Winsor and Belmont Hill have considered each other brother/sister schools in many areas such as the joint prom, plays, and clubs. However, do our schools really get along well? Although the plays and prom have had great success in the past, something about joint clubs just doesn’t seem to click. Here, we will take a look at one particular club that has held joint meetings across schools, Spanish, and the successes and drawbacks it has had in doing so.
Throughout the years, the Spanish clubs at Belmont Hill and Winsor have emerged as one of the only clubs to consistently hold interscholastic events prior to COVID. Two years ago, the clubs joined to watch Verónica, a Spanish horror movie, just before COVID hit. “We had a good turnout then,” says Belmont Hill Spanish teacher Mr. Steffey. “I remember we had about a dozen from our school and a comparable number from Winsor, as well.” A few years before that, the clubs even joined to have a salsa dancing lesson, which attracted twice the crowd that the movie did, according to Mr. Steffey. COVID, in large part, halted the aspirations of continuing Spanish club meetings between the two schools last year, but this year, Belmont Hill Spanish club head Owen Gerah ’22 remains hopeful that the clubs will have interactions to some degree. “I’d love to have a joint club or two this year. They’ve worked in the past, and people have really had fun,” he remarked. “But anything more would be hard to plan out.”
When asked her opinion on joining the Spanish clubs from both schools, Natalie Cooper ’24 said “I think that having a few shared club meetings would be really fun! However, I do enjoy the aspect of only Winsor students in our group so that we can create a closer bond of embracing Latin culture.” Natalie, along with many other students, notes the lack of bonding between our schools. Both Cooper and Gerah recognize the importance of creating a closely-knit group and would prioritize keeping such a group over expanding it. The most successful interactions between the two clubs would be through infrequent meetings as they have done in the past.
Ultimately, it is hard to hold weekly, even monthly joint club meetings. The clubs that still manage to interact with each other have discovered the recipe for success, which is, ironically, reducing interactions between the clubs. Finding the time of day to plan out and hold joint meetings simply is not worth it for many Belmont Hill and Winsor students. As Vanessa Paige ‘24 remarked, “while it could be nice to collaborate with Belmont Hill for clubs, ultimately, it would be too much work, and I would prefer to focus on building a tighter bond with my peers at Winsor.” Among schoolwork, athletics, and other extracurriculars, Paige and many others already have enough on their plate and would prefer to have club meetings with students from their own school in the tight community they have created within each club.
