Alumni Testimonials

“I live in Los Angeles where I write for film and television. I’ve developed projects for film and television with, among others, Universal Cable Productions, Berlanti Productions, and CBS TV Studios. Nothing’s been produced yet - the top of the funnel is very wide in this business and what comes out at the bottom is relatively small - but it’s a fun living.

“Touchstone, to take the broadest view, gave me permission to be an individual (read: weirdo… in the best way). That individuality gets stifled for a pubescent period of time while you’re busy trying to fit in, only to later realize the most dynamic adults - and people doing meaningful work in any profession - are also individuals (read: weirdos) in the best way. There was such a nurturing of creativity at Touchstone, so few constraints placed on self-expression, and such a dazzlingly smart, warm group of teachers proffering this environment… teachers I later came to understand were pioneers in their field, especially in the 80s and 90s, but of course I didn’t know that at the time. It’s a remarkable gift to have been given such a solid foundation for the person I grew up to be, and I’m so grateful for having spent my formative years in such a special place.”

“I’ve been living and working in New York City for over twelve years. I worked six years in audio branding for a commercial music company and then transitioned into qualitative market research. I get to talk face-to-face with consumers around the country and around the world (last year, a project took me to South Korea!) to find out what is important to them and what their preferences and opinions are when it comes to specific types of food and beverage or personal care products. It's a fascinating job that draws on my loves of design, branding, and analytical and creative thinking.

“I have many great memories from my time at Touchstone, from the Children’s Heritage Festival and building the playground to a trip to the Heifer Project with Marian’s class and Mimi Night in Polly’s class. One of my favorite memories is of the multiple trips we took to Sturbridge Village in Susan’s class. We were each assigned a character from the time period. (I think mine was named Abigail.) We had to create a portrait of our character in the classroom as preparation for the trips. Then we took part in a different activity on each visit. The one activity that stands out is making our own fresh peppermint tea. It was one of my first exposures to herb tea, and I was struck by how pungent and wonderful the peppermint smelled. To this day it is one of my favorite scents, evoking the memory of sitting around a rough-hewn wooden table at Sturbridge Village. It seems as if there was also a fire blazing in the background and snow on the ground outside; if there wasn’t, there should have been.

“Touchstone taught me to be an independent thinker and encouraged me to pursue my passions. It also taught me to solve problems independently as well as to work with teams. Learning all these things at an early age has had a profound impact on learning throughout my life. I continue to be curious, seek out information, and beat my own path through the world. Touchstone sparked my sense of exploration and thirst for knowledge, and it taught me that experimentation is one of the best ways to reach a well-informed conclusion. Touchstone is also where I began to develop my art and writing skills. Because we were always allowed to choose our own topics for reports and essays, I was able to delve into topics that truly interested me, yet I was still challenged with each new area of study.

“My education at Touchstone helped me to think differently and look for multiple ways to approach problems and find solutions. This has been useful in every part of my life. Touchstone always allowed me to be true to myself and embrace my talents and strengths; these basic lessons enrich my life and will never leave me.”

Although there were definitely things I needed to adjust to (grades! using teachers’ last names! block scheduling!) I just showed up ready to soak up any knowledge I could get. Later, I went on to become a teacher myself and realized that TCS had shown me that every student learns in vastly different ways. I remember so many of my TCS classmates and when I reflect on them now I realize just how unique we all were in the classroom. I give so much credit to our teachers, all of whom I loved.

“I spent about ten years teaching math, first at my old high school in Massachusetts and then at a charter school in Denver. Both were incredible and formative experiences for me. Since leaving the classroom I’ve moved around the country for my husband’s job. We’ve lived in 6 states all over the country in the last 6 years. We currently live in Chicago where I spend my time tutoring, hanging out with my dogs and going to Cubs games. I’m still a Red Sox fan at heart, though.😉”

“I have spent the last 14 years coaching basketball and baseball on the scholastic, intercollegiate, and professional levels at such institutions as Wentworth, WPI, Rhode Island College, and Green Mountain College. I had previous stops as the coach at Blackstone Valley Tech and as the head coach and director of player personnel for the Worcester 78s of the American Basketball Association. Currently, I’m the head baseball coach at Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill.  

“TCS was challenging for me in many ways and I was far from what you’d call a central-casting Touchstone kid. As you can tell by my choice of profession, I am wired to be very competitive and that didn’t always jibe with the mission of the school. However, teachers like Marian Hazzard and Doris Matthews were able to help me channel my high-strung energy very productively. By the time I returned to public school for grades 6-12 I did so with a different viewpoint and as a tremendously strong reader and critical thinker, which was more than worth the battles over keeping score in gym class! I then went on to play scholarship level college baseball at Franklin Pierce and work for the men’s basketball program at the university of Akron. 

