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BULLETIN • SPRING 2018
BOARD OF TRUSTEES President Steven R. Gorham ’85, P’17, P’21 Andover, Mass.
Daniel J. Riccio P’17, P’20 Los Gatos, Calif. Belisario A. Rosas P’15, P’21 Andover, Mass.
Vice Presidents John R. Barker ’87, P’21 Wellesley, Mass.
Ashley Wightman Scott ’84, P’11, P’14 Manchester, Mass.
Whitney Romoser Savignano ’87 Manchester, Mass.
Juliane Gardner Spencer ’93 New York, N.Y.
Secretary Craig J. Ziady ’85, P’18, P’20 Winchester, Mass.
Ramakrishna R. Sudireddy P’15 Andover, Mass.
Treasurer Valentine Hollingsworth III ’72, P’17 Dover, Mass.
Isabella Speakman Timon ’92 Chadds Ford, Pa. Alessandro F. Uzielli ’85 Beverly Hills, Calif.
TRUSTEES Pamela W. Albright P’10, P’16 Topsfield, Mass.
ALUM N I T RU ST E E S Ronald P. Dixon ’06 Newmarket, N.H.
Cristina E. Antelo ’95 Washington, D.C.
Caroline E. Trustey ’13 Wenham, Mass.
W. J. Patrick Curley III ’69 New York, N.Y.
TRUSTE E S E M E R I T I William N. Booth ’67, P’05 Chestnut Hill, Mass.
Peter V. K. Doyle ’69 Sherborn, Mass.
Henry M. Buhl ’48 New York, N.Y.
Anthony H. Everets ’93 New York, N.Y.
Steve Forbes ’66, P’91 Bedminster, N.J.
Jonathan F. Gibbons ’92 Needham, Mass. Shawn Gorman ’84 Falmouth, Maine Paul L. Hallingby ’65 New York, N.Y. Robert W. Hughes P’16, P’19 Andover, Mass. Booth D. Kyle ’89 Seattle, Wash. Zachary S. Martin P’15, P’17 Wellesley, Mass. Brian McCabe P’18 Meredith, N.H. Timothy H. McCoy ’81, P’14, P’15, P’18 Boston, Mass. John R. Packard Jr. P’18, P’21 Head of School North Andover, Mass.
James G. Hellmuth P’78 Lawrence, N.Y. In 1948, Charlie Davidson founded the Andover Shop, located in Andover, Mass. Davidson still manages the store, which is regarded by many as one of America’s most storied haberdasheries. According to Davidson, Frank D. Ashburn, Brooks’s founding headmaster, would regularly drive a van of Brooks boys to the shop to get outfitted, which Davidson said was critical support to the survival of his then-young company. Over the years, Davidson and the shop designed and created a number of iconic Brooks items. Now, thanks to inspiration from Constantine Valhouli ’91, the Andover Shop, in collaboration with the Brooks School Store, is selling this limited-edition, Italian-made replica of a 1936 Brooks tie. Visit the school store over Alumni Weekend, or, for more information or to reserve yours today, please contact Dawn Morrison at (978) 725-3112 or dmorrison@brooksschool.org. As Valhouli says, “we wanted to create an homage to Frank Ashburn, and we thought that revisiting his connection with the storied Andover Shop would be a way of coming full circle … and, um, of renewing school ties.”
H. Anthony Ittleson ’56, P’84, P’86 Green Pond, S.C. Michael B. Keating ’58, P’97 Boston, Mass. Frank A. Kissel ’69, P’96, P’99 Far Hills, N.J. Peter A. Nadosy ’64 New York, N.Y. Peter W. Nash ’51, P’81, P’89 Nantucket, Mass. Cera B. Robbins P’85, P’90 New York, N.Y. Eleanor R. Seaman P’86, P’88, P’91, GP’18 Hobe Sound, Fla. David R. Williams III ’67 Beverly Farms, Mass.
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Head of School John R. Packard Jr. P’18, P’21
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Associate Head for External Affairs Jim Hamilton Director of Development Gage S. Dobbins Director of Alumni and Parent Events Erica Callahan P’19, P’20 Assistant Director of Alumni Programs Carly Churchill ’10
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Director of Admission and Financial Aid Bini W. Egertson P’12, P’15
Director of Communications and Marketing Dan Callahan P’19, P’20 Director of Publications Rebecca A. Binder Design Aldeia www.aldeia.design Alumni Communications Manager Emily Williams Assistant Director of Communications Jennifer O’Neill
Unsolicited manuscripts are welcome. Opinions expressed in the Bulletin are those of the authors and not necessarily of Brooks School. Correspondence concerning the Bulletin should be sent to Editor Rebecca A. Binder: mail Editor, Brooks Bulletin 1160 Great Pond Road North Andover, MA 01845 email rbinder@brooksschool.org phone (978) 725-6326 © 2018 Brooks School
FEAT U RES
D E PA RTMENTS
20 A Meaningful Pursuit
02 Message from the Head of School
In its final months, The Campaign for Brooks focuses on the endowment of a professional development fund. The fund will allow Brooks to continue to retain and reward dedicated and inspiring faculty, and help them grow throughout their time at Brooks.
03 News + Notes 43 Brooks Connections 50 Class Notes
28 A Home Away From Home
Seven pairs of roommates equals seven different stories of friendship, cooperation, memories and growth. The Bulletin sat down with pairs of roommates to learn more about what it’s like to have a roommate in high school, and how time spent together can make school a second home.
36 A Timeless Connection A Winter Term course that examines war brought students to Washington, D.C. for a three-day trip. The Bulletin accompanied the group, which visited prominent landmarks, met with alumni and gained a new sense of themselves and the school.
ON THE COVER: Colin Khater ’19 takes in the Memorial Ampitheater, located in Arlington National Cemetery, during a Winter Term trip to Washington, D.C.
A MESSAGE FROM JOHN R. PACKARD JR. HEAD OF SCHOOL
Looking Ahead
“If we were to become a school that delivers more meaning to more students over time, we had to ask a core question: What could we do that would deepen the community experience at Brooks for all of us?”
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Although spring is making its typically reluctant journey to North Andover, this is a festive time of year. The campus comes to life with glorious color as we prepare to send a graduating class on to exciting next steps in their lives. As we look back at all we have done with the class of 2018, double-checking work that we hope has positioned the group to be students, citizens and leaders of the highest order, we look forward to a new beginning with incoming students joining us in the fall. The school is similarly situated at this point in time: We revel in all that we have accomplished as we push to finish The Campaign for Brooks, and now pivot to next steps aimed at improving and deepening the student experience for Brooksians still to come. In defining the goals of The Campaign for Brooks, we thought first about the school’s mission: At Brooks School, we seek to provide the most meaningful educational experience our students will have in their lives. If we were to become a school that delivers more meaning to more students over time, we had to ask a core question: What could we do that would deepen the community experience at Brooks for all of us? This campaign answered the question in these ways: We set out to expand our reach with financial aid in ways that would realize high water marks in the school’s history of accessing exceptional students. We have exceeded the impact we aimed for: More students attend Brooks this year on needbased financial aid than has ever been the case. The school’s greatest strength is its human capital, and financial aid brings greater breadth of lived experience into our community. We learn from that difference in ways that enhance our community both tangibly and intangibly.
We have fully renovated, modernized and fortified Ashburn Chapel in ways that have ensured it will be the heart of our school for another 50 years. This quintessential Brooks building is where we go to be together routinely as a community. Expanding the space to fit today’s school while holding on to the feel and intimacy of the building was the goal. Our hope for the project was realized and then some. We constructed Anna K. Trustey Memorial Field, which we believe is the finest synthetic turf venue with lights in New England. To gather routinely in the fall and spring to enjoy athletic contests of all kinds as a whole community under the lights has been great fun. We manage to win far more often than not, as well! Finally, we plan on opening our Center for the Arts in the fall. This 44,000-square foot facility will transform both what we are able to do in our arts programming, and the community experience we will have in and around the building. This facility is the centerpiece of The Campaign for Brooks. Imagining the aspirational and meaningful work students and faculty will create in this inspiring space is thrilling. The school is thriving and progressing. The school also has challenges, and has never needed the engagement of alumni, alumnae and friends more. As we push to close the books on the campaign at the end of June, we are thankful for the support we have received and for the support we still hope to earn. As this edition of the Bulletin will reveal, the work our students and faculty are engaged in together underlines the degree to which your school is worthy of your attention and support. You help us reach our students in their hearts and heads in ways that hold, and for that I could not be more grateful. Have a pleasant start to your summer.
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NEWS + NOTES IN THIS SECTION 04 News from Campus 08 Campus Scene 16 Athlete Spotlight 18 Athletics News
All-ISL Team Honorable Mention recipient Caroline O’Keefe ’19 and the girls 1st hockey team had their sights set on goal as they skated their way into this year’s NEPSAC tournament. Read more about Brooks’s dominant winter sports season on page 18.
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A New Look for the Wilder
In its 51st year, the Wilder Speaking Prize competition debuted a new format that led to robust participation and an impressive final round. Wilder Speaking Prize competition winners, from left to right: First runner-up Amanda Monahan ’19, winner Nate Smith ’18 and second runner-up Chloe Little ’21.
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The Wilder Speaking Prize competition has long been a hallmark of spring at Brooks. Students prepare speeches on a given theme, present them to judges and their peers in an Ashburn Chapel gathering and revel in glory as the winner’s name is announced at Lawn Ceremony. This year, though, the competition debuted a new format that breathed new life into the steadfast contest. Formerly, students who were interested could decide whether or not to compete. This year, though, faculty organizer John
Haile, who teaches English at Brooks, wanted to welcome and involve more students into the competition. The English department had students write a potential Wilder speech as part of their assigned classroom work. Fifty-one speeches were considered for form honors; two or three semi-finalists from each form were chosen for the final round; and 10 students from across the student body competed on finals night in front of a packed Ashburn Chapel. The competition’s theme was “integrity,” and the speeches varied widely in subject,
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scope and format. Students presented spoken-word poetry, short fiction and more traditional speeches that included observations of daily life at Brooks. First place honors went to Nate Smith ’18, who discussed how small, day-to-day actions students take at Brooks can show integrity. The first runner-up was Amanda Monahan ’19, who gave a humorous and honest speech about her own previous lack of integrity and the lessons she learned. Second runner-up Chloe Little, a third-former, stirred the audience with a recitation of two short stories she wrote, each of which illustrated integrity in markedly different ways. Including the speech preparation in the English curriculum accomplished two goals, Haile says. First, it led to a larger base of participants. Second, it led to “a greater sense of engagement. Everyone could identify with the finalists to some extent.” The numbers seem to bear Haile’s conviction out: A record-breaking 250 Brooksians completed an online survey that followed the finals to help the panel of three faculty judges select the winners. The Wilder program, Haile explains, has always offered students an opportunity to practice and perform the important skill of public speaking. However, the opportunity has been historically limited “to just a handful of kids who are motivated to achieve individual excellence.” Haile notes that the traditional, self-selecting format of the Wilder does not work well with the busy lives today’s Brooks students live. “It was hard to get kids to carve out time for something that took lots of time and serious effort, so very few took advantage of it,” he says. “The current configuration, which grows initially from an assignment in their English classes, ensures that each student has this opportunity. Essentially, the new approach uses the original idea of the Wilder program to afford all our students an important educational opportunity that hadn’t been part of their curriculum in the past.”
