Let’s start off as we must: We are deeply fortunate that our jobs do not require significant exposure to COVID-19, and that the schools and organizations where the kids spend their time have taken this virus, in all its permutations, quite seriously. We have done what we can to keep ourselves and others safe — masking, distancing, vaxxing, boosting, the works. As a result, we are grateful to ring in a new year healthy and well and ever grateful to the many people whose work puts them in harm’s way to make all of our lives possible.
As has become our tradition, here are our updates:
Mojito
This year I had to do some adjusting. First off, my people LEFT me for an extended period of time during the foggy days. After that, Dylan left completely. Weird. Then Adela was gone nearly all day most days of the week. Sheesh. What could be more important than petting me? I will say the backyard improvements were pretty cool. I got to hide under the new ferns and other plants that Matt organized and everyone planted. And there were still a lot of outdoor BBQ events, just not with enough shrimp or crab in my opinion.
Adela
I don’t think any of us expected a year like this. When the pandemic started in 2020, I was ready for a few weeks off of school. Heck, maybe we’d even get a month. I was expecting to get out of quarantine and have life return back to normal. I was sorely disappointed. Instead, I spent a year adjusting to a completely new lifestyle. Some people said they were going to make the best of the pandemic: start working out, and go on a diet. I, on the other hand, decided to do nothing. I don’t mean slouch around all day, which frankly, I did plenty of. I meant I wasn’t going to force myself to do things I didn’t want to do. Do yoga in the morning? Sure! Don’t do yoga in the morning because I wasn’t feeling up to it? Just as fine! When I needed to take a break from Zoom school, I would just step away from my computer. If I wanted to go on a walk to look at the sunset, I would. Try and pick up a new hobby? Let’s do it. It made me reevaluate my time and my priorities. Every once in a while, you have to step back and ask, “Are the things that I’m doing really the things I want to do? Or just the things I think I’m supposed to do?”
Some of the new things that happened to me were not by choice. This year I had my first ever live virtual performance with my chorus. That was wild. I mean, who would even think those three words would ever be in the same sentence? I started volunteering to mentor young singers over Zoom. I started biking more to avoid public transportation. I spent almost all my time in my own house or outside. Before long, the things that I would have considered normal and expected had become the unexpected. Going to school in person. Traveling on a plane. Performing a concert live, in person, and with no masks. Eating in a restaurant. I realize how much we had taken for granted. And how many things we grew to think of as mundane in years past are now actually exceptional.
Dylan
From Jack Johnson to Vladimir Nabokov, I read a lot this year. Granted, living out in the Berkshires means that there isn’t much else to do with my time. However, when I did put the books down, I spent most of my time down at Cole Field or shooting pool with my new friends. College has forced me to really change my approach to learning. Between setting my own deadlines and having fewer hours of class per week, I had to change the way I structured my work. Classes went from lectures to discussions, optional readings were not optional, and study groups were a necessity. While I enjoy sharing stories about the new friends I made, and the soccer season we had, the hours spent at my desk reading page after page into the nights will not be forgotten.
Coming off of a year and a half of lockdown in San Francisco, Williamstown felt like a different world. Nestled in the heart of the Berkshires, I got the chance to really experience New England in all of its grandeur. When I arrived, the blazing 90 degree temperatures had me sweating at all hours of the day. But as the weather cooled off and the leaves started to change, I could sort of understand why some make the argument that the east coast tops the west.
When the first snow arrived, the jokes began. “Guys, this is crazy, I’ve never seen snow before!” I exclaimed to my peers born and raised 20-40 minutes outside of Boston. Of course most of you know that I have in fact seen snow before, and even partake in winter sports most years. The responses from my friends varied, some worried for my life in negative temperatures, others perplexed at the concept of growing up in a place with no real seasons. Alas, there were some skeptics as well… “Isn’t there snow in Tahoe?” they asked, or a straight up, “No way. That’s not true.” All in all, when the snow eventually came, and temperatures fell below zero, I can proudly say that I was prepared. Granted, it is COLD. Maybe the coldest I’ve ever been, but something about living in a real winter excites me. So as January moves along, I keep doing my little snow dance, jealous of the 10 feet in Tahoe, hoping to wake up to a blizzard…at least I think that’s what I want.
Coming to Williams, I had a lot of different expectations as to how my first semester would go. The one headline that surprised me was how quickly I became a night owl. Between readings, problem sets, and afternoon classes, I promptly adopted a stereotypical collegiate student sleep schedule. Going home for break may have slightly fixed this unruly routine, but as next semester quickly approaches, I’ll no doubt be back at my desk reading long into the night.
Matt
My work at New Leaders continues to be a source of inspiration and challenge. Through colleagues, clients, and the school leaders we serve, I have been witness to extraordinary feats of courage and perseverance. We are working hard every day to strengthen the quality of principal preparation, so that school leaders are armed not only to take on the nearly impossible challenges of leading through a pandemic, but also to create inclusive and racially just school communities. It has been simply infuriating to watch our schools become a crucible for political opportunism, especially from the most reactionary elements of our body politic, when teachers and principals are just trying to make it from one day to the next. I recently joined the school governance team for Adela’s high school in order to help a little bit more.
