Good afternoon, Tilton family … and welcome to the Hill! My name is Derek Krein and I have the tremendous, good fortune to serve as the Head of Tilton School.

To our new and returning students, to parents, guardians, grandparents, faculty, and staff: welcome to the 2025–26 school year at Tilton School.

Whether you drove five minutes or flew fifteen hours, we’re thrilled you are here. I just LOVE it when students are here. And I really like the first day back from school breaks. AND… I’ll admit… I’m in between being really excited and kind of nervous, which is good and healthy, I think. 

I love the first day of school. Schools are significantly more interesting place with students! We all in different ways have spent so much time thinking about the promise of school and now we get to make the promise to ourselves and others for school.

For our returning students, Mrs. Krein is equally glad you’ve returned, and not just because she can model our theme this year in her interim role in the community life office. No … your return means now I can resume my breakfast-time table-hopping, rapid fire questions, and check-ins with all you and she’ll have some peace and quiet. 

But, beyond the Head’s House, I speak for all the faculty staff here when I say: Student Energy is GOOD energy, and Tilton feels electric right now!

Like many of you here, I’m fairly new, too. I’ve spent days and weeks over the past 18 months seeking to discover as much as I can about the people, places, and programs that make Tilton School so distinct.

A common theme and thread I’ve learned is that what was true for graduates in the 1950s remains true this very moment. Tilton School rallies around a clear promise: We will know, support, and challenge each other as we learn to do hard things well. That isn’t a slogan…I’ve come to understand that it’s been a way of being and a point of pride or generations. 

What does it  mean to be KNOWN at Tilton School?

You are not a schedule, or a sport, or a grade level, or a dorm, or a transcript here; you are a whole person. Being known looks like:

• Having an advisor who is your steady adult — helping you to track your goals, checking in weekly, guiding your growth with teachers, coaches, and dorm faculty — a collection known as your “Team Tilton.”
• Having teachers who learn how you learn and offer clear, timely, actionable feedback.
• Having coaches, leaders, dorm parents, and mentors who notice patterns — both strengths to build upon and stumbles to address — so you keep reaching and evolving and moving beyond what you thought possible.

Students, your role in being known at Tilton is brave and simple: Step in and let yourself be known. Say YES to the conversation. Say YES to the challenges. Say YES to the opportunities. The sooner we know you, the more helpful we can be in helping you grow.

What does it mean to be SUPPORTED at Tilton School?

Our support is not soft — it’s strategic: high expectations with high care.

• We offer structures that work: whether advisory, office hours, the Center for Academic Achievement, or residential routines that protect study, sleep, and well-being.
• We offer skills that stick: planning, reflection, reaching out and asking for help, giving and receiving useful feedback, managing inevitable stress, collaborating across difference.
• We offer belonging by design: clubs and affinity spaces, teams and ensembles, service and leadership roles … so that each student can find a place to contribute.

What does it mean to be CHALLENGED at Tilton School?

We don’t apologize for hard things; very often, hard is where purpose springs to life.

• You’ll experience academic stretch: compelling courses, real-world projects, and exhibitions where students stand up and show what they know and how they know it.
• You’ll experience “Go Beyond” places and spaces: afternoon athletics, arts, outdoor adventure, and community living through residential life — places to lead, be counted on, and practice reliability and citizenship.
• You’ll experience character work: honest conversations, restorative responses, and community expectations that prioritize lasting integrity over passing convenience.

Over the course of the year together, we discover that struggle doesn’t signal we don’t belong; it signals we’re in the arena and doing the messy and magnificent work that teenagers must do.

As the t-shirts state: Step in, reach out. All in, all together! Welcome to ’25–’26. Challenge Accepted!