February 11th: Administration offers to help find housing for those with families affected by the virus.
February 27th: Administration asks all students to defer travel to China or South Korea during spring break.
March 5th: All term abroad trips cancelled. Students traveling to level 2 or 3 countries must remain symptom-free for 14 days before returning to campus.
March 10th: Break extended until March 24. Remote learning set to take place until April 3.
March 13th: Administration announces the School will support remote learning for international studnets throughout the spring, if necessary
March 17th: Remote learning extended through the end of the spring term. First day of classes announced as March 27.
March 19th: Choate alumni receive a letter stating reunion weekend has been cancelled.
March 24th: Administration announces the switch to a Pass/D/Fail grading system.
March 27th: First day of remote classes
April 8th: Tuition commitment deadline extended to July 1.
April 10th: Changes to non-academic diploma requirements announced.
May 22nd: Sixth form’s last day of classes.
May 29th: Prize Day
May 31st: Graduation
Photo by Peter Di Natale/The Choate News
SAC Events
Despite the challenge of faulty Wi-Fi and differences in time zones, the Student Activities Center — along with club life — persisted online during the spring term. Director of the Student Activities Center Ms. Alex Long and Assistant Director of the Student Activities Center Ms. Colleen Kazar made efforts to keep the Choate community united despite the physical distance separating students and faculty. On April 3, the SAC held its first virtual Zoom dance, hosted by Max Brown ’21, and later on May 29, the SAC held a second Zoom dance. Other events included a joint trivia night with Deerfield Academy and a Zoom open mic night, as well as more senior-orientated events such as Senior Bingo and Senior Dance Lessons.
“We’ve also been really successful with some of our passive Instagram challenges or postings where students can just watch things that are going on across the community with faculty and staff or other students, even though they’re from afar,” said Ms. Kazar. The SAC helped to promote several club events through BoarCast emails and Instagram story posts, including a movie night hosted by the Film Club, a Zoom event hosted by the Do It Club, and a cooking event sponsored by the Cooking Exploration Club.
Many clubs moved their meetings to a virtual format. In addition to continuing pod meetings over Zoom, the Debate Team held a virtual debate tournament with Deerfield on May 9. The Environment Action Coalition (EAC) held more discussion-based meetings and a WALL-E movie night. Several clubs decided to hold joint meetings with each other, such as Girl Up and Choate Women in Business.
Photo courtesy of Betsy Overstrum
Staying in Touch
Social distancing guidelines have prevented normal birthday celebrations for those born in the spring or summer months. However, many communities have still managed to find ways to gather together — at a safe distance — and celebrate. Trademarked by the line of cars slowly maneuvering down a driveway and sounds of honks and screams, drive-by birthdays were a popular fix to the social distancing dilemma. Friends and family drove by the birthday boy or girl’s house, hanging out of windows and sunroofs while holding brightly decorated posters and presents. Festivities range from a few friends gathered along the driveway to parades with firetrucks and streamers hanging from the cars. Friends have even been organizing Zoom birthday parties, gathering together a group of friends to surprise the birthday boy or girl.
Students have also been keeping in touch through Netflix Party, a browser extension that synchronizes a movie or show and includes a group chat for friends to watch Netflix together and chat remotely. During all that extra time in quarantine, students can finally feel a little more comfort watching that horror movie or rom-com with friends rather than alone.
Despite FaceTiming and Zooming each other, car circles have become a popular choice for friends who want to hang out in person. Many friends will gather together in an empty parking lot or outside of a friend’s house and sit in the trunk of their cars, often bringing food or other sources of entertainment. Some people have also gathered together in their backyards, sitting six feet apart in lawn chairs.
Some students have resorted to sending care packages and hand-written letters as a more intimate way of keeping in touch compared to texts. Hannah Wallinger ’21 sent her friends boxes filled with cookies decorated with the Choate “C.”
Students who chose to game their way through quarantine have been communicating and socializing through video game chats and headphone sets. Video games not only engage students and prompt them to work together, but also serve as a prime source of entertainment for many students. In addition, Boar Pen and other student groups have organized team gaming competitions against Deerfield Academy through gaming platforms such as FIFA, Madden, and Fortnite — streamed live for students from both schools to enjoy and comment.
Photo Courtesy of Irie Cooper
Keeping Traditions Alive
The Choate community prides itself on its many hallowed traditions. The coronavirus pandemic has stymied get-togethers and made some of these traditions impossible, but Choate students and their school spirit persevere. The School innovated ways to maintain normalcy despite the uncertain and foreign times.
