February 2022 | The Evergreen, Greenhill School

Volume 57, Issue 4

the

Brave New World

Evergreen

February 9, 2022

A new technology policy frames attempts to balance student

safety and network security with personal privacy. Pages 10-11

Everything Greenhill

Photo Illustration by Nate Stitt and Emma Nguyen

Hope Squad

Campus Legend

Academic Edge

The launch of a new Upper School program spotlights student mental health amid the stresses of COVID-19. Page 2

From the classroom to the board room, Tom Perryman ’81 continues to inspire and shape Greenhill culture. Page 6

Is the use of off-campus private tutors giving an unfair advantage to the most affluent students? Page 9

Informing Greenhill since 1966

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News

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Hope Squad Targets Mental Health Sophia Li

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ver the past two years, students have battled the mental toll of COVID-19 on top of traditional high school burdens. Now, Greenhill is launching an Upper School Hope Squad to facilitate community awareness and communication about mental health.

Hope Squad is a Utah-based program with about 1,200 groups nationwide.

According to the organization’s website, Hope Squad is a “peer-to-peer suicide prevention program” comprised of teachers and nominated students.

There are three faculty advisers for the new group: Genie Burke, who teaches Upper School history; Allie Chase, an Upper School speech teacher and associate speech and debate coach; and Director of Social Emotional Learning and Wellness Shanti Majefski.

For Majefski, addressing suicidal thoughts begins with educating students on healthy coping mechanisms.

“I have been in the mental health field for over 20 years, and one thing I feel like the mental health field does not do well is providing education and strategies to e v e r y o n e ,” Majefski said.

“It seems like you have to be in a crisis to get the tools for social and emotional development.”

Campus Conversations Since the Hope Squad’s official introduction to the Greenhill community in November, the advisers have been working behind the scenes to assemble a strong student-oriented program.

“In order to bring a Hope Squad to a school, you have to partner with a local mental health agency,” Majefski said. “The agency we are partnering with is the Grant Halliburton Foundation. They are providing us the support and resources needed to bring Hope Squad to Greenhill.”

The Halliburton foundation works with the national Hope Squad, which helps advisers with suicide prevention training, newsletters and monthly meetings.

Squad Members Student representatives play a key role in a successful Hope Squad, Majefski said.

The hope is that students will face fewer mental health challenges behind closed doors if they have trusted peer representatives in which they can confide, Majefski said. “[The Hope Squad members’] responsibilities are really just to connect with peers and be visible by being someone that peers may come to,” Majefski said. “The key piece with Hope Squad is really embedding it within the culture of our student body and getting our student body to a place of, ‘I share this struggle with someone, and then I take the steps to get help.’”

The selection process began with a survey asking all Upper School students to nominate three peers who they would feel most comfortable talking to. Hope Squad advisers contacted nominated students and invited them to an introductory orientation.

Hope Squad advisers are currently finalizing the list of nominees and scheduling Hope

Squad meetings.

Hope Squad advisers will hold bimonthly meetings to help the nominated squad members fulfill their duties.

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I have been in the mental health field for over 20 years, and one thing I feel like the mental health field does not do well is providing education and strategies to everyone. It seems like you have to be in a crisis to get the tools for social and emotional development.”

“Initially, they will get some pretty intense suicide prevention training. Our Hope Squad members will be trained on how to recognize signs that someone is struggling with suicidal ideation,” Majefski said. “One meeting will be focused on the Hope Squad curriculum. The other meeting will be dedicated toward community awareness activities and using time to plan those.”

Although students take the reins with activity planning, Greenhill hopes to extend activities to students across all grade levels.

Possible community activities include creating a compliment board or a gratitude wall, sending positive quotes and writing supportive letters.

“We may have some activities that are schoolwide, so preschool until twelfth grade,” Majefski said. “We may have some activities that are division-specific. Ultimately, it will be up to the students on how to bring about community awareness.”

Student Response Some Greenhill students have high expectations for this new initiative.

“I think it is rare that a school has a specific program dedicated toward suicide prevention,” sophomore Iyad Mohammed said. “Just knowing that there is a support system where students can talk about mental health is really assuring.”

Other students have expressed dissatisfaction with some aspects of the creation and rollout of the Hope Squad.

“It just turned into a popularity contest, and it is going to be hard to open up to someone who runs in a very different social circle than you do,” sophomore Andy Simpson said of the nominating process for student representatives.

O t h e r students expressed similar concerns.

“If I am not feeling great, I will usually talk to a close friend or counselor,” senior Rachel Wegener said. “I do not know why I would talk about it to a person that I’m not even close with. Mental health issues are usually pretty private.”

Majefski says she understands these concerns and notes that Hope Squad members are not the only communication outlet students have.

“Hope Squad shifts the culture so that people reach out to get the support they need, whether Graphic by Emma Nguyen they are reaching out to a Hope Squad member, an adviser or just another teacher that they trust,” Majefski said.

Students envision alternatives with a similar goal as Hope Squad to ensure the mental wellness of Greenhill students.

“As a way to make it more helpful to people who are struggling, a chat room on MyGreenhill that is anonymous on both ends, as well as sharing outside resources, would be better,” Simpson said. “That would be a lot better than publishing names and saying, ‘Oh, you can talk to them.’”

Although there is some uncertainty in the community about the Hope Squad, Majefski says that its end goal is simple: to foster a healthy community environment where people feel empowered to seek mental health support.

“There are a lot of people that are okay with talking about their struggles, but not okay with taking the next step and getting help from others,” Majefski said. “Hope Squad focuses on developing a lot of skills that will be useful just in dealing with life in general and beyond Greenhill.”

For the Hornets This Week !"#$%&'()*+,-.*/0 Southwest Preparatory Conference Winter Championships in Fort Worth

+$1&'()*+,-.*// SPC Winter Championships Winter Break (School Closed)

2'3#$&'()*+,-.*/4 SPC Winter Championships Winter Break (School Closed)

2#5&'()*+,-.*/6 Winter Break (School Closed)

785&'()*+,-.*/9 Winter Break (School Closed) Valentine’s Day

:,&5,%&'()*+,-.*/; Senior Moms’/ Special Friends’ Breakfast Brunch

This Month * +,-.*/< Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District Softball Tournament

+,-.*/= Greenhill Auction Coffee Meetup Texas Private School Music Educators Association Band Clinic CFB ISD Softball Tournament

+,-.*/> Winter Formal at Christie’s Banquet Hall TPSMEA Band Clinic CFB ISD Softball Tournament

+,-.*46 Executive Committee meeting

+,-.*49 Primer Play

+,-.*4; TPSMEA North Solo/ Ensemble Contest Hope Squad

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Evergreen Ever the

News

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2020 Redux: Omicron Triggers Deja Vu Avery Franks

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n Dec. 17, most Upper School students gathered in Rose Hall – one of the few places on campus where they were required to wear masks – for the annual Holiday Sing-Along. Students left for Winter Break under the assumption that the relaxed COVID-19 protocols would carry into the new year.

On Jan. 2, amid a surge in omicron cases, Head of School Lee Hark sent families an email detailing new protocols and increased restrictions. Students were again required to wear masks indoors, assemblies became virtual and contact tracing shifted from individual emails to close contacts to daily grade-level reports of positive cases.

“We remain committed to offering an on-campus learning experience, but if case numbers rise (either among our student or employee population), we will consider closing classrooms, grade levels or entire divisions as necessary to reduce the spread of infection,” Hark wrote in the email.

However, with omicron, while the risk of getting infected is much higher, the threat of getting really sick if you are vaccinated and boosted is much lower.”

New contact tracing protocols allow a shortened seven-day isolation period for vaccinated people if they can produce a negative PCR test after the fifth day.

A New Normal More students and faculty tested positive in the first weeks of January than at any other point during the pandemic, forcing many to go online for days at a time.

Staying In Person While concern about students contracting COVID-19 is one of the factors that would cause Greenhill to revert to remote learning, administrators believe that a lack of teachers – due to them caring for a sick family member or being sick themselves – is the more pressing issue.

Except for the first grade going remote for three days in January, the school has remained in-person since returning to campus after the break.

“I think what we’ve discovered from last year is that remote learning is not the best and that we really want students to be in person as much as possible,” said Head of Upper School Trevor Worcester. “The thing that might trigger us to go to remote [learning] would be more a lack of faculty on campus to teach rather than the number of students online.”

The omicron spike has set case numbers soaring across the nation and within the Greenhill community. University of California Davis School of Medicine epidemiologist Lorena Garcia says the omicron variant is much more transmissible than the delta variant due to a higher viral load.

Omicron’s transmissibility translated into a surge in cases at Greenhill immediately following Winter Break.

There were 48 cumulative COVID-19 cases during this school year before Dec. 17. By Jan. 31, that number had surged to 393.

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I felt very disconnected while I was online because it’s hard for a teacher to have to accommodate only one or two people. I would be fine with the school saying that people online are just silent learners but a lot of times it felt like the teacher would forget that they had students online and wouldn’t speak up or move the camera.”

“I hope that, in teaching online, I’ve become much more explicit about what the class is doing and why,” said Upper School English Department Chair Joel Garza. “80 minutes is a long time, and it’s even longer when you’re at home.

I can imagine that a student online might feel very isolated during class when all they’re doing is sitting and listening.”

Greenhill administrators say there are no plans to return to a hybrid model. The school expects that most students will attend class in person unless the student or someone in their household tests positive for COVID-19.

“Remote learning is a limited tool that we’re using in a very limited way,” Hark said. “We’re fortunate that we have it, but unless something dramatic happens, we’re going stay in person. Individual families have come to me with significant circumstances that are unique to them, and we try to help them on a case-by-case basis, but we are not offering an online option for anyone that wants to stay home.”

Administrators have told families and faculty that they expect the omicron wave in the United States and Dallas area to peak rapidly and then sharply decline, following trends in places such as South Africa. The school expects to be able to roll back protocols again in the coming weeks.

“It’s tough to say when exactly we will begin loosening up again,” Worcester said. “What I’m reading more broadly is, because of the number of cases, there is an idea that omicron may help us reach this so-called herd immunity if another variant doesn’t quickly come into play. If we see that our numbers are down and everyone is returning from quarantine, we might be able to roll back things sooner than later.”

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I think what we’ve discovered from last year is that remote learning is not the best and that we really want students to be in person as much as possible.

The thing that might trigger us to go to remote [learning] would be more a lack of faculty on campus to teach rather than the number of students online. “

The increased threat of a reversion to remote learning has raised concerns among students. Many students say they prefer to attend in-person classes because they find it difficult to stay engaged and interact with their peers while learning from home.

“I really don’t think online school is an effective way to learn,” freshman Mayer Sidikaro said. “You’re asking someone to do school on the same device where they play video games and on the same device where they can text their friends and do pretty much whatever they want at home.”

Because more than 90% of faculty are vaccinated, administrators feel that remaining in person is safer than it was during the early stages of the pandemic, when vaccines weren’t readily available.

“This time a year and a half ago, our faculty felt like they were at risk and physically in danger by being in-person,” Hark said. “We continue to think that COVID still poses a risk to some members of our community, otherwise we wouldn’t wear masks or try to maintain social distance.

just silent learners, but a lot of times, it felt like the teacher would forget that they had students online and wouldn’t speak up or move the camera.”

Reynolds says there was a lot of confusion about what her role in the classroom should’ve been while online because different teachers approached the situation in different ways. In some classes, she would be called on at random despite not being able to hear and follow along. In others, the teacher would simply turn the camera on and not address her for the rest of class.

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This time a year and a half ago, our faculty felt like they were at risk and physically in danger by being in-person.

We continue to think that COVID still poses a risk to some members of our community, otherwise we wouldn’t wear masks or try to maintain social distance.“

Graphic by Emma Nguyen

Unlike the hybrid model used in the 2020-2021 school year, where remote students participated actively in class, quarantined students are given access to a camera-view that is supposed to function as “a window into the classroom.”

Students are allowed to observe and follow along quietly, and teachers are not supposed to require participation from online students.

“I felt very disconnected while I was online because it’s hard for a teacher to have to accommodate only one or two people,” said senior Erin Reynolds, who monitored classes remotely during a recent quarantine after the holiday break.

“I would be fine with the school saying that people online are

While many in the Greenhill community feel that the omicron variant might finally be signaling the end of widespread restrictions caused by COVID-19, others believe the world will experience a cycle of hope and disappointment as new variants emerge for many years.

“After Winter Break, I felt complete deja vu from last year, and it was so upsetting because things finally started to feel more normal between Thanksgiving and Winter Break,” Reynolds said. “I think maybe we were too quick to go to ‘masks-encouraged’ when it was prime time for people to be traveling and getting exposed. I think overall we were just too quick to let our guard down.”

