Palmer Trinity School

It's no secret that 2020 has been a year of challenge for our world. Living through a worldwide pandemic was a "first" for most of us, and definitely for our students. Along with whatever that meant for each of us personally, for our school, there were no shortage of changes. Within days, classrooms became completely virtual environments. Teachers learned how to navigate teaching your children from home, while watching their own. For our seniors, age-old traditions like prom, Senior Convocation, and our decades-old Baccalaureate and graduation ceremonies were replaced with socially-distanced car parades, "mini" graduations, mailed gifts and a virtual Baccalaureate celebration. Add that to national and global events such as the protests that erupted after the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breona Taylor, and George Floyd, the state of our economy, and events such as the Olympics being canceled or postponed—it seemed like the pendulum just kept swinging farther and farther back. We are so grateful that, through it all, our PTS families have remained safe, healthy and engaged in our school community. But in 2020, like in life, when the pendulum swings back, we must remember that it always swings forward. Out of these challenges, we've also seen incredible growth. As you'll read on these pages, while campus has been closed, we continued to build our Trinity Chapel, which will include special labyrinths generously donated by the Morrison family. In the classroom, Academic Dean Adrianna Truby writes about how the shift to virtual education gave us the opportunity to expand our view of what teaching really means. As technology became our framework, we invested in online learning platforms, installed videoconferencing in every classroom, participated in 80+ webinars, and invited historians and speakers from all over the world to the "classroom" who couldn't physically visit before. Fostering our belief of spirituality and human connection, you'll read about how Chaplain Mary Ellen Cassini hosted virtual Easter and Passover ceremonies and Alumni hosted entire class reunions on Zoom. Speaking of Alumni, don't miss reading about what Andrea Ortiz '12 is doing to help underprivileged communities during this time. Through her job at the United Nations Migration Agency (IOM) in Geneva, Switzerland, she is actively fighting xenophobia as it pertains to migrants during COVID-19. And speaking of human rights, the recent events in our country gave us an opportunity to look in the mirror, examine our own community, speak with alumni of color, and most importantly, listen, learn and act. As this hard, but enlightening year goes on, I hope we all continue to observe, learn, grow, and in the best of ways, change. I look forward to seeing you all for our 2020-2021 academic year, in whatever format that brings. " History has always been a series of pendulum swings, but the individual doesn't have to get caught in that." ROBERT JOHNSON, AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST S U Z A N N E G O T T L I E B C A L L E JA A S S O C I AT E H E A D O F S C H O O L F O R C O M M U N I C AT I O N S A N D S T R AT E G I C PA R T N E R S H I P S M E S S A G E F R O M T H E E D I T O R S U MME R 2 0 2 0 5

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