Up Front

Scholastic Art and Writing Awards

FA faculty member Dr. Virginia (Ginny) Edgcomb, a microbiologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, recently published a ground-breaking study in the prestigious scientific journal Nature. She and her co-authors, including two Falmouth Academy alumnae, Becca Cox ’18 and Sarah Lott ’18, identified microbial life living deep beneath the ocean floor in the Earth’s lower oceanic crust—considered, says Edgcomb, to be one of the last frontiers of exploration for life on this planet.

Cox and Lott worked in Edgcomb’s lab after school and during summers while at Falmouth Academy, assisting with the extraction of DNA for those studies. “Nature and Science are the two top scientific journals and most scientists—let alone high school students—never publish there at all,” says Edgcomb. “This is a remarkable achievement for two young scientists who were high school students at the time of their contributions.”

Edgcomb’s team, which included scientists from China, Germany, France, and the U.S., analyzed samples from the Atlantis Bank—an undersea ridge in the Indian Ocean. This research enhances our understanding of the potential scope of carbon cycling on Earth as well as its habitable biosphere.

Students Publish in Nature, Finding Evidence of Life Beneath the Ocean Floor

Five Falmouth Academy students received a total of seven prizes at the annual Scholastic Art and Writing Awards competition, which supports and celebrates young artistic talent. The regional competition is co-sponsored by the Boston Globe and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University.

Silver key award winners include Alice Tan ’21 for her painting, “Oedipus Rex,” Ethan Fan ’20 for his photograph, “Grandma,” and Nate Holmes ’24 for his photograph, “Fisherman in the Shadows.”

Alice Tan ’21 also received two honorable mentions for her two paintings, “Antigone: What Would You Die For?” and “Girls in Flower.” Noah Manning ’24 received an honorable mention for his photograph, “30 Seconds of Ghosts” and Aubryn Dubois ’25 received an honorable mention for her illustration, “Glass Drawing.”

Above: “Glass Drawing” by Aubryn Dubois ’25 Left: “Oedipus Rex” by Alice Tan ’21

Mind, Body, and Spirit “FA Remote” Takes Flight Matt Green

Head of School Blog 4.1.20 reprinted

By mid-March it had become clear that the coronavirus would be disrupting our world—and our school—in ways that only weeks before were unimaginable. As spring break entered its second week, FA administrators and faculty regrouped and began researching and creating a remote learning model that was responsive to the needs of the students, guided by best practices, and reflective of the mission and spirit of Falmouth Academy. Two weeks after launching the new model, Head of School Matt Green reflected on “FA Remote.”

Even as I write this post from an empty and rather chilly joyful, caring community and culture so many have built and I have Falmouth Academy school building, I do so with full confidence that tried to reinforce. In the current circumstances, it is natural for the spirit of Falmouth Academy is very much alive. Because at this even the most supportive parent to be wondering, “If my child is not very moment, I know that somewhere in the cloud, our wonderful in those classrooms, is not next to those teachers, is not learning in students and remarkable teachers are debating and discussing, that community and directly absorbing that culture, then, are they creating and critiquing, probing and problem-solving, really going to Falmouth Academy?” laughing and learning—as they have all year and as How could a school that relies so their predecessors have for generations. They just Long before social distancing heavily on the personal touch, on happen to be doing so from the comforts and confines and Zoombombing, the character of its community, on of their own home (homes which some days are indeed adolescence was not easy its unique sense of place, reinvent comforting while on other days are most definitely during the best of times. itself in less than a week, exporting confining!) Students need all of the adult its particular brand of special sauce

There does not seem to be a family, business, or support they can get right to an entirely different setting? community that has not been affected by the current now. With families spending To shift that frame a bit and global health and economic crisis; Falmouth Academy long hours together in close perhaps inspire a little belief, I is no exception. To be clear, our collective focus quite quarters, we’ve increased told the students and faculty a rightfully belongs on those most directly impacted. That is why our science department donated its full supply of protective gloves to Falmouth Hospital. That is why Mr. Scharr is working with Falmouth Community Television to bring a “Live Music to Seniors” weekly program featuring our student musicians right into the bedrooms the frequency of advisory meetings as part of the design of our remote learning program. —Assistant Head of School Mike Earley short anecdote I first heard in a talk entitled “The Transformative Power of Classical Music,” delivered by Benjamin Zander, long-time conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. Zander of seniors in local nursing and senior living complexes. tells the story of two shoe salesmen

But like many of you, when the order came from who were both sent by their boss to Governor Baker that all public and private schools were to remain a remote land in some distant locale, only to discover that it was the closed first until April 7 and then to May 4, we were more than a custom for its residents to spend the day bare-footed. little anxious about what this meant to our school and our students. The first salesman took one look and sent a telegram that read:

For more than forty years, families have chosen FA for three “Situation hopeless. They don’t wear shoes here.” The second main reasons: the quality of classroom instruction, the individual salesman also wrote a telegram, his read: “Glorious opportunity. No attention a child receives in a small class in a small school, and the one owns any shoes here yet!”

