At the top of the Senior’s Gratitude Campaign website page, 36 of the Parker seniors are waving happily in a video. Further below, there are 70 messages of gratitude that have been posted on the site. The senior class and their grade-heads have created a Senior Gratitude Campaign that aims to spread thanks across the Parker community during this stressful and disconnected time.

Usually, during the first few months of the school year, the seniors would be working on their County Fair booth. Last year, the senior class introduced a haunted house activity to the fair which required a lot of work, according to Senior Grade Head and Upper School Choir Instructor, Emma Castaldi. This year, County Fair has been postponed until March of 2021, which freed up a significant amount of grade room time, allowing for another project to take place.

According to Castaldi, at this time of year, seniors are very busy with college admissions-related tasks. Because of that added stress, the grade heads wanted to do a new project that would not be “overwhelmingly taking up too much time” for the seniors.

The grade-heads focused on spreading gratefulness because November is a time for thankfulness and being leaders in the community as the oldest grade. “We want to show the Parker community that we’re all very thankful for each other and that we’re all going through the same stuff,” senior Will Ehrlich said.

The grade heads used a grade-room period to hold a brainstorming session to come up with ideas for projects that the seniors could feasibly do to make an impact. That brainstorm resulted in the idea of a message board which is what they decided to create. “We were very limited in our options, but I think it was a good choice,” Ehrlich said.

The message board has its own page on the official Parker website. The primary page has messages of gratitude from the seniors and then that page links to a page where other people in the community could share messages. The community page has over 25 messages from students and faculty who wanted to share.

Freshman Wren Dudney posted a message thanking her math teacher, Wendy Olt for being a good teacher during online learning. When asked about her message, Dudney said she was happy to have a place where she could express gratefulness in such an easy way to teachers she felt were not being given enough thanks.

The video on the Senior Gratitude Campaign website page was created during grade room. The video starts and ends with several Zoom grids of seniors waving to their cameras. “It’s not easy to see the senior class altogether at all now,” Castaldi said. So instead, they wanted to create some images of the full grade. The video also included seniors explaining the page and inviting the community to interact with it by reading a script that the grade-heads had drafted.

“This gratitude statement can be written or recorded,” senior Rohan Dhingra said as the fourth speaker in the video. “Feel free to submit a statement of yourself or work on this project with your class, department, or family.”

Other videos were created in small groups to be sent to different groups of Parker students and faculty, inviting them all to add to the message board.

 The message board was started off by the senior class all posting their messages of gratitude. Castaldi described a variety of people that seniors were thankful for ranging from a specific friend to the collective maintenance staff.

Castaldi explained that because this is a very frustrating time where everyone has a list of things that they are unhappy about, it is important to “take a step back” and recognize the things and people that you are lucky to have and grateful for.

“Usually we don’t have to see our community, we just feel it and it’s around us and it’s right there,” Castaldi said, “so these kinds of things, like a message board, is a creative way where we can kind of still visualize and experience a community.”

Senior Ada Collins recommended that people post on the message board because of the simple joy that it is equipped to share. “It’s just a really great opportunity for people to come together, express gratitude,” Collins said. She noted the significance of expressing gratitude for being part of the Parker community and enjoying all that it has to offer. 

Ehrlich hopes that the message board will bring people together as it allows the Parker community to express gratitude for their relationships. 

Castaldi explained that this kind of senior year was unexpected, even after last Spring, when COVID-19 had already come into effect. The grade heads sent out a survey to the senior class to get a feeling of what they cared about and what they wanted this year to look like. 

Castaldi was surprised to see that seniors had taken the time to write out their thoughts when the survey asked if there was anything else they wanted the grade heads to know. She noted that seniors went into this year with a positive attitude and have maintained that feeling but it has been hard and they are experiencing a lot of doubt struggle, especially relating to the college process.

The senior grade heads have tried to be as accommodating and comforting to the seniors as possible, attempting to signal dedication to the class of 2021’s senior year experience.

Collins explained that seniors had mostly “accepted” this year and they have “come to terms” with the situation. She thinks most students are doing ok and are hopeful for some time together next semester, but are also focused on safety.

Ehrlich noted the disappointment of missing his friends and the atmosphere of being at school with the community. “The reason this gratitude campaign is so effective at a time like this is because we can all just kind of be together without really being together,” Ehrlich said.