Before his ninth grade year Nate Carr had interned at places that were familiar to him, but this time he tried something both different and new, which had a profound impact on him.
By Colleen Cranna
For years, The Field School has prided themselves on offering unique opportunities to each and every student who walks through the infamous red door. For some, that may be an interesting project or a distinctive assignment, but for many Field students, their most memorable experiences have been through the Internship Program.
Designed to offer students real world experiences, developing skills of independence and problem solving, each Winter regularly scheduled classes for Field students are canceled for two weeks to allow time for embarking on various internships. These two weeks see students go anywhere from down the street in Georgetown, to across the world in Italy. As well as providing support for students who are looking to secure these internships, Field offers multiple opportunities for students to take that are run by the school. Community service trips run by the school have been extremely popular, and are well-known for their unconventional service methods. In fact, there is one student who experienced one of these infamous service trips, and labeled it as one of their “most memorable experiences.”
Nate Carr is a current Junior at The Field School. Carr has attended Field since the 6th grade, meeting memorable people and encountering various unique experiences along the way. During his time at Field, he remembers his internship experiences working at more traditional places prior to moving into his ninth grade year. After interning at an ACE Hardware store and a local neighborhood restaurant, Carr was sure his next internship would be more unique.
Regardless of having little community service involvement prior to the ninth grade, he was immediately drawn in by a service opportunity offered by Field through its unique aspects of helping different communities every day. Initially, Carr viewed community service as “helping people who couldn’t help themselves.” This notion and lack of experience in the matter led him to believing that service was all about “trying to do good without really being rewarded for it,” or that “doing good was its own reward.” Regardless of his lack of familiarity with the topic, Carr was eventually set with his first high school internship: a week-long community service trip run by Field. The location? A Washington D.C. church basement.
Located near Dupont Circle, the Church of the Pilgrims is a local community based church that has been heavily involved with various service programs. After serving the community for an astounding 47 years, the Church of the Pilgrims sadly closed in 2020 due to financial effects of the pandemic. However, before its unfortunate closure, it served as the base for Field’s community service trip for several years.
Upon arrival at the church, Carr recalls the darkness surrounding the buses. Sitting on a bench in the Field School casually recalling the events of his first day on the trip, Carr remembers feeling simply overwhelmed. He described feeling suddenly unsure about the decision to go on this trip as he reminisces that others may have been more prepared than himself, with either community service experience, or simply the supplies they brought with them. Looking back, Carr reflected upon the night of arrival with his first impressions. “We get there, it’s already dark, and everyone is already bringing their stuff in, and I’m thinking ‘man some people are more prepared than I am’ like one kid brought a freaking projector,” Nate laughed as he remembered this anecdote from the trip. Consequently, he felt overwhelmed and on edge in that moment, like he didn’t just take a step out his comfort zone, but rather was aggressively shoved.
It was moments like these, the ones that made him sweat just a little, that he found himself relying on the support of his close friends. The days and nights spent with his peers formed closer bonds with the friends that he had since the sixth grade, but also saw new relationships flourish with those he didn’t know as well. Seeing everyone so often, he remembers “It wasn’t uncomfortable because you were with these people all the time, day after day, for a whole week,” suggesting that the forced proximity they endured may have been the best idea for pushing past those initial stages of uncomfortableness. He goes on to say, “There were many times when you were free to hangout with other people, and it didn’t feel unnatural or weird.”
Carr reflected on the sleeping arrangements of this trip as something similar to an “army barracks.” He describes the church basement as having “had bunk beds laid out, it was like, I don’t know, like a bunker.” While most days were spent on the community service outreach objectives, Carr recalls sleepless nights spent hanging out with friends and talking. Days were also spent on adventures into Dupont Circle, which helped to form more friendships throughout the group.
As the featured aspect of this trip, Carr and his group spent most of their time preparing for and executing on different community service objectives. This included traveling to an elementary school struggling with food insecurity, and learning more about food banks and what those processes entail when helping individuals in the community. The “memorable” experiences Carr recalled on this trip were made up greatly by the day to day interactions he had with his community. One example being when he described how the simple interactions he had with individuals as he helped hand out breakfast at a church were “some of the most valuable of the trip.”
