13th Annual Chain Reaction Day
The Sharon Academy held its 13th annual Chain Reaction Day on Wednesday, February 2, 2022. We enjoyed a phenomenal day that started with the TSA Middle Schoolers being introduced to the High School by students Eve Huntington ’22 Phoebe Quackenbos ‘ 23, Joey Thibodeau ’24, and Iris Adamoli-Puchalik ’25, along with the amazing Señorita Raquel.
At 9:00 we kicked off programming with the Vermont State Executive Director of Racial Equity Xusana Davis, who led us through an engaging and powerful trivia game (go team 2!) and encouraged us to wonder about what we don’t know about our state and country’s history.
Students and staff then dispersed into eleven different workshops led by a dazzling cast:
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Fallon Abel, TSA Social Studies teacher and advisor
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César Alvarez, Assistant Professor of Music at Dartmouth College
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Kendra Colburn, Think Again Training, Cross Class Dialogue Circles,
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Dana Decker, Special Educator at Randolph Union HS (with students Ash, Addison and Stormy)
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Rev. Dr. Leon Dunkley, North Chapel in Woodstock, Brave Light
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Karen Ganey, Change the World Kids
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Toni Hover, TSA parent of an alum and S. Royalton community member
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Rachel Milito, TSA Spanish teacher, advisor, and coach
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Mary Newman, TSA Head of School
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Clare Smith, TSA Science teacher and advisor
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Jarod Wunneburger, Timberlake Camp, TSA Board Member
The closing activity pushed us to take our thoughts, appreciations, and concerns and create some BIG questions for the school to grapple with. We then distributed dot stickers on the questions that we thought “most important.” Some examples of questions with LOTS of dots are:
- How do students gain a big enough voice to make a real-world difference?
- Is TSA doing enough to facilitate hard discussions?
- What qualifies someone to talk/teach about race?