I spent 2020-21, my 10th grade, at Chester College. This was an unusual year because of the pandemic. The cozy-looking boarding houses at Chester were closed, so I was staying with a host family. We all had to wear masks of course, and for long stretches we could not socialize with anyone outside the school community or leave town. So life really revolved around school more than it would have otherwise. The Chester College teachers were undaunted by this situation and coped with it creatively and with great dedication. -- Where I came from (California) 10th grade was a critical year already for college preparation for many students. I needed to take certain standardized American classes that year and prepare for certain standard nation-wide tests. My Chester teachers were impressively familiar with the content of these classes and tests. They arranged my schedule in such a way that there was time for them to give me individual tutoring, to allow me to cover these American requirements. But I learned very different things as well, which I would never have been exposed to at home. My Chester teachers made sure my Spanish was improving rapidly, so that I could soon follow classes held in Spanish. These included, for instance, classical philosophy, which I would not have studied at home, and European history taught from a continental European perspective. My (British) English teacher read Shakespeare and other classical literature with her advanced students, and her composition assignments were very different from what is asked of students in California -- perhaps more demanding, but also more interesting, I felt. The school community was particularly small in 2020-21, because of the pandemic, so _every_ class was small and personal. But even in normal years the style would surely not have been very different. Everyone was kind, friendly, and supportive. The school's overall attitude was that academic achievement was important and possible to everyone, but was not the only goal to focus on. Physical thriving mattered: we had a nutritious lunch together every day in the dining hall, an event which brought us all together as a community. Also, all age-groups were out doing field sports behind the school almost every day. We had all-school gatherings, celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas with traditions taken from everyone's cultural background and with musical performances. And especially the lower grades did a lot of arts and crafts, while the upper grades were offered an afternoon program involving a blend of design and creative engineering construction, a bit like a makerspace, which I was particularly involved in. The school managed to make the pandemic feel like an opportunity for a warm communal experience, rather than a time of deprivation. The teachers' dedication to keeping up Chester's tradition, which meant their dedication to each individual student, was exceptional.
If you did this all over again, what's one thing you would change?
I loved my host family, whose children were also attending Chester, and who made a lot of effort to show me the town and surrounding area during those phases of the pandemic when that was allowed. But I think if I went to Chester College now, during a normal year, I would give their boarding arrangement a try. It would bring me together with other students my age from other countries, and between the evening and weekend programs organized by Chester staff and the opportunity to socialize freely as teenagers, that would be a lot of fun.
