Last night we did a livestream of iHub Annual, a yearly celebration that includes presentations, awards, and our Grad. It was one hour long, but it took a couple hundred hours of work to put together, including running the social distancing grad celebration a couple nights before. It didn’t go perfectly, there were a few kinks, but overall it went very well! Our awards at our school are minimal: Leadership & Community service, inquiries, and the Grade 12 ‘Spirit of Inquiry’ Award, for the grad or grads who exemplify what it means to combine leadership/community and also produce amazing inquiry projects.

Highlighting the service to our community (the school or greater community) is something that makes me appreciate what schools do beyond academics.

It’s interesting to think of how remote learning has interrupted the feeling of community, but we still try to bring kids together. One of our teachers started a watch party of the livestream on Teams, and going to check out the chat conversation afterwards was heartwarming. The students watching were complimenting the student performances, congratulating the award winners, and sharing in the celebration of the night. It really was powerful.

This morning a video, Numb – a short film by Liv McNeil, was shared with me:

While remote learning works for some, for others it just isn’t school. I think about how much of what we highlight in our year-end celebration has to do with community, compared to a focus on academics… and it really makes me think about how much more of school is about belonging, and well-being, and community. That isn’t to say academics isn’t important, it’s just that school does so much more than give students final marks on a transcript.