Featured News
A Look Inside CA’s Classrooms, Online
The closure of CA’s campus in March presented a challenge for CA’s admissions cycle. To help welcome a new class in the fall, CA faculty and students have recorded videos about the courses they teach and activities they’re involved in. They have also shared course syllabi, examples of student work, and current senior projects.
The Promise and Perils of Artificial Intelligence
The dizzying rate at which AI is being adopted, mostly behind the scenes, has meant that wariness has accompanied increasing public awareness. In this article, four CA alumnae/i discuss the technology’s potential, as well as the urgency of considering human outcomes and unintended consequences as it develops.
Concord Academy in the Age of Coronavirus
This spring, much of the world stopped. This historic moment required CA to adapt quickly (one of our strengths, as the chameleon teaches us), and we have benefited from being guided by our mission during a time of fear, sorrow, and great uncertainty. Learn about how CA is maintaining community and mission across physical distance.
Ceci Crawford ’20 Senior Project: Reducing Food Waste
Ceci Crawford ’20 had planned to complete a senior project on reducing food waste in the Stu-Fac. With the arrival of distance learning mid-semester, she shifted her focus to how community members can reduce food waste at home. For this video, part of her project, she interviewed CA seniors and faculty members who are trying a variety of tactics to reduce food waste while they practice social distancing. “My hope is that this would remind everyone to think a little more about their own food waste when they’re at home,” she says.
Sustainability Spotlight: Prof. Robin Wall Kimmerer on What the Earth Asks of Us
In a down-to-earth talk with the CA community, Professor Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, spoke about what the earth asks of us in exchange for the gifts it provides. This inspiring discussing was part of the school’s focus on sustainability.
Identity Matters in Language Learning
The Spanish for Heritage Speakers course, which launched in fall 2019, offers students language instruction tailored to the specific needs of students who grew up speaking or hearing the language at home.
Playing Hard, Playing Kind
CA’s boys varsity soccer team captures EIL and NEPSAC titles. This was the third NEPSAC championship title in the past four years for CA, following recent championship wins for girls squash and boys cross-country. The boys varsity soccer team has advanced to the NEPSAC tournament in five straight seasons, seven times in the last eight years. It won EIL titles in 2017 and 2019.
CAMUN 2020, aka “Phoenix CAMUN”
Concord Academy’s 16th annual Model United Nations Conference, which took place using 19 Zoom rooms on May 2, was dubbed “Phoenix CAMUN” since it rose from the ashes of what could no longer be an in-person conference scheduled for April 4. Over 100 delegates from 18 schools attended. Charmaine Ko ’20 led the entire conference, and a series of weekly staff meetings, from her home in Hong Kong!
In Hackathon, CA Student Programmers Offer Ways to Help During Social Distancing
On Sunday, May 3, nine CA computer programmers attended a virtual hackathon hosted by Middlesex School. Its goal: to help people cope with social distancing and isolation during the Covid-19 lockdown. One team of 11th and 12th graders designed a website that pairs restaurants with leftover food supplies with shelters that need it. Another, made up entirely of 9th graders, was recognized for creating the most useful product for helping people who are distancing during the pandemic. Their prototype, designed using MIT’s App Inventor, was a mobile app that uses the location sensor on the phone to warn people when they’re entering high-risk areas, according to published records of Covid-19 cases.
Modeling the Four M’s … and Failing
Jeff Desjarlais, director of health and student support services, reflects on his efforts to incorporate movement, mindfulness, meaningful connection, and mastery every day in quarantine — and another M he decided was missing from the list.