While many students are waiting to get their lunch at noon, Coraline Mongillo, alongside Gabriel Caraballo get picked up from Morgan only to get dropped off at the Guildford Parking lot. From there, they each take the Guildford bus to New Haven. And that is only to start their day.
Mongillo and Caraballo, junior and sophomore here at Morgan, are part of the two school program called ECA , or Educational Center for the Arts. ECA is a public half-time arts magnet high school that was founded in 1973. It offers different kinds of art departments like creative writing, dance, music, visual arts and theater. It is connected to 22 school districts in CT. It is open to students starting their freshman year of high school,from 1:00 pm to 4:10pm, Monday through Thursday.
Both Mongillo and Caraballo finish their school day at Morgan around 11:30am, then head over to the Educational Center for the Arts for their second part of the day. Both go to different kinds of programs, Mongillo heads to the art department to study visual arts such as painting, drawing, photography, while Caraballo heads over to the theater department to study regular stage theater.
Mongillo, who started going to ECA her freshmen year and is in the arts department, focuses more on visual arts but enjoys doing illustration. “ I was really enjoying drawing and stuff.” Throughout her life, she has always loved to draw and paint to pass her time.
“One of my friends was applying, and I thought it’d be really cool to go to an art school or something.” Mongillo has always loved to draw and paint, and she wanted to explore more of that passion. “It was just some place where I could, like, do more fun things, and have more opportunities.”
A normal school day for Mongillo consists of her four core classes: science, math, history and English. Going from class to class before ending her day at 11:30am. She would then have study hall for the next hour before getting picked up and going to the Guilford community lot at noon, where she would wait for the bus to take her to ECA, New Haven.
“I feel like physically tired all the time,” she said as she talked about her experience going from Morgan to ECA and balancing two different kinds of school. “Because I get home at like 5:30pm with the commute and stuff.” She explained how everyday she gets home late, even though she finishes up ECA at 4:10 pm, often getting home almost an hour later after she leaves ECA due to traffic as it can get busy in the afternoon.
On the contrary, Caraballo, a sophomore who has also been going to ECA ever since his freshmen year, feels the commute is worth the experience. Mostly because she loves the classes.
“On certain days, we’ll do script analysis, and we have to act out scenes, and you make something called beats,” Caraballo explained. In one of their classes, alongside other people, they would fix up scripts and scenes to better improve their acting.
Caraballo also ends his day at around 11:30 am and goes to the Guilford parking lot, where he would hang out with his friends before getting picked up at 1 o’clock to go to ECA.
“I really like theater, and I always had a passion for it, and I know here [Morgan] they don’t offer that much of theater,” explained Caraballo. “I’m looking for regular stage theater, instead of just musical theater.” Morgan tends to do more musicals such as The Little Mermaid or Mama Mia, but Carabello is more interested in spoken dialogue alone.
During his freshman year, Gabriel recalls being tired all the time going from school to school. “It was really bad last year because I wasn’t used to it, but now I’m completely used to it.”
Students at ECA can apply to a maximum of two departments, but they can only do one of the departments. ECA doesn’t provide transportation except in specific circumstances. To learn more about the program and how to apply, go to. Application Process-ACES
