Co-Op High School | Culture & Community | Downtown | Education & Youth | Arts & Culture | New Haven Public Schools
Newly minted grad Paris Whitaker, a rising Howard Bison, with her friends Alexa Smith, Kadin Wooten, and Tiara Walters. All four are headed to HBCUs in the fall. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Every morning of her sophomore year, Paris Whitaker woke up before 7 a.m., rearranged the furniture in her living room, and then logged onto a computer to join her classmates. It wasn’t what she’d expected her high school dance classes to be like. But somehow, she knew that she'd make it through to the other side.
Now, she has. As bright lights and ear-splitting cheers filled the Shubert Theatre Wednesday afternoon, Whitaker all but danced across the graduation stage, and on to her future at Howard University. As she leaves the high school family that helped get there, she’s taking a set of arts-based coping skills with her.
Wednesday, Whitaker was one of 118 seniors to graduate from Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, in a ceremony that celebrated a class interrupted by Covid-19, canceled and postponed performances, a three-hour school lockdown this spring and the untimely passing of a classmate last summer. Among the 118 students, the class includes dozens of theater nerds and future Broadway set designers, aspiring Alvin Ailey dancers, lifelong church musicians, budding choral educators and visual artists headed to design programs across the Northeast.
Top: Belton says goodbye to the district after 38 years. Bottom: Kurtis Hughes sings the National Anthem.
Held at the Shubert, with which Co-Op has an educational relationship, the graduation doubled as a chance to fête (and on occasion, gently roast) outgoing principal Val-Jean Belton, who is retiring after 38 years in the New Haven Public Schools and nine at Co-Op. The school offers concentrations in dance, drama, visual arts, creative writing, band, strings, and choir.
“This was not an easy time for many of you, or for us,” said Arts Director Amy “Ms. Miggs” Migliore, who began her tenure in August of 2019, among members of the class of 2023. “Some of you started during Covid, and we never actually saw your faces until the masks came off, not that long ago. But you got through it. So did we, with grace and as much dignity as could muster.”
Both inside the Shubert Theatre and during the laughter-filled conversations that followed outside on College Street, students lived that sense of sticktoitiveness in real time, remembering the moments and the educators that helped them make it to the finish line. As they shifted in their seats, they became a sea of dazzling mortarboards from above, many decorated with glitter, bright feathers, flags, and text. On stage, rows of teachers, administrators, Mayor Justin Elicker and guest speaker attorney Ashley McWilliams beamed back at them.
Top: Salutatorian Cor’daye Coleman. Bottom: Valedictorian Adi Clermont.
Speaking early in the program, salutatorian Cor’daye Coleman praised classmates who supported each other through remote classes, and later a return to some sort of normalcy that wasn’t normal at all. Coleman thanked string instructor Henry Lugo, who “swooped in at the beginning of this year to reconnect our strings program,” as if he was a musically inclined version of Superman.
“I remember when we walked through the Co-Op doors the first time, and even more, when we walked through the Co-Op’s doors for the second time,” Coleman said. “It was like we were fresh out of middle school again, only this time, we were on our way to be the new leaders, and we knew what to expect.
“Remembering that and looking at where we are now is just so shocking and amazing. We really made it.”
Valedictorian Adi Clermont, who pursued creative writing, shouted out “our beautiful class of 2023” and took a moment to acknowledge the family and friends who helped students get to that point. For Clermont, that meant praising both his mom (who cheered “we love you back!” from somewhere in the second row) and girlfriend.
Like many peers who spoke after the ceremony, Clermont also acknowledged the strain of the pandemic on students’ mental health, and importance of a built-in support system. He didn’t do it without humor, joking that he will miss a perennial hole in one of the school’s staircases, the school’s long tech theater rehearsals, and the “silliest teachers who exist,” including at least one in the creative writing department who ends her messages to students with multiple emojis.
“We are the last class [at Co-Op] that experienced life before the pandemic. We fought through it, and we made it to the other side,” he said. “Congratulations. Each and every one of you who struggled but succeeded, you earned this.”
As department heads called their students to the stage, each carried a story of how they had mastered online classes, learned to exist in person, belted through duck-billed singing masks and played instruments fitted with covers meant to reduce the spread of droplets.
Many seemed to personify their departments: the theater kids whooped, pumped their arms, and did a few spins onto the stage, the strings students never had to leave the stage, because they had played their classmates in, the choir students joined head teacher Harriett Alfred in a soulful version of Miley Cyrus’ “It’s The Climb” and visual artists came with vivid and intricate mortarboards.
Students and administrators also took the time to honor Dymen Dash, a visual arts student who passed away unexpectedly last June. Welcoming Dash’s family to the stage, Belton presented his parents, Jason Dash and Angelica Santiago-Dash, with a diploma and a memory—about finding a copy of Of Mice and Men intended for their son while she was cleaning out her office. It pains her still, she said, to know that she will never be able to give it to him.