The annual Pratt-Packard declamation contest was, for the first time, not conducted in front of the student body. The contest semi-finalists presented their speeches to the panel of judges and the finalists presented again at the May 5 pre-taped school meeting. The changes to Choate’s to the speech contest emboldened some and dismayed others. Sakura Hayakawa ’21 noted, “I was personally disappointed about the finals being held online since I submitted my speech partly because of the opportunity to speak in front of the School.” While Joe Monti ’21 remarked, “I think the online nature of the contest was a positive for me since there weren’t as many eyes watching me, which would have made me more nervous.”
The class of 2020 were especially impacted by losing an in-person Spring term. Many students lamented missing out on the excitement of Senior Spring, an experience that many had waited four years for. Some events were able to carry over to the online format. Senior bingo, a small tradition, was played over Zoom. Other senior rites of passage were harder to translate. In place of Last Hurrah, Mr. and Mrs. VanMierlo hosted virtual dance lessons that the seniors could tune into and follow along with. Garden party, a tradition that the senior and junior girls celebrate, harkens back to Rosemary Hall. Garden party typically involves senior girls proposing to their garden party dates in elaborate and public ways, dressing up, and handing down awards from the senior class to the juniors. This year, the junior and senior girls received a video of some of the senior girls giving their garden party awards to their junior dates. “It’s a difficult thing to come to terms with,” said Grace Zhang ’20. “You make all these plans and look forward to this time for three and a half years, and it felt like nothing would interrupt it.” Seniors attended a modified graduation over Zoom on Sunday May 31. Julia Gottschalk ’20 praised the graduation: “For what it was, it was really great and I don’t think they could have done any better. It was good because my entire extended family and friends were able to watch. The sad part was not being able to celebrate with everyone from Choate, but altogether it worked.”
Photo courtesy of Taylor Mitchell
Belongings
With students scattered across the globe and unable to pack up dorm belongings, Choate provided three alternatives to this unique situation: return to campus and pack belongings, ship belongings to home, or store belongings at Choate. Due to the circumstances of COVID-19, students who decided to return and pack their belongings on campus are strictly limited to certain time frames within the day, where only one student is allowed in one level of every dorm during that period. The School also implemented a set of guidelines to ensure the safety and efficiency of every student’s move-out process, which included maintaining social distancing measures, wearing face masks and gloves in all buildings, and refraining from going back to campus if experiencing symptoms.
For students who chose for their belongings to be shipped home or stored on campus, the School has arranged for a packing company to pack up all belongings. Regarding the concern over the handling of prohibited items and substances, the School offered students the opportunity to use Amnesty — an option for students to alert Dean of Students Mike Velez ’00 prior to May 22 about any banned items. Though these prohibited items will be confiscated and parents will be notified, students who report to Mr. Velez before the required date will not be subject to disciplinary charges.
In addition, the School continued to offer the store book buyback program, where students can now return their used school books in good condition to their dorms and receive money.
Sports
Despite the cancellation of the spring season, sports teams have found creative ways of staying in touch during this virtual spring term, whether through Zoom, text, or team events. Both the Boys’ and Girls’ Choate Crew team have been staying in shape through rigorous group workouts on Zoom. While the Girls’ team have been using Strava to keep track of fitness and running challenges and share their times with each other, the Boys’ team have been challenging themselves to Olympic level workouts— each team motivating the other to push harder.
Boys’ Varsity Lacrosse has also found unique ways to stay committed to the sport and uphold team spirit. Everyday, the team participates and competes with each other in vigorous workout routines designed to mimic the team’s schedule during a regular season. The team has also implemented Zoom team dinners on Friday nights to maintain friendships and team morale during the virtual season.
Photo Courtesy of Mariposa Masks Initiative
Community Service
This term, many Choate students used their new free time to assist communities in need.
Due to the coronavirus, healthcare workers have been stretched thin. To provide more support for these workers in her hometown of Alexandria, Va., Mealy Cronin ’23 organized a fundraiser on the crowdfunding site GoFundMe to collect funds for healthcare workers’ meals. Creating the campaign “Let’s Help Those Who Are Helping Us” in late March, Cronin raised enough in a month to collaborate with a restaurant chain and provide lunches for healthcare workers in six different hospitals. With more funds, Cronin was able to continue her support for healthcare workers with other meal batches a few weeks later.
Some communities are more vulnerable to the virus than others, especially the homeless and immunocompromised. To provide more protection in the form of personal protection equipment, Juliet Lin ’22, along with four other friends, created a nonprofit organization called Mariposa Masks Initiative. The organization makes its masks with the help of money raised on GoFundMe before distributing those masks to Connecticut and Massachusetts communities in need. As of mid-May, the organization had distributed more than 2,000 masks.