“I was able to make lifelong friends at Touchstone and they are among my very best friends to this day.” 

I remember being scared to move to public school, to make new friends and experience a very new way of being educated.  I started at Hopkinton’s Elmwood School for 6th grade and graduated from Hopkinton High School in 1994.  Although the transition was tough at first (I remember distinctly getting reprimanded for not drawing 1” margins on my essay and properly placing my name in the upper right hand corner of my page) I quickly adapted and found that I was right on track with my academic preparation, if a little behind on traditional rules and procedures. 

“After Hopkinton, I went to Trinity College in Hartford, CT for my bachelor’s degree and then on to Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy for my masters degree.  I now work as the Director of the Whole Child Connection at Children’s Institute in Rochester, NY.  

“It is hard to overstate the impact of Touchstone on my life.  Although I was only there for 4 years (2nd-5th grade), it profoundly shaped who I am and how I think about learning.  As a direct result of attending Touchstone, my career has been dedicated to education – but not to traditional academic learning. Rather, I have spent the past 15 years working with schools and after-school professionals on how to integrate social and emotional learning and positive youth development into the classroom.  Put another way, I have dedicated my career to helping other kids have the same experience I had when I was at Touchstone. 

“In no particular order, my favorite memories of my time at Touchstone include:

• Singing Yellow Submarine and Blowing in the Wind during music class with Ginny 
• Hiding out at Betty Crocker Rock during recess
• Writing my own book about a girl doing an Outward Bound “solo” on an island in Maine
• Visiting my 4th and 5th grade teacher Chris Lindeman at her home in Boston after my parents won a day with her at the Touchstone auction. We made homemade peanut butter and got ice cream.” 

Touchstone was my second home. My parents, Marian and Ed Hazzard, were deeply involved in the school’s creation and development, so I spent countless extra hours in the building and with the other people who worked to keep the school going in its first years. Leaving Touchstone felt tragic.

“I went to Bancroft School for sixth grade. The adjustment to tests, homework, and big classes took some time. I stayed at Bancroft through tenth grade and then went to Concord Carlisle High School for my junior and senior years. I had friends and did well academically, though I always felt that part of my heart was still back at Touchstone. That was where I was really ‘from’ and my friends from that time were the ones who knew the ‘real me.’

“I attended Haverford College, outside of Philadelphia, and majored in cultural anthropology. For my senior thesis I did ‘fieldwork’ in a bilingual classroom in the city. My favorite classes were in education, but I did not want to be a teacher (spoiler alert: I am now a teacher). I am an introvert and the idea of speaking in front of a class all day made my palms sweat. After college I went to a unique graduate program called the Audubon Expedition Institute. We lived outdoors, traveled in a customized school bus, and learned about ecology, experiential education, and communal living. I also got an elementary teaching certification and started a job as a kindergarten teacher at a small private school in Arlington, MA. As it turned out, I liked teaching! Talking to a class of kindergarteners was completely different than talking to a group of grownups.

“I got married, moved to Minnesota while my husband got his medical training, had two sons, and moved to Cleveland, where I now reside. I stayed home with my sons until the younger one was in full-day kindergarten, at which point I started working at their school as an assistant Montessori teacher. After five years, I went back to school and got my Montessori lead teacher certification for 3-6-year-olds. I became the lead teacher of the class I had been assisting, and will be completing my first year of that job in June. 

“With my current job, I feel that I have come full circle. When I was looking for a school for my older son, I knew that I wanted to find a place where he would feel the way I felt at Touchstone. When I visited the school we chose, and where I now work, I knew that was it. There was original, child-made artwork on the walls. The talk was about making kids feel safe and comfortable so that they could be free to learn at their own pace. As I delved deeper into Montessori pedagogy, that focus became even stronger. 

“I attended Touchstone for a small fraction of my school years, and yet I have measured all of them against those four.”

After graduating I had an internship at the Smithsonian and I just completed a position writing a historical research paper for the National Park Service. 

“In the time I was not doing homework, I really enjoyed working on the student newspaper, getting involved with the history department, and exploring the freezing outdoors. Now I live in Cambridge and am looking for jobs in museum work or with a non-profit. I continue to explore the outdoors, while also crafting and fixing up anything I can find around the house that seems like a good project. 

“Now that I am 10 years out from Touchstone, what has stuck with me is the genuine respect I felt from the teachers, the fostering of a sense of how to think about a problem, and a lack of concern about grades as numbers. I worked really hard in school because I found the topics interesting and I wanted to understand them more deeply, and that often led to me getting good grades, but in high school and college, a grade I didn’t expect wouldn’t wipe me out and a good grade wouldn’t make me check out. 

