20 minute read
Brearley in the Time of Covid
Unarguably, this was a year like no other, at least like no other in recent memory. At Brearley, maintaining the educational program with the necessary health and safety protocols in place meant rethinking programming, adding a virtual component to classes and redesigning schedules, all of which our faculty and students adjusted to with characteristic resolve, spirit and aplomb.
Continuing our reporting on Brearley in the Time of Covid, in this issue we visit the arts departments and learn how the teachers creatively and flexibly adapted their programs to keep students challenged, engaged and curious. Although some traditional events that are integral to the arts curriculum—Winter Assembly, Evening of Dance, Drama’s mainstage production, divisional art shows, Spring Music Concerts, among others—were either canceled or reinvented for the virtual platform, teachers found innovative ways to carry on, in large part thanks to the assistance of the Technology Department.
On the following pages we also go beyond the walls of Brearley to hear from our alumnae. For many the coronavirus outbreak forced an abrupt shift in or redefinition of their jobs and responsibilities. Ranging from the Class of 1970 to 2010, the stories shared are inspiring, heartbreaking and hopeful and demonstrate extraordinary courage, professionalism and principled engagement in the world. We are profoundly grateful to them and everyone in our community providing care and raising awareness of the systemic inequities this disease has laid bare.
CURRICULUM The Arts Persist
Ordinarily, on day one, Marisa Ballaro, Varsity Dance Director, begins dance class in the studio with the foundation of movement, improvisation and composition. With Covid forcing students to dance from home, Ms. Ballaro adjusted to the circumstances by instead starting with “contextual conversations about the current dance field, dance as activism, the ‘who’s who,’ and our own kinesthetic dance histories.” Each student selected an artist and created a presentation for her peers using Zoom’s screen-share tool. “We looked outside of our community at the stories of those who inspire us, and then we looked within our own community and introduced ourselves and our own ‘dance family trees,’” explains Ms. Ballaro. It was a powerful way to connect and spur open discussion among each other, and Ms. Ballaro praises the students for “rising to the occasion and taking on the challenges with positivity and curiosity.” Though the annual February dance concert could not happen, Brearley’s dancers were able to continue their celebration of dance by sharing innovative dance films during Assembly and the virtual Benefit. “With their work ethic and perseverance,” Ms. Ballaro notes, “it’s been a year they can all feel good about.”
With limitations placed on singing and playing instruments, the Music Department took the opportunity to reinvent music instruction for the year. While the existing curriculum has always celebrated cultures from all parts of the world while highlighting classical composers like Bach, Beethoven and Mozart, members of the department were afforded the time to place a greater emphasis on music history and appreciation, bringing a larger group of composers, musicians and artists to the forefront as never before. For example, students learned about New Orleans and the birth of jazz as well as New York City and the Harlem Renaissance. “I am inspired by the work of the department,” reflects Matt Aiken, Head of Music. Additionally, in music classes, teachers introduced students to Soundtrap. A collaborative music and podcast recording app, it provided students with more opportunities in the field of music, to become not only recording artists and composers but also music engineers. Mr. Aiken is pleased with the outcome, adding that students are now “listening and going at music differently, and deepening their appreciation of what it takes to be a professional artist and what goes into a recording.”
Unable to use the studios in 610—they were either taken over for classrooms or converted to office space—the Art Department creatively reimagined the curriculum for all grade levels. To prevent sharing of materials, Dale Emmart, Art Department Head, and her team took on the task of curating kits and tools for every student to have as her own. Teaching remotely, Ms. Emmart credits art teacher Kate Javens for being the “boots on the ground” to ensure the art kits’ smooth distribution. Designed to be portable and fit in a student’s backpack, the kit contained sketchbooks and a standard pack of tools, including scissors, tape, pencils, tracing paper, colored paper and glue. The students enjoyed having their own selection, and although the scale of the work was smaller, Ms. Emmart was greatly impressed by the richness of art the students created and as well as the work of her colleagues. “I take my hat off to anyone in the arts. The entire department was flexible, innovative and brilliant all year.”
