A Semester of Firsts
Alzar School’s Semester XVI has been a semester of firsts in oh-so-many ways. Semester XVI students, families, faculty and staff alike demonstrated great courage this spring by figuratively stepping foot into uncharted territories.
For their first feat, Semester XVI students have been the only semester so far to meet one another at a location far beyond our Idaho campus. This time, students gathered anxiously in a hotel conference room in Atlanta, Georgia just prior to boarding the plane that would begin our long journey to Coyhaique – no turning back! We were impressed by the courage our students demonstrated in those initial moments of preparation for a voyage into a Spanish-speaking country amid those who were, at the time, more-or-less strangers. Semester XVI was also the first semester to greet their Chilean classmates in Chile!
Additionally, Semester XVI is the first group of Alzar School students to have lived in the refugios at Base Patagonia in Lago Atravesado. They patiently and optimistically helped troubleshoot and break in our new systems, including sensitive rural plumbing, daily hill hiking, communal quincho cooking, indoor shoes changing, expedition rationing, giant red off-road bus riding … the list goes on! In Chile, Semester XVI was also the premiere group to enjoy eating specially prepared traditional Chilean cuisine from our local chefs and to have wide-open classroom window views of Lago Atravesado and her circumferential jagged peaks.
In Chile, Semester XVI was also the premiere group to enjoy eating specially prepared traditional Chilean cuisine from our local chefs and to have wide-open classroom window views of Lago Atravesado and her circumferential jagged peaks.
Semester XVI wins the award for shortest amount of time spent in Idaho. Although this is not a fact to be celebrated, it opened the door for a flood of new Semester XVI originals (and we hope that they will also be the first to have a vast majority of alumni return for a very special Idaho expedition block)! Foremost, Semester XVI students have been the first to experience the small joys and bits of entertainment that accompany Zoom class meetings, such as customizing backgrounds, muting your friends, watching your classmates use their Zoom camera as a mirror, bringing pets to class, wondering if your peers are wearing “real” pants or pajama pants, having your family member make a guest star appearance, sitting up in bed to fool your teachers into thinking you are simply at a really soft fluffy desk …
Upon their transition to remote learning, as Semester XVI students prepared to take things home in a very swift and literal sense, they compiled a list of inspirational phrases and memories never to be forgotten. Below is the students’ list of what they wanted to metaphorically take home with them from Alzar School:
- Express gratitude
- Smile
- Sit with someone who you might think is weird
- Do your own laundry
- Laugh more often
- Live a little more
- Pursue every opportunity
- Lay outside
- Jump in the river/lake when it’s cold
- Look at the stars
- Have dance parties
- Do a bonding activity
- Give more hugs
- Stop to smell the roses
- Be grateful for the sunshine
- Be weird
- Learn about what interests you
- Take nothing for granted
- Don’t wait for next time
- Stay in the moment
- Laugh when things go wrong
- Find the good and keep the good
- Do more things that make you feel scared
- Carne y papas
- Stop to throw snow at people
- Drink more maté than water
- YOLO
- Speak more goblin
- Do be afraid to wet exit
- Wear your neoprene once a month
- Be a wild cat
- “Full send”
- Live every day as your last … you never know when Sean and Kristin may come in
- Get up for the sunrise
- Break in your hiking boots
- Oh MAN
- Ride the rainbow
- Journal
- Manjar per square inch
- Chao
- Al la Casa
- Ask a lot of questions
- Have deep conversations with people you normally wouldn’t
- You can live off trail mix
- Hold hands and tackle
- When you’re doing the dishes, do the dishes
- Hide the matches
- Soak the lentils
- Have your stuff together *CLAP*
- “Woah, calm down”
- “Dale no mas”
- “Buena compara”
- “Do you want a cookie?”
Families, we encourage you to ask your remarkable Semester XVI students to breathe life into these ideas and phrases and to stimulate their re-inspiration through storytelling with their loved ones. We are sure that you have heard many tales already and hope that this list may rekindle the Alzar School flame for members of your household. Some day, your students may refer back to these as powerful pearls of wisdom.
Stay safe! Stay inspired! Stay gold.
- About the author: Rachel Ackerman is a Science Teacher and a Blog Coordinator at Alzar School. Feel free to contact her at rackerman@alzar.org with comments, concerns, and interesting topics for future blog posts!