“I also think Touchstone taught me to work well with others. Doing so many group projects in a small classroom, I often had to work with partners I didn’t get along with, and learning how to understand, respect, and work with someone I would not choose has been a hugely applicable skill later in life. I think the sense of community and shared respect has also made me a kinder and more tolerant person.”

Now that we’re all at home, I can’t do the part of my work that involves physically handling reels of film, but there are some digital projects I can work on, such as an inter-institutional collaboration to create a database of films by and about people from diverse communities that have traditionally been underrepresented in archival collections. 

“After Touchstone I attended Hopkinton public schools; Bancroft School (where I graduated from high school); Theodor Heuss Gymnasium in Freiburg, Germany; Harvard/Radcliffe College (BA in Geology); and California Institute of the Arts (MFA in Film and Video).

“At Touchstone, I formed friendships with fellow students, parents, and teachers that have lasted to this day. They taught me to hold on to playfulness as a serious part of learning, and I think that has stayed with me too. Touchstone is the place where I really came to understand what the word ‘community’ means.” 

I've been working as an art handler in various capacities for the past twelve years in Massachusetts and New York: driving trucks, transporting and packing artwork, and installing museum exhibitions, gallery shows and art fairs. I worked as an art study center handler and facilitator for the Harvard Art Museums, and most recently, was the Head Preparator for a contemporary art gallery in NYC. I was laid off from that position along with a number of other employees at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. I'm currently trying to make the most of that situation by working on my own art as much as possible. 

“After graduating from Touchstone, I went to Hopkinton Middle School, Hopkinton High and St. Mark's School, followed by Georgetown University for undergrad.

“I have a lot of great memories from Touchstone, most of which involve the wonderful ways that we learned through hands-on making and playing. Some of the best were our annual field trip to Plum Island to observe marine life in tidal pools, and field days at a swamp/pond near the school to catch and examine frogs and insects (and then release them of course!).

“I think the amount of making I did at Touchstone definitely shaped the artist and cartoonist I am today. I made so many things out of cardboard, glue, popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners, and so many (mostly unfinished) illustrated books. And I was always made to feel that this was a valid way of learning. Not just that it was okay to always be making things, but that I should always be making things.”

From a young age I knew I wanted to plan events professionally and I worked throughout college for a destination management company in Boston, gaining valuable experience. When I graduated I took the leap and started my own event company producing the Natural Living Expo, which today is the largest consumer trade show in the Northeast focused on natural health & wellness. 

“The Touchstone education built my confidence from a young age by validating my ideas, and fostering the courage I had to start my own company at 21. I still remember being 7 years old and asking my teacher if we could make our classroom into a haunted house for the whole school to visit, which she encouraged and supported. Looking back, that may have been my first event planning experience. Today I am able to create my own work schedule so I can be home with my daughters, Bella and Zoe. Bella currently attends Touchstone as its first second-generation student and thrives in the same confidence-building atmosphere that I benefited from 30 years ago. My husband Stephen and I enjoy being a part of the community as parents because we find that the families, teachers and administration support each other to provide a solid foundation for children to model, explore and learn from in their own unique ways.” 

In high school and college I built upon passions I first discovered at Touchstone. I graduated from college with a double major in Theater and Psychology and a minor in English.

“Now I live in New York City, working as a freelance Broadway and off-Broadway stage manager. My love for theater, language, and people was first nurtured at Touchstone. I credit so much of who I am today to the wonderful beginnings I got at Touchstone. I remember being so valued as a person, which is such a special gift to give a child. I was encouraged to know myself as a learner, as a community member, as a creator. Learning looked like play and exploration and we never bored of it. 

“Touchstone created a solid foundation upon which I have built the rest of my life. I am still in touch with my former classmates, a fact which is perhaps less surprising than the fact that I am also in regular touch with my former teachers as well! I count attending Touchstone as one of the great blessings of my life.”

I graduated as Valedictorian of the class of 1996.  At the University of Rochester I double-majored in economics and film studies, with minors in Spanish and Mathematics.  After spending a lot of years bouncing around startups, I now work as the Senior Director of Technical & Cloud Operations for Insulet Corporation.  I take a lot of pride in playing a part (however small) in making the lives of people with Type 1 diabetes a little easier.

  “Quite frankly, my weekends are spent chasing the kids wherever they go.  Between coaching soccer games, moderating sleepovers, and travelling to whatever our next adventure might be, we always manage to be busy.

