Retreats during COVID-19: How are they going to play out this year?

By Gracie Combs

As the students sink deeper into this school year, many teachers start to talk about retreats. Many students look forward to going on retreat during the year, whether it be it an overnight or just a day trip. However, due to COVID-19, there are a few changes since previous years.

“Some retreats were changed with locations. The newer retreat schedule was put aside for now and we are sticking with the original. We had to change a lot, we had to cancel three Kairoses for this current junior class, it will have to move to senior year,” Mrs. Helms said.

Mrs. Helms is the retreat director at Badin, and she is in charge of setting up and planning retreats for students. Due to COVID-19, most of the retreats were either cancelled or moved around. Locations were also changed since most are not holding or only having a certain amount of people in their buildings for retreats.

Having to work around social distancing and masks were also other changes Helms had to work with. However, the fun and experience will remain the same as every year, just like the freshman and sophomore retreats.

“The groups for retreats might be smaller, but the fun should stay the same,” Helms said.

If the need arises to go back into quarantine, Helms will hope to have in person retreat. The groups would be smaller and the experience itself might be a little different then planned, but she hopes to keep the fun alive.