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It’s The Little Things
Two Brooksians blanket the campus with homegrown positivity. “The world is your oyster.” “Strive for progress, not perfection.” “The name’s Bond, ionic bond; taken, not shared.” “Hydrate.” Dozens of handwritten notes sporting these and other humorous, optimistic and kind thoughts began popping up around campus this spring. Affixed to walls, whiteboards and the exteriors of buildings, and all cataloged via Instagram at @brooksreminders, the notes have given the Brooks campus and its inhabitants an extra pep in their collective step. The Brooksians behind the notes, two current students who wish to remain anonymous in order to ensure that their good deed remains “selfless, and not for our own recognition,” explain that they’re trying to spread positive, proactive affirmation and love throughout the Brooks community. The creators wrote approximately 60 notes over Winter Term, and they make new ones as they think of new content. They have tried to not be spotted: They use their free periods and the time before classes start in the morning, when the Classroom Building is relatively empty, to affix their notes to walls. “It’s been fun,” the creators say. “We try to be people who radiate general positivity. Nobody has to be constantly happy, but we should all do our best to make other people happy.” The @brooksreminders Instagram account, also manned by the creators of the notes, follows more than 500 current Brooksians and Brooks alumni. “We try to like everybody’s Instagram photos, no matter what,” they say. “People have noticed the notes around campus more since we started the Instagram. We also have had some people who have already graduated message us suggestions for new notes. We like that we’re reaching across different years of Brooksians. It’s cool.”
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Why is being a Chapel prefect important to you? What do you see as the role of Chapel here at Brooks? Chapel prefects help organize Chapel services, we write introductions for Chapel speakers and we read at Chapel. We also do some community service projects. Chapel is one of my favorite parts of life here at Brooks. It’s important that we all come together and take the time to hear one another.
2 Riley Baker ’18 in Ashburn Chapel.
Fast 5 // Q+A When the Bulletin sat down with Riley Baker ’18, she was busy preparing her Senior Speech on, she explained, “the difference between being busy and having a full life.” She says that when she arrived at Brooks as a third-former she was busy, but that she wasn’t investing her time in activities she was passionate about. Fast-forward to her sixth-form year: Baker has made her “full life” at Brooks by finding and pursuing her passions. She’s a dorm prefect and a Chapel prefect; she loves music and directs the a cappella group the Serendipities; and she’s discovered crew and has committed to row for a Division I college program.
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You took up rowing as a fourth-former, and now you’ve committed to row at Santa Clara University next year. How did you find crew? It’s a chicken or egg situation. I don’t know if my friends brought me to crew, or if crew brought me to my friends, but I find that the people I’ve surrounded myself with have inspired me to do different things here. My mom [Jenna Albert Baker ’91] rowed here and at Harvard, so I had that background, and I decided to try it. Last year, our first boat, my boat, came in fourth in New England. We have a great boat, and I’m excited to see what we do this spring.
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Do you also plan to pursue music in college? I do! I looked for schools that also offered extracurriculars in music. Here at Brooks, I run the Serendipities, our a cappella group, along with Kate Packard ’18. I arrange and teach the music. It’s a lot of fun, and I love it. Kate and I are also directing a show this spring: “Heathers,” the musical based on the movie. I was music director for a show last spring, also. I think I’m going to at least minor in music in college.
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Your sister is a third-former here, and you mentioned that your mother went to Brooks. How have your experiences differed, and how have they been similar? I’ve had a good balance of having my own experience here, but also sharing that connection with my mom. I like walking around and knowing that she lived in that dorm, for example, or that we share the same teachers — like Dusty [Richard]. It’s fun to share that with her. It’s also good to have my sister here. It’s brought us closer. She’s also been pursuing things on her own, and she’s having a very different experience than me or our mom.
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A PERSO NAL CO NNECT I O N
“I haven’t been to Brooks since my graduation. I will be going to my dad’s reunion — he graduated in 1968, so that’s this May. Hopefully I’ll see some of you. Say hi if you see me!” DANI SCHIRMER ’04, in a set of video responses she made to answer questions from Brooks fifth-formers on disability and accessibility issues as part of the fifth-form Self in Community curriculum. Schirmer suffered a spinal cord injury in her early 20s, and she has become a strong voice and advocate for people with disabilities. Kate Wilson ’19 calls the interaction with Schirmer “a great learning experience. It was cool to see how strong and resilient Dani is. It’s inspiring.”
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What’s your favorite place on campus? I love to explore this campus. I really love the upstairs of the boathouse, the room with the fireplace. It has photos of boats from over the years and oars listing accomplishments, from winning New Englands to trips to Henley. I feel so connected to everyone that’s rowed out of there. We also have the tanks, which are an incredible facility, but the boathouse has such character. The Brooks crew program takes advantage of two indoor, eightperson, still-water rowing tanks in inclement weather.
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A section of “#CONSTRUCTIONBROOKS,” an all-community “big draw” that the Lehman gallery hosted for 10 days in February.
A Big Draw The Robert Lehman Art Center hosted a full slate of artists this spring and also gave the Brooks community a chance to collaborate on a community-driven project. The spring schedule kicked off with painter Cynthia Packard, who worked with Winter Term students at her studio in Provincetown, Mass., before exhibiting her work with the students’ work in February. The gallery also hosted photography and mixed-media artist and environmental activist Michael Kolster in April. Kolster’s exhibit, “Horizon Markers,” examined the inadvertent fusion of Hawaiian lava and plastic beach trash into what, Kolster says, geologists call “plastiglomerates” and believe will enter the fossil record as a horizon marker of the Anthropocene. Printing and mixed-media artist Austin Thomas returned to the Lehman following her 2013 exhibition in the space to close out the year. Director of the Robert Lehman Art Center Amy Graham opened the space up to the Brooks community in between the spring’s formal exhibits. A 10-day, community-wide collaborative drawing project on the Lehman gallery walls, titled “#CONSTRUCTIONBROOKS,” took place in mid-February. This “big draw,” which Graham says is typical in art schools, invited students, faculty and staff to draw on taped-off sections of the Lehman walls using water-based markers. Graham asked participants to not add any recognizable letters or words to the space; beyond that, though, artists were able to use their creativity to its fullest as the installation developed. “This was a visual conversation of sound bytes in real time,” Graham says. “It speaks to this idea of being ephemeral, and it allows us to have a continued conversation over time.” Graham notes that the exhibit played on people’s natural urge to “make their mark.” She appreciates that the walls were open to the entire Brooks community, and says that participants enjoyed the chance to connect with everybody else who had participated.
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The northern side of Ashburn Chapel in February 2018, viewed through a window in what will be the main theater of the Center for the Arts, which is currently under construction.
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Teaching Information Literacy
We’ve all been told that you can’t trust everything you read on the Internet, but it can be difficult for high school students conducting research for a paper or assignment to discern a reliable source from an unreliable one. Brooks is committed to combatting the tendency to rely on Google and other unreliable online research methods and websites. Beginning in the fall of 2014, the Henry Luce III Library staff embarked on an information literacy program with the class of 2018, who were then third-formers. In conjunction with the history department, the library worked with specific history classes to teach students sound online research skills. Three years later, the program has had a marked positive effect. Director of the Luce Library Ann Massoth announced in an October 2017 email to the faculty that, over the years that the information literacy program had been operating, the number of searches students had performed using the library’s research databases had increased dramatically. “The
third-formers we began the program with are now sixth-formers, and the increase in students’ database use is impressive,” Massoth wrote. “These numbers have risen steadily each year as we introduce information literacy skills to new students while reinforcing these skills, and more advanced ones, with the upper-level history classes.” In her email, Massoth called the increase in database searches and retrievals “great news.” She concluded that “it means students know how to use and are using electronic resources to find genuine secondary and primary resources, as well as academic journal articles. They will be better prepared to do research in college.” “To do real research is overwhelming for students because of the sheer amount of information and misinformation online,” Massoth added in a follow-up email. “Today’s librarians need to teach students how to evaluate what they find and how to increase the odds of finding good sources by using specialized databases.”
BY THE N UMB E RS
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In October 2014, there were
searches of the library’s two main Gale history databases. In October 2017, there were
3,630
.
425%
That’s an increase of
over that three-year period.
329
In October 2014, there were
full-text retrievals from these two databases. In October 2017, there were
2,527
.
668%
That’s an increase of
over that three-year period.
The Luce Library at Brooks.
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OVER H EAR D
“Have you ever asked yourself: What was the first part of that speech?” KIP BORDELON speaking in Ashburn Chapel on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in January. Bordelon is the founder of the Picardy Group, an educational consulting firm that focuses on promoting diversity and inclusion through presentations and workshops. He discussed the Rev. King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, and explained that the majority of the speech — which has been overshadowed by its evocative refrain — is a demand for economic opportunity and equality.
STANDING IN SOLIDARITY
On Tuesday, February 27, at 9:45 a.m., Brooksians participated in a student-led walkout to, in the students’ words, “protest the school shootings that plague our nation.” Students, faculty and staff processed to the school’s Remembrance Garden, where they gathered in solidarity and as a community to “pay our respects to the many teachers and students who have been killed.” The participants remained still and silent for 17 minutes — one minute for each victim of the recent school shooting in Parkland, Fla. — before returning to their regular schedule. The walkout had the full support of the Brooks administration.
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Experiencing International Diplomacy The Model U.N. team digs into international relations at its annual conference. Brooks’s Model United Nations team spent the first few weeks of the new year researching, studying and preparing position papers for the annual Boston Invitational Model United Nations Conference. Finally prepared, they spent a weekend meeting other teams, debating and giving speeches at the 17th annual Model U. N., hosted by Boston University. The three-day conference allowed students to participate in crisis training, delegate training and committee sessions with more than 1,500 other students from schools across New England. Brooks team member Amolina Bhat ’19, for example, represented Japan in the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. “Our committee’s goal was to try to find homes and create long-term plans for the refugees in South Sudan and Venezuela,” she says. “It’s super interesting to learn about current events occurring all around the world and come up with different solutions by working together with other countries (and intelligent, creative people).” Model U. N. helps team members learn skills that will serve them well after the conference concludes. Not only do students get to practice their speaking skills and learn about international politics, but they also learn how to read and digest news, learn about compromise, and hone their ability to work in and lead groups.
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I N T H E C LASS RO O M
An image of the Brooks Buck, a captive currency designed by Winter Term students for use on campus. They hope to roll out the Brooks Buck this spring.
