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Educating the Heart
"Until I met David, I never truly understood what it meant to be giving with respect to community service. Since I have had this experience, I have learned that giving to others is actually what sets my heart on fire." –– Bailey Stankus ’12
ab ov e Girls Ice Hockey Captain Bailey Stankus ’12 with skate partner David at Choate’s Adaptive Skate Program.
As the tradition matures, it’s increasingly clear how service also plays an anchoring, stabilizing role for students and graduates, whose lives tend to be highly intellectual and achievement-oriented. Personal feats are great, they discover, but what people often need from them isn’t a quick wit or a cogent analysis of a complex issue. They need a person who cares enough to share in their day-to-day struggles and to affirm their value as human beings, even if they can’t walk or care for themselves. This discovery seems to strike an especially tender chord with people who are geared to outperform and consequently put a premium on what they and others can do. Perhaps that’s why one of the most popular and memorable activities at Choate has nothing to do with grades, competitive sports or the arts. The Adaptive Skate Program (better known as Special Pop Skate) gives local residents with disabilities a chance to get out on the ice on Sunday mornings at Choate’s Remsen Arena. Choate volunteers make it possible, as students, faculty and staffers lace up skates and push wheelchairs around the ice for 75 minutes. It doesn’t matter if you’re a hockey superstar or a beginning skater; faces beam either way. All the week’s griping tends to give way to an intoxicating gratitude. It’s a peak experience, one that’s rivaled only by the Adaptive Swim Program, which brings the same concept to the Larry Hart Pool. “I look forward to it every week, just like the kids do,” says Sophia Kaufman, a fifth former from Charleston, W.Va. and regular participant in Adaptive Swim. “There’s no pressure. These kids like you and consider you their friends. They come every week wanting to swim, and they’re not looking at life in terms of, ‘what can I put on my college application?’ Or ‘how can I do this or that?’ They just want to have fun, and there’s not really any pressure. I really like that.” Sometimes the heart-level connections come to light when they’re tested. Fourth former Andrew Moeckel learned this when he was running late one day to pick up Alex, a 10-year-old boy whom he mentors through the Choate Mentoring Program (formerly the Nutmeg Big Brothers and Big Sisters Program). Every Sunday, they hang out on campus: brunch in the dining hall, ping pong at the SAC, maybe a game of squash. This time, Alex might