Gray Matters, June 2021
Capturing History: All School Time Capsule Project
As educators, the act of documentation is an important element of our approach to teaching. Throughout any given year teachers take notes of student conversations, use photographs to memorialize objects that children create, retain student work in portfolios, and more. Documentation for us is also an essential tool for assessment. What we document is archival evidence of the annual student growth and development that we observe.
With this mindset, it was only natural for us to want to find a way to document this extraordinary unique year. To do so, we have created a time capsule to capture experiences across grade levels. Storytelling is an important tool in learning about history—looking at events through the eyes of those who were witnesses. We hope in the years to come when the contents of the time capsule are revealed, it will tell a story of our community’s resilience, perseverance, creativity, innovation, exploration, and more.
To create the time capsule, students and teachers were asked to collect representational items that meant something to them during this year. You can scroll through the photos below to preview some of the items collected. On Tuesday morning, students and teachers will join me on Zoom as we bury our time capsule together.
Another important part of commemorating our year is celebrating the CHDS Class of 2021! Before they go off on their next adventures, we are thrilled to host an in-person commencement ceremony in their honor. Though in-person attendance is limited to the graduates and their families, we hope you will join us virtually. The ceremony will be livestreamed at 10:30 am on Friday, June 11. A link will be sent out to parents this week.