Clockwise from left: Joseph Childs ’24, George Scharr, Ellie Mattison ’20, Daisy Kinsley Hancock ’23

And what a series of glorious opportunities each new day is proving to be. Falmouth Academy’s model, which I sometimes refer to as “FA Remote” has not only been fully informed by extensive research (particularly the personal experience our counterparts on the west coast have so graciously shared), but it was also engineered to be uniquely us. That is, we have endeavored to construct a virtual school that reflects our commitment to educating the proverbial whole child, tending not only to our students’ minds but also to their bodies and spirits, tending not only to the individuals in our community but to that community itself, which nourishes and affirms those individuals.

To illustrate, let me walk you through a day of FA Remote. Upon coming to school each morning, students check “Morning Messages,” where they will find video posts by their Head of School, along with announcements from their teachers and peers. They then attend a series of synchronous classes via video conference, during which they may engage in class discussion, take notes on direct instruction offered via screencasting software, or retire to breakout “rooms” to work in small groups.

“The discussion we enjoyed on Friday morning,” noted history teacher Rob Wells, “about a lecture from 1900 preaching the then perceived ‘truths’ of Social Darwinism was as good as any I have experienced in the past with all sitting around a Harkness table.”

“Last Friday,” adds Interconnected Biology teacher Sarah McCarron, “I was able to do a live physical exam on my cat for my students on Zoom. For safety reasons, that is obviously not something I could have done in class at school. I think my students really enjoyed this opportunity. It’s one example of how technology opened the door for something new.”

Many schools transitioning to remote learning have thrown together several hours of asynchronous learning (which in most cases is a fancy term for homework) and this is where school stops. Not so at Falmouth Academy. Each class is followed by an office hours block during which class may continue, students may work together on what they have just learned, or teachers can meet with individual students to reinforce important class concepts. (That office hours also allows most students to take a screen break and get up and move around is no accident.) One week in, Mr. Lott noted. “A simple highlight has been how well my seniors have been using office hours after class. They stay in ‘the room’ and spend much of that hour working together and with me.”

So yes, FA is educating “in mind,” but what about “in body and spirit?” Consider that we have a dedicated time slot for physical education when Mr. Andrade challenges his students to tackle a range of fitness challenges and share via video post what they did to get their hearts pumping. Consider our daily wellness challenges, during which Ms. DiFalco engages students in interactive activities targeting important themes like resilience. Consider that once a week, we gather at lunchtime for advisory and that advisors continue to meet with individual advisees on a regular basis. Consider that we are even teaching nearly our full slate of electives, including studio art, our musical ensembles, Interconnected Biology, even woodshop!

And so perhaps it is fitting that I am writing this post from an empty school. What better place to be reminded that a school is just a building, but that school is a gathering place, a place where learning happens, where a mind comes to life, where a heart feels something for the first time, and, to once again quote our mission, “where teachers embolden students to take intellectual and creative risks to confidently engage the challenges of our times.”

How I Decided to Fly Home to China Amid the Pandemic By Leo Zhang ’21

Reprinted in part from The Chandlery www.fachandlery.org

I am writing this article from my home in Shanghai, China, a long way from where I was a month ago and where my peers are taking their classes. As an international student, I have spent the past four years away from home. I got used to being by myself, so when homesickness was my biggest concern, going home never felt like an option. But it is different this time. As a student living abroad when this pandemic hit, I felt fear and frustration that led me to choose to fly home amid the outbreak.

As I celebrated the Chinese New Year in Falmouth, MA with some of my friends, my family was told to stay in their homes for the next month while China went into lockdown. Things weren’t looking positive at home as the virus continued to spread. At the time, scientists had just learned that the virus had the ability to transmit from human to human, and within China, almost every single province had cases of the virus. Scientists were unsure of the fatality rate of the virus, but I was frightened for my family and felt at a loss for what to do, except to call and check in.

