Programs

Three years in the making and just weeks from completion, the new Middle School Arts & World Languages Center marks the first phase in a multi-year makeover planned for Durham Academy’s Academy Road campus.

The Durham Academy Summer team has envisioned a fresh approach to DA Summer for 2021 — a transformative all-day camp experience that keeps campers close to home but feeling far away as they gain independence and confidence. Since registration opened in early December, feedback from families has been overwhelmingly positive, with 150 campers registered for a total of 513 weeks of programming.

The Comedy Show is an online-only event modeled on Saturday Night Live, produced, directed, written, acted, danced and played entirely by Upper School students.

With a school that couldn’t gather en masse for any of its traditional community-building events, Parents Association’s leadership and committee chairs were charged with reinventing their community-building, philanthropic and volunteer engagement efforts from the ground up.

Speaking from her home in New York City via a virtual meeting of DA Upper School’s History of Durham class in October 2020, Valerie Kennedy ’81 held students in rapt attention as she recalled the challenges and opportunities presented by growing up in Durham and attending DA in a time of change. 

Seven Upper School students are doing an independent study this semester. Faculty member Tina Bessias coordinates the independent study program and has seen the program grow from two or three projects in early 2018 to about 15 per school year now.