Writing at Loomis Chaffee

Since her fresh-out-of-college arrival on the Island in 1981, Sally Knight has taught English, coached boys cross country and distance track, and served as dorm resident or affiliate. In her tenure, she has taught classes at the freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior levels, including senior electives in Creative Writing, Journalism, Contemporary Literature, Shakespeare, Short Story, and Satire; and in the interdisciplinary course Desegregation & Democracy in South Africa. While on academic exchange with Scotch College in Melbourne, Australia, she taught year-long courses in writing and Australian and British literature to both middle and upper school boys.

In addition to directing the Writing Initiatives program, Sally, a student-council-selected Teacher of the Year, currently teaches the year-long CL Advanced Junior English Seminar class and heads the recently-launched Writing Studio. Sally’s most recent on-going education has come by way of Bard College’s Institute for Writing and Thinking. Earning both her BA (in English) and her MALS from Wesleyan University, Sally also holds a degree in counseling from St. Joseph University.

Sally’s early education came in classrooms in the United States and the South Pacific, at a Quaker Friends kindergarten in Swarthmore, PA; a public elementary school in sub-urban Germantown, PA; a city primary school in Suva, Fiji; a progressive middle school in Laguna Beach, CA; and at British-influenced grammar and high schools in Nuku’alofa, Tonga. She matriculated with National Honor Society and Experienced-Based Career Education certificates from Portland High School in Portland, CT.

Sally and husband Peter are proud parents of Loomis Chaffee graduates Miles ’10 and Tate ’14.

Karen Parsons is a history teacher and Loomis' archivist. She graduated from Amherst College and completed a master’s degree in the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture at the Winterthur Museum and the University of Delaware. Her essays and articles on material culture, art, and other historical topics have appeared in anthologies published by the University of Virginia Press and the University of Massachusetts Press, various journals, and the Loomis Chaffee Magazine. With former headmaster John Ratte, Karen co-authored and co-edited the publication Cherished Hopes and Honorable Ambitions: A Centennial History of the Loomis Chaffee School. Her Loomis career spans more than twenty years and includes teaching a range of American history courses, coaching varsity softball teams to two Western New England championships, working for five years in the College Guidance Office, and co-chairing the school’s 2014 Centennial celebration. This past summer, she joined Writing Studio and Writing Initiative colleagues at Bard College’s summer Institute on Writing and Thinking.

Jessica Hsieh graduated from Loomis in 2008 and returned in 2015 to teach English. In between, she earned a B.A. from Yale University before moving to Singapore, where she taught critical thinking and writing for the GCE A-Level examinations. Now back on the Island, she lives in Palmer Hall and teaches sophomore English, junior English, and Writing Workshop. Jessica also serves as the faculty adviser to The Log, Loomis' student newspaper. Apart from her work on campus, she is currently pursuing an M.A. from Middlebury's Bread Loaf School of English. Her experience as a peer reader in the Ken Macrorie Writing Center at Bread Loaf has informed and inspired her work in Loomis' own Writing Studio.

The Loomis Writing Studio offers inspiration and support for Loomis writers — students and faculty alike — across the curriculum as they work to communicate their ideas, arguments, discoveries, and voices. Believing that engaging an audience of readers during the writing process promotes “skilled and discerning minds,” the trained staff members of the Writing Studio offer non-evaluative feedback and guidance to writers in any stage of work. Staff members support writers as they craft works that evince not only robust writing skills, but also robust thinking skills. The Writing Studio staff serve not in lieu of, but in addition to, students’ own teachers as resources, with the students setting their agendas for their Studio sessions, and holding sole command of the pen.

Agenda items might include, but are not limited to, the generating of ideas, sharing of drafts, expansion of critical thinking, and review of relevant writing skills.