Legacy Day Split in Two

Legacy Day has always been one thing, an assembly, followed by time with Legacy Day groups, and ending with a service project. This year, that changed. Legacy day is now split into two parts, Convocation, which is the assembly, & “Legacy Day” which is the service part of it. Both include time with Legacy Groups. The “Legacy Day” part of it will end with an assembly, although it will be shorter than the Convocation.

The people who organize the event, including Ms. Sackreiter, the Director of Service Learning and Community Engagement, Dr. Raleigh, the Director of Visual and Performing Arts, Kaite Code, the Special Events Manager, and Tyneeta Canonge, the Director of the Office of Equity and Community Engagement, had been “gathering feedback for the last few years from participants and one of the things that we were hearing is that legacy day, when it was a full day in the fall, was long for many of the participants, particularly our youngest participants, to be away from their teachers, and with adults and older students who they didn’t know,” said Ms. Sackreiter, “We value the connections we make with [Legacy] groups, but it’s hard to sustain them, and have them feel really comfortable when they only gather once a year.” Another thing is that this year for Legacy Day, the Pre-K and Kindergarten joined Legacy Day. They used to do Legacy separately at Highcroft, so their joining was something new.

After that, they took their feedback & thoughts to the head administrators. "After looking at a number of different options [we] decided that doing two shorter events, one at the beginning of the year, and one at the end of the year, would allow us to see our legacy groups more often and having that shorter time frame is just easier for everybody to sustain.” Said Ms. Sackreiter.

Although many things are different with this new Legacy Day-Convocation, there is nothing very negative about the change. Ms. Sackreiter said, “We’ll learn by having that experience, and it’s two events to plan, not one so a little more planning overall, but I think the benefits for the whole community should outweigh the work for pulling it together.” This change is here to stay.