“Yeah, I’ll give that a try!” Tew Reflects on her Time at MacDuffie and Future Endeavors

MacDuffie School Faculty Member Lucy Tew will be departing from her position at the end of the 2021 school year after working at MacDuffie for the past five years. She will be heading the Middle School Theater Department at Worcester Academy in Worcester, Massachusetts. 

Tew has become a familiar face to many students over her tenure at MacDuffie, taking on several different positions. She started out as a Residential Advisor in her first year, and later became the middle school theater teacher, the creative writing teacher, an ELL teacher, and the Assistant Dean of Boarding.

Tew also became a mainstay in the MacDuffie theater department. She started out by helping with hair and makeup during A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2016 and by 2021, we saw Tew’s first directorial job at MacDuffie in the form of the “Zoomsical” Annie Jr. 

Tew began her MacDuffie journey at a young age, saying, “I came into this job right before I turned 25 and I had skidded in on two wheels.” She was able to pick up many unique positions with the additional time that she spent at MacDuffie, working her way up in the Arts and English Departments. 

When asked about her motivation for leaving, Tew said that “[she] has come to the natural end of a growth period in [her] life” and is looking to metaphorically “repot her plants.” 

While working at Worcester Academy, Tew said that she hopes to “build a community that is like the one [she] found [in the theater department] at MacDuffie because it’s a very special place.” 

 She added that she would “like to take what the MacDuffie community has given [her] and move it into other parts of the world.” 

Tew expressed many takeaways from her MacDuffie tenure, the biggest of which came from her newfound lack of hesitation and self-doubt towards unknown experiences. She has “learned so much from just jumping in and doing things. The answer was always, ‘Yeah, I’ll give that a try!’” 

Tew said that she’d like to leave MacDuffie students with the following message: “I don’t think of this as a goodbye, it’s a farewell. I’d like to stay in touch with all of you, you can always contact me. I hope to hear from you and I’ve really loved getting to know all of you and see all of you every day. Carrie Fisher said ‘nothing is ever really over, it’s just over there.’”