Then cases started to rise globally at the end of February, although the fear hadn’t settled in that the virus could reach the U.S. or me. As I kept on worrying about my family, my morning routine began by looking at the number of cases in China before I went to my first-period class. Each day the number just got higher and higher. Although my family had been in their houses for a month, China was still in lockdown and nobody was allowed to go out without permission. My fear continued to grow.

Cases of the coronavirus began surging across the U.S. during Falmouth Academy’s spring break, but on the other side of the world, the increase in the number of infections started to slow. Fearful of the pandemic that was going to rage across America, yet hopeful about the decrease in cases in China, my mom suggested that I go back to China the second week into the break. I was skeptical of her suggestion because I thought that it might be too early to question how America would handle the virus. I debated between finishing my junior year at FA or going home. I felt like it wasn’t worth it to leave, and I knew that if I left, I might not be able to return because of the restriction on travel that the Trump administration had put into place on January 31, barring travel for “foreign nationals who had been in China in the last 14 days” (Washington Post).

Then, in mid-March, the cases in China seemed to be disappearing compared to the exponential spread of the coronavirus in America. Even most of the lockdowns in China were lifted at this point. The more I looked at the responses from the U.S. government, the more insecure I felt about how prepared the U.S. was for the virus. I was starting to change my mind about whether or not to go home. Around this time, Italy was hit hard by the virus, and I feared that the same scenario would play out in the U.S.

The second week into our spring break I already had multiple video conferences with my family to figure out my plans. At first, we decided that I would stay, but I quickly felt anxious and unsure if my decision was the right one. Three days later, I received a package of surgical masks my sister had mailed to me. During those three days, I felt more uneasy than I had ever been before.

Looking at the flights online, I could hardly imagine myself being on a plane within a few days. I wished that I could just lay back and close my eyes and the problem would go away. I calmed down and thought about it. There is a pandemic. It spreads like wildfire, it is deadly, and it is near me. I want to be home with my family in a country that I know. I realized that if I stayed in the U.S. my fear would only continue to grow. I looked at the situation as if I was amid a war, only the enemy was invisible but ubiquitous. Ultimately, I decided to leave, but then had to deal with countless cancelled bookings. Finally, I got a ticket from New York to Shanghai scheduled to leave on March 24. I wore a face mask and my ski goggles throughout the whole trip because I feared catching the virus while on the plane. After taking three flights over a span of three days, I arrived in Shanghai.

The 15-hour long flight home was an odyssey compared to the numerous other flights I have taken in the past. The odyssey was surreal. The atmosphere on the plane was death-like, with people being packed side by side. It was like every person on the flight was distrustful of the others and fearful that someone on the flight would spread the virus to them unknowingly; as if we were all going to a funeral. After I arrived, I had to be quarantined for 14 days in a hotel by myself. It was a waiting game to see whether I caught the virus on the journey back home or not. Luckily, after the 14 days, I tested negative, and I finally went home. When I saw my mom, all that anxiousness and fear went away. It was a deliverance.

In retrospect, the entire journey felt surreal. I believe in some sense my survival instinct was triggered and it compelled me to go home. During such a chaotic period, finishing school became far less important than feeling safe with my family. Although I had a loving host family who guaranteed my security, it is a fact that sometimes no one except your family can give you the love and security you need.

Wellness Tips from School Counselor Carol DiFalco Tips for Families at Home

Set regular waking and sleeping times.

Limit leisure screen time (you will likely have academic screen time expected of you). Better yet, set aside two or three two-hour blocks of time when you dock your phone.

Set goals for each day—learning something new, projects you have been putting off, academic commitments, a new recipe you want to try...

Exercise every day—mental wellbeing is directly tied to your physical wellbeing. This is a great time to make self-care a priority.

Go outside every day. Take a walk, do yard work, prepare your next garden, etc.

Call or FaceTime a friend every day. Stay connected to people you care about even while the platform is different.

Check on your friends and neighbors, particularly those that may live alone.

Give someone who lives in your home a hug as often as they will let you—human beings are wired for physical connection.

Keep a positive attitude.

Below: Thalia O’Neil ’24 painted kindness rocks as one of her Wellness choices for the week of April 13 and left them near her mailbox for the mail carrier and other passersby.

From the Pentagon: Seniors Participate in a Q&A with State Department Officials

When seniors arrived in Patrick Kennedy’s Geopolitics and World Cultures course last fall, they assumed the roles of Assistant Secretaries of State. Assigned to represent one of six major regions of the world, students were asked to track cultural issues, research trends, and study controversies of world-wide interest to fuel debate and discussion in class. Then, midway way through the term, students swapped regions, a change meant to reinforce the value of seeing an issue through a variety of perspectives.

