Students Adapting, Learning, Growing

AN ORAL HISTORY: STUDENTS AND THE PANDEMIC RESILIENCE

“Their resilience is a superpower.” – Math teacher Heather Berry

THE PANDEMIC has hurled experiences at young people that adults two and three times their age struggle to cope with. Put to this test, teenagers learned things about themselves, and about life, that many adults are still working on.

Some may have been hurt to varying degrees, but they have grown wiser and stronger. Prevailing through a pandemic, they are better prepared for what life may bring next. Here on the next 12 pages, largely in their own words, are their stories.

Illustration by student artist Isabella Blanco ‘21

Principal photography for this section by Kyle Han ‘20

“A giant curve ball thrown at me.”

– Beck Almawaldi

FEVER DREAM

“I was preparing for the Science Olympiad state competition when Covid hit. It was supposed to be the Saturday that school closed. I was really crushed. It felt like a fever dream.” – Teodora Dragic, Class of 2021

Teodora continued her Weston Research Scholar project, studying the atomic structure of topological insulators, at home with a graduate student sending her readings taken in a college lab. Teodora is now a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania. • • •

“It was a giant curve ball thrown at me. I missed my friends, and it was harder to study and do my work from home. My friends checked up on me, and I checked up on them. We made the best of it.” – Beck Almawaldi, Class of 2021, now a freshman at Binghamton University

• • •

“It wasn’t the Tech we’re famous for, its size…there was no one in the hallways.” – Maddox Clarke, Class of 2022, Biological Sciences major

• • •

“In most of my classes, I was the only one. The rest of my class was on the laptop on the teacher’s desk.” – Samuel Greenberg, Class of 2022, Law and Society major

Sam Ashkenas

Maddox Clarke Intellect Chen

ADAPTING

“The days blended together, and there was a very narrow tunnel of things every day. You had to make an active effort to make time for the things you cared about. I would go for a walk, or hang with my siblings, to make each day a little different.” — Darlene Uzoigwe, Class of 2021, now a freshman at Harvard University • • •

“I made friends on Instagram, I just wrote to as many people as possible. Group chats formed. That’s how I made my first set of friends.” — Samuel Ashkenas, a freshman last year • • •

“Texting or seeing [classmates and friends] on Zoom became the highlight of my day – knowing they were always there to support me kept me motivated.” — Intellect Chen, Class of 2022, Architecture major

• • • “To maintain a positive mindset, I took time every day to do something I enjoyed, whether making myself a good cup of coffee, playing video games, or calling my friends.

Social media was a great help. Group chats, friend groups, spontaneous chats, conversations on the side while we were doing homework. Maybe our interactions came in a Zoom call, but we could still communicate.” — Lucy Vuong, Class of 2022, Applied Mathematics major

“I made each day a little different.”

Darlene Uzoigwe

“Social media was a great help.”

Sam Byars (l) and Ethen Wang (r)

Wait Til Next Year

CALL THEM phantom freshmen. Not once in their first year did Samuel Byars or Ethen Wang set foot in school. Attending class from home, they were Tech-less Technites.

They were among the nearly 8 in 10 Tech students who went remote. All the dramas, traumas, exhilarations and anxieties of a normal freshman year were experienced online. They met no teachers or potential friends in person. There were no cafeteria lunches, or mad dashes from second floorto eighth to change classes.

Samuel had seen the school once, for his eighth grade tour. Ethen had never been closer than the Chucky Cheese at Atlantic Terminal Mall: “I’ve seen it from pictures – a big brick building in downtown Brooklyn with a giant radio tower.”

But these are resourceful young men. Ethen applied online to become class secretary. Samuel, a longtime online gamer, knew how to develop a virtual community of friends.

They and all 1,500 freshmen followed the classic Tech firstyear curriculum: geometry, biology, English, design & drafting for production, and more. The school offered guidance services, tutoring, peer mentoring, and extracurricular and social activities virtually.

The two young men faced sophomore year with optimism. “The Tech I thought I’d be going to can exist,” Samuel said. “The main thing I’m looking forward to is … everything.” ■

Easy Decision

COVID-19 literally tore Amy Delgado’s family apart.

