As Concord Academy shifted back into hybrid learning and the weather was getting colder, it became harder for students to eat and socialize outdoors. As a result, eating tents were established by the CA administration. There are two tents where students can reside during their lunch blocks, eating lunch socially distanced. Inside the tents, there are lights adding to the ambiance and newly ordered tablet tables.
As usual, lunch blocks were separated into early and late lunch, and each student was assigned a specific tent. At the beginning of hybrid learning, every student chose a seat in the eating tents, which was their seat for the STAC. When entering the eating tents, students are asked to "chip-in" using Boardingware and sit at their assigned seats. With the established seating charts, it is easy for contact tracing to happen if need be.
Kiran Bhat '22 said that “even though the eating tents’ atmosphere is different from what we are normally used to in the StuFac, it is nice to be able to have lunch with people in our grade. It is also not crowded at all with early lunch (12:00 pm) and late lunch (12:35 pm) spaced out, there's not a lot of people in the tents at once, which is nice.”
The tents also provide an excellent place for after school activities to take place and for students to socialize safely during free block, as it is heated when it is super cold outside. The newly established heated tents also make it easy to safely host fun student life weekend activities, with one example being the Winter Social which happened on Friday, January 29th.
Overall, these tents are a great addition to CA during the pandemic, giving students an assigned place to eat lunch, do work, and socialize during their free blocks.