Who We Are
Voices of DSHA

Loud and Clear

By Liam Callanan, Current Parent & Annual Fund Co-Chair
As parents of a DSHA grad, a current DSHA student, and (we hope) a future DSHA student, we're often asked why we chose DSHA for our daughters' education. Strange as it may (literally) sound, we often wind up talking about yelling.
Some context. Five years ago, a very quiet freshman got into our car after her first day at DSHA. This was our oldest daughter, Mary, '18. She was quiet because she'd just spent the day discovering that high school was going to demand more of her than she’d ever dreamed. Specifically, she was going to be asked to be an advocate for herself, to speak up—and to be sure she was heard. Later that year, she found out she’d have to speak up outside the classroom, too. Playing third for the softball team, Mary was implored to call out plays, be a leader even as a freshman, to become, in short, “confident and capable.”
 
We’ve always believed in our daughter, but if you’d asked us then if this naturally shy and studious girl had it in her to eventually yell so loudly that the team stopped practice to congratulate her, we might have paused before answering.
 
Fast forward four years. We’re at an Annual Fund house party. People call for quiet. DSHA’s previous president, Ellen Bartel, gets up to speak. Except she doesn’t—she introduces a surprise guest, our daughter Mary, who delivers, from memory, to a roomful of strangers, a five-minute speech about “finding my voice” that centers around the story above, which we’d never heard before.
 
Suddenly, we're the ones who were speechless.
 
There are many reasons to send your daughter to DSHA. The 100 percent college acceptance rate. The 26.9 median ACT score. The perennial state contenders in athletics. The world class arts. The constant devotion to our daughters’ spiritual needs and growth.
 
But for us, what we’ll always celebrate is that DSHA is where young women like our daughters learn not only to find their voices, but also to use them with confident pride.
 
[This blog post was adapted from a letter Liam & Susan recently sent to current DSHA parents.]
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    • Left to right, Mary (DSHA '18), Liam (glad to be DSHA plaid!), and Honor (DSHA '21) pose at the annual Father Daughter Dinner Dance.

    • Left to right, Mary (DSHA '18), Liam, Jane (DSHA '25), Honor (DSHA '21), and Susan stand in front of the Globe Theatre on a spring break trip to London.

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