Upper School Students Embrace WinterMission
Now in its fourth year, WinterMission offered a refreshing opportunity for upper school students to try something new.
Just ask Sam Barek ’27. He hiked in the Hudson Valley and learned about geological history during Into the Woods and Thin Air, a course guided by Stephen Hildreth, middle school humanities teacher; Owen Kiely, upper school science teacher; and Abby Mandel, middle school science teacher.
“I wanted to be outside and moving around for my WinterMission, and find potentially new places to hike on my own,” Barek said. “I loved how disconnected from everything we were. It was nice to have long conversations with my friends on our hikes without any form of interruptions.”
For Hildreth, leading a cross-divisional course was a win-win. Besides being outdoors “in the middle of winter in beautiful, natural surroundings,” he enjoyed “working with upper school students who were upbeat, excited, kind, fun and fully embracing the cold weather and wilderness” as well as “working with Abby and Owen, who are amazing educators, parents and people!”
Sofia Camacho ’26, a fellow Into the Woods hiker, said, “The teachers were so kind and inclusive, and I got to know them on a more personal level than I usually would in a traditional classroom. All abilities were welcome, and my peers had a wide range of experience and so much to offer. The snow also created beautiful views and the opportunity for snowshoeing.”
The four-day schoolwide WinterMission program, overseen by Jason Hult, dean of teaching and learning, offered 48 diverse courses this year. Courses spanned a wide range of experiences, from participating in a traditional Puerto Rican pig roast to writing an original screen adaptation to learning the art of DJ-ing to building a large-scale, 8-foot-tall camera obscura.
One of the new courses, The American Mall, invited students to explore the rise, decline and rebirth of American shopping malls, examining their roles as both commercial ventures and community gathering spaces. Co-teachers Stephanie Andreassi, upper school English teacher, and Rae Johnson ’11, middle school IEC teacher, organized a field trip to the American Dream Mall in East Rutherford, New Jersey, which proved to be an eye-opening experience.
“We started with the idea of the mall as a spectacle and as a miniature version of the rest of the world, so I was floored by how diverse the offerings are in terms of who their customers are,” Johnson said. “Beyond the stores, there's the theme park and water park, but there are also fine dining establishments and a massage parlor.”
Back on campus, the students were assigned a virtual mall project: design a dream space based on an original business plan and product created in the IEC. Zachary Stewart ’27, John Curley ’26, Aarav Singh ’27 and Josh Malkin ’27 imagined a jazz club that also sold high-end clothing.
Stewart, the group’s business manager, focused on whether their ideas would be profitable: “I'm interested in real estate, and what we did in this course somewhat correlates to that, so I wanted to explore that more. When we went through the mall, we took ideas from actual stores and tried to implement them into our made-up store.”
Meanwhile, Sally Dwek ’28, Mila Benson ’26, Mark He ’26 and Anika Li ’28 formed the business team behind The Offline Edit, an in-person mall space designed to host online retailers like the popular makeup brand Rhode.
“Our store would be a space where online companies can come in and have pop-ups, and the brands would rotate every couple of weeks to keep that FOMO (fear of missing out) aspect from it and help customers see the products in person before buying them,” Dwek, the marketing manager, explained.
Andreassi added, "We had a great group of kids — they were excited, creative, jumping into things, and coming up with very interesting retail venues in our virtual mall space. They actively engaged with each other, with the topic and with their own creative venues.”
Hult described the School’s fourth WinterMission as “a blast. It was great hearing from students who were excited to make new connections and discover new interests, as well as from students who were pushed physically and rose to the challenge.”
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