4 News

Evergreen Ever the

Ground Broken for New STEM Center Andrew Mann Ravi Vasan

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apping years of anticipation and discussion, Head of School Lee Hark presided over groundbreaking ceremonies for a new campus STEM + Innovation Center on Feb. 1 on the site of the former Agnich Science Building.

The ceremonies marked the launch of Greenhill’s Growing Stronger Together campaign, which Hark has described as “the most ambitious in the school’s history.” The campaign has already raised $44 million of a targeted $71 million aimed at enhancing school infrastructure as well as academic and athletic programs.

In his remarks before a gathering of school administrators, board members, faculty, donors and other guests, Hark shared plans for the STEM + Innovation Center as well as an indoor athletic practice facility, locker rooms and a new High Performance Center. The science, technology, engineering and math facility is scheduled to be complete in time for fall 2023 classes.

“A year and a half from today, we will look at this moment we spent together and remember its importance and its contribution to an even brighter future for our school,” Hark said in his remarks. “We are here to celebrate the launch of the Growing Stronger Together campaign, which will transform our campus with three major initiatives: of course, the STEM + Innovation Center, expanded and enhanced athletic facilities, and endowment funding to support the operation of these new spaces.”

The lead project donors recognized at the ceremony were Dr. Ralph de la Torre and E. Pierce Marshall Jr. ’86. De la Torre is chairman and chief executive officer of Steward Health Care, a community-based care network based in Massachusetts. His twin boys, Sebastian and Gabriel, are seventh-graders at Greenhill.

Marshall is the president and chief executive officer of Elevage Capital Management, an investment management company based in Dallas. Marshall and his daughter, Megan Marshall ’16, are both Greenhill alumni.

In his comments at the ceremony, de la Torre said that after moving to Dallas he was impressed with the achievements and message of Greenhill as a school. He said he is working to make Greenhill the best that it can be with projects like the new Innovation Center.

“It is going to revolutionize Greenhill,” de la Torre said of the Growing Stronger Together campaign. “Between the STEM + Innovation Center, the endowment growth and the new athletic facilities, I think this is going to be the best campus in all of the Dallas area.”

The new building will be named the Valdes STEM + Innovation Center, after de la Torre’s mother, Rosa Olimpia Valdes, who escaped Fidel Castro’s 1959 communist revolution in Cuba to start a new life in America. The main commons area of the new facility will bear the Marshall family name, which also adorns the Marshall Family Performing Arts Center.

The STEM Center project will be led by Daniel Lee of the Pennsylvania-based architectural firm of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson.

“The existing buildings that you guys have on campus have such a rich history of good design, and we feel compelled and honored to contribute to that,” Lee said.

Head of Athletics and Physical Education Jarrett Shine was on hand to unveil his plans for the new state-of-the-art sports facilities.

“The facilities that will be constructed will provide a sense of pride for our athletes and offer space for our programs to grow,” Shine said. “The pride an athletic facility creates can have a positive impact on our athletes and the overall performance of a team.”

Beijing Winter Olympics Chinese President Xi Jinping opened the pandemicera’s second Olympic Games on Feb. 4, with athletes Zhao Jiawen and Dinigeer Yilamujiang delivering the final flame. China’s selection of Yilamujiang, a member of the country’s Uyghur Muslim minority, for the opening ceremony was Beijing’s symbolic response to accusations of systematic oppression of the minority group.

Historic Aussie Open Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic, the world’s No. 1 men’s player, arrived in Melbourne as the defending champion of the Australian Open, the first of four annual Grand Slam tennis tournaments. Djokovic had a chance to make tennis history by winning his 21st Grand Slam title. Instead, after several days of legal wrangling, Djokovic was deported for refusing to get a COVID-19 vaccination.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the decision was made to keep people safe and to maintain the country’s strict COVID-related border restrictions.

Due to the immigration rules in Australia, Djokovic can’t reenter for the next three years, but Morrison said he might be allowed to reenter sooner.

With Djokovic out of the running, Rafael Nadal won the title, making him the first male to win 21 Grand Slam titles. Before this event, Djokovic, Nadal and Roger Federer had each won 20 major titles.

Ukraine Faces Invasion Threat Russia has moved more than 100,000 troops to its border with Ukraine in an escalation of tensions over its neighbor’s interest in joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Ukraine was part of the former Soviet Union, and its western tilt over recent years has been condemned by Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

The tensions have raised concerns of a broader conflict involving the United States and NATO. At a U.N. Security Council meeting on Jan. 31, Russia accused the U.S. of inciting panic. President Biden has continued to advocate a diplomatic solution, but he has repeatedly declared that he would defend Ukraine if Russia were to invade. Along with numerous U.S. senators, Biden has threatened severe economic sanctions against Russia if it continues to apply military pressure on Ukraine.

Islamic State Leader Dies The leader of the Islamic State group killed himself and members of his family by detonating a bomb during a Feb. 3 raid on his Syrian hideout by U.S. special operations forces, President Biden announced.

Over the past few weeks, Syria and Iraq have experienced a series of terrorist attacks conducted by the resurgent Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The biggest attack, on Jan. 20, targeted a Syrian prison that held over 3000 ISIS militants and 700 children. The operation consisted of two car bombs detonated outside the prison. Many detainees were freed during the attack, but over 500 people died.

With U.S. airstrikes and ground support, U.S.backed Kurdish-led forces managed to regain control of the prison after five days of fighting. However, this attack, along with the numerous raids and bombings throughout Syria and Iraq lead many to worry that the terrorist organization is regaining power and control.

Photos by Ravi Vasan

A HISTORIC DAY: The groundbreaking for the long-awaited Valdes STEM + Innovation Center occurred on Feb.1.

In addition to classrooms, the center will provide laboratories, engineering workspaces and a coffeeshop.

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Cam Kettles

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n Jan. 19, the Senate blocked the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act by a 52 to 48 margin. These bills would have established ballot access standards, made Election Day a national holiday and implemented an automatic voter registration program.

Setting aside the fact that the filibuster is illegitimate and the fact that Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema should seriously consider reevaluating their party affiliation, the outcome proves decisively that the right to vote is never safe.

For context, in the 2020 election, 66.8% of eligible voters voted. It was the highest turnout in over a decade and, still, about 80 million people stayed home. Even if the U.S. presidential election was determined by a popular vote, 7 million more votes were cast for Biden than Trump, which is less than 10% of the people that didn’t vote. As Mitch McConnell correctly stated, “this election actually was not unusually close.”

The point is that people who don’t vote matter a lot. Who they are and the reasons why they don’t vote matter even more.

Since the 2020 election, 19 Republicancontrolled legislatures have passed 34 laws that restrict voting. More than 400 have been introduced during the 2021 legislative session.

Most laws removed options for voting, such as removing polling locations and restricting who can use a mail-in ballot. Others added new identification requirements, shortened early voting, removed ballot-drop boxes and expanded the reasons someone could be taken off voter rolls.

In some states, including Texas, Georgia and Arizona, new laws change who runs elections and how election audits are conducted, making it possible for legislatures to subvert or nullify the results of an election entirely.

Most of these legislatures justify new restrictions by claiming fraud during the 2020 election, even though the election was, according to the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security, “the most secure [one] in American history.”

It didn’t matter what actually happened in the 2020 election. Attacking it was an excuse to pass voting laws. This is why many members of Congress and an even greater share of state representatives still refuse to acknowledge the election’s legitimacy.

In many ways, the state elections that

played out against the backdrop of the Trump defeat were a last stand for voting rights. After the 2020 census, state legislative majorities would be able to redraw their district lines to give themselves a massive electoral advantage. And while Joe Biden won the presidency, Democrats sustained a net lost of 133 state legislative seats, allowing Republicans to do what they eventually did: impose truly draconian restrictions to solve a problem they made up.

These laws are technically race-blind, but they still target people of color. The real explanation for what Republican lawmakers are doing is simple: they are terrified a changing country will unseat them.

Republicans know that people of color or people of lower socioeconomic status disproportionately support Democrats.

As the country becomes more diverse, Republicans will rely on suppression more and more.

“The Republican party is aware that in their current ideological formation, that if American democracy is modernized so that people have voting rights comparable to other democracies, they will lose control for a generation,” political analyst and international elections observer Lincoln Mitchell said in a 2021 interview with The Guardian. “They will basically be out of national politics.”

The point is that people who don’t vote matter a lot. Who they are and the reasons why they don’t vote matter even more.

The bill that Manchin and Sinema blocked would have stopped or at least minimized the impact of many of these new state laws. Such a bill probably won’t make it to a Senate vote again in Biden’s term.

While its failure is a massive blow to state Democrats hoping to win elections in 2022 and 2026, the broader problem isn’t about that. Any party that wants to limit democratic participation is a threat. Not just to their opponents, but to democracy as a whole.

Voter turnout is low now for many reasons. Maybe people don’t vote because they are privileged enough not to care.

Maybe it’s because they don’t feel their vote will make a difference.

But a lot of people do care and want to vote. Why in the world wouldn’t we let them?

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ost Americans can agree that the right to vote is undeniably crucial to maintaining democracy.

Additionally, most Americans agree that specific reforms need to be made in order to safeguard voting on the local, state and federal levels.

However, precisely what changes should be made only highlight the political divisions currently existing in our nation.

My perspective on this issue puts me at odds with most mainstream Republicans, but I simply cannot support the far right’s backing of more voter restrictions and tactics that unjustly gate-keep American polls. That being said, I’m also not in favor of the sweeping proposals from the left to federalize elections and essentially eliminate restrictions on voter registration, absentee balloting and the increasingly popular voteby-mail movement being promoted by the Democratic Party.

With the threat of further polarization looming, it seems to me that the only viable solution is a very limited and targeted approach on one of the most vulnerable areas of the American electoral system: the counting of electoral votes by Congress, a process that Donald Trump and his hardline supporters tried to hijack in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.

My perspective on this issue puts me at odds with most mainstream Republicans, but I simply cannot support the far right’s backing of more voter restrictions and tactics that unjustly gate-keep American polls.

The Electoral Count Act was put in place to ensure the peaceable transfer of power in 1887, around a decade after the contested election between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden.

Although the ambiguities of the law and its potential to provoke future conflict were concerning even at the time, the law was passed anyway and has been in place ever since.

The law empowers the vice president and members of Congress to record presidential election results that have

already been verified at the state level.

Prior to the 2020 presidential election, the powers invested in the vice president and Congress by the Electoral Count Act were largely seen as ceremonial. But during the 2020 election, Trump and his supporters exploited the shortcomings of this law in a way that nearly sank American democracy.

Desperate to overturn the victory of Democratic candidate Joe Biden, Trump argued that the vice president and Congress could reject the electoral votes of certain contested states and effectively send the decision back to state legislatures for review and possible reversal.

If that had occurred, Republicancontrolled state legislatures in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan would have overturned Biden’s victory and handed the election to Trump.

In an attempt to prevent the future abuse of the Electoral Count Act, two major efforts are underway in the U.S. Senate.

The Biden administration tried and failed to persuade the Senate to approve the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Enhancement Act. These Democratic bills, which were blocked by a Republican filibuster in the Senate, would let voters register and vote on the same day, create national standards for voting by mail, limit purges of voter rolls, make election day a holiday and restore and strengthen parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Given the refusal of Senate Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to vote to suspend the filibuster in order to pass the Democratic election proposals, those bills are effectively dead.

The other movement, led by a bipartisan group of U.S. senators, is a more scaled-back approach that would direct efforts towards rectifying the Electoral Count Act. This alone would not be enough to satisfy Democrats, but I find it to be an achievable goal for the near future. Given the current climate of rigid political deadlock, we must turn our concentration away from flashy and unrealistic plans for America’s future.

While reforming the Electoral Count Act wouldn’t solve every problem within the voting system, it takes a step toward more objective and agreeable change in America.

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Features

The Soul of Greenhill: Tom Perryman ’81

Photos courtesy of Tom Perryman and Andrew Mercurio; Photo illustration by Emma Nguyen

THE PERRYMAN LEGACY: Tom Perryman ‘81 has served in numerous administrative roles for over 35 years. Peers say he is the living embodiment of Greenhill’s core values.

Nate Stitt

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lose colleagues have described him as the greatest friend one will ever meet, a school historian and a lifelong advocate for social justice. Younger students might know him as the play-by-play announcer at Friday night football games.

Peers say he is the physical manifestation of what Greenhill represents.

He is Tom Perryman ’81.

Over the course of 50 years, Perryman has built on his years as a distinguished Greenhill student with two stints as a faculty member and administrator.

Since 2001, he has served as a senior administrator, first as assistant head of school and more recently as the associate head of school for mission, community and culture.

One of his signature initiatives is the school’s Heart of the Hill program, where students of all grades bond in group activities. He also heads the Greenhill Legends program, which celebrates faculty with at least 25 years of service to the school. In addition to those responsibilities, he teaches English classes that explore the intersection of human rights, social justice and literature.

