Oakcrest School

Fostering Resilience in Our Daughters

History teacher Ginny Boles speaks with Theology teacher Mary Ann Messenger and former Oakcrest Director of Mentoring Kate Hadley about how to cultivate resilience in our daughters. They chat about how parents can model resilience for their children, how to walk the fine line between empathy and helping your child put things in perspective, and much more. 

Coffee with the Head of School: Your Daughter and Summer

Head of School Emerita Dr. Mary T. Ortiz discusses the importance of making the most of the summer months and gives suggestions for how parents can help their daughters have a happy, fruitful, and fulfilling summer. 

Coffee with the Head of School: Forgiveness

Head of School Emerita Dr. Mary T. Ortiz reflects on forgiveness—what it is, why it’s important, and how we can practice it in our everyday lives. 

7th Annual O’Donovan Humanities Lecture—Ancient and Modern Grief: Presence and Absence

A pair of scholars, father and daughter, look at grief from two angles. The daughter, a classics scholar, takes up an ancient story of grief and anger from Homer’s Iliad. The father, a priest and theologian in the Episcopal church, ponders the loss of his wife at the end of a struggle with brain disease. Both find tension between absence and presence. Achilles undertakes many futile efforts to “restore” his broken life after he loses Patroklos, and the father finds another Presence precisely in the midst of his loss.

January 8, 2022 Mary Rice Hasson Presentation

Attorney and policy expert Mary Rice Hasson talks about the rapid increase in the promotion of gender ideology in movies, social media, and even in the medical community. With a compassionate and realistic approach she shares the understanding of the truth about the human person and urges us to take up our responsibility as parents to study the issue so as to provide guidance to our children. 

How to Help Your Daughter Form Her Moral Imagination Through Good Books

English teacher Stephanie Passero talks about why good literature is so crucial in forming our daughters’ hearts and minds and how to encourage in them a love for reading good books.  

How the Oakcrest Grade Level Experiences Can Be a Resource for Fathers

Dean of Students Meghan Hadley Oakcrest Class of 2006 shares how Grade Level Experiences form students throughout their journey from Middle School to graduation. Oakie dad Philip O’Beirne shares examples from his own experience of how to utilize elements of Oakcrest’s educational vision to promote curiosity, virtue, and wonder in the development of your daughters. 

Our Academic Program

Middle School Director Cecilia Escobar, Upper School Director Christine Nussio, and Director of Academic Advising Catherine Courtney speak about the beauty of an Oakcrest education. They take a look at the big picture of our rich liberal arts curriculum, explaining what we teach, why we teach it, and how it follows the stages of intellectual development. 

O'Donovan Humanities Lecture: Beauty, Piety and Fun in Medieval Literature

Dr. Evelyn Birge Vitz, Professor Emerita of French Literature, Thought and Culture at NYU, takes listeners on an exciting journey through seven of her favorite works of medieval literature. She explores some of the fascinating history and themes in these great and appealing Catholic works from the Middle Ages. 

Coffee with the Head of School: Finishing the School Year Well

Head of School Emerita Dr. Mary T. Ortiz considers ways that families can finish the school year well, highlighting the important role of parent leadership along the way.