New Year, New Adventures A Letter from Gabe Burnstein, Head of School
It is difficult for me to imagine a better place for children to grow up than our Charles River School community. It is a warm hug every day, and our students learn and play in an environment where everybody knows their name. I have often heard it said that CRS is “a bubble,” and not like “the real world.” Sometimes I hear the question, “How will our children be prepared for the real world out there?”
First, we expect our graduates to teach the real world about the values they learned in our bubble and to make every space a place to belong for others. And we expect our graduates to treat the world as a sharing assembly – to share their voices with confidence and to support and applaud others with compassion.
And as our students get older, their educational world needs to grow with them. Every grade level at CRS gets off campus to get outside the bubble, and we use our greater Boston community as a place to explore and grow. However, it is vital that our older students have an opportunity to challenge themselves for an extended period of time and that Massachusetts, New England, and our country can serve as our classroom.
This school year, all fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth graders have opportunities for overnight trips that are part of our curriculum.
Back in September, over the first three days and two nights of the school year, our fifth graders visited Farm School in Athol, Massachusetts where they learned about the natural world and one another. They milked cows, fed pigs, learned to garden, compost, cook, and ended their day with s’mores and stories around the campfire. It was a great way to kick off the school year and build community with Rachel Miller, Michelle Faithful, Annie Kenney, Billy Beauzile, and one another.
This May, our entire sixth grade will head to Acadia National Park for two nights and three days to participate in real scientific research focusing on climate change in Acadia and explore Schoodic Point’s shoreline, wetlands, and forests led by a team of park rangers. This trip will serve as a real-world application of the environmental science curriculum students have been studying this year with Cindy Welch and Tara Jennings.
One week later, our seventh graders will travel to New York City for one night and two days to attend a Broadway musical that enhances their curriculum and inspires our seventh graders before they participate in the seventh and eighth grade musical at the end of the year. This year, the seventh graders are reading The Outsiders in English class with Jake Nemeroff and they will get to see the book come to life in The Outsiders musical at Jacobs Theatre in NYC! In addition to attending the musical, students will also get to explore the city and visit museums to make connections to their science and history curriculum.
Finally, this April, as a culmination of their Civil Rights Unit in history class with Tessa Steinert Evoy, our eighth graders will travel to Alabama and Georgia for a four-day, three-night Civil Rights Trip. They will walk in the footsteps of the foot soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement and even meet some of the ordinary people who did extraordinary things to change the world when they were 13 and 14 years-old.
It is worth noting that while many schools offer overnight trips as optional, or at an additional cost to families, these capstone learning experiences at CRS are supported by our Annual Fund and come at no additional cost. This allows us to live our “everybody in, nobody out” motto, so all students in our upper grades have these important shared experiences together.
I can’t wait for our new adventures in the new year and I’m endlessly grateful to our dedicated teachers who make it all possible.
With gratitude,
Gabe