Singing, slime-making, sand physics, surgical techniques — you can learn about it all at Seminar Day. On March 5, the high school held its 56th Seminar Day — a day where students get to, watch performances of, participate in activities made by, and listen to the experiences of various students, teachers, and outside guests. Each student can attend three, one-hour seminars throughout the course of the half-day.
“Even as a faculty member, when I got to visit some of the seminars, hear some of the stories, and meet some of the people, I was amazed,” said Dr. John Steere, a school counselor and Seminar Day speaker.
Photos of the first Seminar Day in 1969 from the high school’s 1969 yearbook. Along with teacher, student, and other outside speaker led seminars, MIT Professor Jerome Lettvin spoke and answered questions about his debate against pro-drug figure Timothy Leary over the merits of LSD. Photo courtesy of Jeanie Goddard.
Starting as a three day event to break up the monotony of March, Seminar Day initially brought in more outside speakers and teachers to run seminars. Many seminars were also more lively, filled with debates about a variety of topics.
“We wanted to start Seminar Day to open kids up to new ideas and take a break from the ordinary classroom experience,” said Jeanie Goddard, one of the founders of Seminar Day and a retired high school teacher.
However, due to organizational constraints, the three day long event was shortened to one.
“The three days were a tremendous success, but it was a nightmare of planning — I don’t think I slept for weeks. We didn’t have computers, so I had to type the three-day schedule on what they called stencils,” said Goddard.
Now, there are fewer seminars overall, and they are more activity-based, mental health focused, or highlight student performances or clubs.
“I would hate to lose some of the once in a lifetime experiences where people come in with an incredible story to share with a student that might inspire them. But, as valuable as those things are, we need a time to just put the brakes on for a second and have some quiet time where our mind can just be,” said Mr. Collin Shattuck, an assistant principal at the high school.
But how does this event happen?
Every year, Student Congress (STUCO) puts Seminar Day together. STUCO is a student-led club that discusses school and community issues, and organizes the Club Fair, Seminar Day, and some smaller events and bake sales. Shattuck, Paraprofessional Mr. Timothy Prichard, and Special Education Teacher Ms. Arielle Bailey facilitate their work as advisors.
“For Seminar Day, [the advisors] handle things like room assignments, teacher assignments, and CORI checks, and then we do everything else. That can range from creating forms to be sent out so people can register for the seminars to actually reaching out to organizations and professors to communicating with in-school organizations like NHS,” said Armita Hamrah ’25, a STUCO co-president.
This year, STUCO began organizing Seminar Day in November and December, when they reached out to speakers from previous years — usually composing around twenty to thirty of the seminars.
Seminars that you can expect to find annually include student group performances, such as the A Cappella groups, Rock Band, Improv Troupe, and Mock Trial; the experiences of Hanni Myers during the Holocaust; and Math Teacher Ms. Jill Lapato’s worldwide adventure to photograph 1,000 birds in a year.
During Seminar Day, the high school’s Rock Band performs Life is a Highway by Tom Cochrane, soloed by Kate Stewart ’25, Piper Newman ’26, and Luca Bernhardt ’28. Photo by Katherine Xu.
Usually aiming for sixty speakers, STUCO next sends emails to various organizations and colleges and posts in the Swellesley Report to publicize the opportunity. They also put up flyers around the high school and put announcements in Principal Dr. Jamie Chisum’s weekly newsletters to catch the attention of students, parents, or teachers who might be interested in running a seminar themselves. Students usually make up around thirty percent of the speakers.
“The best part about [Seminar Day] is meeting different people because a lot of the time it’s people you wouldn’t otherwise interact with. Just meeting them and talking to them and having these conversations that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to have in a normal high school environment is really neat, and I learn a lot,” said Hamrah.
“I’ve been able to reach out to a personal trainer at Boston Sports Institute who specializes in teaching people how to gain muscle, what to eat, and how to work out safely, and that is really interesting,” said Vibha Thirumale ’26, a member of STUCO.
However, it can be difficult to get enough speakers each year so all students can attend one for all three time blocks — while making sure that there aren’t too many — so all the speakers have people attending their seminars.
“The hardest part of organizing Seminar Day is definitely getting enough speakers. Right now we are at 47, and we need sixty because it is the sweet spot,” said Thirumale.
Steere, who has participated in Seminar Day as a student, organizer, and faculty member, has run a seminar on public speaking for over ten years.
“I love the opportunity to teach skills, but also with something that I have a strength in — to say for me, this is something that I feel is very valuable to you all, but also at the same time, I can give it a personal touch as well,” said Steere. “I find that it’s been a smaller seminar over the years, but I always feel it’s incredibly valuable to see how students come in, and they say they absolutely love it.”
In the future, Chisum hopes to bring in more speakers by having a meeting with, not only the leaders of STUCO, but also the PTSO board. “In the past, we always would be able to, and we’re working on it again, have a big ticket person coming — somebody you need the auditorium for,” he said.
On the day itself, regular STUCO members continue to help make Seminar Day run smoothly. There are four main roles they take: tech runners, who work with the Technology Department and speakers to handle technology-related needs; hall monitors, who ensure all students were attending seminars; greeters, who greet the speakers as they come in, and keep track of who has arrived; and fillers, who sit in on seminars with low attendance.
To further fill these roles, STUCO also reaches out to the high school’s volunteer organizations National Honors Society and Key Club.
Leaders of STUCO take on a different role during Seminar Day, however.
“On the day of, I don’t stick to one place. I make sure that everything is running smoothly. I’ll greet, I’ll monitor something if people aren’t going to seminars — I am the crazy one that just floats around,” said Hamrah.
After Seminar Day is over, STUCO sends out thank you cards to each speaker to show their appreciation.
“Seminar Day is very challenging to organize, and it’s tough to put it all together, but the speakers are valuable,” said Steere. “It’s changing the narrative in some ways — to say, here are people’s personal experiences with these things, and how do you make sense of them for the student’s own understanding of the world.”