“I can’t think of a person who is closer to the physical embodiment of our mission and core values than Mr. Perryman,” Head of School Lee Hark said. “He lives and breathes Greenhill.”

Roots Perryman first joined the Greenhill community at age three.

“I was the oldest of three boys being raised just up the road in Richardson,” Perryman said. “In the 1960s, Richardson was a very homogenous enclave. My mother wanted a more real-world experience for me, so she enrolled me here and I thrived.”

The young Tom Perryman brought a vibrant yet polite energy to the classroom, teachers recall.

“I remember this bright-eyed, energetic, enthusiastic young boy who really liked reading and writing,” said Lucinda Carter, Perryman’s sixth-grade language arts teacher. “He was a good listener in class who deeply cared. Once, we acted out some scenes from ‘Tom Sawyer.’

Ironically, he played Tom. I just will never forget that he acted with all the energy he had.”

Perryman says that Carter was fundamental in his development as a writer.

“When I look back at stuff that I wrote at 11 years old, I’m like, ‘Oh my God,’” Perryman said. “But she apparently saw something in me and made me feel special.

She really did inspire me.”

That year, he also met Susan Bauman ’81, who quickly became one of his closest friends.

“He’s a really loyal friend, and he always has been,” said Bauman, now an eighth-grade English teacher at Greenhill.

“He’s also always been loyal to Greenhill.”

Return to Campus Loyalty to Greenhill was on Perryman’s mind when he graduated in 1981 and, within months, hand-wrote letters to each member of his graduating class, urging them to give back to the school, Bauman recalled.

After graduation, Perryman carried his Greenhill values to Northwestern University. In January 1985, nearing graduation, he got a call from Phil Foote, Greenhill’s head of school from 1976 to 1992. Foote offered Perryman a job.

Perryman’s initial plan was to study journalism in graduate school, but in the meantime, he would teach sixth-grade English at Greenhill. There, he reconnected with his former sixth-grade teacher and his new boss: then Head of Middle School Lucinda Carter.

“Lucinda was just the most perfect boss to have as a young teacher because she was a teacher of teachers,” Perryman said. “Not only did she see something in me as a kid, but [she saw something in me] as a young teacher too. Lucinda is extraordinary in that way – she has a real gift, which inspired me to improve my teaching.”

With his upbeat and loving personality, Perryman says he embraced his new environment teaching sixth grade.

“I knew when he was in the sixth grade that he would be a leader,” Carter said.

“When he came back to work alongside me, I was able to witness that.”

Rise to Administration After teaching for three years, Perryman earned a promotion to language arts coordinator while continuing to teach.

Two years later, he was considering moving back to Chicago in the midst of a longdistance relationship when Foote asked him to become Lower School head.

“I was like, ‘What? This is crazy!’”

Perryman said. “I was 27 years old.”

That fall, Perryman walked into the Lower School as the youngest adult in the building.

“I was smart enough to know what I didn’t know,” Perryman said. “I had long conversations with the existing faculty

where I asked them what I could do for them rather than vice versa.”

At age 30, Perryman took on new responsibilities as head of admissions.

“The school was really starting to take off, and we had just grown into our prestige,” Perryman said. “After a couple of years of doing that, Peter Briggs, the new head of school, came to me and said, ‘I need you to be my assistant head of school.’”

For three years, he traveled the country in search of new faculty candidates.

“Hiring was like admissions for the adults on campus,” Perryman said. “I got to sell Greenhill and talk about how special this place was, in part by my burning love of this school.”

In 1997, as the school was preparing for its 50th anniversary, the board asked Perryman and his brother, David Perryman ’83, to write a book about the history of Greenhill.

“Tom went all over the country just for this book – interviewing people and pulling stories out of them for the book,” Bauman said.

“From Humble Beginnings: The First Fifty Years of Greenhill School” was published in 2000.

In his search for teaching candidates, Perryman met Boston-area native Andrew Mercurio, now an Upper School English teacher and one of his closest friends on campus.

“Mr. Perryman was such a significant reason for why I wanted to take a chance with Greenhill and take a Lower School teaching internship,” Mercurio said. “He has this effect naturally: people want to feel a connection to him.”

When Mercurio discovered his new Texas apartment was roach-filled, he says Perryman quickly offered to let him stay at his place for over two weeks.

“My parents constantly worried about me being down here by myself and away from them,” Mercurio said. “But I remember my mother telling me she felt better knowing that I was with Tom Perryman.”

In 1999, Perryman left Greenhill to enter the Masters of Theological Studies program at the McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago.

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If we … can truly live out our credos, this place could be magic.

“I didn’t think I’d ever be a minister,” Perryman said. “I just wanted to go to grad school again and just wrestle with hard

questions.”

A love of religion and desire for understanding human connection lay at the core of his decision.

“Tom understands that you never stop learning and growing and that we have as much capacity to reach and educate the parent body, the faculty itself,” said Greenhill board member Rusty Jaggers.

Roles Today Perryman began his second career at Greenhill in 2001 as assistant head of school. In that role, he worked to shape Greenhill culture, create the Heart of the Hill program and immerse Upper School students in English classes that explore Dallas’ racial history.

Since last year, in an even more demanding role as associate head of school for mission, community and culture, Perryman has continued to make his mark on Greenhill’s growth and development.

He co-chaired the 2025 strategic plan subgroup for diversity, equity and inclusion with Marlo Melucci, a Greenhill parent and a diversity, equity and inclusion delegate on the Board of Trustees.

“The number one quality about Mr. Perryman is that he invests in people,” said Art Hall, a former director of equity and inclusion at Greenhill. “When he does that, it’s the outpouring of compassion and genuine feelings that just force him and the school to address the issues of equity and inclusion.”

His commitment to equity work has been lifelong, longtime associates say.

“He is a voracious reader, so the depth of understanding that he has about equity is wide-spanning,” Carter said. “More important than that, he has a deep belief in inclusion for all – it’s not just words to Tom. He believes it in his soul.”

Perryman says he hopes to translate this commitment to equity through his classes.

“His teaching enables students to process how our actions impact other people and how we can better ourselves because of it,” said senior Aimee Stachowiak.

Perryman says he hopes to make a larger, more concentrated impact on the school in the years ahead.

“If we, Greenhill and the United States, can truly live out our credos, this place could be magic,” Perryman said. “We never do because we’re human, but even when we come up short, there’s no country I’d rather live in and there’s no school I’d rather be at because we always strive to be better.”

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Evergreen Ever the

Features

7

COVID-19 Lingers Long Past a Negative Test didn’t have as easy of an experience with COVID.” The latest variant of COVID-19, omicron, generally causes milder symptoms in vaccinated individuals, but this doesn’t rule out the possibility of lingering effects.

“The effects of long-COVID are real, which is why we cannot dismiss COVID as something everyone’s going to get and [think] that we are all going to be fine,” Greenstone said. “Some people are not going to be fine even if they get it and the symptoms are initially milder.”

What many believed to be a couple weeks at home in March 2020 has turned into an almost two-year-long pandemic.

The long-term effects of the disease are just another way COVID-19 will remain embedded in the lives of some people, even after the pandemic ends.

Pooja Sanghvi

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fter a long week of being stuck inside during the February 2021 snowstorm, senior Molly Fagelman tested positive for COVID-19. What started as a stuffy nose led to a weeks-long loss of taste and smell.

“I looked up the remedies and [TikTok] trends people had done to try and make my taste and smell come back,” Fagelman said.

“There was one where you put an orange on the stove, make it charred and then eat it. I tried so many different things because it was sad not being able to taste and smell anything.”

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two of every three individuals who test positive for COVID-19 face post-COVID-19 symptoms long after they test negative. As of Jan. 24, there have been more than 74 million COVID-19 cases in the United States and about 880,000 related deaths in the U.S., according to the CDC COVID Data Tracker.

Long-term effects of COVID-19 can range from physical effects, such as difficulty breathing, to cognitive effects like impaired concentration.

Like Fagelman, many Greenhill students have been affected by COVID-19 and a number of these have had to deal with long-term effects.

Senior Caroline Greenstone says she had an experience similar to that of Fagelman after contracting COVID-19 in March 2021.

Her senses of taste and smell are still slightly

Photo illustration by Emma Nguyen

distorted, and she now uses an inhaler when working out.

“For the first few weeks and months after having COVID, it was much more physically exhausting to do things such as working out,” Greenstone said. “But now, it’s so much better.”

Though both Fagelman and Greenstone’s physical effects have improved with time, experts say the long-term effects of COVID-19 can be severe and emotionally taxing.

“I remember thinking [about] the worst-case scenario that my taste and

smell never come back, [and wondering if I’d] smell or taste my favorite foods again,” Fagelman said. “I started to think about something awful happening like a fire, and worried that I wouldn’t be able to smell it.”

While people who have lingering effects worry about the changes to their lives, those who don’t face these effects, such as sophomore Zoya Iyer, feel grateful.

“I got COVID over winter break, and I had symptoms for one day,” Iyer said. “I feel super lucky that I didn’t have it worse or have many lingering symptoms because I know that there were a lot of people who

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The effects of long-COVID are real, which is why we cannot dismiss COVID as something everyone’s going to get and [think] that we are all going to be fine. Some people are not going to be fine even if they get it and the symptoms are initially milder.”

“For so many people, the effects of COVID are not just whether you had it or not, but how many people it took away from you,” Greenstone said. “Even if it wasn’t the people it took away from you, everyone’s lives have completely changed.”

How to be Successful in AP Statistics Emma Hoffman

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dvanced Placement Statistics is one of many year-long AP courses offered by the Upper School Math Department. To take the class, students must complete a year of Honors Algebra II and Advanced Precalculus. Some students take precalculus before going into AP Statistics, and others take AP Statistics and precalculus in the same year.

Upper School math teachers Ahmed Najm and Jack Oros teach the course.

Najm describes the class curriculum as “the art of inference and estimating values.” The class explores topics such as the normal distribution, probability and experimental design. Students also have the option to complete a project where they collect and analyze data they collect.

“While AP Statistics is a unique course, Mr. Oros and I are always available to help students either improve their skill or change their routine to best fit their learning style,” Najm said.

We asked some current and former AP Statistics students about the class, and here is what they said: !"#$%&'$#&$()%*+"),$*&$-./-(./$0&.$12$ 3*(*"4*"54$6/0&./$*+/$5&'.4/$6/,()7 “No, I did not do any self-study.

I think everyone goes into the class knowing that we are all just starting AP Statistics, so we start with the basics and then step up to the next unit. There are no big jumps from topic to topic.” - senior Evan Parker “I went into AP Statistics cold turkey. There was a lot of information that we learned over the years

that helped us go into statistics.” - senior Andrew White

challenging. There are about 30 minutes of homework per night.” - senior Evan Parker

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“We have a standard amount of homework for a math class, and it is one assignment daily – a few problems that normally take around 20 to 30 minutes to finish. This semester, we have had two daily assignments instead of one.”

– junior Katie Bogdanow

“At the end of every class, Mr. Najm will go over the big ideas for us to take notes on, which is super important if you want to really understand what we did that day. Or if you don’t understand, he will give you the big ideas of what we covered. It is super helpful.” - senior Andrew White

“First, we get to ask questions about the homework. Then the class will get into a lesson or do an activity that ties in a realworld example. Then we dive in and do all different types of analysis. At the end, we have ‘big ideas’ time, where we go through the bullet points or takeaways from each class, which is where I go in my notes to study for a quiz or test.” - senior Evan Parker

“This is one of my lighter APs. My other ones tend to be a little more

“The AP Classroom videos and big ideas are what I look at when preparing for a test, which I think is helpful.” - senior William Langdoc $ $ 8+(*$ #&$ %&'$ #&$ *&$ "<-.&=/$$ %&'.$ 4:";;$ &.$ :)&9;/#,/$ ")$ 12$ 3*(*"4*"547 “I did no preparation before the class, but I watch YouTube videos to better prepare myself because I feel it can be more beneficial than just reviewing notes.” - senior Christine Yan “The way Najm set up the class and the way we do homework is a good way to prepare us for the exam and for future lessons.”

– senior Andrew White

“We get to class, get a packet of notes and go through it together and answer the questions and go over them. At the end of class, we go over ‘big ideas.’” - senior William Langdoc >&9$#&$%&'$-./-(./$0&.$*+/$12$/?(<7 “Everything we are learning in class is what is going to be on the exam, and Mr. Najm is pushing us to learn a little more material now so we will have lots of time to review.” - junior Katie Bogdanow “When we go through every unit, we go over it in detail. We do have a lot more material to review because the AP exam is every unit put together, but I will be wellprepared.” - senior Christine Yan 8+(*$"4$&)/$*+"),$%&'$9";;$*(:/$(9(%$0.&<$ 12$3*(*"4*"547 “Understanding the basics of statistics is very helpful if you are forming your own research. Knowing the variables that go into collecting data and what percentages or responses you get back is going to help with any research, not just statistics.” - senior Andrew White Graphic by Emma Nguyen

Evergreen Ever the

8 Features

All Work, No Play?

