- Tim Breen, Ph.D., Head of School
As the year draws to a close, I wanted to take a quick look back at our Fall Term. What a gift that we could be together in-person for most of the term. To put it in numbers, we were in-person for middle school more than 90% of our school days, and for the high school, even with the remote time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we were in-person 72% of the time. While some students had to be remote at times due to symptoms or quarantines, they engaged in classes by zooming in. This amount of in-person time was no small feat, and our success is due to the efforts of all -- practicing COVID safety at school and at home. Thank you all for your diligence with this. I also want to publicly thank our educators for not only creating extraordinary courses, but for going the extra mile to engage students simultaneously in the classroom and remotely. This is a big task.
Below I note a couple of highlights from each month (knowing I will leave out many great things!).
July
-- Staff teams work in collaboration with Boulder County Public Health on our procedures and practices for opening in-person.
-- Pablo leads our work to create safety protocols for camping and backpacking (as a side note, this work helped a number of other schools: when others learned about our planning they asked for our help and we shared our guidelines).
August
-- Incredibly successful high school backpacking (and day-hiking) program: 8 days in the field, connecting, bonding, challenging ourselves, learning about Watershed culture.
-- Wonderful middle school orientation, including camping experiences at Golden Gate State Park.
September
-- We gather in person for classes!
-- Even with COVID, our courses engage in fieldwork whenever possible -- examples: art classes viewing murals around town, the MS Prairie Dogs and the Plague class doing fieldwork with Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks, the HS Water in the West class collecting data at Boulder Creek for the Inland Ocean coalition, the HS Democracy class making podcasts about important issues by interviewing local residents, the MS Wild Horses class traveling to Western Colorado for a few days of field work.
October
-- Our first positive COVID cases in the high school and appropriate quarantines (again, working closely with Boulder County Public Health).
-- The Watershed community reaches out to support community members affected by the CalWood and Left Hand Canyon fires.
-- RoLs: Drawing on our new student portfolios, our students presented the work they were most proud of to their advisory peers and parents. My big takeaway: Many students, when explaining why they chose to share a particular piece, said things like, “I worked really hard on this” or “ I did a lot of drafts and really like how it improved.” This is an essential lesson, one that students don’t always have a chance to learn: our work improves with (real, sustained) effort.
November
-- Seniors work on college applications, polishing essays and getting recommendation letters from educators. The first acceptances start coming in.
-- HS and MS Democracy classes zoom with John Kerry -- former US Senator, Presidential Candidate, and Secretary of State. Our students had wonderful questions for Secretary Kerry, and he challenged us all to engage with the issues in their community and the world, noting that we all have a responsibility to make things better. Days after the zoom call, President-elect Joe Biden announced that John Kerry would serve in his cabinet as the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate and would be a member of the National Security Council.
December
-- The high school stays remote after Thanksgiving in response to state guidance about the regional rise in cases -- they respond with persistence and produce great work. Middle school is able to be in-person.
-- All students participate in a learning lunch with Amber Coleman-Mortley, exploring issues of race. How do we develop as culturally competent citizens? How do we create welcoming spaces for those from different backgrounds? How do we build a stronger community? In the evening, Watershed parents also spend time with Amber, exploring the same issues from the perspective of parents working to raise culturally competent young adults.
-- RoLs again: This time, my big takeaway was hearing, from many students, how they were exposed to something they didn’t know they liked, but in which they developed a real, deep interest. This is such an endorsement of our program: not only helping students pursue their passions, but helping students discover passions they didn’t know they had!
Thank you all for being part of the Watershed community this fall. We couldn’t have done it without the positive energy and support of all community members!
Here’s to a wonderful 2021!