A Valuable Educational Experience A new Winter Term class took students deep inside the world of Wall Street. Brooks mathematics faculty Tote
Smith knows his way around the classroom, but he also knows his way around a balance sheet. Before picking up his teaching career, Smith worked in corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions in the healthcare and technology sectors. This January, Smith introduced a group of Brooks Winter Term students to his old world. He taught the course “Wall Street,” along with co-teachers Abby Perelman and Paul Griffin. The course explored in a hands-on fashion the inherent tensions in a capital markets system: the interests of those with money, the interests of those needing money, and the complex and interdependent system of private and public entities bridging the two. The course taught students about the inner workings of the
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American financial system, and included trips to private firms and government agencies in Boston, New York and Washington, D.C. The course culminated in the completion of three student projects, each of which has the potential to affect Brooks in the future. “Each of the 12 kids who signed up for the class had some level of innate interest,” Smith says. “But, they each came at it from different angles. Some had been involved in the investment club and wanted to expand that interest. Some of them thought they might want to do finance as a career, and used the class as a way to be exposed to that. Others were math people who had been in my classes and taken statistics and thought this would be an interesting opportunity to apply math. My goal was to provide them
that exposure, and let each student take the path that interested them the most.” The course consisted of what Smith calls three “phases.” The first phase was learning, the second phase was seeing, and the third phase was doing. At the outset of the class, the class learned basic terminology, language and skills by dissecting the documents from the initial public offering (IPO) of Ferrari. Smith chose the Ferrari IPO, he says, because “it was a structurally complex IPO that exposed [the students] to everything — international issues, Securities and Exchange issues, the vocabulary, the accounting, you name it — and it was Ferrari, so it was cool for everybody.” J. P. Marcos ’19, a student in the class, appreciates the initial
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dissection of the Ferrari IPO. “We got really in-depth,” he says. “We looked at balance sheets, income statements, cash flow statements. We looked at the controlling interests — who owned how much of the company and what they would have liked to do with the company, where they stood. It was nice to see from the insider’s perspective how it really looks when you’re going through an IPO, and see how the different interests affect where the company goes and its valuation.” The second phase consisted of the group going on the road to witness and learn more about the different entities in the world of finance by visiting with firms, offices and Brooks alumni. The group traveled to New York first. Students spent time with a managing director at Warburg Pincus, which Smith says is one of the country’s leading private equity firms, to learn about how companies get financed before they have access to the public markets. The group then met with Blake Davis ’88 at J.P. Morgan (“They had a whole tour lined up for us,” Marcos adds. “We got to see the whole J.P. Morgan headquarters, which was a pretty spectacular experience, especially as high school students.”). Lynne Sawyer ’83 also lent generous care to the class: She arranged for the students to host a networking dinner at the Yale Club for young Brooks alumni in finance, which Smith calls “one of the unexpected highlights of the entire course.” The students visited the floor of the New York Stock Exchange before continuing on to Washington, where they focused on the regulatory side of the equation. They visited several sites, including the West Wing of the White House, but focused their excursion on trips to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Bureau
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The course taught students about the inner workings of the American financial system, and culminated in the completion of three student projects, each of which has the potential to affect Brooks in the future. of Engraving and Printing, and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). The PCAOB is a private-sector nonprofit corporation created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to oversee the audits of publicly traded companies. The group met with one of the lead overseers, and Smith calls the meeting “awesome. By then, the kids had all these war stories saved up from their meetings with other people, and they made incredible connections.” The class headed back to Brooks for the third phase of the program: They divided into three groups of four students to tackle a project. One group worked with the Brooks alumni office to develop a formal network of Brooksians engaged in finance, a group that Smith says “is nascent, but live.” One group, composed of members of Brooks’s investment club, focused on making the club’s portfolio more diverse. Thanks to an anonymous parent gift, Smith says, the club was able to expand its investments into a portfolio that more closely resembles a hedge fund, the draw off of which, Smith hopes, will help fund philanthropic initiatives as well as future terms of the course itself. The third project has the most potential to affect day-to-day life
at Brooks. Students developed a captive currency to be used on campus, called the “Brooks Buck.” The currency, Smith explains, will have value at the school store and the snack bar, which will give it implicit value any time a transaction occurs on campus. “You can imagine in a few years that this currency will actually be floating around at Brooks, and students might use Brooks Bucks to buy a used tennis racket or a Gatorade from one another,” he says. The group plans to put approximately 4,000 Brooks Bucks, in denominations of one and five, into circulation, pegged at a 1:1 ratio against the U.S. dollar. Sarah Fleischman ’19, who worked on the currency project, says that the project was eye-opening. “I learned a lot about how money circulates around the Brooks campus and how currencies are used in other closed communities like Brooks,” she says. Smith agrees. “Long term, what they’ve presented is using this currency as a way to understand economics,” he says. “Once you have a floating currency, you can measure the velocity of money, you can look at monetary policy — there’s a lot that can come from this.”
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NEWS FRO M CAMPUS NThe EWS + “Xanadu,” NOT ESthe winter cast of musical, faced two challenges: working offsite at The Pike School, and learning how to roller skate.
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An Adventure on Wheels During the construction of the Center for the Arts, Brooks staged its winter musical off campus and on roller skates. This year’s winter musical broke new ground for Brooks, literally and figuratively. The cast and crew ventured off campus to The Pike School in neighboring Andover, Mass., to stage a three-night February run of “Xanadu.” The Tony Award-nominated comedy, which is based on the 1980 movie, stretched Brooksians to their limit. The show, which is about a magical Greek muse who journeys to Venice Beach, Calif., and inspires an artist to create the first roller disco, is awash in 1980s-era music, stunning lighting schemes, disco balls and, in a particular challenge, roller skates. A few cast members performed the bulk of the show on roller skates, and the cast gathered as a whole to perform the closing number on skates. Many of the cast had never used roller skates before, but they took up the challenge with aplomb. “I radically underestimated the amount of time it would take the kids to get comfortable on roller skates,” laughs Rob Lazar, arts department chair and the musical’s director. “But, by the end, everyone felt comfortable and everyone looked comfortable.” The cast and crew also faced the challenge of moving a major production off campus. Lazar says that the major drawback to performing off campus was the time spent traveling back and forth between Pike and Brooks. “An hour of travel time every day meant that we lost an hour of some other time every day,” he says. “We tried to be cognizant and careful of that.” Lazar notes, though, that the experience of working off campus paid off. “Using the facilities at Pike gave us an opportunity to expose the kids to something they hadn’t done before,” he says. “You get used to working in a space, and you become complacent with the environment you’re in. This allowed us to experience a new space, and to address the show in a way we wouldn’t have if we were in a space we were already familiar with.” Despite the off-campus location, Brooksians showed up in force to support the actors. “We had a tremendous Brooks turnout the first night,” Lazar says. “It was a great way to open the show, and it set the mood for the rest of the run.” The next winter musical is slated to take place in Brooks’s new Center for the Arts. Lazar is eager to bring his work back home to Brooks, and to spread his company’s wings in its new space. “I’m excited to have the facility that will allow us to facilitate the work we need to facilitate, given the level of our program,” he says. “We have a program that outpaced our old space, so it will be nice to have a facility that will help us do some really interesting, good work that is appropriate for our students.” SPRING 201 8
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Aly Abou Eleinen ’18 A squash phenom who stands among the program’s greats puts in the hard work, stays modest and humble, and ends up bound for the Ivy League. Squash is a family affair for Aly Abou Eleinen ’18. His grand-
father, he says, played professional squash. His brother, Seif Abou Eleinen ’14, stormed onto the Brooks squash scene, notching three All-ISL Team selection honors at the Brooks no. 1 spot before matriculating to play at Harvard University. Now, Eleinen stands to close the triumvirate: The University of Pennsylvania-bound Brooks captain turned heads throughout the season to claim Boys and Girls New England Interscholastic Squash Association Class A Co-Player of the Year honors, while also finishing third in the U.S. Junior Open Squash Championship. He is, according to boys 1st squash coach Doug Burbank, the best player to wear the green and white in the past three decades, and stands equal to the best players in the program’s storied history. “There are certainly others who have been outstanding,” Burbank says, “but I can confidently say that he’s the best we’ve had in my 32 years here. In terms of ever? We’ve had a number of graduates who went on to play in the Ivy League and were All-America selections. If you brought back any of our past coaches, Aly would certainly be in that conversation. He’s clearly the best we’ve had in the modern game. He came in an outstanding player, he’s very gifted and he’s progressed in his maturity as a player. He’s a leader in every way.” Eleinen hails from Alexandria, Egypt, but he chose to follow his brother to the United States and Brooks, where he entered as a fourth-former. “Seif never told me what to do, but I learned from his experiences,” Abou Eleinen says. “I didn’t look at other schools, because I had fallen in love with Brooks
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since visiting my brother here. I love the residential community here, the small community here.” The close relationships Brooks fostered have helped Eleinen come into his own as a student, an athlete and a member of the community. Along with squash, Eleinen plays for the reigning New England champion boys 1st soccer team. He is a dorm prefect, an alumni ambassador, has served in student government and previously sat on the Community Activities Board. Math is his favorite subject, and he learns dutifully with an eye toward studying economics in college and entering the world of finance. Eleinen has trouble naming a single favorite teacher, but he settles on a foursome: Burbank, who teaches mathematics; boys 1st soccer coach and mathematics faculty Dusty Richard; dean of students, history faculty and boys 1st soccer coach Willie Waters ’02; and his advisor, mathematics faculty Kihak Nam ’99. (When it’s pointed out to Eleinen that three of the four are mathematics faculty, he laughs. “Yeah,” he says, “I like math. Sometimes it’s difficult, but once you get it, it makes sense.”) “I feel really lucky to be coached by both Dusty and Mr. Burbank,” Eleinen says. “I love soccer, and playing here has really taught me what it means to be a part of something that’s bigger than yourself.
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“Being humble is important. If you stay humble, you’ll always have the motivation to work harder and achieve more. If you get cocky, I don’t think you’ll get anywhere.” ALY ABOU ELEINEN ’18
Mr. Burbank, Dusty, Willie Waters, Mr. Nam — I definitely would not be who I am today without all four of them.” Nam says that he admires Eleinen’s “classic, gentlemanly, old-fashioned way of playing. Not many kids do that.” Nam notes that Eleinen plays without fanfare and with humility. “It’s not about making himself look better,” Nam says. “It’s really about just getting the work done. He’s a down-to-earth, good kid, and he works very hard. He sets a goal, and then he works hard to achieve it.” Eleinen shrugs off the notion that he should be anything but unassuming. “Being humble is important,” he says. “If you stay humble, you’ll always have the motivation to work harder and achieve more. If you
get cocky, I don’t think you’ll get anywhere.” Humility has brought Eleinen a long way. “It feels great to achieve something,” he says. “I put in a lot of work. I play early in the morning before classes start, for example. It feels now like all the work I’ve been doing has paid off.” Eleinen enjoys playing squash because it provides for individual achievement in a team-oriented environment. “Squash is more of an individual game, and it shapes your character,” he says. “You’re not only on your own — you have a team supporting you — but on the court, it’s all just you, and you have to have a certain attitude and depend on yourself. You rely on your own confidence and you have to do it for yourself. It’s definitely not easy.” Penn and its powerhouse squash program await Eleinen. He says he doesn’t want to put too much pressure on himself, but he hopes to play near the top of the Quakers lineup in his first year. “I’ve wanted to play in Division I since my fourth-form year,” he says, “and I had it all planned out in terms of what I needed to do to get there. Academics is my priority, so I had to focus on my academics here at Brooks, and try to manage my time between squash, school and my social life. It wasn’t easy, but it’s worth all the time and effort, and I’m glad it all worked out.”
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A Show in the Snow Brooks teams came up big this winter. Boys basketball solidified its dynasty with a third consecutive New England championship; girls squash came home with a New England championship of its own; and girls hockey brought a young, determined team back to the postseason. BOYS HOOPS REACHES RARE AIR
How does a team win the New England championship three years in a row? How does a team win four consecutive ISL championships? Beyond that, how does a team keep its head while racking up 72 straight conference wins and 66 straight wins overall — a run that has seen Brooks win every game since January 2016? Boys 1st basketball head coach John McVeigh keeps it simple. “Our approach is to focus on one
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possession at a time,” he says. “We just try to win the next possession, and then we do that over and over again. I credit our kids, because I think it’s hard to not get caught up in this. We have very good players, but they’re not caught up in this. They’re very humble, and that’s reflected in how they play.” This team, which won the New England championship with a 65 – 40 win over The Rivers School in early March, is packed full of athletes who, McVeigh notes, would be superstars on other teams. At
The boys 1st basketball team won its third consecutive New England championship this winter, along with its fourth consecutive ISL championship.
