For 124 years, SPA has stood on Randolph Avenue as a place of education for students of all ages, genders, and backgrounds; a revolving door of knowledge and growth.
Just 26 years ago, upper school Science teacher Karrisa Baker took her first steps here. Back then, the school looked strikingly different, lacking the modern glass panes of Schilling, the Huss Center of the Performing Arts, and the lunchroom giving the institution a distinct feel.
“So, 20 years ago, if you were to look at the building from Randolph, Schilling didn’t exist,” Baker said. What existed then was the Ordway Wing, the old language wing. For 16 of her 26 years at SPA, Baker taught science classes on the second floor, where the current language commons are. With limited social spaces like Redleaf Commons, she recalled how students often loitered and mingled in the hallways because of this.
Being in one place for so long, Baker has seen many people pass through the school, students and colleagues: “I miss a lot of my retired colleagues…I’ve worked over the years with some really amazing people,” Baker said. “I mean, I started here when I was pretty young, so I looked to those people as my mentors.”
Alexis Irish, the intercultural life program specialist, is what many SPA students call a “lifer,” someone who has attended SPA from kindergarten to graduation. She graduated in 2015 and returned to SPA in 2021 as a faculty member. Irish’s fondest memories in her years in the early 2010s was the tradition that was celebrated just last week: homecoming week.
“The energy around Homecoming was just wild…. And there used to be awards you can get during pep fest, awards for best dressed for each dress-up day.” Irish says. Among other homecoming traditions such as storming the field, pep fest, and the carnival, Irish remembers a somewhat forgotten one.
“We used to have lip sync, and [it] was wild. It was one of those things that you waited your whole high school career to be part of, like, the senior girls’ lip sync or the senior boys’ lip sync.” Irish said.
A wall-sized collage of signatures hangs in the Redleaf Commons near the entrance of the Huss auditorium.
“I remember signing my name,” junior Annalise Atkinson said. She occasionally finds her name out of hundreds and looks back fondly. To commemorate the construction of Huss, all lower and upper school students attending in 2015 signed their names. Atkinson is a “lifer,” a term used to describe a student who has attended SPA since kindergarten. She was in second grade when the Huss auditorium was built in 2015.
“[Huss auditorium] was a really big deal for [the theater department] because they had an actual auditorium,” Atkinson said. The upper school used to perform at the lower school auditorium. “But it was kind of sad for the lower school, because we always went to the upper school plays, because they were at our school.”
The footprint of the school has undoubtedly grown. Baker looks beyond that: “The fundamental sort of character of the school feels pretty similar to me, like who we are as an institution…at our best, is about the relationships. It has nothing to do with technology, and it has nothing to do with buildings, and it has nothing to do with beautiful auditoriums,” Baker said. “When the facilities weren’t that great and when we were very crowded together, we still were a very academically focused school.”
While SPA has physically expanded since Baker joined as a new teacher 26 years ago, and since Irish was a kindergartener 23 years ago, and Atkinson was still learning basic math nine years ago, the spirit of the school remains unchanged.