For Brearley’s thespians, the Drama Department took advantage of their community to come together. Olivia Ball, Head of Class IX and a drama teacher, says the “biggest success of all was being able to use drama class—a blend of in-person and remote students—as a space to laugh and play and create together during this crazy, challenging time.” Robert Duke, Head of the Drama Department, concurs. “Once
the imagination is truly engaged, everybody feels ‘present.’” In lieu of Drama’s mainstage production, this year’s winter musical, aptly named The “Winter” Musical: A Year in Revue, was rehearsed and filmed virtually and included a slate of songs from Waitress, Shrek, Hadestown and Sweet Charity that spoke to the cast’s experiences over the last year. “Seeing the energy, passion, talent and sense of community that students brought to this project made my year,” continues Ms. Ball. “The show did, in fact, go on, and I am incredibly proud of their work.” In the spring, the news in Drama got even more exciting when Brearley put on its first in-person show after over a year, Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona. No matter it was a masked-and-distanced version and for a limited audience. The important thing, Mr. Duke points out, is that “we were able to be in a room making theater again—and it sure felt good!”
While the hope is that Brearley students and faculty will collaborate in person to create art next year, by and large, arts this year continued to thrive. Many of the experiments of the year, in fact, will be incorporated into future programming, including using videos to analyze dance and music lessons, virtually bringing in outside artists to widen students’ perspectives, and learning to turn obstacles into opportunities. “To quote many Brearley administrators, ‘We were building the plane as we were flying it,’” sums up Ms. Ballaro, “and it was an extraordinary year.” At the same time, while Covid may have caused disruptions in the arts curriculum, the guiding principles for its faculty (and all our faculty) have remained intact. “Our need to make art doesn’t stop during a global pandemic,” Ms. Ball underscores. “If anything, that need becomes even more essential.”
ALUMNAE On and Off the Frontlines
Though I am a resident physician training in psychiatry, when Covid hit, I was in my intern year rotating through a New York City hospital’s general medical and emergency room services. Uncertainty was of course the norm, hospital policies changing what felt like hourly, and everyone—hospital employees, patients, families alike—was struggling in their own way; my guiding mantra was “no feeling is wrong right now.” In parallel, as hospital room beds filled with Covid patients, the demographic make-up of our hospital’s patient population shifted: patients of color seemed disproportionately to be admitted for the virus. Anger was added to the list of emotions. This pandemic devastated us. It has also drawn attention to problems in our segregated and unequal health-care system that have been plaguing New York City for far too long and that desperately need more of our collective attention and energy.
—emily (walker) menand ‘06 During the pandemic I worked relentlessly, as a social epidemiologist, to help expose and overcome major data gaps to enable documenting the inequitable tolls of Covid-19 by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic position, and made data tools freely available to other researchers and advocates. A group I helped found that I chair, the Spirit of 1848 Caucus of the American Public Health Association, which focuses on social justice and public health, worked with Public Health Awakened to create a living document—”Covid-19 & Health Justice Resource Page”—to support mutual aid and organizing for health justice. To help inform action for health equity, I’ve spoken about these issues to policy makers, advocates and the broader public, including at the first meeting of the federal Covid-19 Health Equity Task Force. It has been a powerful year, and I am grateful for all who have stood up together to oppose structural racism, police violence, climate change and assaults on democratic rule, and to work instead to bring about a more equitable and sustainable world.
—nancy krieger ’76
As a primary care doctor and addiction specialist, my work during Covid included helping staff Boston Medical Center’s Covid testing clinic, caring for hospitalized Covid-19 patients with substance use disorders, and providing addiction treatment via telehealth for the first time. In my role as a medical director for our health system’s Medicaid Accountable Care Organization (ACO), I worked with my colleagues to ramp up the services we offer our most complex patients, in order to address the rising rates of food insecurity, housing insecurity and mental health conditions, as well as increase Covid vaccination rates. It was such a painful and difficult year for so many, but it was also inspiring to see how much innovation emerged. I was very grateful to remain connected to my patients virtually, and it has been a joy to be able to see patients in person again.
—christine pace ‘97
In April 2020, the New Jersey biotech at which I work received FDA approval for our triple-negative breast cancer medicine. As the head of supply chain, I was accountable for making sure our drug got to patients as quickly as possible after approval. Many of us had to show up to our office to ensure that our seriously ill patients received the medicine that they had been waiting for within days of its approval. Being able to focus on helping patients during such an uncertain and scary time was a gift for which I remain very grateful.
