By Julie McCay Turner
Nothing important happens in school on the last day before vacation. That cliché didn’t ring true for Bedford High School (BHS) on the day before Thanksgiving.
The BHS Peer Leaders scheduled a Community Day for Wednesday, scrambling regular class schedules and focusing on the UNITY in community.
It was a time of reflection and entertainment. Peer leaders presented a pair of assemblies for the student body, along with classroom breakout sessions for reflection.
Everyone has their Own Story
In the first assembly students were encouraged to consider the lives of students with whom they may share a classroom, but whom they may not know personally.
Videos portrayed the disparate daily experience of students who live in Bedford, at Hanscom, and in Boston.
Making friends can be difficult for students of military families: They are often only in Bedford for two years, and Hanscom’s on-base security challenges can limit easy after school sociability.
The experience of Boston students, often on their school bus before some students who live nearer even get out of bed, is a sharp contrast to a short drive along suburban streets.
The videos and the assembly’s finale, however, showed a striking commonality among the responsibilities and stresses for all the students.
50 People, One Question
According to its website, “Fifty People One Question is an ongoing social experiment and film series exploring human connections through people and place. The project began in New Orleans in 2008 and has since traveled across the globe, touching millions of viewers. Along the way, the films have captured a small slice of humanity; to discover dreams, losses, reflections, stories and secrets, some shared and some completely unrepeatable.”
BHS senior Mary Kalb created a 50 People, One Questionvideo where students and teachers were asked what they would do with a single wish.
During one of Wednesday’s classroom break-out sessions, peer leaders asked students to write down their single wish before watching the video. Later they shared observations on the film, commenting on the number of wishes for a better society compared to the number of self-centered hopes. Several students noted that the wish they first wrote had changed after watching the video.
Multicultural Assembly
The morning’s second plenary session generated immense enthusiasm for entertainment from multiple cultures.
BHS’s Advance Choir brought down the house with a splendid rendition of Shosholoza, the song so popular in South African culture that it is often referred to as South Africa’s second national anthem. Patrick Morrisey, head of the Math Department, offered a love song sung in Mandarin to his wife and young son who listened from the second row. On the darkened stage, a lighted Tzuh-ling or Chinese yo-yo, spun through the air on a string.
And there were dancers: English folk-dancing rappers; G-Squad and Dance Club hip-hop performers; terpsichorean skeletons from Mrs. Taub’s Spanish class; and a Native American dancer with full Drum Circle accompaniment.
The program closed with an international Thanksgiving message offered by students and teachers, each saying thank you in their own language.
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