Kents Hill School Is Evolving Education

The central Maine boarding and day school marks its bicentennial with a new head of school and a new faculty position for a director of teaching excellence.

an aerial view of Kents Hill School in central Maine
Photo courtesy of Kents Hill School

When Kents Hill School students arrived on the central Maine campus to kick off the 2024–25 school year, they were greeted by new head of school, Dr. Molly T. MacKean. The boarding and day school has been coeducational since its beginning 200 years ago, but it’s marking a new milestone with its first female leader. MacKean, however, is more excited by just how little attention her gender has garnered. “The Kents Hill community is so profoundly inviting,” she says. “We are a place where your gender doesn’t matter, as long as you care about kids and you care about Kents Hill.”

Dr. Molly T. MacKean, head of school at Kents Hill School
Dr. Molly T. MacKean. Photo courtesy of Kents Hill School

MacKean comes to the role with more than 20 years of experience in educational leadership at boarding and day schools across the United States, but her belief in the benefits of the boarding-school academic model is rooted in her own experience as a student trying new things and meeting people from all around the world. “I experienced the transformative potential of boarding schools,” MacKean says. “That’s part of what launched my career into education.” A Massachusetts native,

MacKean is excited to be back living in New England. “Maine is woven into my soul in a really meaningful way,” she says. “People are wonderful everywhere, but the people who live here are my people. And the energy on this campus is just wonderful.”

As one of her first acts as head of school, MacKean partnered with the Board of Trustees to create the new position of director of teaching excellence, who is charged with elevating Kents Hill’s instructional approaches and providing its teachers with knowledge, tools, and ongoing support to improve their craft. “I am so excited about this position,” MacKean says. “At Kents Hill, we’re growth-oriented. We’re a deeply curious institution. We want to keep evolving. And I think the understanding of what good education looks like is evolving in the larger world right now.”

Dr. Kate Cook Whitt, a passionate advocate for teacher growth who most recently served as Science Team Lead at the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance in Augusta, stepped into the new role this past summer. “When I read the job description, I thought, ‘These are all the parts of my career history that I love combined into one,’” Cook says. “The position draws on my skill sets in teaching, curriculum development, professional development for teachers, and research to really impact change in multiple ways within the school.” Cook will work with teachers to empower their growth and development by translating best practices — as suggested by neuroscience, cognitive psychology, inclusive pedagogy, and culturally responsive teaching — to practice.

Kents Hill offers more than 90 courses to allow students to explore ideas and topics they are passionate about. Photos courtesy of Kents Hill School

Because Kents Hill is private, its faculty has the freedom to experiment with innovative approaches to learning that are sometimes hard to enact in other school settings with parameters around what teachers can and can’t do. “We often talk about it as a shift from traditional learning to engagement in project-based, experiential-based, and place-based learning,” Cook says. The model also strives to build more authentic assessment moments for students. “We both believe that when kids do the final project in a class, they should be assessed on their ability to solve real-world problems,” MacKean says.

The new initiative is an extension of Kents Hill’s established history of supporting its students’ different styles of learning. “It has become trendier at schools to talk about neurodiversity and how to provide scaffolded learning support so that every student can succeed in the classroom,” MacKean says. “We’ve been doing it longer than pretty much anybody, and I think we do it in a way that is holistic and embedded.” In recent years, the school also made a concerted effort to promote new technology and now requires students to engage with curriculum related to technology and engineering as a graduation requirement. “To see that Kents Hill had adapted in that way signaled to me that this is a place that’s really curious,” MacKean says. “This is a place that is evolving to make sure it continues to serve kids in a world that’s changing really quickly.”

To Maine, With Love

Twenty-five percent of Kents Hill School’s population is made up of day students from surrounding Maine towns, but the school is also committed to helping Maine residents take advantage of its boarding program through a reduced tuition rate. “The fact that we really invest in the state and try to make our program accessible to as many Maine kids as possible is a statement of mission,” MacKean says. “That is one of the things that got me hooked on Kents Hill from the start.”

The Maine-resident boarding-student tuition rate of $52,750 is a $16,750 discount from the traditional rate. The school also offers merit scholarships to children of Colby College and MaineGeneral employees and takes advantage of Maine’s Town Tuitioning Program, which provides students from towns without a public high school with a $13,500 voucher to pay tuition at another school. “We want to make sure that, as we grow and attract families from all over the world, those folks are also going to meet a lot of families who are proud to be Maine families,” MacKean says. “We want to be grounded in Maine and connected to the world in a really deliberate way.”

Ultimately, both MacKean and Cook hope to make Kents Hill a resource hub, first within Maine, and then across the country, for thinking about how to approach education differently. “We want to figure out how we can knock down the barriers that exist in some of our current educational settings,” Cook says. “Our goal is to use ourselves as a testing ground and then expand out to help teachers across multiple contexts to start to play in their spaces.” Cook feels confident MacKean’s support will help make that happen. “Molly’s an incredible leader who can really balance strategic visioning with concrete actions,” Cook says. “I’m so excited for Kents Hill’s future with her at the helm.”

MacKean believes the school’s pride of place will help propel it towards her goals for the future ahead. “Community is something everyone is craving in the face of our evolving and complex digital lives,” she says. “This is a place where we deliver on that, and I’ve been enjoying the benefits of that myself, even in my first couple of months on The Hill.”

To learn more about Kents Hill School, visit kentshill.org. 1614 Main St., Kents Hill. 207-685-4914.