Dad and an older brother remained in Queens for work and college. Amy, her sister, and her mom repaired to a rural family home three hours away.

As the pandemic raged, only doctor appointments and major family events brought Amy back to the city. Then one day an e-mail arrived: a studio appointment for her senior yearbook portrait photo to be taken. In Brooklyn.

“Mom,” she told her mother firmly, “I have to go.”

Somewhat reluctantly, Mom drove her in. The scene was surreal: ultraviolet lights, temperature scans, instant cleaning of anything touched by human hands. Amy was instructed to wait her turn socially distanced, and to drop her mask only when the camera snapped.

With that, Amy was officially in the yearbook and an alumna-to-be.

“I didn’t want people to not remember that I went to Tech,” she said later. “My picture in the Blueprint is the evidence that I was a Brooklyn Tech student.”

Amy, there you are forever on page 116, forever an alum.

Nafisa Azizi lost two relatives to Covid.

LOSS AND GROWTH

Numerous members of Nafisa Azizi’s family, in New York and in Bangladesh, got Covid. Two died.

“I had to do my college applications while people around me were getting sick, and I had to be a role model for my younger siblings. It was a lot to go through mentally and emotionally. It made me reconsider my priorities: It all goes before school. It is important to put your loved ones and health before everything.”

Nafisa, Class of 2021, applied to fifteen colleges. With six admissions offers, she chose Rice University.

When Maylin Rosales ’22’s Weston Research Scholar project – on ozone’s effect on grass germination – shut down, she didn’t. She replicated her lab setup at home, building a miniature greenhouse in her living room. Stuck on how to find an ozone dispenser during a pandemic, she tracked down a government scientist in Colorado who advised her where to find one. • • •

Pre-Covid, stage crew member Cliff Stern ’22 handled spotlights, fog machines, and sets. Tech’s 2020-21 virtual productions handed him new challenges: livestreaming, running chat boards, creating Zoom backgrounds.

“The pandemic, and everything that came with it, was a horrible experience. But amidst it, I was able to learn new skills and work with new people to ensure that ‘the show went on.’”

• • •

Heeyun Kim and Katelyn Woo reached the finals of the state Science and Engineering Fair, but it was cancelled. Undaunted, they wrote a paper about their work: “The Development of a Super-Hydrophobic Surface Using Electrodeposition and Precipitation of a Polymer Chain.” It was accepted for publication by a peer-reviewed science journal.

Heeyun is now a freshman at Columbia University; Katelyn is at Binghamton University. • • •

“My parents were both working and needed me to help take care of my younger sister and brother. Maintaining my own grades while helping them with school was challenging. I learned to appreciate everything I have. There are a lot of things in this world I took for granted.” – Anesa Azad ‘21 , now a freshman at Boston University

Maylin Rosales

Cliff Stern

Anesa Azad

Heeyun Kim

“Built-in breaks kept me motivated.” “I’ve always pushed for perfection.”

Andrew Zhou Elsie Park

Matthew Mentis-Cort

LESSONS LEARNED

“There is no such thing as adults. When it comes down to it, no one really knows what they’re doing because life can be so fickle. There will be no one who has the right answer all the time. So you shouldn’t hold yourself up to such high standards that you are afraid to mess up. You will come out of the situation just fine.” — Matthew Mentis-Cort, now a freshman at Cornell University • • • “I’ve always pushed myself for perfection. This pandemic showed me that there are times when my work will fall short, or that I may not always be able to handle all my tasks at any given moment. I did the very best I could to survive outside of normal circumstances.” — Elsie Park, now a freshman at Grove City College

• • •

“Instead of seeing difficult circumstance as something that holds you back, see it as something for change, opportunity, and innovation.” — Andrew Zhou, now a freshman at the University of Rochester • • •

“Before, I was always moving around. I was dependent on my friends for validity. When school closed, I stopped. I stabilized and I homed in on my mental health and academics. I got a deeper understanding of my schoolwork and myself.” – Saira Masud, junior Aeronautics major

• • •

“It’s good to be productive and push yourself to do the best, but it’s also super important to take the time for yourself. You don’t want to push yourself to your limit and have mental breakdowns.” – Joanna Lin, now a freshman at Cornell University ■

Samuel Greenberg

Teodora Dragic The College Challenge THE TEENAGE COMING of age ritual of touring college campuses before applying was stopped frozen for 2020-21. Consider senior Teodora Dragic, who applied to 27 schools but visited none.