  “About 10 years ago, I was fortunate to spend a few years on the Touchstone board.  It was a tremendous opportunity to both reconnect with the community and participate in the school’s growth and challenges.  I was very quickly reminded of what I most valued about my experience there.  To this day, I feel the teachers at Touchstone are some of the best I’ve ever had.  The creativity, maturity, and respect they all used with each individual child was beyond compare.  My reading list with my kids includes everything we read at TCS.  I would also say that many of the ways that I learn new skills, to this day, are tools I learned from TCS.  I am incredibly thankful for the 7 years I spent there.”

While I had only one other Touchstone student in my classes, I knew several who had come before me, and it was always nice to see a face or two that I recognized.

“After graduating from Parker in 2010, I went on to Vassar College to study Drama and Music. It was an incredible four years that I wouldn't trade for anything (not even the abatement of my obscene student loans). During that time I got to act, sing, study mathematics and languages, and perhaps most interestingly, became part of an on-campus circus troupe! I learned to juggle, spin fire, and throw people high into the air (and catch them); it was some of the most fun I've had in my entire life. I rounded out my formal education by pursuing a master’s degree in Informal Learning from the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education, completing my program in 2016.

“Returning to Massachusetts, I've been working as an afterschool program coordinator in Lexington and the youth coordinator for a Unitarian Universalist church. Recently, I took on a full-time job as the Day Camp Director for a unique company called Guardian Adventures, located in Burlington, Massachusetts, which specializes in education and entertainment through immersive storytelling and play. It's a wonderful blend of my logistical and delegation skills, my love of acting, and the playfulness of the inner child I never lost.

“When I think back on Touchstone, that's what I remember most and it still matters most to me: at an informative age where many children are learning to stop playing and start paying attention, Touchstone taught me there is room for both. It was a place where play was part of learning, not just something you did to take a break. I can honestly say I wouldn't be in the field I'm in now (Play & Storytelling) without my formative experiences of what learning could look like at Touchstone.”

Before my daughter was born, we lived in Williamstown, MA, where I taught fourth grade and theater at a small independent school. We also spent a year living in Central America, where, while in Honduras, I worked with local children to put on a musical. In Amherst, I stopped teaching to be home with my kids, became involved in local government, and served on the School Committee for three years. I’ve also performed in many community theater productions. I recently started teaching again in the third and fourth grade classrooms at The Common School in Amherst, a small, progressive school like Touchstone.

“I graduated from Touchstone in 1989 with the founding kindergarten cohort (the second graduating class). After Touchstone, I attended Bancroft School in Worcester for two years, and then our family moved to Concord, MA, where I went to the public high school. I began my college career at Oberlin College, and then spent my sophomore year with a program called the Audubon Expedition Institute: we lived outdoors and traveled through various bioregions, studying natural and cultural history. I went on to complete my undergraduate degree at Mount Holyoke College, and then earned a master’s degree in elementary education at Bennington College. After teaching for several years, I completed my training to become a licensed reading specialist. 

“Touchstone was my second home and family during my childhood. I felt completely known and valued. Having my voice heard and my interests and choices honored was the norm, and I was always happy to go to school every day. I enjoyed every subject area and integrated my creativity into everything we did. I loved art and theater from a very young age, and at Touchstone I had many opportunities to make, draw, write, and perform. My friend Tacy and I became known for our staged dramatizations of the Frog and Toad stories (her as Frog and me as Toad), and I think those early opportunities to explore drama instilled a passion and confidence that has fed my involvement in theater ever since. If someone asked me about Touchstone, I would say it is a place where children love learning and feel loved.” 

“During my studies, I was a member/co-captain of the UVM Synchronized Skating Team and taught myself how to embroider, which I greatly enjoy. I also completed an honors thesis in soil microbiology and volunteered at a local science center and with a few clubs on campus. 

“TCS was amazing in so many ways but one thing I always admire is that we learned to follow what we love. We were always encouraged to delve into the topics that interested us and as a result, we were really passionate about what we were researching and excited to share with our classmates. I loved that there was always "choice" at Touchstone, from which biome we made a poster about and the S.W.A.P.s we participated in, to what we decided to do in our 'learning choice' time. The curiosity and eagerness to learn that Touchstone instilled in us helped me a lot in school to get invested in my classes and assignments. 

“Along with curiosity, there is so much innovation and collaboration at Touchstone. We were always working with different partners and groups within our classrooms and with classes. We had to learn how to get along with everyone and work together to solve problems, whether it be the Peer Mentors at recess or designing ways to clean up an oil spill in Sally's class. 

“One of my favorite moments from TCS was that in Julie's class, Emily the art teacher helped us write and perform a play about our favorite Webkinz. Even though it's a bit embarrassing to think about now, I am amazed at the level of support the teachers had for us and quite proud of our passion towards those stuffed animals.”