Brooks, though, he continues, they’ve committed to sharing points and minutes with each other with an eye toward team success. All five starters — captain Terrell Brown ’18, Justin Connolly ’18, Keigan Kerby ’18, Preston Santos ’19 and Brian WrightKinsey ’18 — were selected to the All-ISL team. “I think that’s a nod to the fact that it’s hard to win all these games if you’re only relying on one or two options,” McVeigh says. “We had lots of different options and different styles: We could play a fast tempo; we could slow it down. Defense has been our identity. Offense is variable, but if you commit to defense, you can play it well every game.”
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A Meaningful Pursuit In its closing months, The Campaign for Brooks turns its focus toward an entity that has been the spine of the school since its inception. The composition of the Brooks faculty has changed over the years, but one constant has remained: The faculty has always been an inspired — and inspiring — group of dedicated teachers, scholars and role models. Now, the campaign seeks to endow $2 million in professional development funds. Brooks will be able to count on those endowed funds to retain and reward great teachers, and those funds will allow those of their students. BY RE BECCA A . BI ND ER
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GIRLS HOCKEY SEES POSTSEASON ACTION
The girls 1st hockey team bucked its youth to reach the quarterfinal round of the NEPSAC tournament, and it’s poised to rake in even greater success next year. “We had a strong core of returning players, and we were still a young team,” says head coach Lori Charpentier. “This team was determined to have a great season, and it started early with our team leadership — captain Millie Brady ’18 and assistant captains Emma English ’18, Teagan Canning ’18 and Caroline Kukas ’19 — focusing on bringing the girls together.” Charpentier says that, regardless of the outcome of the scoreboard, the team found value in every game. “They got important takeaways from every game,” she says, “lessons they learned about how they could improve for the next game. That helped build their confidence, and when we got into the heart of our season and some of the really challenging games, they played hard for each other, which led to a lot of success.” Brooks loses three players to graduation, but Charpentier is optimistic about the future. Kukas, the team’s goalie, will return as the reigning NEPSAC Division 2 Player of the Year, but Charpentier has her eyes on a larger group of returners: “The core of our team is returning, and we’re excited about that,” she says. “We’ll miss the sixth-formers, for sure, but we’re returning a strong, strong core.”
McVeigh lauds the play of Brown, who captained the team and also picked up co-ISL Defensive Player of the Year honors. “Terrell had the kind of sixth-form year that I dreamed about for him,” McVeigh says. “He’s a terrific leader, he’s very talented, but he happened to play behind some of our best players. That made it hard for him to get playing time until this year, which is why it was so gratifying to watch him come in and start every game for us this year.” Next year, McVeigh’s team will take the court having lost seven sixth-formers to graduation. “These things are always cyclical,” McVeigh says. “We’ve hit a stretch where we’ve had a perfect storm of a bunch of guys that can play. But, culture doesn’t graduate. Our culture has helped us lay the groundwork for the next group. I look at our fifth-formers who are our rising sixth-formers, who know what it takes and who will speak to that.” Beyond basketball, McVeigh strives to teach his team larger lessons — about humility; service
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to others; enthusiasm; ownership; finding joy in competition; and focusing on the next play. “I think, and I hope, that they get that there’s a bigger picture,” he says. “As good as we are at basketball, basketball’s not going to be the endgame for any of them. This should be a nice moment in their lives that they can look back on. This should not be the highlight of their lives. It’s more about what kind of men they’re going to be. That’s the part I hope lasts.”
GIRLS SQUASH TAKES HOME THE HARDWARE
The girls 1st squash team made its mark this winter, taking home the Class B New England Championship in an effort that coach Kihak Nam ’99 said was balanced and featured contributions from across the lineup. “This team is fairly unique because, with the exception of two players, they all started playing squash at Brooks,” Nam says. “They started on the 3rd team and made their way up, which is a
credit to the entire program. And, all of our players finished in the top five of their ranking. Everyone worked hard to pull their weight, and it was cool to see that.” The team’s no. 1, Christy Lau, is a third-former, which bodes well for the future. “We expected Christy to do very well, and she did, finishing in second place in a close match,” Nam says. Co-captain Vicki Haghighi ’19 played at no. 2, where she took home first place. Classmate Sabrina Gribbel took on the no. 3 spot this year after spending last year at no. 1 on the 2nd team, and received the team’s most improved player award. Sixth-former Jackie Desautels played at no. 4, where she gritted out a fifth-place finish despite injury. Abby Zerbey ’19 landed in first at no. 5 after playing on the 2nd team last year, and Emily Roush ’18 followed up with a thirdplace finish of her own at no. 6. Co-captain Cindy Liu ’18 capped off the Brooks win with a fourthplace finish in the no. 7 spot. “We’re losing half our team to graduation,” Nam says, “but that happened last year, also.” He says the loss of Liu, Desautels and Roush will, he hopes, be tempered by the promotion of Brooke Robinson ’19. “Brooke played no. 1 for the 2nd team most of the season, and she played a few matches for us at no. 7, so I’m hoping she’ll make the jump,” he says. “Our team’s very close to each other, and they all really pushed hard to help the team win.”
W MORE ONLINE: Please visit the Brooks athletics website at brooksschool.org/athletics for more information on your favorite Brooks team, including schedules, game recaps and upto-date news.
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“There was only one Oscar Root. He seemed solemn and pedestrian, unless you got to know him well. Beneath a deadpan exterior he had a devastating wit. His classes were thorough, always painstakingly prepared, never showy, but always sound. Perhaps his finest memorial is the number of boys to whom he gave a lasting love of nature… His love for all that lived or grew on the school grounds was proverbial.” Founding Headmaster Frank D. Ashburn, in “Brooks at Fifty: Yesterday.”
“When you talk to alumni about their time at Brooks, it usually only takes them around 10 seconds to start talking about a favorite faculty member. Being a faculty member at Brooks is about being a great teacher, but it’s also about so much more. It’s taking what makes a great teacher in the classroom and spreading that out to the dorm and the field and the stage and advisor meetings and to all the other things we do here. Brooks only works when our faculty have that sort of mindset.” Dean of Faculty John McVeigh
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he ground floor hallway of the Brooks Classroom Building, which houses the school’s mathematics classrooms, could easily be confused for a hallway of classrooms in any high school. Gray carpet covers a heavily trod floor beneath a row of flourescent lights; bulletin boards advertising college admission information sessions and student organization initiatives hang on the walls; and at the end, a set of stairs leads up to hallways full of English, history and world languages classrooms.
The hallway may, at first glance, be unremarkable, but look again: Two features make it unique. First, a set of portraits of generations of Brooks’s faculty emeriti — from Waterston to Dunnell; from Wilder to Evangelos; from McCahill to Ward — lines the walls. Second, the school’s six core values — empathy, engagement, confidence, creativity, integrity and passion — stand sentry in block lettering on the western wall. These two features don’t just make this hallway in this school look a little different from other hallways in other schools. The two features in this hallway make this school, Brooks School, special. Generations of Brooks teachers have educated generations of Brooks students. But “educating,” at Brooks, means more than just teaching. At Brooks, educating also means nurturing; caring about; listening to; giving advice to; helping; and, above all, believing in students in all their pursuits. The job doesn’t end when the bell rings. Our teachers matter as much, educate as much and are just as passionate about the growth of their students when classes are over as when classes are in session. It may not have been intentional, but it’s not a mistake that the school’s core values line the same walls as the portraits of faculty emeriti, the same walls that witness the daily work of today’s Brooks faculty. Today’s faculty are just as empathetic, engaged, confident and passionate as the faculty of old, and the connection to their predecessors is both tangible and palpable. Brooks faculty teach, and they teach well, but they also pursue graduate degrees, travel to academic conferences and seek to better themselves — all to further the education of their students in every aspect of their time at Brooks. “This sounds almost cliched,” Dean of Faculty John McVeigh says, “but the faculty really are everything to Brooks. Sometimes when people think about supporting the school, there are a couple of layers there. But these
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SPOTLIGHT
Steph Holmes Brooks faculty Steph Holmes arrived at Brooks to teach English, but now her career goals have broadened: She uses professional development funds to pay tuition for a master’s degree in social work from Boston University. Holmes hopes to expand her role at Brooks, but in the meantime, she says, her coursework influences her English classroom. Holmes points to her teaching of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” and looks at the work through the classes she’s taken on the development of race and gender identities in America: “It’s not just this book about the Roaring Twenties,” she says. “It’s also a book about white supremacy. I’ve changed the way that I teach and the themes I highlight because those World languages faculty Lillian Miller (right) embraces a student following Boo Hoo Chapel in May 2017. Brooks seeks out faculty who also educate and nurture Brooks students outside the classroom. The faculty’s care for their charges is always evident at the post-Boo Hoo Chapel procession.
people — the Brooks faculty — are the people on the ground; these are the people who are having a direct impact on our kids every day.” McVeigh points out that the faculty are central to the school’s mission to provide the most meaningful educational experience students will have in their lives. “The faculty are, simply, the tools through which we deliver on our mission,” he says. “Everything we do here at Brooks is based on relationships, and we need teachers who know how to meet kids where they are. They can’t just be the person who walks into a classroom, delivers a lecture for 50 minutes and leaves.”
Building a Faculty
McVeigh wants, he says, a young teacher to come here to find mentors, a community that helps nourish the desire to be an educator, and positive, excited colleagues who want to pass the craft along to them. He wants a mid-career teacher to find a home: a place where they become rejuvenated, find creativity and find the autonomy to be the teacher they’ve always wanted to be. He wants the teacher reaching the end of their career to look back and give back to younger teachers while not resting on past accomplishments.
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themes are more on the surface and on my mind. Students who before may have not seen anything about their own experiences in the book now feel like it’s also relevant to them, their history and their experience, and I think that’s really important.” Outside the classroom, Holmes says, her classwork is key. “We always say here at Brooks that our job is to take care of kids,” she says. “The degree that I’m getting is, essentially, in how to take care of people. Most advisors would tell you that the bulk of their time with advisees is spent discussing interpersonal relationships, helping them manage stress and helping them respond to adversity. These are things I’ve studied on a clinical level.” As Holmes plans her career, she says, she appreciates the ways in which professional development dollars have helped her find her way. “Brooks is willing to be creative and flexible in how to match up my goals with the goals that the school has for me as a member of the faculty,” she says. “It makes me feel that Brooks has faith in me, that Brooks cares about my development and that Brooks cares about me as a professional and as a person.”