While the pandemic poses health threats to healthcare workers and vulnerable communities, it has also created countless financial struggles for many organizations that rely on opening to sustain their operating status. One of those organizations struggling with their finances is Outreach360, an educational non-profit organization in the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua that operates learning centers for over 200 students. Volunteers of the organization Chloe Lewis ’22 and Orville Amankwah ’22 have stepped up to organize fundraisers along with many others to keep Outreach360 afloat and ensure that the education of the students that the organization supports remains intact.
With the switch to remote learning, many students around the world may find learning certain concepts more difficult. In order to combat this new challenge, Andrew Shenouda ’21, Kai Joseph ’21, and Henry Mars ’21 founded Tadpole Tutoring, a non-profit organization and online tutoring service that gives all of its tutoring proceeds to charitable organizations. The organization enlists the help of several other Choate students as tutors.
Despite not being on the frontlines, these students did what they could to alleviate the effects of the coronavirus.
Information and Technology
As the School transitions to virtual learning, many members of the Choate community expressed concerns regarding the change’s limit to the Choate experience. Creating a safe and collaborative learning environment for both students and faculty, the Information and Technology Services (ITS) introduced two major communication platforms: Microsoft Teams and Zoom.
What used to be in-person classes and meetings are now held through the virtual platform Zoom. Zoom includes many beneficial aspects for a virtual classroom such as the ability to screen share, record sessions, and arrange smaller breakout rooms. To acquire the skills used for this application, ITS directly trained a smaller group of faculty with Zoom basics, who then instructed the rest of the faculty in smaller groups. The platform was more difficult to set up than expected; with the help from the Choate Programming Union, ITS was able to catalog all meeting IDs and links into one website.
For Microsoft Teams, the platform was introduced to Choate a year and a half ago as a way to initiate small conversations online within the Choate community. Head of the ITS Department Mr. Andrew Speyer noted, “It’s been my dream to get the School into one place where we could do a lot more electronic conversations and small group work together.” One of Mr. Speyer’s goal is rather than ITS answering all the tech questions, members of the Choate community can post questions in a group space for anyone to respond, utilizing the wisdom of the crowd.
ITS is currently available through Microsoft Teams and has hosted daily Zoom calls with Academic Technology and the Andrew Mellon Library to explore ways to administer support to faculty and students amid the global pandemic.
Student Council Initiatives
During the remote spring term, Choate Student Council worked hard to facilitate several measures meant to enhance off-campus student life in addition to the online learning experience. The council’s work this spring was split between initiatives for the virtual spring term and proposals for the upcoming year. Because the conventional proposal process could result in it taking weeks for an initiative to be passed, council members this term felt that a more efficient system was needed. So, they worked with faculty on their independent initiatives and were expected to check in every week with other members and give updates on their progress.
The Pass/D/Fail grading system was one major change carried out with help from the council. Student Council discussed with Dean of Students Mr. Mike Velez ’00, Director of Studies Mr. Kevin Rogers, and members of the College Counseling Office. They reasoned that with all students back at home, priorities may shift and education may not be a student’s primary concern. As a result, ahead of the start of the online spring term, Head of School Dr. Alex Curtis emailed the School regarding the alteration in the grading system.
Student Body President Ula Lucas ’21, when asked about the experiences she gained from the online term, remarked, “When it comes to the council, I think we are really getting to understand the true importance of collaboration and self-motivation. We’re not meeting weekly anymore or seeing each other around campus, so connecting with our individual passions for this community and being self-starters are more important than ever before.”
In regards to the upcoming year, Student Council members have already launched proposals including allocating day student parking spaces closer to St. John Hall, eliminating assigned seating in school meetings, and giving students the ability to early check-in on Saturdays in any dorm.
Photo Courtesy of Senching Hsia
Arts
In a time of confusion and chaos, Choate’s students found a way to brighten up peoples’ days through their art. Third Form Class Representative Joy An ’23 created a competition on the Student Council Instagram account known as “Choate Creates.” Students created works of art — paintings, songs, poems, and photographs — based on the one-word prompt released every Friday. These prompts included “memory”, “hero”, and “storm.” The students in Arts Concentration also began postin their work on the @choate_arts Instagram.
The Choate C-Proctors also started Project Earth, an initiative that encouraged students to get creative and make a sustainable art project from recycled materials in order to celebrate Earth Day. Students made crafts ranging from photo collages made from old, cut-up magazines to decorative containers made from repurposed jars and animal toys.