Finding Balance in Complicated Times Emma Nguyen

O

n a normal day, junior Ryan Taffe says he goes to bed at 12 a.m. if there are no major assessments the following day. On nights before tests and quizzes, he tries to go to bed earlier.

“Only on Friday and maybe Saturday or Sunday do I have a break,” Taffe said.

“Otherwise, I’m always working.”

Taffe says his work ethic, though not perfect, is at least good. Between Advanced Placement Biology and other rigorous classes in his schedule, the workload every night takes at least a few hours.

But a positive COVID-19 exposure forcing him to move to online learning and the lack of time between sports, academics and homework has led to a poorer balance for him of late.

“It takes at least an hour to do just math,” Taffe said. “Overall, I have a lot more anxiety.”

Managing work and relaxation effectively is not an issue new to Greenhill, but for many, COVID-19 has eroded the boundaries between the two.

“I couldn’t separate myself from being at school and being at home,” junior Charlotte Purcell said. “But it’s gotten better since we’ve gone back to in-person.”

Last year, Purcell says, her work-life balance was worse, given the amount of time she spent being online. Now, she tries to keep strict boundaries between the work she needs to do and time she sets aside to relax.

“I try not to do homework in bed anymore since it’s not productive,” Purcell said.

“If I’m hanging out with my friends, I try to have my homework done before so I can just focus on my friends and relaxing.”

The rise in omicron-variant COVID-19 cases in January caused a brief surge in online learning for Upper School students.

According to COVID-19 protocols sent out on Jan. 11, those who test positive “may return to school on day 8 if they have a negative antigen test on day 5 or later, or they may return on day 10 with no test required.”

Students are now offered a camera’s-eye view into class if they are under quarantine.

For Taffe, who had to quarantine for a week, distinguishing between work and relaxation online became more difficult, especially since connecting to what was going on in class was harder.

“I found myself having to work harder by myself to learn the material,” he said.

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The advent of email, in many ways, eliminated clear-cut boundaries between work and home because there’s that expectation you’re going to respond in the evening. I don’t know that COVID has changed much that hadn’t already gone that direction.”

The increasingly available online communication and remote work possibilities have also inhibited work-life balance, as tasks that would normally be seen as work now extend to home. But to Upper School math teacher Melissa Battis, COVID-19 hasn’t necessarily changed things.

“The advent of email, in many ways, eliminated clear-cut boundaries between work and home because there’s that expectation you’re going to respond in the evening,” she said. “I don’t know that COVID has changed much that hadn’t already gone that direction.”

Setting explicit boundaries between work and relaxation is a priority for Battis.

“I’ve been pretty clear with students that I do not use the [Microsoft] Teams chat except during class time,” she said. “I do not want that boundary to be crossed because as soon as we start crossing, that would run into an even fuzzier space.”

At a time when work-life boundaries were already eroding, COVID-19 has created further complications for teachers.

Battis notes that even if a teacher falls ill, they have to work to ensure a smooth handoff with a substitute.

“If you’re sick, you still need to have your lesson plans done to get classes covered,” Battis said. “Most teachers

will say that they would prefer to teach sick than to try to plan for a [substitute teacher] because it’s that much harder.”

Junior Hannah Zhou says their life has veered into a state of imbalance, but the cause might be burnout — not COVID-19.

“It’s terrible,” Zhou said. “My life is work. I had better work-life balance in ninth grade, but I think I got burnt-out. I don’t know if that was COVID or not.”

To Zhou, a myriad of other factors inhibits work-life balance, including the culture surrounding work at Greenhill.

“A lot of people buy into the ‘all work, no life’ kind of thing,” Zhou said. “I don’t think anything’s changed.”

According to Taffe, retaining a wellbalanced work ethic while still enjoying recreational activities requires careful planning and support.

“Having a support system, having

parents [and] having teachers who are willing to help you so you don’t have to spend as much time by yourself learning the material definitely helps,” Taffe said.

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Having a support system, having parents [and] having teachers who are willing to help you so you don’t have to spend as much time by yourself learning the material definitely helps.”

To mitigate the pressure, Greenhill has created breaks in the schedule, including Community Time and Office Hours, to help students better manage their work load.

“There’s a good community of people

Graphic by Emma Nguyen

who work during Community Time or during break periods, and I try to work during those times as well,” Purcell said.

“I think it’s a pretty good balance, [except] maybe just more communication between departments so there’s not tons of work for students.”

To find a well-balanced work ethic, Battis says communication on all sides is key.

“The expectation that every [test] grade is going to be amazing has created a culture of stress among students and their families that has affected work-life balance for everyone,” Battis said. “I want to partner with families, but I think that there has to be a balance that we find in how those partnerships work.”

Special Report

9

Rise in Private Tutoring Raises Equity Concerns Diane Lin, Ava Iwasko

G

reenhill students’ schedules often consist of challenging courses with complicated material to master, working alone or with a teacher. When the homework piles up or the content simply isn’t sticking, some students turn to another resource that only the more privileged can afford: private tutoring.

Private tutoring shines a spotlight on the complex issue of socioeconomic status and its relationship to academic performance, not just at Greenhill, but across the country.

Head of Upper School Trevor Worcester says socioeconomic status can play a role in a student’s academic experience.

“We do our best to mitigate that gap,” Worcester said. “I do think there are inherent structures overall, outside of Greenhill. Look at the [entrance] test that students take to get into Greenhill.

They might be receiving tutoring for that, so, unfortunately, it’s there from the very beginning.”

The Rise of Private Tutoring The rise in private tutoring is a relatively new phenomenon. Over the past 20 years, the number of tutoring centers in the U.S. has more than tripled.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the surge in private tutoring.

One in five upper-income families hired outside tutors to aid with their children’s learning when the pandemic struck the U.S. in March 2020, according to a study by the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

This same 2021 study found that the locations of private tutoring centers tend to be concentrated in highincome areas. Along with the obvious correlation between higher income and access to private tutoring, immigrant and Asian families are more likely to have private tutoring resources in their areas.

This can potentially be explained by the idea that certain communities have existing attitudes toward tutoring.

As explained by the Harvard study, seeking outside help could possibly be described as a “cultural response,” where specific groups are more willing to pay for outside tutoring because they are already familiar with it culturally.

Along with the ubiquity of private tutoring for higher income families, online resources such as KD College

Prep and Khan Academy have also played a key role in developing an education system that requires outside tutoring to get ahead.

The real question is now how to navigate a system that rewards students highly when they perform well on exams but does nothing to prepare them for those challenging exams in the first place. While a national survey from the U.S. Department of Education found that almost all students can improve their grades with outside tutoring, severe inequity is created when those opportunities are only available to highincome families.

While tutoring in fact- and processbased topics like Upper School math and science are straightforward, tutoring looks very different in the English Department – if it even occurs.

“It’s a rarity,” Upper School English Department Chair Joel Garza said.

“We rarely get a student here that just has really faulty sentence skills. For example, there might be times when in a rough draft a student has a lot of comma errors, but we don’t often have to teach students what a complete sentence is.”

Instead, the furthest extent to which “outside help” occurs in the English Department is approaching the Upper School learning specialists to determine how to provide specific materials and tools students need to succeed, Garza said.

Worcester says Greenhill does cover some tutoring fees, but there are other school resources that students should initially seek out.

“First, there’s the ‘I’m not understanding a certain concept, can I meet with you?’ thing, where students can set up a meeting with their teacher,” Worcester said. “Then, there’s a pattern or a trend that you’re like, ‘This class is just consistently challenging.’ Then, maybe schedule more of a standing meeting with your teacher.”

From there, if a student is still struggling, Worcester suggests reaching out to an adviser or the learning specialists. If after all these efforts there has been no change, it might be time to seek some outside help that Greenhill might be able to help fund.

Academic Equity Issues Garza says there are advantages that go along with a higher socioeconomic status, including access to private institutions with lower student-toteacher ratios.

Graphic by Erica Fulbright

“When you’ve got a smaller class, you’re able to give more direct attention,” Garza said. “When you’ve got smaller classes, you’re able to give feedback more often than if you had twice the students. As a private school parent and teacher, I see how a family’s resources can keep a student from falling too far behind in a course or in the college application process.”

Upper School math teacher Cathy Falk agrees that having a more individualized education can benefit a student’s performance, whether it is coming from another teacher, a peer or an outside tutor.

“I think everybody benefits either from seeing their own teacher or another math teacher or even getting help from other students because you learn a different way to work problems out than the way you were taught by the teacher you have,” Falk said.

Senior Hallie Sternblitz has both tutored and been tutored in school.

She says the impacts of socioeconomic privilege have been evident from both perspectives. “[I work with] volunteer programs that target underprivileged kids, but then I also do paid tutoring,” Sternblitz said. “There’s definitely a difference in the way they learn and the levels that they’re at. I tutor a three-year-old boy, and he’s really fluent, and he’s better at reading than some of the kids that I work with in elementary school.”

Sternblitz also received tutoring as an Upper School student in chemistry as a freshman and biology as a sophomore.

She firmly believes the help improved her academic performance.

“If I couldn’t afford a tutor in chemistry and biology, I would not have gotten the grades that I did,” Sternblitz said. “That could have led to a lower GPA and then changed my college [application] experience. I think being able to afford [tutoring] did change my academic trajectory.”

Who is Responsible?

Despite the socioeconomic status disadvantages some students face, Greenhill is committed to meeting families’ demonstrated financial need, said Equity and Inclusion Director Marcus Ingram.

“My sense of Greenhill is that it’s a place that is incredibly supportive of all of its families,” Equity and Inclusion Director Marcus Ingram said. “When

we say all of our families, that includes those from various socioeconomic quartiles because it’s been a critical part of how the school [operated] since the beginning.”

To junior Madison Rojas, it is a school’s responsibility to help their students improve their academics as much as possible, even if that includes extra costs, such as tutoring.

“If a comprehensive conversation is had, and the solution is to get extra help outside of the classroom, then there should definitely be some way of attaining tutoring,” Rojas said.

Ingram agrees that schools should provide as much academic aid as possible for their students, especially if that school actively tries to diversify its student body.

“When [independent schools] say, ‘We’re interested in inviting a variety

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My sense of Greenhill is that it’s a place that is incredibly supportive of all of its families.

When we say all of our families, that includes those from various socioeconomic quartiles because it’s been a critical part of how the school [operated] since the beginning.”

of students into a space, and we want them to have the full experience,’ then that would likely include all of the support pieces that come along with that,” Ingram said. “So, if we’re thinking about tutoring as a part of the academic experience, and not necessarily something that’s punitive or a remediation in some way, then I think that fits into that space.”

Garza says another strategy to help address students’ socioeconomic inequities within a school’s own administration is to examine the need for tutoring in the first place.

“In order to improve any issue, a community needs to know the scope and seriousness of the issue,” Garza said.

“For that reason, I think that a school ought to evaluate their own academic programs bravely and regularly.”

In the end, Falk says a student’s own determination and perseverance are just as important as any financial resources they might have access to.

“There’s always disadvantages to not having the money that other people might have,” said Falk. “It just all depends on what you can do on your own.”

Everg Ever the

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Privacy in th

Limits on Technology Use at Greenh

Saara Bidiwala, Jothi Gupta On Monday, Nov. 16, at 6:28 p.m., a Greenhill student typed into their school-issued computer: “what’s bad about cutting down trees?”

One day later, Director of Technology Scott Rosa received what is known as a “red-flag” alert from monitoring software. The trigger: the use of the word “cutting.”

Three years ago, Greenhill began using a technology called Linewize, a self-described content filtering and monitoring tool.

In the Nov. 16 incident, the alert that Rosa received was deemed an inaccurate flag that didn’t require followup. Meanwhile, each keyboard stroke of Greenhill-issued student devices is scrutinized by the Linewize artificial intelligence software.

The digital surveillance that students face highlights a larger national and international debate over privacy in the digital age. That debate is coming into sharper focus as Greenhill proceeds with a program aimed toward having every student use a school-owned device.

Digital monitoring is common at U.S. schools, privacy experts say. Greenhill administrators say the monitoring is a crucial component of the school’s efforts to ensure the health and well-being of students.

Still, student and parental awareness of the extent of the monitoring may be limited, Rosa said.

“I can understand why this might make some students unhappy,” said Head of School Lee Hark. “We all value our privacy and don’t like it when it’s limited.

Unfortunately, the world we live in necessitates some degree of monitoring the traffic on our network – for safety and security, but also to help ensure student well-being. And in the latest iteration of our laptop rollout, these devices are school property. At this point, most adults are used to these kinds of restrictions in the workplace.”