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SPOTLIGHT
Laura Hajdukiewicz Science faculty Laura Hajdukiewicz uses Brooks’s professional development fund to pay for a series of
“For our students to have a meaningful experience, they need to be surrounded by adults who fill so many different roles. Certainly a teacher role, but also the mentor, the coach, the cheerleader, the person who knows how to give you a kick when you need it.” Dean of Faculty John McVeigh
classes in American Sign Language at Northern Essex Community College. Hajdukiewicz hopes to bring her new knowledge back to the Brooks campus. She imagines, for example, a Winter Term course introducing students to sign language. And, she points out, Brooks benefits from having a member of the campus community who can communicate in sign language. “I feel lucky that Brooks is allowing me to do this,” she says. “This falls within our core values here at Brooks — especially empathy, as we learn about people who communicate in a different way due to their abilities — and it’s a beautiful language.” Hajdukiewicz’s interest in learning sign language also has strong personal roots: Her daughter, Maryna ’19, is hard of hearing, and she is also enrolled in the class. The instructor is a deaf man, and Hajdukiewicz reports that together, she and her daughter learn as much about “deaf culture” as they do about sign language. “The fact that I am able to pursue an interest that is both professional and personal is very meaningful,” Hajdukiewicz says. She notes that, although she has built on her knowledge of science throughout her teaching career, she’s found it fulfilling to engage in a new subject. “This uses a different part of my brain. It’s good to learn about something that’s outside of your realm, to be a lifelong learner,” she says. “It’s been really eye-opening to be a student again. That helps any educator remember what it’s like for their own students, and that translates directly back to my students here at Brooks.”
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“I want our faculty to be themselves,” McVeigh says. “I want this to be a dynamic place, a professionally satisfying place and a place where you feel welcomed, where you look around and you’re teaching with people you respect and admire and want to spend time with. I want our teachers to feel like they’re being compensated at a level that allows them to do the things they want to do. Ultimately, I want this to be a great place to work — to work with the kind of kids you want to work with, the colleagues you want to work with, on the work that matters to you.” Providing the Brooks faculty with this level of fulfillment requires money. The Campaign for Brooks seeks to fill $2 million of endowment restricted to a professional development fund. The annual draw off of that endowed principal will provide McVeigh with a healthy, robust professional development fund that he can allocate to individual Brooks faculty as they seek to expand their expertise for the benefit of their students. The endowment of the fund is critical: The school, and the faculty, can rely on the existence of the funds over time, and faculty will not face difficult career decisions based on the limitations of school resources.
Hiring Future Brooksians
The sort of faculty community that McVeigh sees at Brooks doesn’t come together without work. “As we make hires, we need to find those people who are seeking out connection,” he says, “not just in the scripted, official moments of their job, but also in those in-between moments. Who is going to walk through the dorm just because they want to see the kids? Who is going to go to the game or the recital? Who is going to volunteer to advise a student club? Those things make this place go.” When a teacher with those qualities — the motivation to go beyond the job description; the impulse to care; the desire to connect — lands at Brooks, the
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challenge becomes one of hiring and retention. “We need to find ways to get those teachers here,” McVeigh says. “We need to keep them here, help them grow and help them feel great about this work. Teaching is not a profession of perfect — it’s not like you get to a place where someone gives you a teaching black belt and then you’re there. You have to change and grow and evolve.” McVeigh knows that, as he says, “nobody does this work to get rich.” However, he points out, Brooks would like to be able to confidently match offers given to faculty candidates by other schools. “We’ve managed to get some incredible teachers to come here, because they like the environment,” he says. “They like the small classes, they like the kids they’re teaching, they like the freedom. I would love to go in knowing that people can decide based on the culture of this place, on the kids, on the direction we’re going in as a school, on the opportunities they’ll have here — not on the salary. I have confidence that the other stuff will win the day for us.”
Rewarding Excellence
Once a faculty member is established at Brooks, professional development can be used to reward and promote excellence in teaching. McVeigh says that he wants “to reward people who are doing work above and beyond the work we hired them to do. The people who have chosen to engage in life at Brooks beyond the written expectations of their job; the people who exceed their job description and who reflect the school’s mission.” The faculty, McVeigh continues, who put time, effort and inspiration into making a student’s Brooks education meaningful. “This place will not work if we all just do our job descriptions,” he says. “The idea of having that recognition of excellence is to give us a little more in that fight to retain and recognize people who have done great work.” Professional development, McVeigh continues, allows faculty to “know that they’re appreciated at a level that literally puts our money where our mouth
SPOTLIGHT
Edward Carson “If people teach the same course the same way every year, I feel sorry for them,” says history faculty Edward Carson, who uses professional development funds to cover the cost to attend several conferences each year. Carson attends a number of association conferences and conferences related to teaching Advanced Placement courses. He argues that these opportunities for learning, networking and collaborating with other educators directly benefit his students at Brooks. “When a teacher is engaged in some sort of professional development practice, you can feel it in the classroom,” Carson says. “The depth of content and the skills being taught are elevated to another level. If teachers aren’t engaged in their field, or if they’ve fallen behind and aren’t versed in recent scholarship and pedagogical approaches? The students can spot teachers like that a mile away.” Carson is attracted to conferences for many reasons. Primary among them, he says, is the opportunity conferences provide to meet and network with other educators. “Teaching is lonely sometimes,” he says. “Sometimes, we need to teach subjects where we need further resources, training or development. It’s good to meet other teachers with expertise in different fields within history. I’m able to reach out to them if I feel I’m not strong in a particular area. Teaching shouldn’t be a competition; it should be a collaboration.” Conferences also provide Carson with a space in which he can grow as a historian. “I feel intellectually stimulated,” he says. “I challenge my students here and they might grow, but that’s not the same as me sitting down at a conference and learning, talking
“My job as a teacher is to use my teaching to make my students into scholars. My job is to teach students how to be active, live thinkers, and I can’t do that if I’m not also an active, live thinker.”
with someone that I know is smarter than I am, or with someone that I know I can offer something to. My job as a teacher is to use my teaching to make my students into scholars. My job is to teach students how to be active, live thinkers, and I can’t do that if I’m not also an active, live thinker.”
History faculty Edward Carson
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SPOTLIGHT
Ali Mattison Mathematics faculty Ali Mattison wants Brooks to
“[Professional development funding] makes me feel that Brooks has faith in me, that Brooks cares about my development and that Brooks cares about me as a professional and as a person.” English faculty Steph Holmes
be “on the forefront of innovative teaching.” She’s using professional development dollars to pay for coursework toward a master’s degree in mathematics for teaching through Harvard Extension School. The program teaches strategies that will improve Mattison’s ability to teach her students mathematics skills: It builds deeper knowledge of mathematics content; teaches tactics that can improve student motivation; and develops an enhanced understanding of what it means to learn math. “This is about me becoming a better teacher,” Mattison says. “If there are new techniques out there that we can learn, that’s only going to benefit us as teachers and our students at Brooks. We can all recognize that students learn differently now than even I did in high school. The math itself isn’t changing much, but the ways in which we understand brain development and learning styles are changing, and we need to adapt our teaching to the way that science is discovering that students absorb material the best.” Mattison plans to bring her new knowledge back to the Brooks mathematics department. “There’s a direct correlation between this program and our kids learning new things, and that’s what’s really cool about being able to do this,” she says. Mattison also notes that she’s able to set an example for students. “It’s nice for the kids to see that their teachers are invested in their own education,” she says, recalling sitting side-by-side with Brooks students in the library to do her homework. As a female math teacher, Mattison also feels a duty to be a role model for girls in a field that she observes is populated mostly by males. “When I first started teaching, I wanted girls to feel passionate about math and feel like they could be good at it,”
is. There are plenty of teachers here for whom that grant to go to that conference is, for them, just as good as money. They probably would have paid for that conference themselves — that’s how important they feel it is. We should be helping them. In either case, the students benefit. If you keep great teachers, reward them and help them grow, that has a direct impact on the student experience at Brooks.”
The Future Faculty
A healthy endowed fund for professional development would help craft a faculty that, McVeigh says, would both lead and resonate with Brooks students, and that would do its work secure in the knowledge that Brooks encourages them to explore their own boundaries. First, McVeigh sees the faculty as a microcosm of the increasingly diverse and interconnected world Brooks students graduate into. “We want a faculty that our students can see themselves in, and can see their experience in,” he says. “On the flip side, I also want our faculty to be people who don’t look like our students, but still be people our students can learn from and interact with. We want a faculty that prepares kids to step out into the world, that has had different experiences and viewpoints, and that constantly offers new perspectives and ideas.” Second, McVeigh says, he wants Brooks to be “the kind of place where every teacher feels like they have the opportunity and tools at their fingertips to be the best teacher they can be, and where every teacher knows that the school will support them as they evolve and change, and as the world evolves and changes around them. I don’t want any teacher to be the same teacher that they were five years ago. We want them to continuously improve.”
she says “I think that building my own competence in math and different teaching styles — it trickles down.”
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GIVE BACK
For more information on The Campaign for Brooks and its pursuit of endowment restricted to professional development, please visit the campaign website at www.thecampaignforbrooks.org, or contact Director of Development Gage Dobbins at gdobbins@brooksschool.org or (978) 725-6288.
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Founding Headmaster Frank D. Ashburn. 27
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Caitlin Peirce ’19 & Katie Warren ’19
w a ay from
These Merriman residents met as prospective students at an admission revisit day, and they knew from the beginning of their time on campus that they’d be friends. Now, these fifth-formers have lived together for two years, and they’re hoping to live together again in the same room next year (hint, hint, dorm parents!). Caitlin (left): Katie and I balance each other out. She reminds me to do my homework, and I remind her to go out and have fun. Katie: When I first met Caitlin, she was very bubbly and outgoing. And she still is — she’s really fun to be around and very talkative. I’m very reserved when I first meet someone, so I appreciated that.
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Brooks students lead a busy life: They spend their days in class, on the stage and in the game. They traverse Main Street, Wilder Dining Hall and the bounds of the school’s campus. They study, they eat and they explore their interests, strengths and weaknesses. Now, we look at the lives and stories that unfold behind the walls of our dorms and inside the rooms of our boarding students. The Bulletin spoke with seven pairs of Brooks roommates — and photographed them in their dorm rooms — to shine a light on the experience of having a roommate in high school. As you’ll see, each pair is different, each relationship is different and each room is different. One theme, though, runs throughout: These students, these roommates, wouldn’t have it any other way. 28
Caitlin: Our room is a no-judgment zone. In here, we can talk about anything. There’s a lot of stress and pressure from school, so it’s nice to be able to come back here and talk and just let it all out. Katie: Also, we have tea time! Caitlin loves tea. Last year, she would drink two or three cups a day. So, we would have “tea time” — we would drink tea together, de-stress and center ourselves.
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MERRIMAN HOUSE
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CHACE HOUSE
Andrew Stevens ’18 &Matthew Kim ’18 This sixth-form pair each started at Brooks as fourth-formers. They were placed together for their first year on campus, and they’ve stuck together since. Stevens, the captain of the New England champion boys 1st soccer team, says that the pair shares a strong bond despite engaging in very different activities outside their Chace House room. Matthew (right): We haven’t fought in three years. We respect each other, which is the most important thing as roommates. I love Andy the way he is, and I hope he loves me the way I am. Andrew: We have our different lives here — he does his thing and I do mine — but at the end of the day, we come back here and it’s always just been easy. Matthew: I’ll remember Andy’s passion for soccer. He thinks a lot about soccer and we’ve watched a lot of soccer on television together. I’ve heard him talking to teammates about soccer. Now that I’ve met Andy and seen how passionate he is about this thing that he loves, I’ve started to look for the thing in my own life that I have the same level of passion for. Andrew: I’ll always remember our first day of school here. I was a homesick fourth-former, it was all new, and Matthew was this kid that I didn’t know at all. We were trying to get out the door to get to breakfast, and for the life of me, I couldn’t get my tie tied correctly. Matthew came over and he helped me. He tied my tie perfectly for me. Since then, of course, I’ve learned how to tie my tie myself, but in the moment, I was so grateful; I thought, “this kid’s good.”