She had hoped to see many: “You see students walking around; you see what the communities are like. Is the environment cutthroat or supportive? Would I have access to the kind of science research I was doing at Tech?”

Teodora watched two dozen of the online virtual tours colleges were offering as a substitute. She said later, “There’s always the what-if: what new knowledge might I have come across? But I made the best of the situation and took advantage of what was presented.”

Twenty colleges accepted Teodora. She is now a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania.

• • •

Elsie Park, who led middle-school tours at Tech, knew the value of in-person visits. When that option vanished, she implemented Plan B:

Elsie reached out to graduated Technites at colleges on her radar for unvarnished intel. She studied the “confessions” social media pages where students dish the real scoop on their school. She found her new home at Grove City College. • • •

Bariat Bashiru was able to visit just a few schools. “I am not sure how I’d fit into most campuses. Some people say you can walk onto a campus and know it’s a place where you could exist,” she said. Bariat took her touring virtual and landed a spot at Washington University.

• • •

Samuel Greenberg said of the online tours: “You can’t put the vibe of a school into words or a PowerPoint.” Sam gets all over New York in his wheelchair, but he’d like to check the accessibility situation at the schools he’s considering. Fortunately, he gets a second chance: he’s a senior this year. ■

Denis at his desk in Moscow

Time-Zoned

SOPHOMORE DENIS KHORUZHIK and junior Nicholas Di Girolamo went remote for the pandemic year … really, really remote.

Exemplifying a citywide mini-trend, they attended online school an ocean apart from Brooklyn.

Denis, an aero major, spent six weeks at his extended family’s home in Russia. Math major Nicholas stayed with relatives in Italy for three months. Navigating time differences of up to eight hours, they attended class, did assignments, and took part in extracurriculars.

“Reliable and apparently seamless” is how chemistry teacher Dr. MacRae Maxfield described Denis’ weekly participation in Science Olympiad, the rigorous citywide scholastic competition. …Except for the time Denis went missing for one afterschool session: it took place past midnight Moscow time, the hour when Russian authorities shut down the internet. Still, he earned an uncommonly high ranking in the event.

Class time in Brooklyn was dinner time in Russia. Denis would occasionally flip his camera off while his grandmother served him sausages and dumplings.

How was attending school from Moscow different than back home?

“Colder,” Denis told us.

• • •

Nicholas, in Rome, developed a routine: after classes ended at 8:00 PM Italy time, he joined his family for dinner. Then, homework. Midnight wasn’t bedtime: it was socializing online time with school friends already awake for the next day. As a result Nicholas soon found himself doing regular all-nighters.

Most students and his teachers knew his whereabouts, but any doubt was erased the time a Roman ambulance’s siren blared through an open window into his laptop microphone.

“Where are you, Italy?” asked one incredulous classmate. ■

Nicholas Di Girolamo

For The Win

Strategies that got students through the year

“I liked to do things that made me happy: roller skating, embroidery, reading, and dancing around.” – Bariat Bashiru, now a freshman at Washington University in St. Louis

“Going outside into my backyard or an uncrowded park nearby calmed me down and cleared my head.” — Nafisa Azizi “Do the work. Fall in love with it, find a routine, stick with it, and hold on tight. It gets better from there.” – David Li, now a freshman at Boston University

“If it was due on the 19th, I tried to finish it on the 17th so I didn’t have to worry those two days.” – Katelyn Woo

“Not watching that last YouTube video or playing that last game.” — Matthew Mentis-Cort “A to-do list. Nothing is more satisfying than finishing a task and crossing out a few words on a sheet of paper.”

— Intellect Chen

“Before sleep, I ran a simulation of the next day in my head.” — Heeyun Kim

“Things that made me happy.”

Bariat Bashiru

“Do the work.”

David Li