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Technology Overview The global debate over digital privacy has also raised questions about the ethics of tracking software used by educational institutions.

In the past decade, many schools in Texas have invested in tracking software to maintain network security and ensure student well-being. Schools often cite the proliferation of inappropriate content and cyberbullying as justifications for this infrastructure.

Software has gotten progressively more sophisticated with the development of technology, too. Commonly used student monitoring software programs include Gaggle, GoGuardian and Social Sentinel. These software programs have the capability to review Google documents, track browsing history and scan social media posts.

Many social media apps and websites track and sell user information when their services are used.

Hark says that losing some amount of privacy when individuals are operating under a specific organization or corporation is a reality of living in the 21st century.

“We have an audit and risk management committee on the board, and cybersecurity is one of that committee’s main focuses and concerns,” Hark said. “Schools have increasingly become targets of cyberattacks. Because of that, we can’t continue to allow students or faculty employees to have unfettered access to whatever they want during the school day on our network. College and universities don’t allow it, and there’s no other job in the world where you’re going to be allowed to do that.”

Nonetheless, there are rising concerns about the privacy lost when the software is applied. In Montclair, New Jersey, more than 700 people have signed a petition begun last year by parents protesting the use of GoGuardian monitoring of students in the Montclair Public School District.

Some of the people who share these concerns are parents. Many student

I can understand why this might make some students unhappy. We all value our privacy and don’t like it when it’s limited. Unfortunately, the world we live in necessitates some degree of monitoring the traffic on our network – for safety and security, but also to help ensure student well-being. And in the latest iteration of our laptop rollout, these devices are school property. At this point, most adults are used to these kinds of restrictions in the workplace.”

privacy advocacy organizations are actively fighting for legislation to be passed that allows parents to have more transparency with the data schools have on their children because of monitoring software. ”Citizens for Public Schools members, including many parents, are deeply concerned about threats to the privacy of student information,” Executive Director of Citizens for Public Schools Lisa Guisbond said in a press release for the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy. “We support hearings and strong legislation to protect the privacy of this data.”

That was in 2014, as this issue was gaining greater public attention. Eight years later, the debate has become even more complicated and intense

Situation at Greenhill Greenhill has followed a similar trend, introducing a school-owned device policy for students two years ago. New school-issued laptops come equipped with the Linewize monitoring software.

Over the next two years, all students will be equipped with school-issued laptops. Faculty members already use school-issued devices.

“This is not a public network,” Rosa said. “This is a private network owned by the school. We have an obligation to the students and families to protect their data.”

The software is the second of what Rosa refers to as “layers” of security.

green

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

11

he Digital Age

hill in an Increasingly Limitless World

The first level of filtering comes through the campus Wi-Fi. The Greenhill network blocks access to a range of illicit, illegal or potentially harmful sites, including gambling and pornography websites and malware sites. Select members of the Technology Department also have access to information on Greenhill accounts, such as Outlook, Microsoft Teams and OneDrive.

Furthermore, the Linewize software installed on school-issued devices provides more robust content filtering and monitoring, serving as a second layer of device-specific security.

Some alerts end up being benign, as with “what’s bad about cutting down trees.”

“If we need to, then we can go back and look at recent search terms to see what else is going on here,” Rosa said.

When something concerning comes up, Rosa forwards the emails to Head of Upper School Trevor Worcester and Upper School Counselor Amanda Frederick for possible action.

Frederick says she gets red alerts on average once or twice a month.

“It certainly helps identify students that maybe I wouldn’t see otherwise,” Frederick said. “I do think it gives me a better read on how some of our students are feeling.”

Students React

“[Linewize] provides a little better reporting for us, in case we need to look at the results,” Rosa said.

This software has two main components: content filtering and wellness.

The content filtering is based on URLs and search terms which amplify the restrictions at the Wi-Fi-level. Students are not able to access these sites while on the school’s internet.

The wellness component looks through all web searches for trigger words in seven categories: violence, bullying, suicide, drugs, abuse, extremism and oversharing.

The school uses the Linewize School Manager product and, according to Linewize, its features include “Google and YouTube controls,” “YouTube Video Visibility and Playback,” “Search Term Visibility,” and “Cybersafety reports with Red Flags,” among others.

Before each Greenhill student gets a school-issued device, they agree to the Acceptable Use Policy with the reminder to expect “only limited privacy in the contents of [their] personal files on the School network.”

The specifics of what data is tracked are not outlined in the policy notice, which only says that “Greenhill School has software and systems in place that monitors and records all activities and traffic on School computing resources.”

Many Upper School students say they lack specific details about the extent to which the school tracks their information and the usage of the Linewize software.

“I think they should have shared that with us,” sophomore Zoë Dzialowski said.

“I think it is an invasion of privacy. And since they didn’t tell you that, it just seems like they shouldn’t be doing that.”

Freshman Prabath Girish, who uses a school-issued laptop, feels that having Greenhill manage his device is at times helpful with data maintenance.

“If I lose my laptop somewhere, it’ll be a lot easier to recover,” he said.

With this technology, students, parents and faculty must agree to this policy at the start of every school year, thereby giving their consent to the school to look at their files.

Unlike the Wi-Fi restrictions, Linewize does not stop tracking students once they leave campus. In other words, students are still subject to the same restrictions at home as they are at school from Linewize, which makes it hard for students to use their laptops for nonschool purposes as one may do with a personal device.

“It feels like I’m always being watched,” Dzialowski said. “It makes me not want to

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Schools have increasingly become targets of cyberattacks. Because of that, we can’t continue to allow students or faculty employees to have unfettered access to whatever they want during the school day on our network. College and universities don’t allow it, and there’s no other job in the world where you’re going to be allowed to do that.”

use it as much at school or at home.”

The distinction between these and personal devices is that purchasing them isn’t a choice. The sharing of data on some platforms such as Instagram or Facebook is consensual because people are choosing to put their information on them, but the laptops are different, Dzialowski says.

Junior Thomas Bozalis agrees with Dzialowski, adding that personal information that does not relate to the school should not be accessed by the administration.

“When you’re [at] home, you’re your most vulnerable self when you’re alone in your room,” Bozalis said. “For most people, that’s when you can be yourself.

And I feel like some things you don’t want the entirety of the administration to find out.”

Stepping Back Because the school-issued laptop program is yet to be fully rolled out, many changes are yet to come, school officials said.

Modifications may include limiting the restrictions to school days and adjusting sites blocked by the Wi-Fi firewall and Linewize software, Rosa said.

One example of school flexibility cited by Rosa came last year when the current sophomores asked Upper School leadership for Netflix to be unblocked.

The Technology Office granted the request authorized by the leadership team. “[Students have] just got to go make the case for it,” Rosa said.

However, privacy concerns will likely continue to exist.

Ultimately, the school is seeking to balance their use of tracking software against student privacy. The school’s intentions with this software are to protect students, not to pry into their personal business, Rosa said.

“We do not have the time or the people to sit around all day and watch what you’re doing,” Rosa said. “We have these things in place for safety and security.”

Graphic by Emma Nguyen

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Arts

Emily Hu

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The Intersection of Arts and Academics

eachers are increasingly incorporating art and academic study in their curriculum, joining two otherwise separate disciplines.

Each Upper School student is required to take four semesters of Fine Arts classes by graduation. These classes include studio arts, theater, speech and debate, music, dance and publications.

Lesley Rucker, the Middle and Upper School visual art teacher and adviser for the Upper School yearbook and literary magazine, says fine arts are essential for everything.

“I am not teaching someone to be an artist, but rather to be a critical thinker and creative problemsolver,” Rucker said. “That is something you need and can use in all subjects.”

Students in her class pursue projects beyond just photorealism, incorporating more elements of abstract thinking and imagination. Rucker says artists should be creating their own voice and learning to express themselves, materializing in academic classes as well.

“Art can integrate into every single thing we teach on campus,” Rucker said. “I think just having that visual knowledge and creativity helps a lot.”

Many students who participate in art notice how applicable it is to other subjects they study.

“I feel like art works with some of the same shapes we use in math or chemicals we use in science, as well as the symbolism and analysis that is central to any discussion for English or history,” senior Ashton Higgins said. “Many of the critical thinking skills and [the] dedication that is necessary to produce a meaningful piece of art can be cross-applied to humanities especially.”

Sydney Chien, Evie Kwei, Christan Park

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Double A’s

Across campus, academic teachers incorporate visual projects in their classes, such as posters created and displayed by students from Upper School History Department Chair Amy Bresie’s Women’s History class..

Upper School English teacher Karin Thomas assigns drawing-related tasks to students to introduce them to other forms of thinking and expression. Students in her Creative Writing class from the first semester created comic books and storybooks.

“Art and writing are extremely interconnected,” Thomas said. “Words can tell a story, but there’s no reason why we need to just limit ourselves to words when there are so many images available.”

Often, students enter classes like Drawing I or Painting I thinking

Thomas notices that many students simply need to get past preconceptions that they need to be well-trained in the arts in order to effectively tell their story with it.

“A lot of the time, some of the people who say they don’t draw end up finding fascinating ways to tell their story – unlike what they could have done with words,” Thomas said.

Higgins notes that the distinguishing factor of art is that it follows no objective standard, allowing room for personal expression without an intricate background.

“I don’t like the term ‘good art’ and prefer ‘meaningful art’ because art really is personal and cannot be judged against any set standards,” Higgins said. “It simply takes time and effort to dig deep into a person to discover what they want to make and then actually do it.

Previous experience will obviously help ease that process, but everyone starts from somewhere and has the capacity for growth.”

Elements of the arts and academics have become increasingly they need intertwined in classes across all previous departments, which strengthens students’ experience or learning and thinking processes, according to knowledge.

Rucker.

“If you think “There’s a certain amount of unGraphic by Christine Yan about it, you’re not expected t o schooling that needs to occur, in not just already know things when you walk into a only thinking about ways you can write Spanish class for the first time without any prior experience and think,” Thomas said. “It’s about trusting the process, in foreign language classes,” Rucker said. “Practicing and getting over whether or not an art piece is good or bad, and understanding different terminology and techniques is how exploring who you are as a thinker.” you grow.”

Cinema Scene: “Encanto” The film is decked with an all-star creative cast, including Byron Howard and Jared Bush, both known for their work on “Zootopia” and “Moana.”

The original music for “Encanto” was composed by “Hamilton” mastermind Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Upper School students overwhelmingly agree with the favorable score “Encanto” has earned on Rotten Tomatoes. We asked some of them about the

ritics are raving about the 2021 film “Encanto,” which won the 2022 Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film. A representation of Afro-Colombian culture on the big screen, “Encanto” offers a depiction of Colombian life while being a story about family and unity.

The film tells the story of the Madrigal family, which lives hidden in the Colombian mountains in a place called Encanto. When Abuela Alma and her infant triplets were forced to flee to Encanto, she was granted a miracle, which provided her with a magical house and blessed each of her children with a gift. Mirabel is the only child without a gift.

When the magic surrounding Encanto is put in danger and the Madrigals’ powers disappear, Mirabel steps up to stop it.

The film has a 90% “Certified Fresh” rating from over 180 critic reviews on the film and television review website Rotten Tomatoes.

Critics overwhelmingly Graphic by Khushi Chhaya believe that “Encanto” is “worth the watch.”

“The characters are infectious and well-drawn, movie, and here is what enriching Encanto’s world with gifts that extend far they said: beyond their bestowed powers,” wrote film critic !"#$%#&'%()*&%+','&#-%$")*+"$.% Whelan Barzey in a review on TimeOut.com. ),%/0,1#,$)23% The love for “Encanto” hasn’t been universal.

Critic Valentina Eve, writing for Medium’s “The songs are so catchy! I liked how the story Cinemania, ripped the “formulaic storytelling delved into several cases of family trauma – i.e., too structure that Disney has been using far too often.”