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Now that I’ve met Andy and seen how passionate he is about this thing that he loves, I’ve started to look for the thing in my own life that I have the same level of passion for.”
CHACE HOUSE
Eddie Choi ’19 & Myles Pember ’19 These fifth-form residents of Chace House love their room. In fact, they’ve set it up with an eye toward hosting large groups of friends and dormmates. The layout of your room, they assert, “can really change how you spend your year.” Eddie (right): The way our room is set up, it’s perfect for everyone else to come in. That’s our work section over there [gesturing to two desks against the opposite wall], and this is our “chill” section. I like it that way because when I do homework, I need someone doing homework next to me to keep me motivated. Myles: We motivate each other! And if I have a question on my homework, I can just slide my book over and Eddie knows to help me with it. It’s a beneficial relationship. I help Eddie more with social things. Eddie: If you don’t decorate your room, if you don’t set it up so that it’s convenient, people aren’t going to come to your room. It’s the little things that make people want to come to your room. Myles: Our room is like a second common room for the dorm. There are usually, like, six people in here. We like it that way.
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I think Lucy’s the closest thing I have to a sister. And not in the sense that we’re best friends but in the sense that sometimes we argue, and then we get over it.”
Olivia Jarvis ’18 & Lucy Lannan ’18 These Hettinger East residents joined together to deliver their Senior Speech on their time together as roommates. The duo took to the Ashburn Chapel lectern to reveal the hard work that’s gone into their lasting relationship, a topic that they spoke about again in this interview. Olivia (left): The only argument we’ve had consistently is that we’ll get in our beds and then Lucy will try to do her English reading and keep the light on. So for her birthday this year, I bought Lucy a book light that hooks over her book. Lucy: We’ve really just figured it out. After you’ve been together for three years, you just kind of know. We’ve had times where we’ve argued, and you’d think it wasn’t going to work out, but that’s not true at all. It’s actually gotten so much better. The time it takes to settle into a relationship is really important. Olivia: I have a brother, but I think Lucy’s the closest thing I have to a sister. And not in the sense that we’re best friends but in the sense that sometimes we argue, and then we get over it. Lucy (to Olivia): It’s like when you bought that light for me. You were with some of your other friends, and they all said that’s a weird present and that I wouldn’t like it. But, I loved it!
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BLAKE HOUSE
Tianshu Wang ’19 & Connor Wright ’19 This pair likes living in Blake House. As neighbors last year, they became good friends. Now, they live together, and they form a great duo. Connor (below): Tianshu and I are pretty close. He’s someone that I really enjoy spending time with. He makes living in a dorm so much better. Tianshu: Thank you! When I applied to Brooks, I wanted a roommate. I want to live with someone, talk to each other, learn more about society and the world. That’s the whole point of why I came to America for school. Connor adds to my life at Brooks. Connor: And Blake is a great community. Especially this year, it’s harder to go home on the weekends than it is to just stay here and hang out with friends in the dorm. Tianshu: Also, Connor makes the room smell nice. Connor (laughing): I have the Febreze air fresheners.
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I want to live with someone, talk to each other, learn more about society and the world.”
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GARDNER HOUSE
Millie Brady ’18 & Blakely Dimeo ’18 These Gardner House prefects are among the first group of sixth-form girls to live in a dorm reserved for third-form girls. They’ve lived together all four years at Brooks, and they say they wanted to be role models for Brooks’s newest students as the third-formers found their own home on campus. Millie (left): Last year, we had singles next to each other. We ended up combining our rooms because we decided we wanted to live together. We put both our beds in one single, and then we had a living room and a bedroom. Blakely: Next year in college, I’ll miss coming back to the dorm and knowing that my best friend is here to talk to. I’ve gotten so used to having her near me over the past four years. Millie: We both understand what the other is going through with school, sports, social life — and we work well in terms of our similarities: cleanliness, quiet time, everything. Blakely: The first night we were here as third-formers, we had our beds pushed up against a baseboard wall heater. There was a space between our pillows and the wall, so our pillows kept sliding into the crack where the heater was. It was funny — that first night, both of us up at midnight and trying to figure out how to work through that together, not really knowing each other. Millie: We were up for an hour after that, just sitting in our pajamas and laughing. We connected so well, even on our first night here. I see how far we’ve come together from that first night to now. It’s different, but it’s still very much the same.
THORNE HOUSE
Jacob Iwowo ’18 & Terrell Brown ’18 These self-described extroverts exude energy. They enjoy living together in Thorne House (here, they are photographed in the common room), and they agree that, as Terrell says, “the people make the dorm.” Jacob (left): I’m a social person, and I don’t really need a lot of time to be by myself. I’m always talking to other people, so having a roommate to spend time with, and to have people come to our room, matches my personality. Terrell: I had a single my fourth-form year, and I didn’t like it. I was always in other people’s rooms.
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I think about all the times when we were just together and alive.”
Jacob: It’s good to learn how to live with someone. But, you learn about yourself. You find out what you’re like when you live with someone else, which is important in college and in life. Terrell: I think about all the times when we were just together and alive. We love to dance, we love to laugh and joke around. There have been times when I couldn’t breathe because I was laughing so hard with Jacob. To have that one person here that you know you have as a friend; I know I always have this guy here.
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Right: Kailey O’Neill ’19 (crouching) and Niko George ’19 search for names of servicemembers on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The Washington Monument is in the background.
Connection A T IMELESS
“The Complexity of War,” a Winter Term course offered at Brooks, is popular, and for good reason. The course delves into questions surrounding the experience of going to war, focusing on the Vietnam War and American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Head of School John Packard is one of the course's teachers and takes the students on a three-day trip to Washington, D.C. This year, the Bulletin tagged along to get an up-close look at the course, its students and the lessons they learned.
BY R E BECCA A . B I N D E R
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t’s the tail end of the morning rush hour in Washington, D.C., and I’ve never seen the other side of the street look so far away. Most of our group has already crossed the G Street intersection. I’m a few storefronts back, walking with a group of Brooks girls who are in awe: They’ve never been to Washington, and they’re walking slowly as they take in the buildings, the people, the atmosphere of our nation’s capitol. They haven’t noticed that they’re bringing up the rear; they haven’t noticed that most of the group is a half a block ahead of them; they haven’t noticed that the light is changing. We should stick together, I think. We need to stick together. “Hey girls,” I say, “let’s make that light. Let’s hurry up and make that light.” One of the girls peers at the walk signal, which shows a red hand and numbers counting down. “Oh!” she says. “The light’s changing. Let’s run, guys. Let’s all stick together.” We run. We make the light. We all stick together.
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Right: The class searched the Vietnam Veterans Memorial for the name of George Carpenter ’64, who was killed in action in 1967. Lexie Prokopis ’19 took a photo of Carpenter’s name, pictured here. Bottom left: Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer ’72 (left) greets Colin Khater ’19 (center) as Will Koslo ’19 looks on. Khater, Koslo and their classmates toured the Pentagon and met with Spencer, who explained his position and his views on national service.
I’m accompanying the group of Brooksians — Head of School John Packard, Associate Director of Athletics John Fahey and the dozen students enrolled in their Winter Term course, “The Complexity of War” — on its three-day trip to Washington, D.C. in mid-January. The course dissects the experience of going to war from a variety of perspectives, focusing on the Vietnam War and the American military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. The course teaches students the history and chronology of these conflicts, but also asks them to examine war from a more personal angle: The students meet with veterans, read primary sources and travel to Washington to visit monuments and memorials, and to meet with prominent figures in politics and policy. The 12 students enrolled in the course come from across the Brooks student body: They range from the fourth to the sixth form; they are boarding students and day students; some play sports and some dive into the musical; they come from military families and from families without military experience. They’re varied in age, background and perspective, but they all share one opinion: They’re excited to be together, and they’re excited to be enrolled in the class and visiting Washington. Colin Khater ’19 enrolled, he says, because the subject matter intrigued him. “I’ve always had a pretty big interest in war, and in how war impacts our country,”
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he says, “but I didn’t fully understand the positive and negative effects of war, and how it really impacts the country, the soldiers and our culture. I also thought that the trip to D.C., and having an educational experience there, would be a good decision.” We flew out of Boston before the sun rose; we made a whirlwind stop at our hotel; and now, we’re en route to our first destination, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. Over the next three days, we’ll visit a variety of D.C. landmarks, including: the Pentagon, where we’ll meet with Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer ’72; the Vietnam Veterans Memorial; and Arlington National Cemetery. We’ll also attend a
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“I picture George Carpenter as a brave man. I picture an incredibly brave person who risked everything for his country.” N I KO G EORG E ’ 19
number of meetings, including sessions with: campaign finance expert Trevor Potter ’74; United States Senator Ed Markey, the junior senator from Massachusetts; members of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign staff and Jeff Forbes, who has 20 years of campaign experience; and analysts at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies, an international policy think tank focused on defense and security. “Washington was definitely the highlight of the course for me,” Khater says after his return to campus. “I’m sure it was for plenty of other people, too. It was absolutely spectacular.”
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A Brooks Connection The trip to Washington that students enrolled in “The Complexity of War” course took depended on the support, help and time of several Brooks graduates. The class enjoyed meetings with Trevor Potter ’74, who discussed his work in campaign finance reform, and with Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer ’72, who spoke on his responsibility to manage the supply-side operations of the Navy, as well as on his strong opinions on public service. The class also utilized the unfailing help of Liz Kearney Forbes ’98, who not only connected the group to staff in Senator Ed Markey’s office and the senator himself, but also arranged a series of meetings with members of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign team and with her husband, Jeff Forbes of lobbying firm Forbes Tate Partners. “John [Packard] and I have communicated every single time he’s brought a class on Winter Term,” Spencer said in a telephone interview following the trip. “One reason I got excited was the topic, which is a fascinating topic that everyone ought to have interplay with, because it just begs conversation on two sides of an equation.” Spencer feels that the exposure Mr. Packard’s students get to Washington is valuable, not only because it allows students to experience the city, but also because, he says, it helps Brooksians become more aware of the world outside the campus gates. “Any time we can get outside of the beautiful gates of the bucolic Brooks campus and out into reality in the world and see people do things, I think it’s fantastic,” he says. “Brooks is a beautiful place. I think it’s great. But, Brooks isn’t the real world, and any sort of inoculation as to what’s going on is tremendously beneficial to one’s education.” Kearney agrees with Spencer. “It’s such a great opportunity for high school students to experience the real world and get a sense of what life could be like as a professional, or even as an intern,” she says. “That motivated me to help out. Also, helping Brooks and giving back to Brooks is paramount to me, because of how much Brooks did for me. The passion I have for helping Brooks wouldn’t be as strong if it weren’t for the leadership of Mr. Packard, because I’ve had time to experience him growing with the school. I respect him and what he’s done, and how he’s led the school forward.”
Up Close and Personal
Visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at night wasn’t the original plan. The increased chance of rain in the next day’s forecast caused the group to head to the memorial the night before. The change in the weather pattern turned out to be fortuitous. As day turns to night, floodlights installed in the ground at the base of the memorial shine upwards, illuminating the names of servicemembers in relief against a jet-black wall. The crowds have dispersed; the National Mall is dark and quiet; and the solemnity of the space is palpable. The Brooksians walked the length
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of the memorial, taking in the totality of the names while searching for specific ones — including George Carpenter ’64, a Brooks senior prefect who was killed in combat in 1967 during his service as a United States Marine. “We lost American lives,” Niko George ’19 reflects. “Seeing all those names on the memorial was breathtaking, but also very saddening. All those lives taken. And being able to find the individual names of the people we had learned about: I picture George Carpenter as a brave man. I picture an incredibly brave person who risked everything for his country.”
