AN SPS GRADUATION LIKE NO OTHER

Gratitude and hope are at the forefront as School celebrates the Form of 2021

Between the goalposts of the Guzzo Family Field, the Form of 2021 met its simultaneously traditional and extraordinary goal of graduating together, in person, in front of loved ones.

“Goodness, here we are,” Rector Kathy Giles said in her opening remarks to the 144 graduates, “on the football field, in family squares, on May 23, in person at Graduation. That’s an unprecedented sentence at the end of an unprecedented year.”

Rector Giles recognized students and employees for their efforts to live and learn on the grounds in the face of so much change. “It’s not what we wanted or planned, but we — as a whole — we have made it into something valuable and powerful,” she said. “And against the backdrop of suffering and injustice in the world out there, it has been an amazing privilege for each of us to get to do our jobs here, together, this year … St. Paul’s School exists to educate students to build purposeful lives in service to a greater good, and everyone here this morning has had a hand in making sure we stayed true to that mission this year.”

In his address, Sixth Form President Seth McKenzie spoke of the challenges of the past year. “How does one put into words what we have gone through as a form?” he asked. “Can words even truly convey what we went

In his address, Sixth Form President Seth McKenzie spoke of the challenges of the past year. “How does one put into words what we have gone through as a form?” he asked. “Can words even truly convey what we went through? Our chosen theme for the year was resilience. Resilience is defined as the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. I cannot think of a form that embodies what resilience is more so than us.”

Beyond the difficulties of the academic year at SPS, he continued with a variation of the Rector’s theme of pushing good into the world and addressed the responses of the Sixth Form Officers to the aftermaths of George Floyd’s death in May 2020 and the attack on the U.S. Capitol in January 2021.

“Worldwide, society has pivoted to and committed itself to making existing institutions more equitable and safer for everyone,” McKenzie said. “We saw this on the grand scale in the Black Lives Matter movement, and on the smaller scale here at SPS, where two Sixth Formers founded the Student Diversity Equity and Inclusion Council.”

As an institution, McKenzie said, St. Paul’s has made strides in affirming and uplifting student voices, in particular those of minorities. He added that there is still more to be done, and he called for the graduates to continue “to fight for our collective, honorable, and true-to-values vision of St. Paul’s. To do so, it is important that, once you receive your diplomas and walk off this stage, you do not lose the sense of community that we have all known so well.”

It was that teamwork that led to the vaccination of more than 400 eligible students prior to their departure on May 18 and the Graduation of the Form of 2021 on May 23. Ellinwood, the dean of students, credits the entire school life team with remaining positive and optimistic. At the end of the year, she adds, “We all still love our jobs and love working with kids and families. That, coupled with in-person Graduation, was huge. To be able to provide that to this class in the middle of a pandemic, we are so proud. I also credit Kathy [Giles] and her optimism. She was a great role model for positivity.”

Another unexpected benefit of the pandemic included an increase in sleep for students, resulting in improved wellness. Thanks to the delivery of personalized fitness, sleep, and recovery data from WHOOP fitness trackers donated by company founder Will Ahmed ’08, SPS learned that, in 2020-21, students averaged 70 minutes more sleep per night than the national benchmark.

“We will not be going back to all of the student-life time issues we wrestled with in the past,” Giles says. “We learned that teacher/student time is premium, so we moved some meetings out of the afternoon into early mornings so faculty can do that while kids are sleeping.”

Giles started her boarding school career in 1985, and has been through crises of varying degree during that tenure. The past year, she acknowledges, was challenging because of the need for high-stakes decision-making combined with rampant uncertainty, community anxiety, and a lack of reliable information with which to make important decisions due to the evolving nature of

a pandemic. There is one image that she says will remain with her forever. It was Easter morning, Sunday, April 4, 2021, and Dr. Bassi’s team had just received the final round of reentry testing after students returned from March Break. All tests came back negative for COVID-19. Instead of eating in the tents that had been set up to limit indoor contact, students were able to eat — together — in Coit. “What the kids realized was that everyone had come back healthy from the break, and we were going to be able to have the spring they wanted to have,” Giles says. “We were going to be able to finish this year. Kids were going into brunch and high-fiving that we were a healthy community. It was our goal to stay in person all year so students and teachers could do the work of learning, teaching, and growing. Everyone bought in and did their part, even when it was scary and hard.”

The Sheldon Rotunda was among the campus spaces modified to accommodate socially distanced learning.

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