Another thumbs-down came from Peter much pressure, high expectations and overworking – Bradshaw of The Guardian. “This milestone movie and how it showcased Colombian culture!” - 4*,5)&% could represent a creative crisis for Disney – it feels 6"#,1'(%7$'8#,).% “I definitely loved the relatability of ‘Encanto’ like another step down the cul-de-sac of bland, algorithmically generated entertainment,” Bradshaw because too often in movies and shows a ‘perfect’ family dynamic is portrayed, but ‘Encanto’ was very wrote.

realistic when it comes to a flawed family dynamic. I also liked how it highlighted things like anxiety and the pressure to be perfect, all of which are very real things that are refreshing to see onscreen.” - 8&'."9#,% 6-#5&'%:&);"(% “As a Colombian, it was fun to see things from my culture that haven’t been shown in media before.” .);")9)&'%:'--#%!5<)<)% “I loved the diversity, the hair and facial expressions, the animation, the skin tones, and the Colombian-Afro-Latin flare! - 4*,5)&%0&51#%=*->&5+"$% “Don’t get me wrong, I liked the movie, but the repetitiveness of not only the plot, but the music from Lin-Manuel Miranda made it very predictable. I like the representation, and I think Disney’s going in the right direction, but the script is almost the same thing. You know who’s going to save the day and when they’re going to do it. Overall, however, I loved the characters, and the movie had lots of charm and energy.” 8&'."9#,%7"'&&(%?"#,+% !"#$% 9#<'% ()*% @#,$% $)% @#$1"% /0,1#,$)23

“It was set in my mother’s home country.” - .);")9)&'%:'--#%!5<)<) “People on TikTok were raving about it, and my friend said it was good.” - freshman Claire Brophy “It was the first 3D animated Afro-Latin Disney movie ever. I had to support [it].” - 4*,5)&% 0&51#% =*->&5+"$% “I wanted to watch ‘Encanto’ because I heard all the songs on TikTok and they were fantastic. ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ is so catchy, it’s addictive.” 4*,5)&%6"#,1'(%7$'8#,).%

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Evergreen Ever the

Arts

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Dance Company Encourages Participation Gabi Appel, Daniela Hallack

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enior Aimee Stachowiak started with the Upper School Dance Company during her freshman year, when there were around 10 students in the group. Now, Stachowiak is one of three members still with the company.

Like other Upper School programs, the Dance Company has seen its numbers decline as a result of graduations and cyclical changes in student interests.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, maintaining Dance Company participation has been a challenge for students as well as Middle and Upper School dance and drama teacher Kelly McCain.

With both an extracurricular Dance Company and a Dance Technique class, the skills acquired in both are useful for aspiring performers and students who want to learn more about this particular artistic endeavor.

Anyone can be a part of the Dance C ompany and the D a n c e Te c h n i q u e class with no prior experience, M c C a i n said.

As with most Upper School activities, COVID-19 has added a Graphic by Sophia Chao difficulty factor to the dance program.

“We’ve had to transition at times to virtual classes,” McCain said. Overall, “the students and teachers adapted well

to the new change.”

Junior Erica Fulbright is one of the three Dance Company members this year. Fulbright joined the company as a sophomore and says it has been a positive experience.

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We’ve had to transition at times to virtual classes. The students and teachers adapted well to the new change.”

Dwindling participation in the Dance Company may be due to a lack of awareness about the activity in the Upper School, Fulbright said.

“[People] h a v e mandator y c l a s s e s during our practice, or they tend to forget it’s during school because practice used to be during sports [practice times],” Fulbright said.

Fulbright says that if the company were given opportunities to perform during Community Time or other high-profile occasions, students would be more aware of what it does. Fulbright says students would enjoy participating in the company, even if they don’t have prior dance experience.

Freshman Zara Paul recalls first hearing about the Dance Company at the Holiday Sing-Along last December.

“I have not heard much about them, being new to Greenhill this year,

Photo courtesy of Kelly McCain

QUALITY OVER QUANTITY: The 2021-2022 Greenhill Upper School Dance Company has only three dancers. What matters most to them, however, is the art they create.

although I would like to learn more about them,” said Paul.

Paul says she decided not to join Dance Company because she is playing on the girls basketball team.

Fulbright says the Dance Company offers a welcoming environment where students are free to express themselves and learn.

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[People] have mandatory classes during our practice, or they tend to forget it’s during school because practice used to be during sports [practice times].”

“I have learned to be more patient with people day-to-day,” Fulbright said. “The two other girls who are in the class have been dancing for several years. While they are learning things like a breeze, I am struggling to do a simple movement. I really appreciate the patience everyone has given me.”

Through the COVID-19 pandemic, the Dance Company was still able to share its choreography with an audience. Stachowiak says she has taken part in multiple virtual performances such as Start and Stasis since the start of the pandemic.

“We were ready to try our best in this situation and learned to do the best within our limitations,” Stachowiak said.

The bigger company that Stachowiak experienced in previous years allowed for more dances to be performed and more flexibility throughout the choreography process.

Despite this, Stachowiak says she has adapted to the smaller group.

“I enjoy the smallness of our current company,” she said. “We are

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I have learned to be more patient with people day-to-day.

The other two girls who are in the class have been dancing for several years. While they are learning things like a breeze, I am struggling to do a simple movement. I really appreciate the patience everyone has given me.”

able to specialize our skills more.”

Whether the company is big or small, the dancers can still express themselves, Fulbright and Stachowiak said.

“Regardless of the size, the energy is always high, and the people are excited to express themselves through

Ever Evergreen Behind the Scenes of Greenhill Theater

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Eitan Hahn, Aria Kutty

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pper School plays and musicals often include elaborate choreography, flashy costumes and detailed sets, but viewers don’t always notice what goes on behind the scenes to create the spectacles.

The theater program’s technical crew students oversee everything from building the stage to dimming the lights on opening night.

The school offers multiple technical theater classes in both Middle and Upper School. Students work mostly on the Fall Play and Spring Musical during the tech theater practicum classes.

Performing Arts Building Manager Leann Burns and Middle and Upper School technical theater teacher Will Turbyne work together to guide tech crew students working behind the scenes on the shows.

During the class, students conduct visual research, work on design props, sets, lighting and sound, and create scenery for the upcoming shows.

In the past, the tech crew has worked to create elaborate, high-tech shows including the 2019 musical “Carrie.”

“When they did ‘Carrie,’ it was the first time in a while that [the tech crew] had done pyrotechnics,” said junior Erica Fulbright, who acted in the musical. “They had to use fireworks to cause [an] explosion. We [also] had people flying. It was so technologically advanced.”

Tech theater classes used to have around 15 people. This number has decreased over time due to scheduling issues.

Junior Lucas Williams, who is part of the tech crew, says that, since the group is so small, the workload can feel overwhelming.

“It takes a lot of effort,” Williams said. “We are understaffed. We only had five people, so we’re working a lot.”

To reduce the workload, the tech crew uses actors when they are available to help with building sets and props.

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It takes a lot of effort. We were understaffed. We only had five people, so we’re working a lot.”

“If we had five kids building every single set piece, it would never get done,” stage manager Chancey Stefanos said. “Having all those people outside of the small group gets it done faster.”

While the tech crew has a lot of work to do, Turbyne says working together as a team makes it easier and more enjoyable.

“What I love about tech theater is how collaborative it is,” Turbyne said. “That collaborative creativity, when it’s done right, is the greatest thing to latch onto.”

This spring the Theater Department will be performing the musical “The Little Mermaid.” Since a large portion of

the show takes place underwater, the tech crew is working to make the sets come to life.

“When all the plexiglass came down from COVID, we packaged it up and [have] been saving it all this time,” Burns said. “We are upcycling that into our set design.”

The tech crew is utilizing the material to reflect light, giving the stage an underwater effect.

“The Little Mermaid” is a well-known Disney story, but the tech crew wants to throw a new spin on the classic musical.

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What I love about tech theater is how collaborative it is. That collaborative creativity, when it’s done right, is the greatest thing to latch onto.”

“When you have something as iconic as ‘The Little Mermaid,’ it’s fun to sort of see if you can turn it on its ear a little bit and try to tell it in a fresh and new way that’s never been done before,” Turbyne said.

While honoring the classic Disney feel, the tech crew is working to put their own stamp on the design. They plan to use blues and softer edges in the underwater scenery to contrast the maroons and sharper edges in the land scenery.

This will not be the movie version put on stage, but rather Greenhill’s version of a classic tale.

A large portion of planning for each production is done during Tech Week, the week before opening night.

Tech Week is a crucial part in the rehearsal process when the actors and tech crew rehearse together.

“During the semester, actors do their thing, [and the tech crew] does their thing,” Upper School drama and theater teacher Valerie Hauss-Smith said. “When Tech Week happens, we blend the two things together.”

Actors and tech students work together to finalize cues, microphones and lighting. It is also the first time that actors rehearse on set.

“All of the planning and work that’s gone into the two or three months that lead up to Tech Week, it all comes together,” Turbyne said.

Williams emphasizes the commitment involved with being a member of the tech crew, especially during Tech Week.

“We would go from 2:30 p.m. until 9:00 p.m., or even a little bit later,” he said.

To try to minimize any additional stress, actors and the tech crew take preventive measures to make sure the week can go as smoothly as possible.

“Throughout the year we have team bonding exercises, so I think we already have those friendships beforehand, so it’s like, ‘Let’s really get to business when [Tech Week] starts,’” Fulbright said.

While most of the planning to produce a show happens

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

months before opening n i g h t , sometimes the tech students must adapt to difficult situations when things don’t go according to plan during the show.

“One time there was a moment [in a s h o w ]

where the Graphics by Khushi Chhaya lighting board went out, and this wonderful kid literally created a light cue on the spot,” Hauss-Smith said. “While the show was struggling, this tech student made it work.”

While tech theater is a commitment, it is a crucial aspect of any show, since the tech crew makes the show come to life through sets, props and lights.

“I feel like [the tech crew] doesn’t get a lot of appreciation,” said freshman Cassie Rosa, an actress in Upper School productions. “Without them, there would be no musical.”

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One time there was a moment [in a show] where the lighting board went out, and this wonderful kid literally created a light cue on the spot. While the show was struggling, this tech student made it work.”

Burns says there is a place for everyone in the tech theater community at Greenhill.

“It is an art form where not only anyone can participate in it,” Burns said. “We need all of those different skills and types of people in order to create it, so, really, it’s the most inclusive art form on the face of the planet.”

Photos by Ravi Vasan

HARD AT WORK: Tech Theater students are currently preparing for a production of Disney’s “The Little Mermaid.” With only five students in the group and the frequent help of actors not currently working on their scenes, they have had to work very hard to finish the set in time for the performances planned for the spring of 2022.

Sports

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High Expectations for Boys Basketball Khushi Chhaya, Aman Jaleel

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he varsity boys basketball team is off to a strong start in the 20212022 season, posting 20 wins against eight losses overall and a 5-0 record in the Southwest Preparatory Conference.

“I think we’ve been successful,” Varsity Boys Basketball Coach Joey Sims said.

“We’ve played probably one of the most difficult schedules in the state of Texas.

I think the only teams that I can bring up are really Duncanville and Richardson, who play tougher non-conference schedules than us.”

Senior Noah Shelby, a Hornet cocaptain, echoes this sentiment, citing “quite a few quality wins.”

“I really enjoy playing with my classmates and pursuing an SPC title together,” Shelby said. “I think the season is going very well. We have a lot of momentum so far in conference play.”

Demanding Effort

Photo by Ravi Vasan

ON GUARD: The boys varsity basketball team defends against a powerhouse offense.

Sims says the team is striving to improve and that there is always another goal to reach.

“We’re pushing on, as the coaching staff, to get better every day,” Sims said. “We are by no means playing our best basketball right now, but that can be a good thing because there’s room for improvement. We just want to keep peaking towards the end of the season in SPC.” Sims says he always expects the highest level of dedication from the team.

“I demand that they give me maximum effort every day,” Sims said. “We hold the kids to a high standard.”

Sims says these values are instilled in the team. Additionally, sportsmanship and hard work are integral to being good teammates and propelling the athletes a successful season, he said. “[The team knows] it’s kind of the plan,” said Sims. “Most of them just go and do it themselves. The expectations are clear and coherent from the beginning. We set them from day one, and we reinforce them throughout the whole season.”

Junior Zac Slotnik says he feels the expectations from coaches and teammates but uses it to his advantage. “[There is pressure] in a good, competitive way, not in a toxic way,” Slotnik said. “Coach Sims does a great job of building winning chemistry and holding us accountable. He is someone that has taught me a lot both on and off the court.”

With high expectations for the rest of the season comes pressure to meet them.

Because pressure is usually associated with a negative connotation, Sims says he prefers to motivate the team using “goals” and “expectations.”

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“[There is pressure] in a good, competitive way, not in a toxic way.

Coach Sims does a great job of building winning chemistry and holding us accountable.”

“I don’t think it’s pressure on gaming,” Sims said. “I think it’s just a matter of selfmotivation. These kids love the game, and they want to get better. They wouldn’t be here [and] wouldn’t be spending hours upon hours outside of school with me and my assistants if they didn’t love it. It’s selfdiscipline.”

Team Culture Photo by Ravi Vasan

PROTECT THE NEST: Upper School students unite to show support to hornet atheletes.

This year’s team captains, Shelby and senior Lee Dort, have had a significant

impact on the team, Sims says. Both Shelby and Dort have committed to Vanderbilt University to play basketball in the fall.

Sims believes the leadership of the two captains puts his high expectations of the team into practice.

“They’ve done a wonderful job, not only verbally, but by example,” Sims said. “They’ve been awesome, they’re great players, they work hard every day in practice, and the kids just fall behind [them]. You can’t ask for better leadership.”

