Yom HaShoah—Holocaust Remembrance Day—urges people around the world to never forget the extermination of six million Jews in Nazi Germany. To mark the commemoration, which  this year began at sundown last night and continues today, Rivers welcomed two guest speakers to a special all-school meeting on Wednesday. Their message? Antisemitism did not begin or end with the Holocaust. At a moment when antisemitic incidents are on the rise at home and abroad, that message was especially timely.

Baseball has its World Series, football has its Super Bowl, and the NWHL—the National Women’s Hockey League—has its Isobel Cup, awarded to the league champions each year since 2016. And this year, for the second time in its history, the Boston Pride, helmed by Jillian Dempsey ’09, has its Isobel Cup, after a 4-3 victory over the Minnesota Whitecaps last weekend. To top it off, Dempsey—also a member of the Isobel-winning 2016 team—took home MVP honors.

Just before spring break, more than 100 members of the Rivers community joined some 9,000 attendees at an AISNE-hosted webinar titled “Go Beyond an Awareness of Racism.” The large turnout was driven in part by the high-profile featured speaker, prominent author and activist Ibram X. Kendi. Kendi is a New York Times bestselling author, winner of the National Book Award, and director of the Boston University Center for Anti-Racist Research.

What is the sound of one cockroach leg flapping? Students in the second trimester elective Neuroscience recently found out—and were startled by what they heard.

The Scholastic Art & Writing awards have been recognizing and inspiring student creativity for nearly a century, since their founding in 1923. This year’s recently announced state-level awards saw 16 Rivers students garnering 21 prizes for photography, drawing, painting, and other forms of visual art. Among them were two Gold Key awards, which are automatically entered into the national competition.

Put on a musical during the era of masks and social distancing? Impossible, you say? Not for the intrepid team that makes up the Nonesuch Players. With the type of can-do spirit celebrated in countless Broadway musicals, they brought Rivers a show full of joy, humor, hope, and good old-fashioned razzle dazzle—all in the virtual space.

Sydnie Schwarz, Middle School DEI coordinator at Rivers, vividly remembers the first diversity conference she attended. “I was in eighth grade. I remember feeling like this world had opened up,” she says today. “Going to workshops, meeting kids from other schools—I was so excited.” It’s the kind of experience she hoped to bring to Rivers Middle School students by offering to have Rivers host the AISNE Middle School Students of Color Conference earlier this month.

If the past year has taught us anything, it’s that predicting the future can be a tricky business. But laying the groundwork for the future is another matter. With that in mind, last week’s Rivers Connect event brought together graduating seniors and Rivers alumni to discuss life after high school.

Rivers students typically embrace a number of community engagement opportunities throughout the year. But nothing about this year has been typical, with many nonprofits and other organizations unable to host or accommodate would-be volunteers. There’s one noteworthy exception, however: Since April, more than 50 Rivers students have volunteered with Immigrant Family Services Institute (IFSI), an organization that supports immigrant families.

It’s not as easy as ABC to win an ABC Award, given annually by Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) Massachusetts. At the organization’s virtual awards ceremony last month, only 12 firms in Massachusetts were recognized for a project reflecting “overall excellence in project execution, craftsmanship, safety, innovative elements and challenges, and client satisfaction”—and one of them was Bowdoin Construction Corp. for its work on our own Revers Center for Science and Visual Arts.

Theater, like sports, teaches participants resilience, teamwork, and grit. And, like athletes, theater students engage in competition from an early age. The Massachusetts Educational Theater Guild (METG) has been holding student theater contests for years, but this year, for the first time, the group added a solo musical theater category.

The National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship is a prestigious, highly competitive program that supports scholarship in the humanities for up to a year. Among the 8 percent of applicants who were chosen for the fellowship this year are university professors, scholars affiliated with museums and other institutions, foundations—and one high school teacher.

Over the years, commemorations of Martin Luther King Jr. Day have taken different forms at Rivers—sometimes with guest speakers and performers, sometimes with powerful statements from students and other members of the community, sometimes with service projects that honor the legacy of the slain civil rights leader.