Right: The class met with United States Senator Ed Markey, the junior senator from Massachusetts, at the U.S. Capitol building. Senator Markey (back row, fourth from right) spoke with the group about his policy initiatives and fielded questions.
Similar emotions came to the fore the following morning, when the group visited Arlington National Cemetery, which houses the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The Brooksians toured the grounds, taking in the sweeping vistas of gravestones. The group watched a changing of the guard ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. George calls it “moving.” Khater agrees. “Similar to the Vietnam memorial, every single gravestone has a story,” he says. “Every gravestone is a family, and it was very touching. I also found the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to be a perfect representation of the U.S. military and how serious they are.” The group also had a rare opportunity: a private tour of the Pentagon, culminating in a meeting with Richard Spencer, the current Secretary of the Navy, in his office. After welcoming each Brooksian with a handshake, Spencer explained his charge: He heads up “the supply side” of the Navy, and is responsible to man, train, equip, deliver and dispose of all the goods needed by the Navy. He then fielded a question asking his opinion on whether Americans should engage in mandatory public service — a theme that repeated throughout the course — and his answer resonated with the group. “Yes,” he said. “I truly believe they should, and it doesn’t have to be in the military.” He explained that national mandatory public service would help a citizenry that he sees as bifurcated and polarized become “introduced to itself.” Americans from different walks of life would meet each other and work together, he reasoned, “and public service
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“I think it’s one thing to just sit and read from a textbook or watch a movie, but when you speak with someone who has had a lived experience, it makes that experience that much more real.”
she has a strong interest in government and politics. In the meeting, Medina asked the senator to discuss his views on immigration issues. He carefully outlined his positions, and Medina was struck by his efforts to connect with her. “It really got to me,” she says. “I felt like he was speaking to me. My family is Dominican. These are the stories of a lot of people that I know. I felt acknowledged, and that was a memorable moment for me.”
N AL I A M EDINA ’ 18
Future Benefits might be a good way to tighten the weave of the country.” Kailey O’Neill ’19 sees herself in a new light after meeting Spencer. “If you think about it, he walked this campus, and we’re walking in his footsteps,” she says. “It’s really cool to think that maybe, someday, I could be where he is.” Anoosha Barua ’20 agrees. “You could tell that he’s so passionate about the Navy and that he believes so strongly in what he does,” she says. “It’s cool to meet an alum who is so successful, happy and fulfilled.” Finally, the Brooksians were able to visit the U.S. Capitol and meet Senator Markey. The group
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gathered around a conference table in Senator Markey’s office, where they heard about his experiences, his policy priorities and the president’s signing legislation sponsored by Markey the day before that, Markey hoped, would help combat the nation’s opioid epidemic. Nalia Medina ’18 appreciates her time with Markey. “Someone mentioned that I was from Lawrence, Mass., and then the senator’s chief of staff mentioned that Senator Markey’s dad is from Lawrence. Right there, I felt like a part of something,” she says. Medina will attend The George Washington University next year, and she says
As the trip progressed, the familiarity and friendship the Brooksians had with each other grew stronger. What began as a gaggle of three or four small groups of friends transformed into one large group of friends. The students became more comfortable with each other as they traveled far from home on airplanes, trains and on foot. George thinks this is natural. “When you’re off campus and away from other people, you have to work together and become friends with these people,” he says. Barua, a fourth-former, is grateful for the chance to become friendly with upperclassmen. “I was intimidated,” she admits. “I didn’t know anyone that
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Course Catalog As Thanksgiving approaches, Brooks students look forward to the annual release of the Winter Term Course Catalog and its descriptions of the 30-plus courses offered over a two-and-a-half-week stint of January. The 2018 course description of “The Complexity of War” read as follows: Using the Vietnam War as our point of entry, this course also considers more recent American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as we attempt to think together about the incredibly complex challenges facing those who have authorized and waged these wars. While we spend some time examining the origins, context and chronology of all three conflicts, we are primarily focused on doing all we can to understand what war is like from the perspective of those who have experienced it firsthand. We aim to interview veterans of all three of these wars in order to get in touch with living history, and to be able to reflect on the similarities and differences of individual experiences at different points in time. We read selections by those who experienced or observed these wars up close in an effort to enhance our sense of war itself. We take a look at both documentary and feature films in order to examine the range of ways in which these wars have been treated on screen. We travel to Washington, D.C., and visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, among others, along with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, Arlington National Cemetery and a number of other monuments, memorials and museums within our reach. While in Washington, we try to connect with alumni, alumnae and friends of the school who have helped us visit and meet the following through the past five years: the National Museum of the Marine Corps, the White House, the Situation Room, the United States Congress, Senator John McCain, Congressman Seth Moulton, and the Pentagon. We ask students to keep a journal through the course in order to reflect on and share experiences we are having together. The course culminates with a group project that centers on the questions we find to be the most core to understanding and thinking about the debate over war’s complexity, necessity, tragedy and many costs.
well. But, by the end of the trip, we were all really good friends. Even now, we still hang out.” Beyond the making of new friendships and the solidifying of old, the students universally agree that the course was valuable: Not only did it teach them about the subject matter, but it also taught them skills that, they say, will transfer to other classes. “I learned the art of listening,” Khater says. “We did a lot of listening to people who know more than we do. Being able, instead of always talking and trying to get your point
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in, to sit back for a second and think and take it in — I’m trying to work on that with my other teachers, to take in what they say and absorb it.” George, meanwhile, learned how to notice and understand perspectives that differ from his own. “A big topic was whether going to war or protesting a war was more patriotic,” he says. “Taking this course didn’t change my opinion — going to war and fighting for your country is more patriotic — but it definitely gave me a different perspective on how other people
feel. I respect and understand why the protests were happening. This course opened my eyes to seeing both sides of the picture. It taught me to go deeper into a subject, learn more about what’s happening and try to see the bigger picture.” Medina says that one aspect of the course was particularly valuable. The group met with several veterans during the course to hear their stories and learn about their experiences with war. “In other academic courses at Brooks, I haven’t had the opportunity to delve into these questions of war,” she says. “So having the opportunity to speak with people who have actually lived war — veterans who have served in different wars — is interesting. I think it’s one thing to just sit and read from a textbook or watch a movie, but when you speak with someone who has had a lived experience, it makes that experience that much more real.” Finally, Medina relates many of the topics that American society wrestled with in the past to society’s questions today. “We talked a lot about patriotism, honor and glory when it comes to war,” she says. “It’s interesting because right now, we’re living in a time when a lot of the things we talked about in the course are so relevant again. We talked about protesting the Vietnam War, and we related that to what’s going on today with the protests during the National Anthem. Things that happened back then are coming full circle, and we’re living them again. It’s interesting to be living this experience but then also hear about it from years ago.”
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RO KS CONNECTIONS Henry Camp ’74, P’17 seatedBat theO ASR-33 Teletype. The teletype was popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and had a paper punch and reader on its left side. Camp’s model was probably built between 1972 and 1974. It connected to a mainframe via a dial-up network, using the BASIC programming language. It weighed 75 pounds and cost approximately $1,450 in 1974 — a whopping $7,290 in 2018 dollars.
BROOKS CONNECTIONS
IN THIS SECTION 44 Alumni News 50 Class Notes 86 In Memoriam
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B RO O KS CONNECT I O NS
ALU MNI NEWS
Like Mother, Like Daughter
Current Brooks parents Annie Tallas (left) and Peter Tallas volunteered with the Brooks Gives Back group in Boston. The group worked at Cradles to Crayons, an organization that collects, processes and distributes donations of essential children’s items.
Meaningful Volunteer Service During the course of a weekend in February, more than three dozen Brooksians rallied to volunteer and give back to their communities. The Brooks alumni board sponsored events in four cities. On February 18 and 19, Brooks alumni, parents and friends gathered at locations in Boston, Chicago, New York City and Washington, D.C., for the second annual Brooks Gives Back event. The effort, which is sponsored by the Brooks alumni board, seeks to help Brooksian volunteers reconnect with the school and lend their time and efforts to people in need closer to home. Volunteers worked under the direction of a Brooks host and an on-site leader. The Boston and Chicago groups — hosted by Assistant Director of Alumni Programs Carly Churchill ’10 and head of the alumni board’s events committee Nick Ziebarth ’95, respectively — each volunteered at Cradles to Crayons, an organization that collects, processes, packages and distributes donations of essential children’s items. In Washington, Brooksians led by Shannon Clark ’99 and Will Collier ’11 helped out at the Capital Area Food Bank, the largest organization in the Washington metro area working to solve hunger and its companion problems, by sorting and packing thousands of pounds of food on its way to area families. In New York, the group, hosted by Tom Armstead ’89, pitched in at Xavier Mission, where it served hot meals to the mission’s guests. Churchill says that Brooks Gives Back is a “great event for Brooksians to participate in.” She points out that it’s rewarding work that gives back to local communities, but that it also gives Brooksians a chance to meet, reconnect and work toward a common goal.
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Rob Fleischman P’19, P’21 wrote in with the following tidbit: “In 1984, Brooks began its girls ice hockey program with a small team. Since then, the program has grown large and has had multiple decades of success. [Ed. Note: This year, the girls 1st team made an appearance in the NEPSAC tournament. Read more about the squad’s success on page 18 of this issue.] This year, on February 10, the girls 2nd team came back from a 0–2 deficit to beat Lawrence Academy 4–3. The first goal in that game was a rebound goal scored by Emma Fleischman ’21. In the stands, watching the goal and cheering the loudest was Emma's mother, Marianne (Augot) Fleischman ’87, P’19, P’21. Marianne was on that 1984 hockey team, and scored the very first (and second) goal for the girls ice hockey program. After 34 years, the circle is now complete.”
Emma Fleischman ’21, who scored for the current girls 2nd hockey team in a comeback win over Lawrence Academy in February. Inset: From the 1984 Brooks girls ice hockey team photo, Marianne (Augot) Fleischman ’87, P’19, P’21.
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B RO O KS CONNECTIONS
Giving Day Win! The third annual Brooks Fund push broke new records. Many people express their love on February 14, Valentines Day, but Brooksians couldn’t wait: Alumni and other community members showed up in force a day early, February 13, to donate to the Brooks Fund on the school’s third annual Giving Day. Brooksians donated $193,580, with $178,290 of the total coming from 724 alumni gifts. These figures resoundingly top GIVING DAY last year’s totals. In 2017, Brooks RESULTS earned $161,000 with 629 gifts from TOTAL alumni. They also give Brooks a AMOUNT RAISED: defining win over Giving Day competition The Governor’s Academy. Govs notched 688 alumni gifts. ALUMNI DONATIONS: Brooks will again fly its flag on the Govs campus flagpole for one day. Brooksians also rallied to support NUMBER OF ALUMNI GIFTS: another contest: The Brooks class with the highest rate of participation in Giving Day was awarded a AVERAGE DONATION AMOUNT: chair plaque in the theater of the new Center for the Arts. This temptation may have been critical to the day’s success, as classmates reached out to each other over the course of the day to encourage class participation. The classes of 1975 and 2010 each notched 59 percent class participation (see sidebar), and each class will receive a chair plaque for their efforts. The Brooks Fund accounts for approximately 10 percent of the school’s annual operating budget. It funds every element of day-to-day life on campus, from classroom supplies to athletic equipment, and it is vital to the continued vibrancy of the Brooks experience.
