On Thursday February 1st, Campo hosted its annual Open House to provide opportunities for students and families to meet its staff, as well as learn about course offerings, student services provided, and various ways to become involved in campus life.
Beginning at 5:30 pm, the parents club sponsored a “Family Social,” inviting Ofie’s Kitchen and Groovy Gorditas onsite to provide food for the guests. At 6:00 pm, families and incoming students gathered for the “General Welcome” before being released to visit classrooms and participate in breakout sessions.
Associate Principal Robin Harrison worked with teachers, administrators, and the CPC to put together the open house. “The only difference from years past is that we added in a social before everything kicked off. The hope was that new families would be able to meet each other and have a space where they could start connecting or see some familiar faces. The food truck helped a little with that, in terms of having people get to know each other,” she said.
There were several different opportunities for families to drop in and learn more about how to register for classes and address the difference between the student and parent transition into highschool.
A focused area was to have a place for families to learn more about campus life. “With incoming freshmen, there’s always an air of nervousness that comes with starting a new school, but our Leadership kids did a really good job in terms of creating breakout sessions specifically for freshmen so that they can start meeting people, as well as learn about what it means to be a cougar and how to get involved,” said Harrison.
The breakout sessions were held in various classrooms across campus, where specific questions about courses could be answered. Senior Pinkie Schnayer said she worked as part of Leadership, “helping guide parents and incoming freshmen to different classrooms to learn about the academic departments offered, as well as leading our own seminar on what Leadership does around Campo throughout the school year.”
“Leadership helped set up different booths in the gym for all the sports and some other extracurriculars, like clubs, to show different activities and awards they have received over the past few years for future students to browse,” Schnayer said. “Our goal was to make sure that future cougars and parents could easily navigate their way around campus.”
The art room put all of the current student’s works on display, as it was very popular for people to visit. Teachers set up presentations and waited in their rooms for visitors as well. “The purpose of open house is to bring people together and to learn what we have here. It really is an opportunity for teachers to showcase all the services that we have,” said Harrison.
To advertise Campo’s incredible instrumental music program, “the orchestra and the band put on chamber performances in the CPAC so that attendees could walk in and observe freely,” said senior Naina Srivastava. “We got to choose our own chamber groups and the music we wanted to perform within those groups. We spent a month or two practicing for the performance.”
Parents and future students also stopped into the auditorium to watch the musical practice, as students were working with one another to learn their choreography. “A lot of families were excited. What I was hearing at the end of the night was that most people were happy that they came because they got to learn a lot about the different programs and services that we offer,” Harrison said.
