The Fall Harvest Celebration
How Montpelier High School is Cultivating Community Relationships
By Elena Guadagno
November 22, 2024
The Fall Harvest Celebration is an annual community event held at Montpelier High School (MHS). This year’s celebration, which marked its 15th anniversary, was held on October 24th. It consisted of educational workshops led by community partners and MHS teachers and students, a variety show of student performances and a sustainably sourced lunch shared by the entire school.
The day started with workshops from 8:30 to 11:15 with topics ranging from candle making to mountain biking. Putney-based teaching artist, Evie Lovett, ran a workshop about digital media storytelling linked to the upcoming Bridges to Belonging project.
She described her work as “an initiative to take the pulse of how people feel about their lives.”
Lovett’s coworker, Amber Paris, ran a workshop in which students learned about social change expressed across different art mediums. There were 27 workshops, which students enjoyed.
“Everybody was included and it was just really fun,” said freshman Lillian Fitch.
After the morning workshops, students and faculty gathered together to share a meal of chicken tikka masala. Every ingredient was either grown by students at the school gardens or sourced from towns and cities in Vermont. By sourcing locally, the meal saved 368.1 pounds of carbon emissions per person.
“The food is always delicious,” said senior Russel Clar. “I worked with Mr. Sabo in the gardens this summer, so I had a hand in growing all of it and I [was] really excited for that.”
The sustainability aspect of the celebration is especially important.
“I love this idea of the Harvest.” says workshop leader Erin Malloy of the Vermont Energy Education program, who ran a workshop about hands-on renewable energy. “We are celebrating local food where that's a huge piece of our climate issue, so really keeping things local is great.”
Lunch took place in the gym, and every teacher advisory (TA) came up with their own theme, dressed up, and decorated their table. The tables were then judged by a small group of students and teachers for creative categories. Some of the themes included Greek Gods, Lumberjacks, New York Times Games, 50s Diner, Peanuts Characters, and Casino (which won best overall).
To wrap up the day, there was a showcase of performances from students and teachers. Performers included Band and Orchestra teacher Ally Tarwater with senior Mia Reynolds, The Hard Copies (winner of the Harwood Union battle of the bands), the MHS jazz band, and P. Nasty (English teacher Patrick Leene). To see a list of all performances, visit this link.
Tom Sabo, one of the coordinators of the celebration and the manager of the MHS greenhouses summed up the event.
“It’s a celebration of all the things that we cultivate here at Montpelier High School. We cultivate minds, young and old, [...] We cultivate our fields [...] and our crops. And we cultivate relationships, and that’s the community part." Sabo said.
“It’s really good for building community and not making school just a place where people go to sit in classrooms all day,” says senior Anna Blackburn. “To make everyone feel like they belong to our school as a whole.”
This was the central theme of the celebration. Although school was in session, it was a comfortable, open space to celebrate inclusivity, community, and the environment.
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