by Dasi Albert ’27
As students cherished their last few weeks of summer, Upper School Dean of Students Malkie Hametz was working with great effort toward preparation for the new school year, specifically the newly added gradewide “Kickoff” trips.
In previous years, students were welcomed back to school with an Upper School-wide event known as Kickoff. For many, Kickoff meant an opportunity to reconnect with new and old friends and create a sense of unity and excitement for the year ahead. Moshe Broder ’27 reflected on Kickoff last year, when he was a new student to Berman. “I really enjoyed Kickoff because it gave me a way to bond with not only the rest of my grade, but the rest of high school. I really enjoyed how it gave me a lot more opportunities to connect and bond with my friends.”
However, due to budget-related issues, students were not greeted with this same event they had become accustomed to looking forward to. “Kickoff was extremely expensive to run and because of COVID, the prices of things went up astronomically,” Hametz said. “We were using a ton of overall student activities budget on a two-day program which is hard to rationalize.
According to Hametz, this year the Upper School administration decided it would be better to focus on grade-wide bonding as opposed to the inter-grade bonding Kickoff provided. Upper School students headed to places such as Harpers Ferry and GO Adventure located in Germantown, Maryland, and West Virginia, to do a series of grade bonding and team-building exercises.
The underclassmen activities in particular had a strong emphasis on team building and trust exercises seeing as the grades are still relatively new to the Upper School. Rimmone Zakheim ’28 highlighted how it was a great time to build new friendships and connect with her grade. “It definitely got me more excited for high school to see what bonding events are up ahead,” Zakheim said. “I’m excited to see if there will be some inter-grade bonding and not just within my grade.”
For the seniors who are more familiar with high school, Hametz thought it would be best to kickstart their year in a fun way outside of the other team-building activities. Seniors headed to Harpers Ferry for an eventful day of white water rafting. “I felt a lot closer to my grade coming out of it and it was a really fun time,” Big Council President Dana Lazar ’25 said. “We got to bond with the instructors and we also got to bond with our grade because we had to communicate when paddling and carrying the rafts.”
As president of the inter-grade government, Lazar went into detail about the process of making these events into what they were. “Council did not have such a big say in deciding these trips. It was mostly worked on over the summer by Mrs. Hametz,” Lazar said. “But, before the summer we discussed a little bit about the trips and just wanted something that would bring the grades together.”
Despite students’ comparison of the trips to Kickoff, Lazar and Hametz made it evident that the trips were not something that was meant to be in place of Kickoff. The purpose of the trips was to provide some grade-wide bonding before the school year started while creating space for a fun day of activities and socializing within the grades. “I don’t think comparing this to Kickoff is a fair thing to do,” Lazar said. “They are two very different events and I think taking this event as separate from Kickoff is very important.”
