Emily Hays Photo
Beecher gym teacher explains a game at Friday’s assembly.
Exactly a year after New Haven schools closed in response to Covid-19, L. W. Beecher students and staff Friday reflected on all that happened — and celebrated the fact that they made it through.
The reflection and celebration took place at a special morning #BeecherStrongDay 2021 assembly at the Beaver Hills-based magnet school.
Signs of normalcy peeked through the surgical and cloth masks. Assistant Principal Mark Sweeting cracked school supply jokes. Teachers danced to the Cha-Cha Slide.
At the same time, the event, with its combination of in-person and remote interaction, symbolized the still-unfinished business of emerging from the pandemic.
“Celebration is not something we’ve focused on this year, just because it’s hard to pull off when students are at home,” said Beecher physical education teacher Michael Youngman, who led the event prep.
Covid-19 safety measures meant flipping the roles in a normal school celebration. The teachers were the ones playing games at #BeecherStrongDay 2021 …
… while students watched from their classrooms and bedrooms. Beecher is a pre-K‑8 magnet school. As of Thursday last week, all grades have the option of some in-person classes each week.
Sweeting started off Beecher Strong Day with his own addition to his script.
“What school supply rules the classroom?” Sweeting asked, emphasizing the world “rules.”
Small, tinny voices shouted out from their Google Classroom squares that the answer was a ruler. Sweeting had practiced this joke on his coworkers, asking who was the “king” of the classroom. No one had guessed it, so he switched the wording for his live performance.
Sweeting then ran through the instructions of the times: Maintain social distancing during the ceremony. Keep your masks on.
Before Sweeting handed off the microphone, he squeezed in another joke.
What did Benjamin Franklin feel when he discovered electricity? he asked.
One of the members of the support staff whispered, “Shocked,” to another. Both laughed quietly and rolled their eyes. A few seconds afterwards, a student shouted out the answer on screen.
Principal Kathy Russell Beck took center stage in the school cafeteria to reflect on the pandemic anniversary.
“I cannot believe it’s been a year since that two-week hiatus turned into 10 months. Over that time, our teachers have been incredible. Our parents have been patient. And you all made this the best place to be,” Beck said.
She said that the first weeks of the pandemic were hardest for her. The school had handed out packets of work to students, and she thought she was getting two weeks to relax a little and spend time with her family. Then Gov. Ned Lamont pushed back the date for students to return, until she learned eighth graders would not ever return to the school. She had seen many of those students through every grade at Beecher and had to send them off with a modified graduation.
Beck has been impressed by how everyone has reacted to the pandemic. Some of the teachers went house to house to give their students gifts, so they knew their teachers were still thinking of them. The custodian and the school clerk painted a huge “We miss you!” banner to fly over the school during Beecher’s reverse parade last spring.
After a video on the same topic, teachers were pulled out of their rooms. As they filed into the cafeteria, they asked Beck whether they were getting a prize.
“Maybe you are,” she said cryptically.
They were not.
Youngman, Sweeting and magnet resource teacher Erin Michaud played modified pop songs for a socially distant dance party. Some of the teachers swayed slightly as Sweeting brought around the bluetooth speaker and Youngman carried over the camera. Only when the Cha-Cha Slide came on did every teacher start moving.
Then Youngman set groups of teachers up with games. The first group’s task was to use a straw to move 20 Skittles from one plastic cup to another. Language arts teacher Howard Williams won that game, scrunching his blue surgical mask up over his straw.
Second grade teacher Jen Parry won the next game. She systematically blew as much air into her white balloon as it would hold and used that air to blow cups off the desk in front of her. Her two competitors could not get their balloons as large as hers. Each managed to knock a few cups off desks.
The last game pitted administrators against each other to assemble “puzzles” made out of cereal boxes. Beck and Michaud threw paper onto each others’ workspaces, while Sweeting called out Beck for foul play and Youngman reminded them that they were role models. Despite this distraction, Michaud assembled her puzzle the fastest. One student rooting for another administrator let out a disappointed “Nooo!”
The last event was a surprise for Beck. A staff member rushed a box — labeled “SPECIAL DELIVERY” in marker — to her during her closing speech. She opened the box to find a plaque recognizing Beecher as a school of distinction among magnet schools. The award goes to schools based on their commitment to racial equity, its curriculum, and its testing data and academic improvement.
Beck knew that the school had won the award, for the eighth time, but did not know that the plaque had arrived. She asked another teacher to read out the plaque because she was getting choked up.
As the ceremony ended, teachers asked students in school to look under their seat to find a snack taped there. Both in-person students and the students home then got the link to an online game. The questions asked students to guess when Beecher was built, the number of parking spaces in the back lot and how many basketball hoops were in and outside the school. Youngman said that the students were looking forward to the game all day.