Looking back on 2021, I realize that I have mostly created a virtual social web. The Dead Poets Society — our 30-member family call — has been going strong week-in and week-out. On a monthly basis, I’ve been convening a happy hour of my closest college friends — James, James, and Dave. And I kept up facilitation of our amazing bookclub, now called Saplings, where we read on the theme of displacement and exile before moving on to transformation.
Perhaps because I spent so much of my time online this year, the things I recall most fondly from 2021 all happened outdoors. Leveling up my game as a gardener (I’m still very much in the novice category). Hiking “the Notch” with my dad during a December family gathering in Vermont. And, best of all, trekking the Lost Coast of California for three off-the-grid days with Dylan and Adela.
Jeannette
2021 brought me many reasons to be hopeful, maybe because I was determined to reclaim a better balance after the turmoil and stress of 2020. Amidst the enduring issues of racial injustice, climate change, attacks on democracy, and COVID-19, I appreciated several sources of inspiration – most of them from wise and bold women. Here’s a snippet of what’s been keeping me going . . .
“I have learned you are never too small to make a difference.” — Greta Thunberg, COP24 Speech (2018)
“When America is at its best, we acknowledge the complexity of our societies and the complicating reality of how we experience this country—and its obstacles. Yet we never lose sight of the fact that we all want the same thing. We want education. We want economic security. We want health care. Identity politics pushes leaders to understand that because of race, class, gender, sexual orientation/gender identity, and national origin, people confront obstacles that stem from these identities.” — Stacey Abrams, Our Time is Now (2020)
“Hope is an embrace of the unknown and knowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It’s the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand.” — Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark (2004)
“To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.” – bell hooks, Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope (2003)
“Action on behalf of life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.” — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)
“Be Love. Find Joy. Do Good.” — Bernadette Chi, words to live by (2021)
In my day to day, I engage in redesign efforts in education. My work in the U.S. is focuses on rethinking and redesigning schools and districts so they are more equitable, relevant, student-centered, civic-minded, and engaging. With colleagues in Chile, I train educators to design and implement high quality project-based learning. Beyond my professional world, I remain active in “Get Out the Vote” campaigns, my church community, connecting with family and friends, and trying to stay on top of my bookclub reading. My other “Get Out” campaign in 2021 was an effort to stay physically active. While that was often limited to working out in our garage mini-gym, on better days it included long walks, bike rides, or ski ventures. After we were vaccinated and felt safe enough, we ventured out socially, traveling east to see family during the summer. Later I dropped off Dylan to Williams College with my folks. In December, I embarked on my first work trip in nearly two years, and we closed out the year with a lovely holiday visit in Vermont.
*****
2021 is also the year that the reactionary Right wing of our country tried to foment a coup, and they almost pulled it off. Since January 6th, what’s become eminently clear is an attempt to whitewash that failed plot, to normalize the rioting and obfuscate the planning, all in an effort to consolidate and regain power. There are lots of things to fight for as we move deeper into 2022, but perhaps none is more critical than holding the lot of them accountable. And since only a few Republicans are willing to stand up and do the right thing, it’s up to the rest of us to keep up the work of democracy, which we can only do by winning more elections.
In September, we had the chance to see Mon Laferte in concert. She is, simply put, a powerhouse. A Chilean singer who lives and works in Mexico and who channels the revolutionary and feminist spirit of women across Latin America. In one of her 2021 releases, she asks, “Qué alguien me explique lo que pasó con la democracia… ¿Pa’ dónde fue? ¿Quién se la robó?” (“Can somebody explain to me what happened to democracy? Where did it go? Who stole it?”)
This year, we hope you will join us in the work to be sure that we don’t need to keep asking ourselves that question. And we hope that the new year will bring many more of you to our backyard — we’d like to see you in person.
2021 by the numbers
0 – work trips for Matt
1 – moose spotted on Cole Field where the Williams men’s soccer team plays home games
2 – hours Dylan physically attended high school during his senior year (kid you not)
4 – people in our household who legally drove in the state of California
5 — hours Adela spent at Dylan’s school (taking – and acing – the AP Spanish exam)
6 — number of cuisines our Chilean friend Sol fell in love with while visiting us in San Francisco
10 — concerts Adela sang in: 4 virtually, 5 in-person, and 1 recorded live and later streamed
12 – doses of COVID vaccine injected into our arms
17 – date in August when Dylan cast his first ballot (in the recall election for Governor Newsom)
25 – miles of California Lost Coast trekked by Adela, Dylan and Matt
27 – our favorite soccer player wears this number (you can probably guess who)
50 — percent of women serving as constitutional assembly members (as defined by law) to rewrite Chile’s constitution and rid it once and for all of the trappings of the dictatorship
70 – percent of the day that our cat, Mojito, spends sleeping
80 – milestone birthdays for Pop-Pop Kelemen and Uncle Pete
3000+ — number of stained-glass windows Adela enthusiastically called out while walking, cycling, or driving
2021 Year in Pictures