Over this week-long trip, the Field students in attendance were accompanied by multiple chaperones. A key overseer of the trip that year was John Cichello, a current teacher here at the Field School who began his sixteenth year at the school this semester. Throughout his time here, he has been heavily involved in the community service initiatives in the curriculum, and was vital in the creation of the community service trip program that took place during multiple internship periods. Initially intrigued by the small class sizes and close relationships developed between teachers and students, Cichello brought a great amount of service experience to the school.
“I think that the community service trip that we do being based in D.C. is something that is a unique approach from other schools,” Cichello communicated when asked about what he felt differentiated Field’s approach to service opportunities from various other high schools. “One of the things we tried to build into the trip was that this trip gives you a variety of service settings as a student so that you can explore, you know, what’s it like to visit a nursing home? What’s it like to work in youth service?” He went on to add, “All of those different aspects, you know everyday was different.”
The development of this service trip resulted in planning for not just short term benefits for students, but also looking at how service opportunities can be a part of their futures. One of the most impactful aspects of the trip in Cichello’s mind was the way that students continued their community initiatives even after the conclusion of the trip. He remembered a Field school senior who was on the trip his ninth grade year, and when he had access to a car the summer before his senior year, began volunteering for Food and Friends, one of the programs featured on his community service trip. Founded in 1988, Food and Friends has delivered over 23 million meals to their clients who are health bound to their homes. Featuring over 8500 volunteers, this Washington D.C. service group has been extremely active in local communities. Cichello remembers the high school senior student as he would “go out and deliver food to people’s homes, and visit with them,” it “became a part of his volunteering.” In relation to the community service trips at Field, the involvement of students in community service following their completion of their trip was “what we had always hoped for with the program,” Cichello admitted.
With the effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic still largely prominent in the community, the future of these trips are unclear. Balancing how popular these service opportunities have become in recent years and the safety precautions and steps needed to be taken, Sarah Swain has had a heavy task laid out for her. Arriving at the school in July of this year, Swain, our current Director of Innovative and Experiential Learning here at Field, has been working tirelessly to incorporate all of the different wants and needs of the student and teacher populations.
Swain hopes to make it clear to students that while the traditional Internship program won’t be occurring this year, the newly created Intersession program will reflect many of the enjoyed qualities of past years experiences. Students will now have the option to decide for themselves whether or not they will begin the process of looking through Field’s database for internship opportunities, which has been heavily modified due to the ability of certain opportunities to take place during a pandemic, or take one of the programs offered by Field. Bottom line, the community service trips taken by students in past years will not be offered this Winter. It is unclear whether or not those trips will ever be able to take place again. However, students shouldn’t fret about where they may get those service hours or opportunities that they seek. All programs offered by Field for Intersession this year include portions of community outreach that will help enable students to develop a further connection and understanding of community service.
Following his return from the trip, Carr was suddenly faced with the effects of the global pandemic. Moving fully online to school, staying home, rarely going out, his entire planned out school year had been uprooted. As a part of these rapidly changing safety measures and protocols, volunteering in person became a major challenge. “Everyone was super afraid and staying in our houses,” Carr remembered when asked about the challenging effects of the pandemic, “We couldn’t do much community service then.” Carr isn’t alone in feeling these lack of opportunities to safely volunteer. The United Nations wrote an article in 2020 highlighting the effects of volunteer work during the pandemic, specifically in France. The article demonstrated the shocking statistics of close to 11,000 volunteers over the age of 60 years old who were forced to end their work with Red Cross France due to safety concerns.
Regardless of the lasting effects of the global pandemic, Carr is hopeful for the future. Having recently volunteered in a voter registration drive after seeing how many individuals were “disenfranchised from our political system,” he realized that safe service opportunities are beginning to become more attainable. After recounting how memorable this event was in his life, Carr seems to perfectly embody the true spirit of community service: the want to give back. The ultimate goal of The Field’s Schools service programs.