The greatest gift of being on campus these last three months has been hearing so much laughter.
Last week, a group of Colorado Academy Second Graders invited me to their music class. Mrs. Golden read us a story about shapes. She asked us to use our bodies to tell a story. We stretched our arms up high as a tall shape, we crouched down low as a small shape, we rolled across the floor, and we skipped in a circle. As I rolled across the floor of the music classroom, I giggled out loud the whole time. The children did, too. For a moment, we forgot we were all wearing masks.
The week before Thanksgiving Break, the Schotters Music Center was abuzz with laughter. The choir room acted as our stand-in theater for nine live performances of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. Five Upper School actors, Juniors Annelise Agelopoulos, Christian Barnard, and Nathan Truong, and Sophomores Naomi Gillis and Andrew Koclanes, performed 30-minute shows, consisting of 31 different scenes, chosen by the audience. The audience was even invited to come up on stage in a couple of scenes. Who knew that our ceramics instructor Alecia Maher would volunteer to dance to a Nicki Minaj song with Christian Barnard? Audience members sat more than six feet apart from one another, but we laughed together, uncontrollably at times.
Over in the Ponzio Arts Center, together with my class of advanced painters, we laugh every day. Often we are laughing at me, as I try to use my new laser pointer, a tool I use to talk about the artists’ compositions, now that I can’t be looking over their shoulders, as in a normal year. Or perhaps it was the time we all ended up on an impromptu Zoom field trip with Junior Wyatt Rubey, as she searched for a missing cat she was taking care of for her neighbor. The cat was found in a crawl space, and because Wyatt had her iPad with her, we took a break from painting and went on the adventure with her. We all got a good chuckle as she turned her camera to show him hiding from her.
Never again will we not appreciate our time together on campus and the opportunity to share joy with one another.
Have a wonderful holiday season!