In 2025-26, I enter my fourth year as your Head of Upper School. I continue to be amazed by the lively halls of Cannon’s Upper School as they echo with “cougar growls” when our Advisors and Deans celebrate students who have demonstrated extraordinary commitment to our Cannon core values. Our student-first community values and appreciates the distinctive characteristics of developing young adults. While we meet students where they are, our mission calls us to engage with students in “a journey of growth” during their four years in Upper School. Through programs and spaces like the Academic Resource Center (ARC), we provide opportunity, support, and encouragement as students navigate the victories and the challenges of young adulthood. This is a school fully alive.

Students engage in myriad ways at Cannon’s Upper School. We offer a complex and engaging academic environment, competitive athletics, sophisticated arts programs, and a range of leadership and social opportunities through our many clubs and unique House System. With help from their advisor, student dean, academic dean, learning specialist, and college counselor, students design unique programs of study and extracurricular activities that support their interests, passions, and talents and prepare them for their future. 

While the Upper School has a successful track record of effectively preparing students for colleges and universities, we feel our mission is to prepare students for the challenges they will encounter throughout their lives in a future we cannot predict. To that end, we are deliberate about designing an academic program and supportive environment that empowers independence and advocacy as students seek mastery, reflect and communicate growth, and become accustomed to managing uncertainty. 

I have called Cannon home for the last sixteen years. I have watched my son Joseph ‘20, my daughter Rebecca ‘22, and my daughter Grace ‘24 - and so many other young people - grow and fulfill, in the halls of Cannon, the vision of the human being fully alive. That is the desire I have for all future Cougars.

Fabio Hurtado
Head of Upper School