$193,580 $178,290 724
$258
BATTLE OF THE ABBOTTS Chris Abbott ’75, P’10, P’14 and his daughter, Lowell Abbott ’10, must be cut from the same cloth: Each was determined to win Giving Day’s class participation challenge, and each spent a large part of their day rallying their class — when they weren’t poking good-naturedly at each other, that is. The Abbotts tirelessly combed through their phone and email contacts, urging classmates to participate in Giving Day. New alumni board member Lowell, though, also found time to distract her father, who formerly served as school trustee and alumni board president, by Facetiming him in an attempt to tie up his use of his phone. Chris, who began the day focused on defeating the “arch-nemesis” class of 1985, which includes his sister Alexandra Abbott and which is managed by school trustee Craig Ziady ’85, P’18, P’20, reports that he didn’t see Lowell’s attack coming. “Little did I know that [the class of 1985] was not to be our nemesis this day, but rather the upstart class of 2010,” Chris reflects. “Those still wet behind the ears, Snap Gramming, Insta-chatting, Book Facing, group memes, conference chatters using all that darned new technology, had vaulted themselves into the lead with [the class of 1975].” When the dust settled, the class of 1975 and the class of 2010 had ended in a dead heat at 59 percent participation. The class of 1985 finished a close second, with 53 percent participation. “I congratulate Craig and Lowell and their classes on a contest well fought,” says Chris. “The tie is great for Brooks, and I cannot imagine anyone I’d rather share it with than the classes of 2010 and 1985.” Lowell echoes her father’s sentiments, and adds that she launched such a fearsome campaign because of her “absolute love for Brooks and the importance of Brooks to our family. I love sharing that with my dad.”
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BRO O KS CON NECT I O NS
ALU MNI NEWS
A Hello, and a Goodbye
As one Brooksian ascends to the national stage in his sport, another bids farewell. Anthony Purpura ’04 turned heads on the football field at Brooks: He was named to the All-ISL team as a player, and also received NEPSAC All-Scholastic recognition as a wrestler. He’s turning heads again now, but in a new sport. Purpura took the lessons he learned at Brooks and applied them to the rugby pitch. Now, he’s a two-year member of the United States men’s national rugby team, known as the Eagles. In March, the Eagles beat Uraguay, 61–19, to take the Americas Rugby Championship (ARC) for the second year in a row. Purpura has also signed with the San Diego Legion, one of the teams in Major League Rugby, a professional American rugby league that kicks off its inaugural season this spring. Purpura props for the American side. He began playing rugby at the University of Maine, where he represented the Northeast at the Collegiate All-Stars Tournament. He then played in New Zealand with Mid Canterbury Rugby Union and the Ashburton Celtics before making his homecoming to play with Boston Rugby. Purpura made his Eagles debut in 2010, and made a second appearance in 2012, before making the national roster
again last year and helping secure the ARC championship. He has also staked a claim in the coaching world, patrolling the sidelines at Boston College, Harvard University and Columbia University. Charlie Davies ’04, meanwhile, announced his retirement from professional soccer in early March. The former striker for the national team played in the 2008 Olympic Games and was a pivotal part of the U.S. attack preceding the 2010 World Cup, before a 2009 car accident derailed his promising career and sent him into a lengthy and challenging period of recovery. Davies worked his way back to the elite ranks. Although he did not return to the national team, he went on to play for MLS’s D.C. United before signing with the New England Revolution. He faced down another challenge in the form of a cancer diagnosis in 2016. Happily, Davies surmounted that challenge as well: He announced in the fall 2017 Bulletin class notes that he had been cancer-free for a year. Brooks is proud to call Davies one of our own. His drive, determination and sheer will are inspiring, and he is a role model to Brooksians of all ages.
HAVE YOU R ECENTLY PUBLISHED A BOOK? Has your album just dropped? Tell us about it. We want to hear about your creative successes, and we want to highlight your work in an upcoming issue of the Bulletin. To have your work considered for inclusion in a future installment of Brooks Works, please send a review copy to:
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Editor, Brooks Bulletin 1160 Great Pond Road North Andover, MA 01845
The magazine does not purchase the materials listed in Brooks Works. The materials we receive will be donated to the Luce Library or another appropriate outlet. The Bulletin reserves the right to reject works that, in the judgment of the editorial staff, do not promote the mission or values of Brooks School or the Bulletin.
Its a Birthday Girl World The singer-songwriter Starshell ’01, formerly known as LaNeah Menzies, certainly has something to sing about these days. When she was previously profiled in the Bulletin (see spring 2016 Bulletin, page 56), her business, Birthday Girl World, was just getting off the ground. Now, business is booming: Starshell’s website, birthdaygirlworld.com, saw more than 200,000 visitors in January 2018 and has had, she told the website TechCrunch, more than 250 million impressions since its launch three years ago. Birthday Girl World recently raised $1 million in financing in order to help its expansion efforts. Birthday Girl World, Starshell told the Bulletin in 2016, began as a clothing line featuring bright colors and bold lettering marking its wearer as someone celebrating her birthday. It’s evolved into more, though: Starshell’s goal is to form a community that encourages its members to celebrate life, joy and friendship, with an eye toward promoting mental health and wellness.
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B RO O KS CONNECTIONS
When Endicott Met Earp A minister and a gambler walk into a bar, and the rest is history.
1881 fire destroyed the bank that held the church’s building fund. Bill Endicott writes:
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Tombstone, Ariz.
One good Earp story is that when Peabody was raising funds for his church, he entered one of the town’s saloons, as he did on occasion, and walked up to the table at which Wyatt Earp was playing poker. Earp had been winning, and a pile of chips lay before him. When Peabody asked for a donation, Earp pushed a stack of chips his way, adding “Here’s my contribution, Mr. Peabody.” Then Earp turned to the other players and commanded, “Now each of you has to give the same.” And they did.
Bill Endicott ’63, distant relative of Brooks School and Groton School founder the Rev. Endicott Peabody, wrote in to highlight a fascinating piece of family and school history. In 1882, early in his career, Peabody spent six months ministering in Tombstone, Ariz., where he founded St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and became friends with the legendary lawman, gambler and gunfighter Wyatt Earp.
St. Paul’s, which stands less than two blocks from the famous O.K. Corral, the site of the skirmish between the Earp brothers and a gang of outlaws, is still active today, and is the oldest Protestant church building in Arizona. Earp and Peabody are further intertwined, though: Earp donated a hefty sum of his gambling winnings to Peabody to help fund the construction of the church after an
According to St. Paul’s, Peabody and Earp remained friendly for years after they each left Tombstone: Earp eventually decamped to California, and Peabody returned to Massachusetts to found Groton in 1884, but the two kept up correspondence for some time after. Peabody’s imprint remains on St. Paul’s and on other area churches: Some Episcopal churches in Arizona hold a feast day in Peabody’s honor on November 17, the date of his death.
SQUAD GOALS
Brooks alumni took over Brooks Arena on January 20 for the annual alumni hockey game. These four Brooksians laced up and took to the ice to relive their glory days. From left to right: Brendan McDonough ’12, Packy Jones ’12, Nick Potter ’12 and Dan Conway ’11.
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BOSTON
REGIONAL RECEPTION Brooks hosted its annual Boston reception on February 1 at the Boston College Club. Alumni, parents and friends of all ages gathered to hear from Head of School John Packard, enjoy hors d’oeuvres and cocktails, and spend time together in a gorgeous location.
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01 Head of School John Packard H’87, P’18, P’21 addresses the crowd at the Boston Reception. 02 Daniel Smith (left) and Michael Schelzi represented the class of 2013. 03 Catherine Ehrlich ’10 (left) and Aaron Morris. 04 Patrick Gordon P’13 (left) and Jim Yameen ’80. 05 The class of 2006 featured appearances from (left to right) Jess Phelan, Kate Sullivan Edge and Lexi Caffrey. 06 Carl Berni ’75 (left) speaks with W. J. Patrick Curley ’69. 07 Loubna Garozzo ’96, P’21 (left) met up with Alexis Mallen McManamon ’99. 08 The reception gave Brooksians a chance to reconnect, including, here, Annie McClelland ’12 (right). 09 Members of the class of 2004 reunite. From left to right: Jamie Waters, Mike Fucito, Eric Amoroso, Matt Mues. 10 John Stone ’79, P’11 (left) and Emily Stone P’11. 11 Meaghan Flanagan ’13 (left) and reception host committee member Bill Flanagan P’13, P’16, P’18. 12 Tom Barenboim P’18, P’21 (center) and Kori Barenboim P’18, P’21 (right), members of the reception host committee. 13 From left to right: Chair of the Mathematics Department Dave Price P’17, P’19; Elaine Gill P’19; reception host committee members Dana D’Orio P’20, P’21 and Chris D’Orio P’20, P’21; Tracy Fulgione P’14, P’19; Geoff Fulgione ’77, P’14, P’19; and Niki Price P’17, P’19. 14 Steve Caron P’15 (center).
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PARTING SHOT
“Boy With Striped Shirt,” Irish Traveller, Ballinasloe, Galway, Ireland 2017.
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This photograph by Joseph-Philippe Bevillard ’85 is one of two of his photos named “Pic of the Day” by “PhotoVogue Italia.” At press time, 42 of Bevillard’s photos had been named to the “Best of PhotoVogue 2018” list. Bevillard had also been named one of 15 finalists to be considered for inclusion in the publication’s curated Leica “When Ethics Meet Aesthetics” exhibit, scheduled to show in Milan in June. Bevillard explains that Irish Travellers are an ethnic group in Ireland. Their culture and nomadic way of life distinguish them from the “settled” population. “Although Travellers provide useful services as they move through towns,” Bevillard continues, “their style of dress, lack of education due to being on the move, and the occasional feud between clans often results in discrimination by the larger population.”
B RO O KS BUL L E TI N
* We’re almost at our goal, but we need your help.
B RO O KS SC HO O L BROOKS FUND On page 28 of this issue, you met seven pairs of Brooks roommates and got to peek inside their dorm rooms. On page 18, you read about the championship-caliber success of our boys 1st basketball and girls 1st squash teams. On page 14, you read about the dedication the cast and company of the winter musical showed in traveling to The Pike School every day for rehearsal. The Brooks Fund helped pay for that busette, those uniforms, that dorm food. The Brooks Fund, which supplies approximately 10 percent of the school’s annual operating budget, is critical. The Brooks Fund allows our students to reach for their dreams and challenge their limits on the stage, on the court and as part of our community. Give to the Brooks Fund today. Three easy ways to give: Credit Card — Check — Stock. Visit www.brooksschool.org to make your gift.
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Please join us and your fellow Brooksians for the following upcoming events: May 11–12, 2018 Alumni Weekend May 27, 2018 Lawn Ceremony May 28, 2018 Prize Day June 14, 2018 New York Young Alumni Happy Hour June 21, 2018 Boston Young Alumni Happy Hour October 26–27, 2018 Parents Weekend
As part of their study of damage to skin caused by the sun’s rays, members of the Winter Term class “Health and Human Disease” looked at their own faces under a light that detected skin damage. Quin Healy ’20, pictured here, had a surprising result: Her face was still marked with paint she had applied before going to a school dance several days before this photo was taken.
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