Reimagining Our Reopening

BY SHAUN KITTLE

A community should feel like home, like a place you return to again and again. But community is more than a location. It’s working together for the greater good. It’s group songs and outbursts of laughter. It’s compassion, it’s collaboration, and it’s resilience.

In March of 2020, the place that is our community was upended by something we never could have imagined: a pandemic. As a result, many of our students were forced to remain off campus, and Camp Treetops was cancelled for the first time in 100 years. Our 220-acre mountain campus suddenly felt very different, but that sense of community—our community—never wavered.

The COVID-19 pandemic reassured us that the very principles of North Country School and Camp Treetops are more relevent now than ever, and it also forced us to take a look at everything we do through an unexpected lens. Our children are adaptable, we knew this, so the question became: How do we offer our unique blend of hands-on, outdoor-based education while keeping our students and faculty safe?

The answer was a lot of planning. As soon as the spring semester ended—with its virtual graduation and online showcases of students’ work—faculty and staff began meeting and researching. Welcoming students and faculty back included health screenings, testing, and quarantining to meet New York State and Center for Disease Control guidelines.

“The philosophy underlying our planning was to maintain and preserve North Country School’s traditions the best we could,” said NCS Director of School Matthew Smith.

Many of the ingredients NCS needed for a safe reopening were already there; the school just needed to develop the right recipe. Since our educational philosophy hinges on nature as a master teacher, things like outdoor classrooms and even more time outside were an easy fit for teachers and students.

Other aspects of life here were not so simple.

“A lot of schools were shutting down the dining room and instead doing single-service, where you pick up a bagged lunch and go back and eat in your classroom,” Matthew said. “The dining room is the heart center of our campus and our community, and we wanted to preserve its role.”

Meals are traditionally all-community affairs at NCS. The dining room space wouldn’t allow for everyone to be present and socially distanced, so faculty and staff did the next best thing. First, plexiglass barriers were installed on every table, so two people could share a table and still be physically separated. Second, MERV 13 air filtration devices were installed to keep the air filtered and fresh. And lastly, the lunch period was split in two to accommodate smaller group sizes at a time.

Now, students and faculty can maintain the tradition of sharing a meal together. Students get to connect with the kitchen staff, hear announcements from their peers and teachers, and, perhaps most importantly, share time with each other.

Similar to dividing the meal periods, faculty and staff at NCS also decided to arrange classes so students would be interacting only with children in their own grade level.

Outside, nine new outdoor classrooms enabled children to be socially distanced and mask-less, if they desired. Inside, every grade level has its own space, classrooms, and teachers, and passing times between classes are staggered. This has resulted in small class sizes, and faculty being stretched a bit more.

“In the past, the goal has been to get students in the same spaces at the same time,” said NCS Director of Teaching and Learning Dave Steckler. “This year, it’s been the opposite. It’s a very different way of looking at scheduling.”

There are traditions that haven’t been affected, though. Happenings like garden harvests, barn chores, the Halloween celebration, and work jobs are still building the NCS community, even if they look a little different. Children are still climbing at the Crag, hanging out in Upper Field, painting on the Bog Bridge, participating in WARP, and hiking to Balanced Rocks.

Matthew and Dave agreed that the reopening went smoothly, and that the school is poised to handle any new challenges that might occur in the upcoming months and years. But for them, the biggest success is the happiness of the children. It’s true our students haven’t escaped the realities of COVID-19 by coming to our Adirondack community, but they have found a safe place to learn, play, and grow, together.

“The kids are really happy to be here,” Matthew said. "There's joy attached to school right now—school as a concept. They’re in person, they’re together, and they really appreciate it.”