When the Rivers hockey teams take to the ice next season, there will be a couple of new hands at the helm—for both the boys’ and girls’ teams. Athletic Director Bob Pipe recently announced the appointment of Freddy Meyer as head boy’s hockey coach and Courtney Sheary as his opposite number for the girls’ hockey team.

Rivers made a strong showing at this year’s Massachusetts Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, announced in February. In total, students earned 20 awards in the prestigious competition: six Gold Keys, six Silver Keys, and eight Honorable Mentions.

While most educators would agree that it is important to teach students how to be leaders, few have thought more deeply about the best way to do that than Rivers Middle School teacher Melissa Dolan ’98.

Ever wonder about the legal or political ramifications of having a superpower? Maybe not, but that was exactly the task laid before 28 Rivers students when they paid a recent visit to Boston’s Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate.

Legally Blonde: The Musical is a show that demands strong lead performances, crackerjack ensemble work, and unflagging energy on the part of cast and crew. Fortunately, the Rivers School Nonesuch Players possess all those qualities, amply on display in the opening night performance of the Upper School musical on Feb. 20 at the Eleanor Welch Casey Theater at Regis College. 

An LGBTQ activist, author, performer, and educator, Philip McAdoo has a long list of credentials and accomplishments to his name. But, he told an audience of Rivers parents at a Monday evening roundtable discussion, it was a much more personal experience that really brought all his work into focus.

The first lesson to learn about Chinese New Year is that it isn’t just Chinese New Year. The Lunar New Year is celebrated throughout Asia, not only in China, and each country brings its own customs and traditions to the party. To share some of those customs with Rivers students, the Asian American Pacific Islander Affinity Group this week welcomed Shirene Aman-Karim P’20 to campus. Aman-Karim, mother of Yasmin Myers ’20, explained how the new year is celebrated in her native Malaysia.

The week of February 10 is sure to be cold outside, but inside The Rivers School Conservatory, the forecast is definitely warm and sunny. From February 10 to 15, the Conservatory will play host to a Latin American Music Festival featuring performances, master classes, workshops, and more.

The path that led Marika Barnett to a Rivers classroom last week was a long and convoluted one. The 85-year-old Holocaust survivor—one of an ever-dwindling cohort—was born in Hungary in 1934, made it through the war years by dint of sheer luck and resourcefulness, losing many family members to the concentration camps, and arrived in America to start anew in 1957. Last Thursday, under the auspices of the Facing History and Ourselves program, Barnett came to campus to speak to students enrolled in an interdisciplinary course on the Holocaust.

Sports have their championship tourneys, musicians have their festivals and competitions, plays have their opening nights—and Model UN has CMUNCE, the Columbia Model United Nations Conference and Exposition. “This really is the jewel of what we do—the highlight of the year,” says history teacher Arturo Bagley, who serves as one of Rivers’s Model UN coordinators and who accompanied the school’s team of eight students to the New York City competition last weekend.

The legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is broad and deep, and there are many ways to honor that legacy: Solemnly, thoughtfully, sadly, hopefully. At the annual Rivers MLK Day assembly, held on Monday, student organizers chose to do it joyfully, commemorating the slain civil rights leader through music.

On Friday, January 10, at 7:00 p.m., friends, students, and colleagues will gather in Rivera Recital Hall to bid farewell to RSC string department chair and violinist Magdalena Richter. Richter’s music will be the focus of the evening, as she presents her final public performance before joining a contemplative order of Catholic nuns in Andover, Mass.

The Rivers School community was plunged into mourning this week over the sudden death of longtime math teacher Dan McCartney. According to his family, Dan passed away unexpectedly on Saturday, January 4, as a result of complications arising from his recent battle with a chronic illness.