Chatham Hall

Established in 1894, Chatham Hall was founded as the first girls' Episcopal school in Southern Virginia, and today we are grounded in the values of the Episcopal tradition. We invite you to learn more about us and get to know the places and people who make Chatham Hall one of the top girls' boarding schools in the country.

Chatham Hall prepares girls for college and for productive lives. Our rigorous educational program encourages intellectual growth, creativity, and personal responsibility. We foster the intellect and character of each student and, through our Honor Code, live in a community of trust. Grounded in its Episcopal heritage, the school welcomes students of all faiths and backgrounds.

At Chatham Hall, an exemplary private school for girls, the core of everything we do, both in the classroom and beyond, is the Honor Code and Purple and Golden Rule. Together, these principles help maintain our unique, trust-based community, one in which every person is challenged to live each day with integrity.

At Chatham Hall, trust is given before it’s earned; once given, each person has the responsibility to keep it. Students, teachers, administrators, and staff all live by a system of shared values, rather than one of restrictive rules. The special privilege of the seniors is to lead the school by upholding the Honor Code and Purple and Golden Rule and by educating the student body on these principles.

An all girls boarding and day school in Southern Virginia, Chatham Hall prepares girls for college and for productive lives. Our innovative academic program offers Advanced Placement courses, global study and travel, as well as project based learning. Our athletic teams regularly compete at the State level and our exceptional riding program is nationally recognized. We foster the intellect and character of each student and, through our Honor Code, live in a community of trust. Grounded in its Episcopal heritage, the school welcomes students of all faiths and backgrounds.

A life-inspiring education is the sum of powerful parts. At Chatham Hall, these strengths include our profound commitment to critical basics such as public speaking and exceptional writing. Our faculty members are passionately dedicated to creative methods of teaching. Walk in on a French lesson and you might find girls sampling a French delicacy in the classroom kitchen. We also focus on engaging with new technology. For instance, all math teachers use Smart Boards and our science labs boast state-of-the-art equipment. All of our students use iPads for studies, and our teachers are experts in harnessing these tools to strengthen and enhance the classroom experience.

One of the ways in which girls learn best is through collaboration. At Chatham Hall, girls collaborate all of the time...in and out of class. Teachers and students design projects that enable close work with classmates as you make and edit films, design a KeyNote to introduce Roman numerals, use up-to-the-minute technology in the Lee Library to produce realistic interviews of historical figures, or plan a Chatham Hall community garden and renovate the school greenhouse. Students who share a similar passion might design an iQuest together. Performances come to the stage thanks to students’ creative forces; Iris, Chatham Hall’s literary magazine, and the Columns, our newspaper, come to fruition because students work closely, share ideas, edit, revise, and partner to achieve a goal. Why is collaboration so important? When you collaborate, you learn about the decision-making process and how to choose the best idea of all those generated. You discuss approaches, negotiate, and develop skills that will lead you to creating a top-quality product.

The broad and deep curriculum one finds at Chatham Hall asks students to think, question, imagine, wonder. In order to satisfy student curiosity, iQuest and Discovery Challenge programs allow students to design projects that will have them finding answers to their own essential questions – in some cases, receiving significant funding to pursue a well-developed question. Internal motivation and creativity bring about the best type of learning – Chatham Hall supports this most dynamic exploration.

Our goal as an institution, is to prepare our students to be generous and responsible citizens of the digital age. We view technology integration not as a set of tools, but as a set of measurable outcomes that defy the usage of a single tool to achieve. A student might use their computer to collaborate on a project, or an iPad to create an e-book. Today, there is no single tool that covers the entirety of the technological spectrum, and at Chatham Hall we refuse to be defined by a singularity. As technology changes in the outside world, so too will our usage, our expectations, and our creativity.