Top: The family of Dymen Dash. Bottom: Choir student Chrystophe Obiang Ze.
Back onstage, both Belton and assistant superintendent Paul Whyte conferred the diplomas, and formally announced the class of 2023. The cheers, which set a soundtrack to the entire ceremony, were loud enough to blow off the roof.
As they poured out onto College Street, many students recalled how hard—and also rewarding—the last four years had been for them. Standing beneath the school’s overhang for perhaps the last time, Whitaker thought back to March of her freshman year, when Covid-19 upended her entire understanding of what high school would be.
When classes went remote, “it was hard to adjust to online learning,” she remembered.
In part, that was because dance—the art form for which she selected Co-Op—was never intended for living rooms and kitchens. Before Covid hit New Haven, Whitaker was used to dancing in a classroom, on a stage, and with her peers at Tia Russell Dance Studios. The pandemic suddenly meant that she was walking up, moving furniture around, and logging into class as she danced through her home.
Top: Whitaker receives her diploma. Bottom: Dancer Analeiz Guerrero with her parents.
“I always knew I was gonna make it,” she said—but she also struggled with the isolation and stress of lockdown. During her time in remote learning, she developed coping mechanisms, like dancing outdoors or communicating with her friends. She said she wants to continue to dance in the fall at Howard University, where she plans to study psychology.
Fellow dancer Analeiz Guerrero said that remote learning, and particularly online dance classes, also wore on her. Now a rising freshman at Albertus Magnus, Guerrero said she’s been dancing for as long as she can remember, first as a student with the New Haven Ballet, and later with her church’s praise team. When she learned that she could study the discipline at Co-Op, from which her older brother graduated a few years ago, she was thrilled.
Then Covid hit towards the end of her freshman year. At home, her mom got sick—so early in the pandemic that the family couldn’t even get an answer around whether it was Covid—and Guerrero felt like her world had been turned upside down. “It didn’t feel like school,” she said. “It felt so sad and empty … there were difficult times when I did not know if I would make it.”
But she did, with plans to study communications at Albertus in the fall. What got her through was talking to her friends almost every day, including a few to whom she knew she could vent “and get my feelings out.” She pointed to the importance of teachers who supported her across the distance, and a family that supported her at home. Every so often, she stepped out of the conversation to say a few words to her parents, Concepcion Guerrero and Luis Flores.
“I just feel proud,” she said. “Thanks to them, I’ve made it this far.”
Miniya Kitoko Turé and Jazz Solomon.
Nearby, strings grad Miniya Kitoko Turé thought back to the day that freshmen got the announcement that school would be remote. At the time, she thought that it would be for two weeks, not a year and a half. She remembered the time of year, she said, because she’d been excited to see RENT. Instead, she found herself struggling to practice her violin from home.
“It was a lot to come back, because it was still Covid precautions … so we were limited so far as how much art we could do,” she said. And yet, she came into senior year feeling excited to be there. She said she was especially grateful to reunite with Lugo, who she had as a teacher during her middle school years at Betsy Ross Arts Middle School. She finished the year on a literal high note, as first violin.
Next to her, visual artist Jazz Solomon stressed the importance of artmaking as a coping mechanism, especially at a time when the world felt small and isolated. Over months of remote learning, art class became “a soothing space,” consistent and calming in a world that was neither. In the fall, Solomon will be bringing that approach to MassArt in Boston.
“I have to find the motivation, because otherwise you’re not gonna get up out of bed,” Solomon said. “It’s good to have the motivation, and that was like, my family, my art, my friends.”
Both added that a wave of teacher departures last year—and new faces and vacancies that Co-Op started with last fall—didn’t go unnoticed by students. Last year, art teacher Christoper Cozzi and strings instructor Nick Neumann both retired. This year, art teacher Kris Wetmore is stepping into retirement as well. In August 2022, Brooklyn transplant Ryan Minezzi was named lead art teacher for the school.
“It’s a lot, honestly,” Solomon said. “You build bonds with these people, and they become your inspiration. So when they leave, it is difficult … but you have to take what they gave to you, and use that to build yourself.”
“I agree,” Turé said. “The bond that we form with our teachers is pretty unbreakable. So when they leave, it does hurt a lot, and it did hurt when Neumann left. But it’s also good to get, you know, a fresh set of eyes.”
As he lifted a bottle of sparkling grape juice, Kurtis Hughes said that he’ll be bringing Co-Op with him as he moves toward his studies at Gateway Community College.
By the time he started at Co-Op, Hughes had been singing for over a decade—he’s performed since the time that he could walk, including in church. Wednesday, he graced the stage with a rendition of the National Anthem that had people screaming from their seats.
So when Covid hit, he knew it was music that was going to get him through.
“Ms. Alfred, she opens up to everyone with loving arms, and that’s one person who I can say will have your back. Harriett Alfred will have your back,” he said. “The music and the love all the teachers and administrators have here, Co-Op is a good place.”