On October 1, Parker’s Student Government had its first in-person Small Groups in over a year. Small Groups are a part of Student Government where Parker students get the chance to talk about a range of topics that are current and relevant at the time for the school. Small Groups are also a chance for a cross-grade conversation about a topic that people may have a shared experience or opinion about. 

This year there were 14 Small Groups led by 26 students, all in different grades in Upper School. The topics included mental health at Parker, athletic exclusion at Parker, in-person MX, lunch spaces and timing, Parker lounge space and unspoken rules, teacher practices, grading, work load, and the portal, the online to in-person transition, the schedule, and club times, class dismissal and exemption, the elective selection process, Parker course requirements, the athletic department, COVID-19 Q&A with Mr. Bruno, and Science Proposal Introduction and Q&A. 

Freshman Mala Levin went to the Parker lounge space and unspoken rules small group. “My whole experience went really well, it was cool to see what the seniors thought compared to what I knew,” Levin said. 

Small Groups also provide opportunities to learn something you didn’t know before. “I thought that it was really cool to learn more about some of the unspoken rules that I didn’t really know about as a freshman,” Levin said.  

Senior Ava Rosenberg led a small group about Athletic Exclusion at Parker. Rosenberg described how the meeting included a lot of underclassmen and was an overall productive conversation and debate. 

This year’s small group format differed from years in the past. This year, students had the chance to pick a room that had a specific topic. Before, each room discussed the same list of topics with questions, previously chosen by the Executive Advisor. “I think that the new format goes well because everyone in your small group is there to talk. Almost every single person participated when I led it,” Rosenberg said. 

Rosenberg described her previous experience with Small Groups. “I remember when I was an underclassman, I was put into a small group. It was all the same topic and I remember the upperclassmen that were leading it, were trying to push people to participate and they would just get really bad answers. There would be silence for a few minutes. But I think having different topics for Small Groups makes the engagement better,” Rosenberg said. 

Specifically, in Rosenberg’s small group, productive questions were asked that engaged people to speak and contribute to the conversation. Rosenberg said that the question that was really interesting was, “Whether we should split up JV and varsity in practices,” Rosenberg said. These questions prompted interesting conversation according to Rosenberg. 

Ivy Jacobs, senior and Executive Advisor in Student Government, managed Small Groups. Jacobs discussed this year’s process for Small Groups and its overall success. 

“We had a brainstorming session at the Small Groups training meeting and it was super awesome to see all of these different Small Groups leaders generating their own ideas and bouncing ideas off of each other and pairing up based on what they were interested in, and so that in the beginning was really exciting to see,” Jacobs said. 

Last year, this format of Small Groups was changed for a Zoom setting so this was the first year being done in-person. “I was obviously a little nervous because this had never been done before in person, so I had a lot of worries on attendance…I was really impressed with the student body’s attendance, I think we had more attendance than we’ve had in past years,” Jacobs said. 

Jacobs also highlighted that the new format also prompted people to speak more. “When you are talking about something that you care about you are much more likely to participate and to engage,” Jacobs said.