Dear Staff,
When school closed in March of 2020, we entered an educational landscape that challenged us to our core as educators. And while we were unprepared at the time to run a comprehensive high school remotely, together we dedicated ourselves to the work of continuously assessing and adjusting plans as we learned, and strived to do better each week. Collectively, we rose to the challenge.
A large majority of you volunteered on committee after committee, and continued to do so into and throughout the summer, all of you learning the necessary remote and hybrid platforms—as well as a new educational lexicon—and as frustrating as it was time and time again, you never lost sight of the students at the center of our work. Through a number of new schedule rollouts and the development of and shifting nature of various student cohorts and COVID protocols, you not only rose to the occasion but you responded to a larger community need for connection and reassurance. You committed yourselves to consistent family outreach, an effort unlike any outreach we’ve seen. Your efforts and your inspired action this year is the glue that has held us together. In this first post-school year moment of reflection here, I want to highlight for us all what went well. The reflection that follows isn’t short, yet it’s also not exhaustive. I know that people were doing backbreaking work behind the scenes that some of us will never know about. If there’s someone or something I fail to mention, I invite you to share it in this ongoing community shout out.
From the outset, our custodial staff put forth monumental efforts to keep the buildings clean and disinfected. The nurses office spent restless days and nights ensuring compliance with COVID protocols and their weekends helping our local boards of health with contact tracing. The cafeteria crew spent the entire last year feeding students and community members — first outside under tents, then both inside and outside while hybrid, and then ultimately via boxed lunches, which they created and served to students and staff at multiple stations around the building in our hybrid model. The front office and IT teams ensured that students and staff had working Chromebooks and Wifi throughout the year, signing out technology and updating those who came in for it on the ever-changing remote/hybrid/in-person rules. We had members of the faculty help too with this, providing not only QR codes and the like throughout the year, but also his expertise in his challenging role as union president, serving as a critical line of communication between the faculty and administration.
And what a year it was to be a teacher. Though you were better prepared to teach remotely after dedicated summer training, the tedious nature of the daily work was challenging at best. Even though strides were made with new technology, students were often hard to reach and engage. Administrators, teachers, ESPs, and ASPs began using all possible lines of communication to reach students who were struggling to connect. Home visits were conducted, phone calls home were made. What’s App, Facebook, Instagram — all and more were employed as ways to connect with students in any way possible. On top of your teaching load, you were assigned a number of students to check in with to minimize the likelihood of students slipping through the cracks. Again, you rose to the occasion. Our community outreach to our Brazilian families reached an all time high.
While learning how to best teach remotely, we wanted to try to maintain a sense of high school normalcy and community for our students to whatever extent possible. The freshmen team prioritized holding our Freshman Orientation on campus — albeit masked and outdoors — to welcome our new 9th graders during a most significant transition. By Halloween, the freshman advisors had helped freshmen to organize a trick-or-treating event outdoors on the football field, a gathering that was welcomed wholeheartedly by families, young kids, and teenagers alike.
November brought more COVID testing, and the first opportunity for students to join clubs. In December, the theater department produced a drive-in screening of “It’s a wonderful life,” in which our kids pulled off an incredible performance that required everyone to take creative risks. The show simultaneously served as a timely reminder.
By January, an entirely new schedule was in the works for the impending hybrid model. Teachers, you were asked to pivot yet again. When the hybrid schedule was approved, our guidance department divided 695 students into workable cohorts.
In the hybrid model, you were further tasked with teaching both in person and also to students Zooming from home. You did this fully masked, ever mindful of the need for your in-person students to remain 6 feet apart. Your curriculum materials needed to be consistently modified or reimagined altogether to fit the new model and to meet students’ readiness and ever-changing needs. Having students in the building eventually helped to satisfy an overwhelming social-emotional need for them, but still the work of engaging students remotely and in the hybrid model was challenging and tiring.
Amidst the nearly insurmountable teaching challenges, you also continued to show up for the difficult work of maintaining a reflective professional community dedicated to addressing systemic racism and overcoming injustice. The Race, Equity, and Cultural Proficiency group was formed to create a vision for the high school on diversity, inclusion, and equity, and to actively examine our role in the systemic inequalities that advantage some and disadvantage others. This group developed and offered all-school assemblies on social justice issues and organized school-wide professional development opportunities around systemic racism and bias. The Women of Color peer group was born, as was the Black Student Alliance.
