FEATURE
As COVID-19 separated us physically in Nashville last May, Harpeth Hall’s community came together online to think critically about the challenges we faced. In a virtual symposium entitled “Broadening Our Perspective: Life in a Global Pandemic,” students engaged via Zoom with top experts in business, history, science, and medicine to better understand the state of the world as it was that day. Featured speakers included Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham and Dr. Kelly L. Moore, a vaccine expert and advisor to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. In her opening remarks, Head of School Jess Hill spoke directly to students saying, “We have a shared experience. We have a shared humanity, and we have a shared responsibility as global citizens. That means all of us, all of you, and everyone else across the world need to be informed. We need to ask good questions today, and we need to keep asking good questions after today. We need to think critically about all that we are hearing. We need to reflect on this moment in history as being our time to envision a better future together.” And our students did just that. Throughout the day, the Harpeth Hall community participated in discussions including “Pandemic 101: Why Did This Happen? What Can We Do? When Does It End?,” “Nashville Strong: Creative Thinking and Innovation in Small Business,” and “Living Through History” as a way to contextualize what was happening across the globe and what was happening in our local community. Between each session, the girls met in small groups to discuss what they learned and reflect on what it meant to them. Through the spread of information, students walked away from the event feeling more educated about COVID-19. “My biggest takeaway,” one student remarked, “is just how important this time will be in the larger context of history…Put simply, I was reminded that my experience and my views of this time matter, that I have a voice.” Providing perspective and insight, “Broadening Our Perspective: Life in a Global Pandemic” helped to ease the stress of the pandemic for some students as we all experienced so many new and scary unknowns. The symposium also helped our students lift their heads from schoolwork and take in our humanity in this shared experience. The importance of coming together stuck with one student who observed: “COVID-19 is a very serious issue that is affecting global economies and, most importantly, people worldwide. As many struggle to overcome the pandemic, it is up to all of us despite our differences to fight it as one.”
FALL 2020
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