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I demand that they give me maximum effort every day. We hold the kids to a higher standard, and we have consequences.”

The whole team shares a bond that the coaching staff think contributes greatly to their performance this season, Sims said.

“I think they really truly enjoy being together,” Sims said. “We’ve had some teams in the past that liked to be around each other, but outside of basketball, they would kind of just go their own ways. These guys have good chemistry in the locker room and outside of the court.”

Slotnik’s experience on the team has been incredibly positive, he says. He greatly values the bonds he and the team have formed in a short amount of time.

“Having new teammates is also different, but the way we have adjusted as a team both on the court and off is incredible,” Slotnik said. “We were able to bond off the court, which helped us on the court. I love the guys on the team, and they’re all like brothers to me.”

The Greater Community As the end of the season approaches, all eyes are on the SPC championships in early February.

“I hope we finish the season and cap it off with an SPC title,” Shelby said. “My mind is focused on conference play and going undefeated for the rest of the season. That is our team goal as well.”

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I hope we finish the season and cap it off with an SPC title. My mind is focused on conference play and going undefeated for the rest of the season.

That is our team goal as well.”

Hornet fans say they hope to see the team’s success continue through the end of the season.

“We’re pretty good this year,” freshman Alex Sharma said. “The connections between the players are very good in my opinion, and I hope that we can win SPC and get a banner on the wall.”

Freshman Will Johnson is also happy with the season so far and says this year’s team is set up for success.

“I think they’ve done pretty well considering the tough opponents,” Johnson said. “I feel like they’ve put in some good teamwork, [and] we’ve got some great players, a great coach and great organization overall. We’re going to put together some good wins down the stretch, and we’re going to win SPC.” The team is focused and working hard to achieve its goals, Sims said.

“I just want to see our kids keep improving,” Sims said. “Our ultimate goal is to win an SPC championship. That’s the goal we set for ourselves at the beginning of the season, and that’s the number one goal for us.”

Wednesday, February 9, 2022 16 Sports Evergreen Ever Under the Radar: Protecting Greenhill’s Athletes

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Photos by Ravi Vasan and Helina Tedros

RECOVERING ATHLETES: Students seek medical assistance and physical rehabilitation from trainers Matthew Blimline and Kasey Zibton in order to prepare for games.

Josie Arbuckle

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n their way to practice, studentathletes stream through the hallway housing Greenhill Athletics Department offices and walk past the inconspicuous space known as the sports medicine room.

Although sports medicine is an integral part of Greenhill Athletics, many students don’t know what it encompasses.

Merriam-Webster defines sports medicine as “a field of medicine concerned with the prevention and treatment of injuries and disorders related to participation in sports.”

“I think of it as an umbrella term for various professions,” Athletic Trainer Matthew Blimline said. “Physical therapists, trainers, chiropractors – we all work together inter-professionally to provide the best care for our patients. Each of us has a specialized skill set.”

Varsity Cross Country Coach Jason Yaffe says that athletes go into sports medicine either to protect themselves from injury or recover from it. Sports medicine is a process that aids athletes who face both major and minor injuries, he said.

“Athletes enter sports medicine from proactive or reactive situations,” Yaffe said. “Some athletes get there because they want to continue to make sure their bodies can perform. Then there’s the reactive piece, when that body is not cooperating athletically or physically.”

Sports medicine team members act as first responders for any injuries, working to keep Greenhill’s athletes as safe and healthy as possible.

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Athletes enter sports medicine from proactive or reactive situations.

Some athletes get there because they want to continue to make sure their bodies can perform. Then there’s the reactive piece, when that body is not cooperating athletically or physically.”

“We do the [Upper School] game coverage – I like to call us the lifeguards of athletics,” Blimline said. “We are the first line of defense if an athlete is injured and needs rehab.”

A day in the life of both of Greenhill’s athletic trainers, Kasey Zibton and Blimline, includes setting up the clinic, supplying the

fields all around campus with water and ice for thirsty competitors, and helping injured or aching athletes.

Students come in for physical therapy evaluations at their convenience, sometimes during the school day.

Senior Icis Barrientos says that she would check in with the athletic trainers and be evaluated so she could recover as quickly as possible from her concussion.

“I would check in with Kasey [Zibton], and she would see my progress and if I’m still symptomatic,” Barrientos said.

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We do the [Upper School] game coverage - I like to call us the lifeguards of athletics. We are the first line of defense if an athlete is injured and needs rehab.”

Greenhill also offers a Student Athletic Training Aide program where students are exposed to sports medicine techniques by working under the athletic trainers.

“It’s a buffet of anatomy,” Blimline said.

“We have a student aide program where students can come in and help us out in the training room for a sports credit by learning to tape and help with rehab.”

To receive full credit for their sports medicine course, students must work from 4-6 p.m. daily to aid the trainers and put in hours comparable to athletes.

“The more commitment they put into that, the more they get out – they are able to count it as an elective sports credit if they do it enough,” Blimline said. “As much time as you put in is what you get out. We want you to be effective with a certain skill before we let you help out.”

Junior Hannah Zhou, a student in the Student Athletic Training Aide program, says they were intrigued by the program and wanted to learn more about sports medicine.

“A lot of the time I help out with rehab or taping people,” Zhou said. “The closest thing to what we learn is kinesiology.”

When an athlete needs medical attention or treatment, coaches will also send their team members to the trainers. Varsity Girls Basketball Coach Darryn Sandler says that he had an athlete injured early in the season whom he recommended work with sports medicine.

“She was able to set up times to go in and get treatment and make progress,” Sandler said. “A lot of the time, athletes want to get

back on the court faster than they should – the trainers do a great job of communicating with the coaches to keep our athletes as safe as possible.”

Yaffe says athletes taking time to be proactive in taking care of themselves minimizes the need for reactive care or rehabilitation and helps protect his runners.

“The best ability is availability,” Yaffe said. “We need to strengthen our frame and

do what we can to take care of ourselves.”

One of the primary duties of an athletic trainer is to give the student body security and support.

Barrientos says that the trainers have always ensured that she received quality care. “[Zibton] is really good at communicating with my doctors,” Barrientos said. “The trainers make sure that everyone is working towards getting healthy.”

Ever Evergreen Friends In and Out of the Game

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

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Sports

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Photo courtesy of Sibelle Zambie; photo by Ravi Vasan

TEAM CHEMISTRY: Sports teams such as girls basketball participate in various bonding activities outside of practice. The goal is to build friendships with teammates.

Ria Agarwal

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n Upper School sports teams, coaches and captains are constantly working to find ways to allow players to grow closer, not only as teammates, but also as friends. Camaraderie makes the sport enjoyable for players and contributes to a team’s success, according to players and coaches.

“Outside of practice and games, team bonding is extremely important,” varsity girls basketball captain Mia Ness said.

“There are things you can’t always talk about on the court, so taking the time out of my normal day to hang out with my team off the court is really special.”

Girls soccer and girls basketball both schedule out-of-town tournaments early in the season. Varsity Girls Soccer Coach Laura Flanagan says the trip always helps everyone adjust to the team dynamic and helps players focus on getting to know one another better.

The overnight stays also allow coaches to get to know players individually.

“With the long bus ride and also some sort of activity, like a mall scavenger hunt, this trip gives the team time away from Dallas distractions so that we can really enjoy being around each other and acclimate the new kids to the team,” said Varsity Girls Basketball Coach Darryn Sandler. “We also make very specific rooming lists to encourage communication throughout grade levels.”

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With the long bus ride and also some sort of activity, like a mall scavenger hunt, this trip gives the team time away from Dallas distractions so that we can really enjoy being around each other and acclimate the new kids to the team. We also make very specific rooming lists to encourage communication throughout grade levels.”

Outside of tournaments, captains plan smaller activities for teammates to do together on weekends or after games.

Varsity boys soccer captain Gideon

Myers says that their team goes bowling every year as a team bonding activity. They also organize soccer buddies with the girls soccer team where the players give their buddy a small treat on game days.

“We also hang out as friends in school as well as on the weekends,” Myers said.

Girls basketball also does annual Secret Santa gift exchanges, sleepovers, lunches and dinners to encourage team bonding.

“I think team lunches are really the simplest way to enhance team bonding,” Ness said. “It’s really fun to just come together as often as you want, even when you aren’t on the court.”

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Outside of practice and games, team bonding is extremely important.

There are things you can’t always talk about on the court, so taking the time out of my normal day to hang out with my team off the court is really special.”

Sandler says establishing strong friendships off the court and field is essential to success during games.

“In my past, our best years record-wise were also our best years chemistry-wise,” Sandler said.

Myers says that having a close team also gives players the ability to see practices as a distraction and as an outlet, rather than as something they dread.

“Practices and games are much more enjoyable when you like the people you’re playing with,” Myers said. “The cold during soccer season is really un-motivating, so having fun with the team is especially important.”

Sandler says the bond between teammates and coaches is simply unmatched during the season due to the sheer amount of quality time spent together during daily two-hour practices, bus rides and games.

“Good chemistry always changes the game,” Ness said. “Playing this year has been so much fun because I can always feel the positive energy from every one of my teammates. I could carry on a conversation with every person on my team off the court, and I think that really shows on the court.”

Graphic by Emma Nguyen

Evergreen Ever the

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Opinion: Lessons from the Wrongful Conviction of Joyce Ann Brown Ryan Fiedelman, Isabelle Kronick, Megan Liu, Lily McArdle, Chris Quan, Skylar Smith

O

n May 6, 1980, a family-owned fur shop in Preston Center became a murder scene.

To the dismay and shock of his wife, Rubin Danziger was robbed and murdered. In the investigation that followed, a 34-year-old McKinney woman named Joyce Ann Brown was wrongly convicted of committing the crime.

We first learned about this case in Tom Perryman’s Literature of Human Rights class in the fall semester. We learned how Joyce Ann Brown was misidentified and wrongly convicted of capital murder on false witness testimony. And we learned how, in the years following the conviction, evidence emerged pointing to faults in the original investigation and trial.

The facts are disturbing. The jailhouse informant had her sentence shortened in exchange for her testimony. On the witness stand, she lied about her criminal record and what she heard — facts that investigators uncovered.

There were other appalling mistakes.

The getaway car was rented by a Denver resident named Joyce Ann Brown—a person who had no connection to the McKinney Joyce Ann Brown convicted of Rubin Danziger’s murder.

The actual murderer, Rene Taylor, confessed to Danziger’s murder after she

was arrested for another murder; she revealed that her accomplice was a woman named Lorraine Germany, who was being held for another crime in New Mexico.

Germany, it turned out, looked strikingly similar to the wrongly convicted Joyce Ann Brown, which likely explains how Danziger’s wife, Ala, mistakenly placed Brown at the scene of the murder.

While Joyce Ann Brown’s story was highly publicized and she was granted a new trial and eventually exonerated, we learned that the majority of other innocent inmates are not as lucky. Most important of all, we learned it is our responsibility to bring awareness and attention to this case and others that are similar.

While this case closed over 30 years ago, there are still many imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. The injustices in our system need to be exposed. We need to work as the greater Dallas community, as future voters and present citizens to ensure that the “justice” system is grounded in truth and more equitable for all.

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These skills most directly prepare you to be a contributing member of society. Thus, we believe that Personal Finance should be a mandatory class at Greenhill. In a world that revolves around money, knowing how to use it is one of the most important skills you can have.

Our Editorial Policy

national and international events through articles and editorials written and edited by students.

The Evergreen welcomes letters and emails from readers. We reserve the right to edit submissions for accuracy, grammar and length. The Evergreen will not publish material that we judge to be libelous, obscene, invades privacy or constitutes hate speech.

Anonymous letters will not be published.

The staff editorial represents the opinion of The Evergreen staff, not necessarily that of Greenhill School.

The Evergreen is an independent, student-run newspaper serving the community of Greenhill School. It is printed six times during the school year. Print circulation is 800 copies. Past issues are archived at issuu.com/ghevergreen.

The Evergreen staff upholds a code of ethics that values honesty, integrity, accuracy and responsibility. Our mission is to help the local community interpret campus, local,

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Leaving school and moving into the world as an adult comes with the added burden of managing finances responsibly. "

Greenhill currently requires Narrative Nonfiction because the school believes it’s important for everyone – not just those who love to write – to be able to tell their story.

Whether in a college application essay or a job interview far in the future, a student’s ability to tell their story can put them on the path to success. We have been telling stories our whole lives, and Narrative Nonfiction helps us refine those skills.

The lessons Personal Finance teaches, despite their importance, are not skills we are just socialized to know. Most students do not grow up learning about taxes or investment.

Finance is an area largely unexplored by most of the student body, yet it is one of the most crucial when looking beyond high school.

