News

On Monday, January 21, school will be in session to honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The school day will consist of a keynote address by Rodney Glasgow and a variety of workshops for students to attend. All workshops will be led by students and faculty around topics of diversity, equity and inclusion. They and are designed to build understanding, strengthen community, and celebrate Dr. King’s legacy of nonviolent activism and pursuit of social justice.

We will launch signups for our summer trips early next week and are excited to offer a diverse range of international and domestic opportunities. Our students will be presented with a two week culture and language trip to Germany, a two week trip to Spain where they will embark on the centuries-old pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago, a week-long history and leadership journey to the Mississippi Delta, and a week-long service learning trip combating hunger and homeless in our nation’s capital, Washington, DC. All trips will depart around June 8-9 with final dates to be determined based on the number of travelers.

Students will be presented with an application to complete before they depart for winter break. Please talk with your child about their interest in participating in one of the summer trips and encourage them to complete the application as soon as possible. Decisions will be made the first week back in January. Be on the lookout for more information over the new few weeks!

On Wednesday, December 12, we will gather in Belknap House (admissions building) at 6 p.m. to share some light refreshments before we begin our discussion at 6:30 p.m. CA English Teacher Nick Hiebert will be leading a discussion of No Ashes in the Fire by Darnell Moore. TAs the current holder of the Katherine Carton Hammer Endowed Faculty Chair, Nick is focusing on improving his inclusive teaching practices. CA’s faculty/staff book group is also currently reading this book in the context of ongoing discussions about inclusion at CA. With parents, Nick will bridge those discussions as we reflect upon the relevance of the issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the CA community, as well as other topics raised by the book. Please contact Judy Osher P’17 ’19 (ja.os@verizon.net) or Frank Craig P’14 ’17 (fpcraig404@gmailcom) with questions.

CA’s annual Holiday Music Concert, featuring Chorus, CA Singers, chamber music ensembles, and student singing groups, will be on Friday, December 14. The show begins at 8 p.m. in the Chapel. No tickets are required, and anyone is welcome! If you are able to help with refreshments and/or support at this performance, please click here to learn more and sign up. Thank you!

In October, Haley Wixom ’20 and Lucas Ewing ’19, two of the co-heads of Concord Academy’s Big Data Club, competed in the 2018 Teradata University Network (TUN) Analytics Challenge. They were the first high school team to take part in this global, university-level competition. For their analysis that showed improving mental health support can reduce gun violence in schools, they took home the People’s Choice Award for best presentation. Now they’re working to help other high school students interested in pursuing data analytics.

On November 9 and 10, the CA Dance Project hosted their fall performance, Colour Theory, in the SHAC dance studio. See photos of the performance here.

The Community and Equity assembly on November 15 was a high point in this year’s 30th-anniversary celebration of Concord Academy’s GSA. Formerly the Gay-Straight Alliance, now known as the Gender Sexuality Alliance, this revolutionary safe space for LGBTQ+ people and allies was the first high school organization of its kind. Three decades after Kevin Jennings, then a CA history teacher, catalyzed the GSA’s founding, Concord Academy warmly welcomed him back to campus to present an assembly, “500 Years of Queers: An Overview of America’s LGBTQ History.” Jennings employed an educator’s seasoned instincts for engaging with complex subject matter and knowing when to get personal. His talk was adapted from a presentation he used to deliver in schools around Boston for LGBTQ History Month (which Jennings helped create). At CA, he demonstrated why knowing this history matters.

Congratulations on your child earning a position on a CA winter team sport! It is an honor to represent CA on the court, slope, and mat. Your child will be in great hands, as our winter coaching staff is a committed and talented group of educators. Sue Johnson, director of athletics, focuses on supporting the students and coaches as they pursue their team and individual goals this winter. In this article, she points out a few items to assist parents in following and supporting your child’s team in the coming weeks.

On November 8, 2018–19 Davidson Lecturer Patsy Aldana ’64 spoke at CA about the plight of migrant children in crisis. Reviewing the history of U.S. involvement in Central America and the conditions in the Northern Triangle — El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — she argued that instead of being demonized as threats to the United States, migrants should be understood as people whose history is closely tied to Americans’. The present circumstances have made thousands of children extremely vulnerable, she said, and hence worthy of protection.

On October 2, Mark Berger ’06 gave a talk hours before CA’s opening night production of The Laramie Project, contextualizing the play as “about empathizing with people who are different.” A film, theater, and TV producer in New York and a former member of the touring cast of Tectonic Theater Project’s The Laramie Project and the world premiere of The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, Berger share his firsthand knowledge of this influential work of theater. He spoke passionately about the dire implications of refusing to accept unwelcome narratives and instead substituting counterfactual ones — a message that resonates all the more deeply today. “We need to take big risks, ask uncomfortable questions, be fearless in our pursuit of truth,” he said. Click through to watch the video of his talk.