At the same time, committed parents and faculty members created a PTSO for MVRHS, supported in large part by our student leadership classes. As a result, we have a gorgeous new space in the Garden Courtyard and we await the installation of a new door to allow students and staff to cross through this area during the day — more time outside, for which many of us have a newfound appreciation.
When winter sports returned, albeit via a shortened season, we grew a bit more hopeful for a return to normal. The boys’ basketball team were Cape & Islands Champs!
The sophomore class, led by class advisors, reminded us all to “spread the love” through positive messages on the marquee out front and the request for hearts to be displayed across the island. The Voyager class embarked on a business venture producing Purple Paws dog treats. Under special education’s direction, we started offering Saturday school support for students needing time and teachers to help them. The Navigator program brought back their “Coffee Clipper” to the delight of our staff in need of caffeine!
In April, we welcomed back sports fans — 100 fans signed up to watch football! After break, we were in-person for any and all who wanted to be with us five days a week. It was so refreshing to be among so many (masked) faces in the building! Once again, our custodial crew put in many extra hours ensuring the correct number of chairs and tables (3 ft with masks on, 6 feet when eating) were in each room.
Teachers had to handle more students in-person (ahead of the state’s requiring schools to go in-person) plus a handful of students Zooming each block. You were rightfully frustrated and exhausted, yet you handled it with grace.
With so many students in the building and a need for more seats at lunch, the phys. ed. department was incredibly flexible and spent countless periods moving to any open space (indoors/outdoors) available with their gym classes. The CTE and science departments got creative with ways to teach their content, which is traditionally more hands-on.
In May we tested out yet another new schedule, with an early release on Mondays.
Teachers were asked to pivot yet again. And you did. Thank you.
We were able to organize Honors Night, it was filmed and edited for the community to watch. Every student being honored tuned in.
The visual arts department used their brand new gallery displays to show off the amazing work of our student artists for a full week in the art triangle instead of as a one-night event. The Minnesingers were able to display their talent at the Tabernacle — in-person! The theatre department produced an in-person performance of “Bright Stars.” Creative writing students facilitated a coffee house poetry reading under the tent in the courtyard. We led the massive effort to get all our sophomores (including remote students) through MCAS testing. The junior class student council, led by advisors, collaborated with MVCS for Electronics Disposal Day — a huge success for both the school, Martha’s Vineyard Community Services, and the community at large.
Even with all the shifting from Zoom to hybrid to in-person, effective teaching by our world language department led to yet another increase in the number of students who earned their seals of biliteracy. In 2019 seals of biliteracy were awarded to 7 MVRHS students. In 2020 that number grew to 13 students. In 2021, 24 students were awarded seals of biliteracy. Incredible.
The first week of June was Senior Week. Although the bonfire was canceled due to weather, and field day slightly dampened by rain, a fantastic Evening Under the Stars allowed graduates, who never got their official prom last year, to get all dolled up and gather with great music and food in the Courtyard. Class Night and its accompanying scholarship program, both organized by the guidance department, was held at the Tabernacle. Over $1million was given out to graduates.
Graduation was a huge, and hot, success at the varsity baseball field, we had of whom rolled with changing Department of Education regulations to make it happen. Project Vine sailed over to Penikese Island for their annual senior class retreat. The GSA (Gender Sexuality Alliance) held their annual Pride event in June and raised the intersectionality flag that now waves proudly in front of MVRHS.
On a recent beautiful Monday afternoon, our SAC organized a Field Day that brought our freshman class together again for a series of community building activities, ice cream sandwiches, and a chance to hand out Class of 2024 “I think you’re muted” t-shirts. Our sense of humor just might be somewhat intact after all …
To those of you retiring this year, thank you. Kathy Perrotta, Barbara-jean Chauvin, Jeff Caruthers, Amy Reece, Mike Tinus, Francis “Scotty” Scott, Inez Montanile, and Linda Leonard, you will be missed beyond words. Thank you for your service to our MVRHS students and families. We wish you well as you begin your next chapters.
From the bottom of my heart, to our entire staff at MVRHS, thank you. You have made it through the most backbreaking year in the history of education. As a staff member said in our final staff meeting of the year, this was a year where we all fell down and got back up, over and over again. Give yourselves a summer to breathe and relax. Who knows. We just might return to our best year yet.