At 6 p.m., ten students join me at the gate. Sharp New England wind cuts through the air, but we are oblivious, warmed by excited chatter. We have come to this inaugural meeting of the Circle Chats Club to answer one question: What does it mean to deserve to go to our school? It is a question that hangs in hallways unspoken, barred off by the twin fears of offense and judgment. But to those who want to understand the differences that shape our boarding school community, it matters.
As we take off on our walk down Joy Lane, side chats and shared laughs turn unfamiliar faces into friends. The looming question becomes addressable, so the group takes it on.
Each person shares their thoughts and their story. When one young student mentions that he wrote his parents’ high school recommendations, I pause.
“Why?” I ask.
He shares that his father speaks only Spanish, and his mother, working two jobs, didn’t have the time. In that moment, I discover both a determination in this fellow student and an unrecognized privilege in myself. I look at the other club members across from me and see that many are thinking the same thing.
I didn’t know it then, but this was my first taste of civity.
Months after that meeting, I found myself on a Zoom call where Malka and Palma asked what I wanted to do with my Civity summer internship. The night on Joy Lane returned to me. I shared the memory with them and floated an idea: bringing Civity to high schools so that students can not only talk about important issues but also have the “conversation before the conversation” – like the conversation I had with the student who shared his personal story with me. The discussions that followed gave rise to the Civity Club.
I began with an outline of how meetings would go and what norms would be practiced. Structure focused on the breakout discussions that make Civity meetings special, and everything centered on the goal of creating a space where relationships enable difficult conversations.
Over the rest of the summer, we built this concept into a website, recruited prospective club heads from Oregon to Massachusetts, and taught these leaders what they needed to know to bring a bit of Civity to their school. For me, this summer experience has been eye-opening. I fell in love with what Circle Chats was at my school. Working with Malka and Palma showed me that it could be bigger. Now I can’t wait to see what Civity Clubs across the country will become.