This partially comes from the stigma around discussing money. It’s not something

Evergreen Print Editors-in-Chief

Jothi Gupta and Diane Lin

Executive Editors

Avery Franks and Cam Kettles

Kronick: ”Lots of Work to Do” !"#$ #"%&'$ ("%$ ')*+,-.)$ /0)$ )1"/-"2*$ ("%$3)&/$4*$("%$&)4,2)'$4."%/$/0)$),,",*$ 42'$-25%*/-+)$"3$/0)$+4*)6 Isabelle Kronick: Because of Texas’ long history of injustice, I wasn’t initially surprised by the wrongful conviction.

However, as I began to learn just how many things went wrong for Joyce Ann Brown— that information was deliberately hidden, the majority of the jury was white, and so on—I was shocked. I put myself in her position: I would be beyond terrified if I realized that I’d forever be associated with a fatal armed robbery, never mind having a criminal record next time I tried to apply for a job or seek social services. The sheer fear that I felt for Joyce Ann Brown and others in her position was overwhelming.

Managing Editor - Content Saara Bidiwala

Managing Editor - Design Khushi Chhaya

Creative Director Nate Stitt

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Associate Editors

Isabel Martinez and Valerie Xu

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Backpage Writers

Riya Kommineni and Anisa Walji

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Sophia Chao, Erica Fulbright and Christine Yan

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Evergreen Online

Isabelle Kronick: I always thought that telling the truth would be enough to keep me out of trouble. Clearly, that is not how our system works. I’ve learned that these cracks and loopholes that keep the innocent incarcerated are stains of our nation’s racist past, and we somehow cannot agree to get rid of them. As a country, we have lots of work to do. I hope that, by voting, advocating, and otherwise we will soon reach a point where the justice system is actually just.

Sumana Kethu and Spencer Jacobs

Editorial: Personal Finance Should Be Mandatory hen we leave Greenhill, the knowledge and skills we have learned from our classes will help us in many ways. Because of what we learn in science and history, we are more aware of the world; and language, math and English will help us immensely in participating in it.

However, some of the most basic, necessary skills for adult life are only mastered, generally speaking, by a select few Greenhill students who elect to take Personal Finance, a class dedicated to teaching students about personal responsibility and social consciousness.

Covering a breadth of topics from credit scores to real estate, the course offers students the opportunity to take on realworld situations where they are forced to make financial decisions. Students learn how to handle money and weigh costs and benefits of financial endeavors.

Regardless of how well you can solve indefinite integrals or how much you know about how World War I started, many of us without this knowledge will be calling our parents or Googling how to budget our future salaries or buy car insurance.

As Upper School students, we are nearing the end of our time as dependents.

Leaving school and moving into the world as an adult comes with the added burden of managing finances responsibly.

Unfortunately, so many of us leave high school not knowing how to do just that.

Evergreen staff Ever the

most of us talk about casually like we would our stories, for example. Students won’t get in-depth exposure to personal finances unless it’s done in a formal class setting. With finance, learning passively isn’t an option. In fact, many adults still hire expensive services to advise them on their finances.

Financial literacy and personal responsibility are critical to life beyond school. Not only do spending habits and good choices matter, but financial competency adds a layer of freedom to life. You don’t need to rely on anyone or anything to tell you how to use your money. There is a lot of information out there, not all of which can be trusted. Furthermore, being knowledgeable about personal spending habits means better control over one’s financial life and lower risk of financial trouble.

High school is the best time to learn these skills. With college fast approaching, students need to know how they are going to manage their money once they are on their own. Most of you will have some kind of job before the end of college, if you don’t already.

Having the knowledge to make financial decisions can give you more independence.

Finally, college itself involves money and money management, especially if you take out student loans for an undergraduate or master’s degree.

Personal Finance is only a semester long, but we can confidently say that its impacts are lifelong.

Advertisements The Evergreen welcomes advertisements, but we reserve the right to refuse an ad.

Business inquiries should be directed to Spencer Jacobs and Kaden Alibhai: jacobss22@greenhill.org alibhaik24@greenhill.org

Editors-in-Chief

Managing Editor - Content Ria Agarwal

Managing Editor - Multimedia Payton Blalock

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Helina Tedros and Stephanie Rojas

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Staff Writers Gabi Appel Juan Barrientos Devin Bracy Laird Burke Sydney Chien Taylor Chon Milyon Esayas Cole Feldman Eitan Hahn Dani Hallack Alfred Hoak Aman Jaleel

Aria Kutty William Maher Rishi Motupalli Christan Park Zara Paul Kathrin Peterson Noah Piper Jailynn Robinson Hayden Sampson Allie Schnitzer Mayer Sidikaro Jack Stone Ethan Vicknair

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Gregg Jones

Have a response?

Opinion? Original Idea?

Email the editors-in-chief lind22@greenhill.org guptaj22@greenhill.org

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To request a correction or clarification, please email Diane Lin: lind22@greenhill.org

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Evergreen Ever the

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Rants & Raves A RAVE to COVID-19 vaccine booster shots. Although getting boosted does guarantee a very sore arm for two days, it’s worth the protection against COVID-19. Even better, a rave to students actually getting the booster shot. Thanks to y’all, there is definitely hope for a better end to the school year.

A RANT to Texas weather.

It has been fluctuating even more than usual, which says a lot. After an 80-degree Christmas, it was suddenly below freezing in a matter of days. After some warmish weather in January, we’re starting February with the threat of another Snow-pocalypse.

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RANT to everyone getting COVID-19. Omicron spent much of January working its way through Lower, Middle and Upper School.

Symptoms are fortunately very mild in a lot of cases, if they’re even present at all, but it’s definitely not ideal to quarantine for days on end.

No one likes Microsoft Teams.

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RANT to the “four-peopleto-a-table” requirement in the dining hall. It’s understandable for safety’s sake, but it’s so much harder to talk to everyone at lunch. The worst part is that the cold weather prevents us from sitting outside in larger groups.

RAVE to the new semester.

A

A RANT to long stretches of school without a major break.

After having Thanksgiving Break and Winter Break in the span of two months, the fact that the next weeklong break is in mid-March is daunting.

A RAVE to our SchoolPass form no longer being checked as we enter Greenhill. Most people just showed a screenshot from last year anyway. Others tried to fill it out while driving to school or waiting to turn onto Hornet Lane, which endangered other drivers. I don’t even know what would happen if your pass was red.

It’s always nice to have a fresh start in some classes.

For juniors, seniors and people taking semester-long electives in particular, having a lot of new classes and a different schedule makes for a nice change of pace.

RAVENT to the STEM

Center construction expansion. After staring at an enclosed hole for the past six months, it’s great to see progress. That means, however, limited parking and a long walk – doubling the already lengthy trek to the Athletics Building.

RAVENT to seniors finally being done with the vast majority of things. It’s time for senioritis to kick in! Unfortunately for juniors, things will only pile up more and more from here until the end of 2022. We wish you luck.

Opinion: Polarization Threatens Democracy Riya Kommineni

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ust over a year ago, democracy – or what was left of it – died in America.

On Jan. 6, 2021, over 2,000 supporters of former president Donald Trump stormed the Capitol in Washington, D.C., seeking to overturn his loss to Joe Biden. Chaos ensued, Congress went into lockdown, and several people lost their lives. Trump’s Twitter account was banned, and he was subsequently impeached by the House of Representatives.

By denying the outcome of an election and revolting against it, these people defied the very concept of democracy that the United States is founded on.

Yet, over a year later, nothing has changed.

The ever-growing partisan divide between Republicans and Democrats has extended far beyond the white columns of the Capitol. As a country, we have become so blinded by our allegiance to a political party that we can’t differentiate between right and wrong.

Republicans, including everyday citizens, continue to denounce Biden’s win and claim that the election was a “fraud.” They proudly fly their Trump flags in front of their homes, attend protests chanting “Let’s Go Brandon,” and tell anyone who will listen that Biden lost the election.

What do Republican politicians do? For the most part, they encourage this behavior.

It’s one thing to not agree with a president, but it’s another to hinder the progress of the nation because you’re sore that your political party didn’t win. Rarely in American history, regardless of which party was in power, has the political divide in this nation become so polarized, and so violently so.

It’s been a year since the insurrection. Many had hoped

Republicans would come to their senses and moderate their followers. That hasn’t happened.

Most recently, polarization over the Build Back Better Act reopened old wounds.

The BBB Act was effectively killed when Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., publicly announced that he would not vote for it. Without any Republican support, the bill could not pass. The BBB was one of Biden’s core campaign promises.

By failing to pass it, his chances of winning reelection in 2024 have weakened.

Obviously, Republicans don’t want him to win again, but the act proposes trillions of dollars for raising corporate taxes, affordable healthcare and climate change remediation.

These measures would have improved most Americans’ lives and started seriously addressing climate change.

The BBB just shows that, regardless of the actual legislation, following party lines matters the most. It has become even more apparent that politics was never truly about the people, but rather the egos of politicians.

Polarization is blinding. Most Republicans aren’t genuinely on board with taking guns into the Capitol. Most are rational people who made a calculated political decision to save their career by jumping on the bandwagon.

Not all Republican Party members endorse the insurrection or the actions that resulted from it, but Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah and Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming seem to be outliers. Republicans like them are few and far between these days.

In fact, as the GOP leans farther and farther to the far-right, Romney and Cheney have been ostracized from their party. When Cheney publicly condemned Trump for his actions on Jan. 6, she was subsequently censured by the Wyoming GOP. Imagine telling someone in 2004 that Dick

Cheney’s daughter would be ostracized by the Republican Party.

This is how extreme politics in America have become.

So, how do we advance from this fragile moment in the life of our democracy? We rebuild.

As citizens, we must demand better from our leaders.

We must come together, not as followers of a political party that doesn’t care about us, but rather as Americans. Only if that happens can democracy survive in America.

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Evergreen Ever the

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Wednesday, February 9, 2022

OMICRON UPENDS COVID-19 PROTOCOLS Riya Kommineni, Anisa Walji

T

he omicron variant of COVID-19 unleashed a surge in positive cases on the Greenhill campus in January, prompting changes to safety protocols. Masks are required again in all indoor spaces, and lunch tables are limited to four students.

Greenhill also released new contact tracing rules. These guidelines include shifting from the five-day isolation period recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to a seven-day isolation period if a student tests positive. The revised guidelines allowed vaccinated students not exhibiting any COVID-19 symptoms to return from a contact-tracing quarantine after a negative test at least five days after exposure. Overall, the school is proceeding on a caseby-case basis.

The contact tracing team members, drawn from the administration and nurse’s office, created these guidelines to maximize safety for students and families. The team frequently consults with Dallas County Health and Human Services and the school’s Medical Advisory Committee, which is made up of medical professionals in the fields of infectious disease, pulmonary care and pediatrics.

“Due to the highly contagious nature of this variant, [the] risk of exposure is so high and generalized,” Associate Head of School, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer Kendra Grace said. “You’re going to be exposed to the virus at some point. What we’ve done is narrowed our contact tracing efforts to really focus on high-risk, frequent-contact groups.”

So what happens when you test positive for COVID-19 or come into close contact with someone who tests positive?

You have been exposed to COVID-19…

Are you vaccinated?

Yes

“Vaccinated students who are close contacts and are not showing symptoms may remain at school and take a PCR test on Day 5 after exposure.”

If you feel uncomfortable coming to school...

No

Take your PCR test five days after exposure.

Did you test positive?

You can contact the school, but online learning is only an option if the school has directed you to stay at home after exposure or a positive test.

“Unvaccinated students will be required to quarantine at home, returning on Day 6 after receiving a negative PCR test if they remain symptom-free.”

While quarantining, these students must learn remotely.

No If you test negative and are symptom-free, you may return to school on Day 6.

No “Students [...] may

return to school on Day 8.”

Take your antigen test five days after testing positive.

Did you test positive?

Yes

You must isolate for seven days and should notify the school. You must learn remotely if you are well enough during that time. “Student and employees may return to school on Day 8 if they have a negative antigen test on Day 5 or later (or they may return on Day 10 with no test required).”

Has someone you live with tested positive?

Yes “Quarantine timeframes will continue to be handled by the nurses’ office on a caseby-case basis. Please contact greenhill_ nurse@greenhill.org if someone in your household tests positive and wait to talk with a nurse before sending your child to school.” You must learn remotely if you are well enough and not attending school.

Yes If you tested positive, do not wish to take another test, or are not able to get a test, you must stay home for ten days and can return on Day 11.

Stay safe and mask up, Hornets!

Note: The day of exposure is day 0. SchoolPass completion is required every school day, even if a student is not attending school that day. This graphic only applies to students. All quotes are from Head of School Lee Hark’s email from Jan. 11, 2022. For up-to-date guidance about COVID-19, please contact Nurse Trimmer (trimmerk@greenhill.org) or consult the CDC website.

Graphic by Khushi Chhaya and Emma Nguyen