—sarah (hyman) washkowitz ‘00
In March and April of 2020 I was nearing the end of my intern year in internal medicine residency in New York City when Covid-19 upended the trajectory of my training, which was, for the next few months, focused exclusively on treating a single disease whose pathophysiology we learned in real time. I was mostly in the intensive care units at two hospitals—Bellevue Hospital, the oldest public hospital in the United States, and the Manhattan Veterans Affairs Medical Center, serving the veterans who had once served us. At the beginning, we didn’t even know yet what PPE we needed: The CDC was not yet saying N95s were necessary, and even wearing surgical masks with patients was not yet standard practice. But it was clear we did not have enough PPE even for the suspected Covid cases, and N95s were kept under lock and key. Some of my co-residents were hearing reports of dire shortages across the city at places like Elmhurst, which was at first hit earlier and harder than Bellevue was (we caught up soon enough) and sent out a call for crowd-sourced PPE that would be delivered to hospitals most in need. After we were redeployed to the ICUs, the amazing medical students at NYU took the baton and continued these efforts in far more organized and efficient manner—they were able to deliver thousands of masks and handmade face shields to hospitals all over NYC during those harrowing weeks of late March and early April.
—simone blaser ‘04
I am a general internist and respiratory epidemiologist, so, as some of my colleagues have put it, “this was our Super Bowl.” I was redeployed as a physician to the Emergency Department and Step-Down units at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in Washington Heights during the March–April 2020 Covid-19 surge. During that traumatic period, I initiated a number of Covid-19 research efforts that have been funded by NIH to improve our understanding of the pandemic. I have the privilege of leading the Collaborative Cohort of Cohorts for Covid-19 Research, which brings together 14 long-term general population–based cohort studies to identify risk and resilience factors for severe Covid-19, to examine potential long-term health effects of Covid-19, and also to understand how the Covid-19 pandemic experience has affected trajectories of health and disease. C4R includes over fifty thousand adult participants from every continental US state and from diverse racial, ethnic and sociodemographic backgrounds, thereby supporting critical assessments of how social determinants of health impact Covid-19 outcomes. This project brings together over 150 investigators from across the United States, at last count (but no Brearley alums, yet?). I am also conducting the Covid-19 Lung Microvascular and Parenchymal Sequelae (LUNG-MaPS) study, in which we are examining lung architecture with dual-energy lung CT among hundreds of Covid-19 survivors. Meanwhile, my three school-age kids have been incredibly brave, supportive and independent; in return, I have let them play a lot of video games. My husband has been a total star.
—elizabeth oelsner ‘96
At City Harvest, New York City’s largest food rescue organization, where I serve as VP of marketing and communications, we mobilized swiftly when the first cases of Covid-19 were diagnosed in the city in March, ramping up our food rescue and delivery operations to provide more free nutritious food for our neighbors than ever before. We simultaneously revamped how we work in accordance with CDC guidelines around social distancing, restrictions on in-person volunteering, and efforts to minimize exposure while distributing food, including by delivering PPE, hand sanitizer and cleaning supplies to our partner food pantries. Between March 2020 and March 2021, City Harvest trucks were on the streets every day rescuing and delivering over 151 million pounds of food, more than twice as much as the year prior, to help feed the 2.5 million New Yorkers who were struggling to make ends meet even before Covid-19, and the many more in need of food assistance because of the pandemic. Knowing how many New Yorkers were turning to soup kitchens and food pantries for the first time, we added an interactive “Find Free Food” map to our website to help our neighbors access food near them, and we advocated throughout the pandemic to strengthen and expand benefits, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Pandemic-EBT, to support people in our city and across the country who were struggling.
—julia foster ’00
I am a physician and radiologist with 38 years of experience in pulmonary disease. I “see” patients in their representations on radiologic images and have emotional reactions to their conditions. They are no less real to me than three-dimensional patients seen by my clinical colleagues. Since March 2020 I have seen an incalculable number of patients with Covid-19 infection. The radiographic appearance and evolution of the disease have become more familiar but no less appalling. I have found the illness in the asymptomatic patient imaged for other purposes, in the patient in early illness, and in the patient who is floridly ill. I have watched patients with severe pulmonary damage lie in the bed on the ventilator for weeks, a horrifying course of illness that always feels personal and emotional. I have watched patients, many in their 30s and 40s, whose lungs are so damaged that they have been maintained on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO); these images of patients with completely opacified lungs and airways appear to be the picture of physiologic nonsense. (“How can lungs be utterly airless?”) They provoke intense emotions and distress.
