve had in my career. I still work on it, and still edit everything. And I rewrite, because it makes a difference. In everything I’ve done, and I’ve worked in corporate jobs and I’ve worked in schools, clarity and communication is really the north star. It is so easy to miscommunicate, and it’s so easy to be misunderstood. So, the ability to communicate clearly is something that I strive for. I’m not always successful so it’s something I still work toward.”

To wrap up our interview, I asked Ms. Warner if she had any advice for me and other students interested in pursuing journalism, or writing in general. “Of course,” she answered, “I would say get out and do it now. Get an internship on anything you can find, do any kind of writing you can find online. There are a lot of places you can do some freelance writing and start developing your work. So, just get out there and start getting things published, put together a portfolio, and just keep on going. You’ll find that you’ll start with little things and you’ll build up over a course of time. It takes time to find the topics you want to focus on, so I would say just get out there and do it.”

Student Artwork

Left page, left: Alexandra Hounsell, Marker and Colored Pencil, Untitled Left page, right: Xiangru “Aaron” Han, Ink, Untitled Right page, top to bottom: Sean Gleason, Digital Art, “The Hive,” Rica Wong, Digital Art, “Water Sprite,” Zhen Jiang, Acrylic, Untitled