Graphic by Yoyo Zhang/The Choate News
In light of the many strenuous challenges that the Choate community faced this term, the administration made the decision to cancel teacher term reports for the fall.
In previous years, faculty wrote term reports for each of their students at the end of every trimester. A long-standing practice, term reports are designed to encourage students to reflect on their performance during the term and adjust accordingly for the following one.
Dean of Students Mr. Mike Velez ’00 noted that the amount of time and energy required of faculty and staff members to care for students and each other was significantly heightened during the final weeks of fall term. Several factors, including the ongoing pandemic, the outside threat against Black-identifying members of the Choate community, and the aftermath of the U.S. presidential election, increased stress and anxiety among students, faculty, and staff. In order for teachers to provide the proper support to students and the community in future terms, a bit of time off was crucial. “The feeling was that faculty members needed to recharge, essentially,” said Mr. Velez. The School also felt that, in addition to being an extra stressor on teachers, term reports would be repetitive this year, as parent-teacher conferences have been moved from mid-October to early January.
The decision was made after a series of conversations, initially between the Dean of Faculty Office and the Dean of Students Office and later with other senior administrators.
Mathematics teacher Ms. Andrea Sorrells said, “It was a really hard term for the faculty, especially my BIPOC colleagues. We were dealing with Covid-19 stress, managing extra responsibilities, teaching in a new hybrid environment, worrying about the election, either working towards being anti-racist or dealing with racial trauma, and trying to help our students through the same things. Normally, report-writing fills up the week [of fall break] and then faculty jump right in to the new term. Not writing reports gave all of us, but BIPOC and especially Black-identifying colleagues, time for self-care.”
Mr. Velez expressed that canceling term reports has also allowed the administration the opportunity to “recalibrate, reassess, [and] reevaluate” the School’s normal practices regarding term reports and other academic standards. This recent adjustment has called into question whether three full term reports every year is the most effective strategy to relay feedback from teachers to students and parents.
Mathematics teacher Mr. Jeremy Oliver said, “The school has done really well in making the most of the opportunity to be flexible at this time. Choate has been around for more than a hundred years, and sometimes we can get entrenched in certain habits, but I think that as a school, we’ve taken the opportunity to explore how can we find a way to connect when fundamentally so many things are different about what we expected this year to look like.”
Mr. Velez added, “We’ve had to pivot at times and move in directions that we’re not accustomed to, and we have found out in some of those processes that there is something to be said for greater efficiency.” He concluded that continued conversations are needed to ensure that the administration can be as effective as possible in supporting the community moving forward.