In February, Kennedy invited his brother-in-law Colonel Michael Styskal, branch chief of current and future operations for the Marine Corps, to video chat with his students about his role at the Pentagon. “I thought it would be a great experience for the students to ask current event questions to someone who works for the Department of Defense,” said Kennedy. Col. Styskal suggested including his Department of State colleague, Mr. Joel Ehrendreich, in the conversation. The Department of Defense and the Department of State work closely together; the former deals with military oversight and the latter with diplomacy. Ehrendreich is the Department of State Foreign Policy Advisor to the Commandant of the Marine Corps.

The two men answered questions posed by the students ranging from what was being done about the coronavirus, the role of the U.S. in Syria, whether the military should be required to defend the U.S. southern border, to lighter topics such as what a typical day looks like and what famous world leaders they have met. Kennedy said that while debriefing with Col. Styskal that evening, he said, “Your students were so enthusiastic—that call was the highlight of our day! Joel and I would love to participate in something similar in the future.”

Above: Patrick Kennedy introduces Colonel Styskal and Mr. Erhendreich to his students in Geopolitics and World Cultures: A State Department Simulation.

The Ethics of Newspaper Coverage

What happens when we hear of atrocious acts taking place, especially if they happen far away from us? Sometimes, nothing. Sometimes, it takes many sources reporting the same news before society feels compelled to act. This fall, Dr. Norah Schneider ’03 shared with students in Rob Wells’ 10th-grade history class the discoveries she made on this topic while working on her doctoral dissertation.

Calling herself a disaster historian, Schneider remembered reading Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl in 8th grade while at Falmouth Academy and wondering if anything like Anne’s story had happened in her family two generations ago. This question lingered in her mind as she considered a topic for her doctoral research at Salve Regina University after completing a Master of History from Providence College.

While elder relatives had been reticent to discuss their Holocaust experiences for decades, Schneider eventually had the opportunity to dive deeply into the subject with her grandmother. “She gave me permission to find out what happened to my great-greatgrandparents,” said Schneider, “so the study became more personal to me.” Schneider traced her great-great-grandparents and other relatives from Kristallnacht Germany in 1938, to concentration camps, through England and Denmark, and eventually to the United States and Shanghai. She discovered a dearth of coverage in the U.S. of the horrific news coming out of Germany in the 1930s and 40s. But she also discovered a small newspaper out of Chicago that did, in fact, report consistently what was happening, which made her question why larger news agencies hadn’t done the same. Her interest piqued, she channeled what she had learned into her dissertation titled, “The Sentinel: American-Jewish Weekly Coverage in Chicago of Nazi Persecution of European Jewry and the Holocaust, 1930-1947.”

Following the appointment of Adolf Hitler as German Chancellor in 1933, which ended the parliamentary democracy of the Weimar Republic established after WWI, citizens no longer had guaranteed human rights and the first concentration camps were constructed. “German Jews felt the effects of more than 400 decrees and regulations that restricted all aspects of their public and private lives,” according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“We learn and talk about the Holocaust and WWII, but it has always been hard to believe that people could commit such atrocities,” said sophomore Kyra Ramsey. “When Dr. Schneider began to show real-life records and talk about how her living family wouldn’t even mention the horrors of the past because they were so painful, it all became a little more real.”

According to Schneider, such information about the rise of Nazism and the systematic oppression and later extermination of Jews was knowable. Both The Sentinel and the Jewish Telegraphy Agency to which the New York Times subscribed, reported on the escalation. These stories were routinely “buried by the Times,” according to Schneider. There is even evidence that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt routinely read The Sentinel. Yet, it wasn’t until 1944—more than 17 months after Hitler announced The Final Solution, orchestrating the mass genocide of the Jews—that FDR issued an executive order that established the War Refugee Board, created initially to save Hungarian Jews.

Conducting research was challenging, said Schneider, due to the Jewish refugee crisis, inaccurate or incomplete immigration records, and lineage customs. In Germany, Christian family histories were documented through church records of baptisms, marriages, and deaths. Jewish synagogues didn’t keep such public records. Families kept a familienstammbuch, recording their family tree. Most of these and other belongings were destroyed in raids and pogroms. A boon for Schneider was finding her great-grandmother’s stammbuch intact, which helped her piece together their story.

