As the school year kicks off, students are reconnecting with friends and teachers after a summer apart. Many Form 3 students are facing their first year at a new school, and their year begins with a community-building orientation trip to Camp Merriwood. This has been a tradition for the freshman class for the past three years, and a place where friendships are formed and memories are made. Additionally, each grade in the Middle School goes for a similar overnight trip to camps around New England as part of orientation. While beneficial for this group of students, new Form 4 and Form 5 students do not have the same opportunity to connect with their classmates outside of a school environment, making the beginning of their year a bit more difficult as they immerse themselves in brand-new academic and social environments.
In an effort to promote community engagement and class bonding, we suggest that Upper School students of all grade levels should have an experience like the Form 3 Merriwood trip. Even a small event like a class movie night or a lawn-games-and-barbeque hangout would create a better sense of community for students. To make the experience more special, though, KO could bring back the old tradition of orientation adventures for all grade levels, and send each class on their own annual trip.
This Fall, students in Forms 4 through 6 participated in Service Learning Day on Sept. 6, where the student body, divided into groups, found ways to engage with others in meaningful ways. An excellent way to both do a service to the community and get to know classmates better, the Service Learning projects were a great success. Head of the Upper School Lisa Loeb emailed the student body on Sept. 9 with gratitude for our work on Service Learning Day. “Thank you for being so committed, caring, and kind,” she wrote. “You are demonstrating our core values both on and off campus.”
The excursions and experiences students participated in offered a chance to break out of the classroom and spend the day with friends in ways similar to the class bonding trips taken by Middle School and Form 3 students. However, in the trips taken by the younger forms, students were able to spend a couple of overnights at a camp, and bond through the various activities provided by camping staff, such as archery, candle making, canoeing, and more. These activities help the different forms grow even closer.
Unfortunately for the older forms, they were never able to pursue the same excursions as the lower forms. Since COVID, it has been difficult for such activities to happen. However, this also means that the forms have become less close-knit. Having class trips would allow for the older students to bond. Since junior and senior year are extremely stressful, it would be nice to have a trip to relieve some tension and come together as a form.
One idea we had was for seniors to go on a trip to Boston or to Six Flags. These kinds of trips would be a nice stress reliever and would get seniors out of a stressful environment and to an amusement park or into the city. This trip could be considered a “celebration trip” for seniors in late May after they turn in their thesis and take their AP exams, and when most know where they are going to college. It would be a chance to come together one last time as a Form for one more bonding experience.
Another idea that has been brought up by the Editorial Board is to bring juniors to a sports game. They could go to a Hartford Yard Goats game or a Wolf Pack game together. The school could reserve a section just for the Form 5 students, so that the group could bond with each other. Students would have the ability to connect with their friends over sports and competition. We feel this is an appropriate trip for the Form 5 students and could be pretty doable.
For Form 4, we felt that a trip to Quassy or Sonny’s Place would be perfect. The variety of rides and activities to do would be ideal for sophomores to bond together with people of similar interests outside of school, whether it be going on more thrilling rides, going to the waterpark, or enjoying the competitive games for prizes. This would allow new students to find friends that they know they can have fun with and share interests with, and therefore help to bond the community even more.
Having more class trips that are not school related would help to make students much happier and do better in school in the long-run. Students would have more to look forward to, and therefore would feel better about the long hours of work they have to deal with. In addition, new students who do not feel as if they truly have found their place at KO yet will have a chance to meet people in a whole new environment, which should help them to immerse themselves into the KO community while enjoying a fun and stress-relieving experience. Overall, trips would be beneficial to students at KO, and we hope that they will be considered for the future when considering our student community and making strong connections.
