Reimagining SAS: Reimagined

Close your eyes. Imagine preschool. The smell of crayons and paint. Imagine playing on the tire swing,in the sand pit. Imagine a herd of seniors in their red hoodies roaming the school, then watching them in their caps and gowns walking through our playground on their senior walk. 

Imagine running through the different playgrounds. The gecko, the spiderweb, the flying fox. Those of us that were at SAS may remember looking up at the high school steps they used to be the biggest, most terrifying thing ever. Our world was so big, while we were so small. 

Now, imagine going into our awkward middle school phase. We had a new array of lunches to choose from. We were thrown into 3 different sides, and we found our place in a gagaball pit outside the MS office. I remember laughing with Luciana during our food from the heart meetings, and playing games on the whiteboards in the library. We had new lockers, new classrooms, we even did school online for awhile, yet through it all we had each other. 

For a lot of us, those memories are easy to bring to the top of our minds. 

But instead of imagining our experience at SAS, we've started to reimagine it. SAS Reimagined. The iconic name for our everchanging and ever-developing school. It hurts to think of these places we can only imagine but never revisit. My beloved tire swing playground now looks like this, and the elementary playgrounds are covered by rubble and debris. When we, seniors, go on our senior walk, we won’t have our nostalgic places to reminisce in. We will have a reimagined, newly constructed unfamiliar school. 

Let's take a look at some of the physical changes we have already witnessed. Imagine these concrete walls slowly turning into glass. Our open grass fields transformed into Olympic sized swimming pools. Our beloved ramen station is now sodexo and the gagaball pit is suddenly the ‘mew mew’ cafe in the MS foyer. Imagine the stands in which we used to sit and watch the swim and football events magically turn into a deserted island we call the perch.

These superficial changes are shiny. They glisten and catch our attention. Don't get me wrong – a lot of the changes provide amazing opportunities and I am grateful for that. But I want us to imagine one other thing. Imagine what our school would be without those changes. 

Who would we be if we were sitting in an older, concrete classroom with one fewer furnished dining space? Would we be any different? I’d argue not. We would be the same people, chasing the same futures, why? because we would be surrounded by the same community. SAS is a hub with people flooding in and out. My best friends from kindergarten are not the same people who I sit with at lunch today. People come and go every year, however the one thing that stayed consistent was our school. Our home. Each classroom or playground would transcend me back into the memories I had cherished of my childhood. Memories with settings that are now torn down. Reimagining this building could bring us benefits, but it also can tower over the past that shaped our community. Every photo used in this presentation includes individuals from ATNFR this year. Whether we were 3 years old, or 16, we grew with one another, in our beloved SAS.

So, I ask why? Why must we continue to reimagine this school when the place that shaped us was already there? Or at least, how? How will we continue to keep our community the same when our home is continuously changing?

The classrooms in which we study may have changed physically, but we underwent much deeper changes. We found ourselves in our community, our SAS family. It's time to shift our attention away from the new SAS and onto the real SAS. The real school that helped shape every one of us. 

The term reimagined means to have a new idea about something familiar. So, I want us to try this reimagining thing. Let's reimagine what actually matters. Let's think about if these changes are actually bettering our community. Whether or not we can swim in a 50-meter pool, our foundation has remained consistent. The people, the education, and most of all the community. 

I want SAS to continue growing. But I mean with the people. I want us to learn to invest in the community as much as we’ve invested in our architecture. Concrete builds buildings. We build community.

If I went back and imagined my first day at SAS, I wouldn't remember the buildings we were in. I wouldn't think of whether we could see past our walls or not. I think of who was standing beside this little girl every step of the way. I think of the teachers who guided me and the friends who supported me. I think of playing on the spider web playground with my friends and taking my red book bag to the elementary school library. I remember SAS as the community that shaped me. We never needed to demolish the places we grew up in to progress our community, just focus on keeping our community alive.

SAS reimagined. We are renovating, and we are changing. But, it is possible these changes will be amazing, as long as they are focused on surrounding the community. If we can continue to think with this intention, SAS will shine even more than the glass.