Co-Op High School | Culture & Community | Education & Youth | Arts & Culture | Theater
Top: Aaron Steed jumps into a game of "I Like People Who." Bottom: Jordan Oliver, Jordyn Thomas, Jalen Edwards, and Mikayla Stallings. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Mikayla Stallings leaned over a sheet of paper, a pen placed gingerly between her fingers. A single braid fell gently over her arms. Dear Kayla, this is your last first day of high school, she began. I’m so proud of the woman you have become. I never thought that I would see this moment.
Minutes later, she folded the paper into thirds, then pulled out an envelope she’d addressed to herself. She wouldn’t see the letter again for another year. Before she did, she was determined to savor the moment.
Stallings is one of 125 seniors at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, where classes across the arts began Thursday morning with the hum of conversation and squeak of sneakers in the hallways. As she walked into a second period theater studies class, she joined dozens of classmates on the precipice of that last first day—and two teachers who wanted to ensure they would remember it.
Co-Op currently has a total of 525 students enrolled for the 2024-2025 school year. One of the city’s seven magnet high schools, it offers classes in dance, drama, choir, creative writing, band, strings, and the visual arts. For the seniors, it marks the end of a chapter that they began wide-eyed and masked up in August 2021, after over a year of remote learning.
Teachers Christi Sargent and Rob "Espo" Esposito.
“It’s an interesting year, it really is, because it’s both an end and it’s a beginning,” said drama teacher Rob “Espo” Esposito, who has been teaching at Co-Op since 2005. “And it’s also sort of where the rubber meets the road. This is the last year where you’re guaranteed a public education … It's a beautiful opportunity for you to look inside yourself. You will see, ‘This is who I can offer. This is who I am.’”
Thursday, many seemed excited to get to work—and to graduation. In the school’s first-floor black box theater, students jumped into conversation with each other, the room humming with stories of summer jobs, family vacations, acting gigs that took them beyond Co-Op and sometimes had them walking the school’s halls as teachers at the Shubert’s summer camp.
Despite a moon of chairs that Esposito and teacher Christi Sargent had set up before class, most students buzzed around the room, never in the same spot for more than a few seconds. Aaron Steed bounced over to Marangelie Colon, catching up on their plans for senior year.
Colon, who wants to pursue secondary education, is preparing to apply to Southern Connecticut State University. Before that, she said, she also wants to make the most of her senior year, including with a role in her last school musical. In the last two years, she has played Hairspray’s powdered-up villain, Velma Von Tussle, and ensemble in the school’s production of The Wiz. This year’s show has not yet been announced.
“I’m so scared,” she said of senior year. “I’m excited to graduate soon, but I have a little bit of nerves because I don’t know if I’m ready to be an adult yet.”
Top: Lyric. Bottom: Stephanie Garcia and Giada Thomas.
Only when Esposito cleared his throat, welcoming students to their senior year, did butts finally seem to find seats. First, he said, a familiar warning: the year always went by faster than students thought it would. He was midway through explaining the school’s new A-B schedule when Lyric Albo cut in, a smile playing at the edges of his mouth.
“Oh no, I don’t like that!” exclaimed Albo, a senior who lives in Guilford and has worn the same hand-painted pair of jeans every first day of school since his freshman year in 2021 (“Except one year, but we don’t talk about that,” he said with a laugh). Bands of rainbow color and tiny red-and-white spotted mushrooms peeked out from his pant legs, beneath a bright button down that looked like it was from the set of Saved by the Bell.
Around him, students burst into a fit of giggles. Sargent started to laugh, a high-pitched, just-a-little-surprised, ringing bell of a laugh that has been missing from the school’s hallways and theater classrooms since June. Albo held a hand to his chin, beneath a swoop of pink hair. One seat over, Elle McPhail smiled and considered the switch-up.
Gleb Kursheik with Esposito. After immigrating from Belarus, Kursheik had high praise for Co-Op. "I love it!" he said of acting. "It's just a part of me."
“It’s a good thing, because you’ll never have two even days in a row, or two odd days in a row!” Esposito said. Albo softened. “You’ll get used to it and I think you’ll grow to like it. We as teachers have been asking for this for a long time.”
The nods of understanding multiplied around the room, and Esposito continued. There was the matter of phone etiquette (while some of New Haven’s middle schools are trying out new Yondr pouches, which restrict cell phone use, high schools are not). There was the senior play, which for a second year in a row will be written by Co-Op alum Keona Maria Gomes. And then there were the letters, now a tradition that he has brought into the classroom for 20 years.
The prompt is simple, he explained. Each year, he brings in stacks of lined paper and envelopes, making sure that the school’s College Street campus is neatly marked as a return address. Students can write anything they want to their future selves. Some include their wishes for senior year, from college acceptances to leading roles in the school musical. Others reflect on their journey through high school and predict what the future might hold.
