By Samara Kinyanjuis’27
At The Frederick Gunn School, Community Weekends are intentionally dedicated times where the students have to come together and have the opportunity to gain knowledge about topics students may be familiar with but do not know much about. Community weekends can help spark interest in the student body to learn more about the topic from someone who specializes in that field. Students are not allowed to leave that weekend and are heavily encouraged to participate in the planned activities.
Community weekends are a selected time out of the school year. This 2023-2024 school year has eleven community weekends planned. Each weekend has its own lesson and program. The weekends often help students address character issues, giving them a break from their normal class curriculum. Depending on the lesson, the grade levels might be separated. During these weekends, students learn beneficial information which they can apply to themselves now or use as information for the future. Most importantly, the community is able to come together and have fun.
Community weekend is about allowing students to further their worldly knowledge. Bringing guest speakers from various professions to campus gives Gunn students a wide view of the working world. Gunn students then broaden their view of the world in many different ways. Furthermore, it can encourage them to be change-makers in the world.
During the most recent Community weekend, meditation practitioner Gemma Gambee led the Gunn underclassmen students into a Meditation practice, which primarily focused on getting the students to learn how to direct their attention and consciousness and show them that they have control over the things that they want to focus on. Meditation specialist Gemma Gambee led the sophomore and freshman class into a state of relaxation and calmness. Gambee talks about how meditation helped her and how she thinks it can help students. After the meditation, she directed them to write about how this meditation practice affected them and whether it helped them. Then, the students had to burn that piece of paper and watch everything that they wrote go up in flames.
“Finding time for a regular Meditation Practice gave me the opportunity to disregard any thoughts on whether what I did affected what others thought of me. Also, Mindfulness practices can give you a sense of presence. Meditation and Mindfulness practices gave me the ability to observe my whole self. And for how it can help the students, it can help them because if you allow the students to have experiences and trust themselves, they can benefit in many ways.” Having Gemma as a guest on campus was just what the campus needed to welcome in the New Year, and it sure did help the school.