During the 1930s, the world was suffering due to the Great Depression. This, of course, came on the heels of WWI, which was a time of great deprivation and despair. Citizens of the world were beleaguered and weary, and the American collective imagination was focused homeward. The national conversation about immigration policy was clouded by the needs at home and fueled by “isolationism, xenophobia, racism, and anti-Semitism” according to Schneider. The U.S. maintained a strict quota system based on country census data which was enforced until the end of WWII. Until 1941, Nazi policy was to encourage Jews to leave by making life unbearable, but there was nowhere for them to go.

Schneider posited that the lack of mainstream newspaper coverage of the rise of Nazism and the plight of the Jews, coupled with a circle-the-wagons mentality in America were complicit in the lack of a timely and proportional response by the U.S. to the humanitarian crisis. The U.S. government didn’t respond to the crisis officially until it entered the war in 1941. “Ethical reporting is a responsibility,” Schneider said. “The whole story of the United States and the Holocaust is an ethical leadership story. Why didn’t the strongest country in the world do anything?”

Even today, a small population of people will go to great lengths to deny the Holocaust. “Genocide is still happening in the world today and is not acknowledged. Unbelievably, Holocaust denial, while illegal in Europe, is legal in the United States,” said Schneider. During her talk in Wells’ class, she urged students to be discerning and diligent in the pursuit of truth and justice saying, “The purpose of studying history is to learn from it, but what have we really learned if we allow atrocities to continue to happen?”

“The generation that experienced the atrocities of the Nazi party is dying out,” commented sophomore Zach Crampton. “It is up to their children, their grandchildren, and us, to keep the truth alive so this kind of thing doesn’t happen again.” Schneider’s presentation left a lasting impression on Ramsey and her classmates, “We will be thinking about her presentation long after she’s gone.” Crampton added, “Learning about such terrible but significant events in a textbook or short video makes them feel almost one dimensional and unimportant. Dr. Schneider’s lecture gave it a context and depth I had never experienced.”

Students Create Online Newspaper The Chandlery

Looking for a new way for students to express themselves and to share news and views, juniors Noah Glasgow and Maya Peterson joined forces to create The Chandlery, an online student newspaper that in just a few short months has become an exciting new voice for the student body.

“Maya and I started a newspaper because we wanted to tap into our school’s ethos and try to find freedom of expression in our own writing,” said Glasgow in his first letter from the editor, “We wanted a new platform for student voices that was built out of the integrity and passion that only a newspaper can provide...we believed that if we built The Chandlery, others would come and join us, write with us, both now and in the future.”

They were right. More than 15 students contributed articles and images to the first

edition and the level of enthusiasm and dedication hasn’t waned, with three issues completed thus far.

Under the direction of faculty advisor Dr. Ben Parsons, Glasgow and Peterson work with each writer throughout the Chandlery: def. A meeting place for mariners editorial process, from hearing story pitches to editing final submissions. “The Chandlery exists “Our writers are in varying stages to promote scholastic of development and in their writing journalism, provide journeys,” observed Glasgow.

“Some require more hands-on instruction while others need only light coverage of events both inside and outside our editing,” commented Peterson. Writers community, and foster “tackled everything—from complex and conversation and kindness dynamic political issues to student and club profiles, to lighthearted community fare,” noted Peterson. Topics ranged from within the student body...” —Chandlery bylaws considering impeachment from both sides, to concern for climate change, to a fashion statement about Mr. Green looking fresh in his Allbirds.

“The truth is that we live in a time where true journalism is threatened by the polarization of our politics, by the echo chambers that we live in, and by a cultural emphasis on tradition and bias rather than fact and rational judgement,” posited Glasgow. “Students come to Falmouth Academy with a passion for learning and receive the tools they need to embark on a path as leaders who value truth, honesty, and strong, earnest communication.”

Students have taken up this work with integrity, and it resonates with their burgeoning audience both in the school and in the wider community. More than 500 people read the first issue of the newspaper within the first two days of its release. Teachers, including Anka Martula, have used articles as discussion prompts in the classroom. The impeachment article by

Alice Tan ’21 and John McDowell ’20 was used as a springboard for debate and conversation about current affairs in Martula’s 11th grade “Crucial Issues: How We Got Here” course. Andy Kingman ’00, attorney, trustee, and former Alumni Council member left this comment on the school’s Instagram page, “watching adolescents try to grapple with issues and concepts way bigger than our little hometown school of 200 with sincerity and resolve IS energizing.”

The Chandlery is available online; a link can be found on the Student Life page of the Falmouth Academy website.