A World Within a World: Campus Spaces

Time and Space
Chatham Hall’s unique location offers two key benefits: time and space. Both are required for students, and faculty and staff, to make intentional decisions, form bonds, and dive deeply into experiences that encourage self-reflection. All are essential for community members to learn more about themselves and their passions. Each day, the Chatham Hall community has the time and space to create opportunities to appreciate being present with each other and to create thoughtful and joyful experiences in which teens can be teens and individuals are valued for their authentic selves.

Campus Possibilities
The global coronavirus pandemic has brought countless changes to everyday life. For students and teachers across the country, this has meant a complete disruption to school life. At Chatham Hall, the ability to create a community “bubble” has meant that not only could in person instruction continue but so too could extracurricular experiences. In fall 2020, this meant offering the Fall Play outside to take precautions against COVID-19 and take advantage of the campus’ many unique spaces.

“I’ve always thought we have such an interesting campus that it can really be activated with performance,” said Cameron Ayres, Theatre Department director and English and creative writing teacher. “I have an interest in site specificity in performance anyway, and what we did in the fall was not exactly site specific but I knew we would be generally stable in terms of weather and I thought this might be a way for us to be able to have live performances. We could do it without the actors being masked, and the plays that I was looking at could be fairly distantly blocked.”

All in the Timing, a  series of three one-act plays, took place on the Holt patio, in front of Willis Hall, and behind the Rectory.

“I was very proud of the girls,” said Ayres. “We had so many obstacles to figure out how to get around and I thought they were just very clever about it. Frequently they would come up with something that I was not thinking of. I think one of the challenging things about working outside is being big enough. I think very realistic theater is more like cinematic acting, it’s very internal. In the Black Box, for example, it kind of picks that up. But if you’re behind the Rectory and someone is back by one of the trees then it doesn’t really get picked up. The girls were marvelous about a sense of scale with normal interactions that would be big enough to read to the audience.”

In addition to scale, the performances also had to take into account outdoor challenges such as bugs, birds, and even cars driving by. But despite these factors, the show did indeed go on.

“Something I told the girls is that you are always living through history, but generally you are not aware of it.” said Ayres. “But we’re in a very interesting moment because we are totally aware of living through history. This is something you’ll tell your grandkids about, how this year was totally bizarre and you’ll appreciate it differently when we’re out of it.”

Opportunities to Explore
A program unique to Chatham Hall, GIRLS’ Day is a once-a-year opportunity for the students to become the teachers and offer workshops on their personal passions. In 2021, GIRLS’ Day included workshops on Mardi Gras, jiu jitsu, Chinese medicine, saving the oceans, and more. Each year, each workshop and each facilitator have different requirements for success and the Chatham Hall campus offers spaces for each.

“In the planning process, students have to fill out a form about the space they would like,” said GIRLS’ Day coordinator, biology teacher, and associate director of residential life for student initiatives Kirsten Blaesing.
“I ask them, for example, if they would like a Harkness table or a desk or a lot of space. Essentially, we’re asking them what they need for their workshops to go how they would like. One of the questions is literally ‘if you could have any space on campus, what would that space be and why?’ Most of the time, logistics work themselves out. Students who are leading discussions usually want the cozy feeling of the Harkness table. Last year we had students who wanted to do a baking workshop. The student kitchen wasn’t big enough and we couldn’t use the dining hall, but Mrs. Morrison’s Latin classroom had a kitchen that was perfect. There really is a space available for everyone to feel comfortable and everyone to have a good fit for their workshop and what they intend to do.”

Backdrop for Success
Each day, Chatham Hall offers opportunities for all community members to hone the skills needed for success. From yoga classes to rock wall climbing, building robots to building a personal finance budget, students, faculty, and staff try new things, take risks, fail forward, and find new ways to meet their goals. The Chatham Hall campus is like no other. A dynamic world within a world, the life of the School takes advantage of every unique space to foster the interests and passions of each unique individual.

Originally published in the Spring 2021 Chat.