Northfield, NH – Spaulding Academy & Family Services (formerly Spaulding Youth Center) virtually celebrated its annual Authors Tea event in October to accommodate COVID-19 safety precautions. This event is the culmination of weeks of student work: brainstorming, writing, revising, illustrating, and producing creative writing projects that align with a specific theme. The school selected “Choose Love” as the 2020 theme, since it has recently integrated the social and emotional learning (SEL) Choose Love Movement curriculum across academic departments.

Each classroom developed grade level-appropriate projects focused on specific modules of the Choose Love curriculum: Courage, Gratitude, Forgiveness, and Compassion in Action. For example, younger students used each letter of their names to write and illustrate descriptive words that demonstrate courage, while older students wrote poems and stories – and even designed cartoons – about courage, gratitude, forgiveness, and compassion.

Typically, students and staff are joined by family and friends at the Authors Tea to showcase their works and celebrate their imaginations, creativity, and diligence. Due to COVID guidelines, this confidence-building event took place in-house with students and staff this year, and was shared virtually with other cohorts and loved ones.

“I was truly impressed by the staff’s ability to flex with the demands of COVID-19 to create their works and still enjoy a school-based, school-wide event,” said Colleen Sliva, M.S.Ed., School Principal & Special Education Director. “Many of the student works were especially poignant and insightful, while aligned with our integration of the Choose Love curriculum.”