Looking Out for Each Other: Our Fall Gathering Art Tradition
We have a fantastic tradition that we do together as a whole school during our Fall Gathering event at the end of back-to-school week. In the midst of all the field game challenges, students and faculty all pause to participate in a shared creative experience; each contributing one small piece to something much larger. The finished installation becomes a snapshot of who we are as a community at this particular moment in our school’s story.
This year, that symbolic concept was a little more literal!
Meet our tiny Guardians
For our 2026-27 year project, every member of our school community received a blank, Funko Pop-inspired figure and a simple challenge: turn this tiny person into a representation of you. Your avatar, if you will, who will stand watch on campus as a tiny guardian, watching over our school, the campus and the people.
Before we took brush to Funko, we spent some time thinking about what visual details would make us recognizably us, either literally or symbolically. What a tiny version of me’s hair looks like? What clothes feel most like me? Do I wear glasses? Do I have favorite sneakers? Earrings? Freckles? Is there a color, pattern, symbol, or tiny detail that says something about who I am?
Once we settled on our concept, the painting began!
There is something wonderfully disarming about watching an entire school enthusiastically make tiny versions of themselves. Students traded ideas about how to create hair for their Funkos and what they might use to accessorize. They experimented with tiny detail brushes, mixed unique colors, problem-solved, tried things, adjusted as they went, and discovered just how challenging it can be to paint a very, very small pair of shoes.
And because everyone began with the same blank form, the individuality that emerged was even more striking. No two figures were quite alike.
Looking Out for Each Other
I told everyone to keep an eye out for when their Funkos will show up on campus! The figures will take their places on the large wooden beams above the glass doors throughout our school lobbies, where hundreds of tiny members of our community will quite literally look out over the school.
I want our school to be a place where we look out for one another: where we notice the people around us, care for the spaces we share, contribute what we can, and recognize that each person has a very real and indispensable place in our community.
The figures overhead offer a whimsical reminder that none of us moves through this school alone. The building belongs to all of us, but more importantly, the community belongs to all of us. We each help shape what it feels like to be here.
There is something lovely, too, about seeing all those differences gathered together. One tiny figure on its own is a self-portrait. Hundreds of them together become a portrait of a school.
Creating Something Together
This is why the art part of our Fall Gathering tradition matters.
Art doesn’t have to be about making a masterpiece. Often the most meaningful creative experiences are about the doing of it—sitting beside someone we might not normally work with, allowing ourselves to make choices and try unfamiliar things, and adding our contribution to a shared whole.
I believe it’s human nature to create in the world.
As students pass beneath this year’s installation on their way to class, they'll see themselves among friends, teachers, classmates, and other members of our community. And overhead, our miniature guardians will remain on duty: looking out over our campus—and reminding us to look out for each other.