Chapel Hill-Chauncy Hall School Blog: Take Charge

At Chapel Hill-Chauncy Hall, theatre students proudly sport letter jackets, which are earned after their sixth show on campus. Although this is perhaps the most obvious symbol that theatre is considered a team sport on campus, it is only the outermost layer of everything going on behind the scenes.

On the day of the Faculty-Student Ultimate Frisbee game, Luke DiOrio ‘10 stormed the field with seven friends. It was Luke’s birthday, and he was not only the avid organizer of this event but also the Ultimate Frisbee coach on campus, so his enthusiasm was understandable. “I worried no one would show up!” he confesses, but that worry quickly faded as faculty and fellow alumni arrived in droves to take on the students in friendly but fierce competition.

The Alumni Office recently got wind of an exciting project brewing not in a galaxy far far away, but just down the road at Olin College, where alumnus Aaron Codrington '21 was hard at work on a real retractable lightsaber. We caught up with Aaron, and learned he's up to a lot more than that, too!

Pictured from left to right: Aaron Codrington '21, Madie Tong and Jacob Uy

In many ways, Tim Seston can claim to have been on campus longer than most current faculty and staff. “I remember this building when it was the Head of School’s house,” he muses when we connect in East Hall, harking back to the era when Tim first taught on campus from 2000 to 2005. Although Tim’s path meandered over the ensuing two decades - raising his children, founding a children’s music company, coaching and teaching at other local independent schools -  it feels almost inevitable that he came full circle back to the beginning.

 Luke DiOrio '10 is not only a Chapel Hill-Chauncy Hall School alumnus, but he's also a faculty member in our Visual and Performing Arts department. Recently, Luke took advantage of Spring Break to attend a photography conference in Northern Ireland, but we (CH-CH) were able to steal a few moments of his time for some questions (and obligatory Ireland pics!)

As students in the podcasting co-curricular activity produced the first episode of their series, In the Loop, a segment, called “Fire Interview,” asked students to name their favorite teacher. “Miss Ibave, Señora Ibave…” an echo is soon apparent. 

Members of the CH-CH community might be surprised to find a familiar face on their TV screens this holiday season. Is that Spanish Teaching Fellow Samantha Cruz sending up a cloud of flour from her stand mixer on Netflix’s Nailed It? Why yes, in fact, it is! If you have a Netflix account, you can watch the episode here.

It’s the middle of summer and Em Chonofsky ‘14 admits that her home is “the equivalent of being in your car with all the windows open. So it is warm.” That’s just one quirk she’s learned to live with, residing aboard a 48' long, 6'10" wide steel boat, known as a narrowboat. She first felt the lure to live aboard one of these UK canal boats as a university student six years ago, but it wasn’t until she was a working woman that Em made the leap into boat ownership.