Earlier this week, CA participated in the Big Draw, a cross-divisional event that encouraged students and faculty to create art that beautified the campus, via the lens of this year’s theme: Make the Change.

As educators, we believe in our students' capacity to make a better world place, and so this theme resonated deeply with us. And while there are many ways to create change in the world, the Big Draw narrowed in on a specific target: reducing, reusing, and recycling—here at CA.

To illustrate how we might lighten our impact on the environment, the art department decorated the sculpture garden with a sample of all the different items we recycle on a given day. Seeing all the items laid out was eye-opening for many students—both in that it highlighted how effective we are at recycling those things that are a daily part of a functioning campus (we get a lot of packages!), but also calling out those small changes we can make if we hope to lighten our environmental footprint (filling reusable water bottles is far better than using disposable ones).

Particularly eye-opening were the stats related to how many disposable masks Upper School students use on a daily basis. As you might know, we stock disposable masks that students can grab in the main office; the intent is to offer an assist to those students who forget their reusable masks. After crunching numbers for the Big Draw, we realized we were going through 100 masks a day. These masks are often found in the parking lot, or our trash cans, at the end of the day, which made us realize the benefit of asking our students to once again redouble their efforts to wear reusable masks, and only grab our disposable masks if they truly forget those masks at home. Whatever you can do to support these efforts would be greatly appreciated!

Leading up to the Big Draw, of course, was Back-to-School Night. Again, we apologize for the technical issues that impeded the start of that event. We’re doing our own redoubling of efforts to ensure any events that require Zoom will go more smoothly in the future!

For those of you who missed my opening remarks, you may find the recording here.