Broadening our Perspective

Dan Ayrault Lecture | Oct. 25, 2023

Matika Wilbur

MATIKA WILBUR is a critically acclaimed social documentarian, speaker, National Geographic Explorer, and photographer from the Swinomish and Tulalip peoples of coastal Washington. She cohosts the All My Relations podcast with Dr. Adrienne Keene, providing a platform that invites guests to delve into subjects facing Native peoples today and explore the connections between land, nonhuman relatives, and one another. Her recently published work, Project 562, a crowd-funded initiative to visit, engage, and photograph people from more than 562 sovereign tribal nations in North America, is her fourth major creative venture elevating Native American identity and culture.

Bernie Noe Endowed Lecture on Ethics and Politics | Jan. 31, 2024

Anne Applebaum

APULITZER PRIZE-WINNING historian, journalist, and commentator on geopolitics, Anne Applebaum examines the challenges and opportunities of global political and economic change through the lens of world history and the contemporary political landscape. Informed by her expertise in European history and her years of international reporting, Applebaum shares perspectives on the far-reaching implications of today’s volatile world events. Her Pulitzer Prize-winning “Gulag: A History” is about the Soviet concentration camps. Her book “Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine” received her second Duff Cooper Prize and the 28th Lionel

Gelber Prize in 2018. Her other books include “Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1946,” which won a Cundill Prize for Historical Literature, and “Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe.” She is a senior fellow of international affairs and Agora fellow in residence at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.

Mark J. Bebie ’70 Memorial Lecture | March 6, 2024

Shankar Vedantam

SHANKAR VEDANTAM is the host and executive editor of National Public Radio’s Hidden Brain radio show and podcast, which is regularly listed as one of the top 20 podcasts in the world. Vedantam was NPR’s social science correspondent between 2011 and 2020, following 10 years as a reporter and columnist at The Washington Post. He is the author of two nonfiction books: “The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars and Save Our Lives” and “Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain,” an exploration of deception’s role in human success. He speaks internationally about how the “hidden brain” shapes our world.

LECTURES IN THE SERIES take place on the Lakeside School’s Upper School campus and are free and open to the Lakeside community. Speakers are chosen by a selection committee drawn from Lakeside faculty, staff, parents/guardians, alumni, students, and trustees. The views and opinions expressed by speakers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Lakeside School. Learn more: lakesideschool.org/about-us/lakeside-lecture-series

Shankar Vedantam

Tom Rona ’72

For nearly 50 years, Tom Rona has been challenging students’ minds and deepening their understanding of mathematical concepts. He has been a valued mentor, generous colleague, and unparalleled schedule maker. At the Upper School commencement on June 8, he was honored by the Lakeside Board of Trustees with the Willard J. Wright ’32 Distinguished Service Award. The following citation was read by the board chair, Artemios “Tim” Panos ’85.

FOR THE PAST 46 school years, Tom Rona has been a thoughtful practitioner of a growth and learning mindset, crafting and continually refining his toolkit of gentle kindness, delightful wit, creative pedagogy, and superb mentoring. With immeasurable devotion to Lakeside, he has applied these tools in his role as a math teacher and outdoor trip leader; an advisor; a member of innumerable committees and task forces; and as a wizard at special projects, by which we mean the thoughtful and functional course schedules that have benefited generations of Lakeside students and teachers.

Working with kids is Tom’s raison d’être, and Lake- siders past, present, and future are so fortunate. To Tom’s 46 school years as a teacher, add his years as a Lakeside student, Class of 1972, and we realize that Tom has committed essentially his entire life to our school.

We have seen his service in the classroom, where his legendary math classes are a tour de force in promoting deep thinking about quantitative ideas … ideas his students can engage with because he is aware of both their academic and emotional capabilities. He carefully — brilliantly — tailors his teaching to those capabilities, building kids’ mathematical confidence. His high expectations and rigorous lessons are punctuated by his characteristic good humor, bad puns, and doodlings of the famous “Balloon Dog,” whose quips and silliness in the margin of many an algebra as- signment and test lighten the mood and relax his students so they can do their best thinking.

We have seen Tom’s service in his mentoring of colleagues. Whether sharing ideas to improve classroom management or explaining how to teach complicated math concepts, as he does with his students, Tom builds teachers up by believing in them more than they believe in themselves. He affirms what they are doing well, and his suggestions are so gentle that the teachers feel encouraged, nurtured, and inspired to live up to his very high expectations. New teachers who sit in on his class see a happy atmosphere for growth and learning, and they see how he connects with students. They say the feeling in his room is education magic. “I had many great colleagues who mentored me, but none better than Tom,” one said.

We have seen Tom’s service in his steadfast enthusiasm for innovation, his own and that of others. At a meeting where a new enterprise is unveiled, invariably he notices the hard work of each person and his thank you is always specific and sincere. Of Tom’s own delightful innovations, one of many we thank him for is a silly, colorful, online math-exercises page that challenges students with at-their-own-pace practice.

Tom’s wife, Barbara, shared that he was jubilant to be selected as a Lakeside teacher in 1977, and we are jubilant today to honor his service with the Willard J. Wright ’32 Distinguished Service Award. Tom has served the school with his quiet, humble brilliance in everything he has touched, and we hope he stays at Lakeside until he is 100.