He never sees the contents: that is for the writer alone. He just holds onto the letters, which students address to themselves. Then a year later—usually on the first or second day of school—he adds stamps, puts the letters in the mail, and starts the whole process again. It gives his students a rare and needed moment of reflection, he said.
Top: Dexter Menyfield. Bottom: Carizma Buonome.
“This is where you can ask, who am I as an artist? Who am I as a scholar?” he said as he handed out sheets of paper. In the years since he started the exercise, he’s seen students go on to careers in acting, directing, and playwriting, arts education and even legislative work. Just this year, drama alumni Jacque Brown and Kendall Driffin founded their own production company, W.A.B. Performing Arts Studio and Conservatory.
“People have been telling you what to do your whole lives, right?” he said. “They’ve been telling you where to go, no choice. After this, you’re gonna have a lot of choices. So start to think about who you are, ‘cause that’s gonna decide the next steps of your life.”
As students fanned out across the first-floor black box theater, many of them took a pause before writing, thinking over what they wanted to say. Where there had been a flurry of motion was suddenly stillness, punctuated every so often with another round of giggles, an affirming Mmmm hmmm at something that had been said. Within minutes, the gentle tap-tap-whisper of pen on paper filled the theater.
At a table, Stallings crouched at one end, eyeing a blank sheet of paper for only a moment. Then the words began to flow, emerging from her fingertips as if they’d been there all along. This year, she said, taking care of her mental health, staying on top of her grades and keeping up with her peers is her top priority.
“I had to take a lot of time to heal” from mental health struggles over previous years, she said. Now that she has her head above water, “I want to be more out there,” particularly during her senior year. For instance, she plans to sign up for Co-Op After School (CAS) and spend more time with her friends before they scatter to go to college.
Beside her, Jalen Jaziere Edwards leaned forward, conjuring a career in fashion as he imagined his future self. Dear Jaziere, AKA thee flyest bitch, he began with a smile, his rings glittering as he wrote. You’ve done it again you’ve never done yourself wrong you’ve graduated … [you are] making a life for yourself.
If he paused for even a moment, he could see the next years playing out in vignettes, each more fashionable than the next. This year, he said, he wants to join the yearbook committee, as well as a fashion class that CAS has offered in years past (designers Donald Carter and Tea Montgomery have both taught at Co-Op). After graduation, he dreams of studying fashion design and marketing in New York. His dream is to become a fashion stylist.
Before school Thursday, he had put that love to good use, selecting a green-and-white plaid pullover vest, baggy denim shorts, and layered crucifix necklaces that caught and glimmered in the theater’s light. Before he leaves Co-Op, he said, he’s also focused on overcoming some insecurities that he still has.
“I want to find out who I am,” Edwards said.
In his seat, Albo began scribbling, charting a journey that had started a decade before, and would be—he hoped—leading to a job, new home, and community college classes before the year was over. Almost 10 years ago, he saw Wicked for the first time, and fell in love with theater. As a kid attending Guilford Middle School, he learned about Co-Op and applied on his own.
He’s been grateful for it nearly every day for four years.
“It has a lot of flaws as a school but I love it here,” he said. “There are not a lot of places that let you do your art every day.”
His plans for this year include “honestly, working my ass off,” he added. “I have so much to do and not a lot of time to do it.”
On the paper, he wrote out the sentence: You still have so much to do, and it felt more like a firm reminder than a warning. Then he looked around, taking in the class before folding the letter in thirds and slipping it into the envelope. When it was sealed, he handed it back to Esposito and made his way back to his seat. Next to him, Elle McPhail smiled; the two compared beaded bracelets. “I missed it here,” she said.
Back in the circle, it was time to break in the year with a game. Albo stood at the center of the group, ready to kick off a round of “I Like People Who.” The game is a mix of Simon Says and Musical chairs: players rise in response to a statement, and then scramble to find a new chair amidst the chaos. There is always one less chair than there are people.
“I like people who—” Albo pulled a hand to their shoulder, the other resting on a pink cane. “Dress feminine.”
A third of the class stood, some students pausing before they seemed to remember themselves, and made a mad dash for the chairs. Albo glided into one nearby, smiling as peers burst into laughter, and it filled the room, cacophonous. When the sound of conversation rose, Esposito cleared his throat and brought students to a hush. “Okay, listen up everybody!” he said.
The prompts kept coming. “I like people who are in theater!” Edwards said, and the whole room rose. “I like people who … have braids in their hair?” ventured La'riah Norman. McPhail liked people who wore jewelry and Steed liked people who had check marks on their shoes. “I like people … who are seniors!” exclaimed Carizma Buonome. The whole room rose with an off-harmony squeal of delight.
When the bell signaled the first lunch rush, students were slow to go. They had just seen their future selves, after all, and seemed hesitant to say goodbye.
“As artists we have to look up,” Esposito had said moments earlier, and the words seemed fitting as they began to file out. “We have to look around. You have to look at the world around you.”