Riverdale’s Student Body Undertakes Projects of Gratitude

With the influx of new students and the barrier of masks, it has been rather challenging to form meaningful relationships with other community members this year. However, through participating in games during school assemblies and grade-wide trips, we have learned how to appreciate one another in environments that force us to interact with those we often take for granted.

 Particularly, over the span of the past year, students and faculty have made strides towards ensuring that everyone feels that they serve a purpose in our community through expressing their gratitude. 

“Gratitude not only reminds us of the things that are good in our lives, but also, in sharing gratitude, we impact others positively,” said Ms. Susan Polise, Dean of the Class of 2022. 

With an uneasy junior year affected by the pandemic, the senior class hasn’t had much time to reconnect with one another and establish a cohesive class identity. The creation of a gratitude jar has allowed the seniors to release their feelings of gratitude on a piece of paper and add it to the container of appreciation. The first quarter of senior year isn’t exactly a walk in the park; students often focus on everything that isn’t going right. However, the jar is a tangible monument of not only the senior class’s hardships, but also their extraordinary wins. 

Though this initiative is relatively new, seniors have been transforming gratitude into commendable projects since last year. Seniors Stella Michel and Jake Siden both worked incredibly hard to express their appreciation for the kitchen staff at Riverdale. Both Michel and Siden contacted Chef Jeffrey Duncan about potentially helping the food service staff out in the kitchen, and he proposed the idea of students serving lunch for the day. 

Not only did the cafeteria workers appreciate the gesture greatly, but it also showed the students how hard it is to serve food for hours on end. Addressing students who want to get involved in the Riverdale community, but donít necessarily know how to, Michel said, “Don’t be afraid to reach out to anyone. Obviously, everyone in the Riverdale community is very welcoming, very open, and they’re always looking for different ways to support the community.” She encourages students to think outside of the box and email administrators whenever they want to contribute significant projects to the community.

Before in-person learning at Riverdale resumed this fall, students managed to form initiatives to show their support and appreciation for their teachers who scrambled to make online learning fun and engaging. 

Senior Sasha Mamaysky reminisces about her project that catered to bridging the gap between the screen and learning by allowing students to partake in a virtual video-making project. In describing her inspiration for the initiative, Mamaysky said, “The project was just a video saying thank you to the faculty and staff, but specifically geared towards the teachers because I, like a lot of students, was having kind of a tough transition from in-person school to virtual school.”

Upon receiving feedback from teachers, Mamaysky expressed her great delight for her teachers’ hard work during a time when uncertainty dwelled in the lives of students and faculty alike. “There’s no one way to show that you care about people,” said Mamaysky. 

At Riverdale, whether you entered the school in Pre-K or ninth grade, we've all encountered significant acts of kindness and have exuded such benevolence as well. A return to normalcy is simultaneously a return to the rekindling of friendships. As students level up to the next grade, they will meet unfamiliar challenges that may seem hard to overcome at first, but with the support of the people around them, the dilemmas seem less daunting. As the year progresses, we can be sure that we'll continue to breed meaningful connections within our community.