I am disturbed by the political and social climate that has led many sofar uninfected individuals to reject vaccination, a tool that if used widely would greatly reduce the number of severely infected individuals. Because it is unreasonable for me to continue to burn through my personal reserves and peace of mind for an increasingly upsetting and indifferent society, I have resigned my position, effective May 31, 2021.
—lisa diethelm ’70
I’m currently a pediatric resident physician in NYC. I have treated children with severe Covid-19 symptoms (fever, shortness of breath, cough, etc.), and even more children with Covid-associated multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), a condition that occurs weeks to months after an asymptomatic or mild Covid-19 infection. The disease affects children differently and it’s been really shocking and difficult to tell parents that their child developed long-term heart problems weeks after a mild Covid infection. I’ve also lost count of the number of children who have lost grandparents, parents and other caregivers to Covid-19. I’ve also lost count of the many pediatric patients requiring psychiatric treatment because of the anxiety, stress and loneliness caused by the pandemic. Covid-19 is a deadly disease that has changed family structures and has myriad social consequences.
—alumna ‘10
Working in a safety-net, community-based clinic has had so many ups and downs. I really felt last summer’s second wave. There was a significant uptick with Covid calls, most of them interpreted calls from our immigrant populations, mostly essential workers lacking the flexibility that I had. A few times a week those calls were scary and I felt helpless—they were obviously short of breath and very ill. All I could do was beg someone to go the ED despite their fears, immigration status or lack of health insurance. I’m less rattled and on edge now that we are vaccinating in high numbers and can easily access high-quality treatment. I held a vial of vaccine for the first time and unexpectedly had tears. I felt relief and hope.
—anna kaminski ’77
I am an internal medicine hospitalist, thus I take care of adults who are hospitalized, which in the past year and a half has largely been patients stricken with Covid-19. During the horrific surge that consumed our city last spring, I also had the privilege of working alongside doctors of our military at the Javits Center, caring for New Yorkers from the five boroughs with complex social backgrounds affecting their Covid-19 clinical courses. I also work in the worlds of health-care administration and digital patient experience, which differently, but just as nimbly, had to escalate efforts and adaptive innovation in order to serve all our patients and communities with the dignity and diligence they always deserve. Throughout this ongoing experience, I’ve been struck by the strength of collective initiative and of the powerful vulnerability in sharing stories, perspectives, ideas—inside of this professional world I inhabit, but also outside of it. I especially am grateful to my Brearley community for the emotional support and collaborative advocacy (especially through social media) that has bolstered me during this time. Navigating the many facets of fear brought on by the pandemic: my own, my patients’, for my family and friends, our city, our globe, knowing I wasn’t alone, has deeply helped me get through each day’s unprecedented challenges.
—VasaVi deVireddy ’04
During the height of Covid in NYC, I worked primarily on the labor floor caring for pregnant patients, some with Covid, delivering babies. While it was entirely scary for my mom-to-be patients and also for me, a newly minted doctor in my intern year of residency, it was so powerful bringing life into the world during this otherwise dark time. I will never forget sharing these joyful moments behind N95s and face shields.
—emily auran ’10
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit Boston, I was working as a chief resident for the pediatrics residency program at Boston Children’s Hospital. Our leadership team had to act quickly to achieve multiple goals simultaneously: 1) minimize unnecessary exposure for our residents; 2) create a flexible reserve staffing pool in preparation for a possible surge of patients as well as a possible outbreak among our residents; 3) minimize disruptions to resident education and training; and 4) support the physical and mental well-being of our residents. In the end the pediatric Covid-19 burden was much lower than expected, but I am proud that our efforts allowed us to keep our residents as safe as possible and also provide staffing to our affiliate hospital’s Covid-19 units, all while pivoting our educational curricula to be fully remote. Despite the rapid timeframe with which we developed and implemented these scheduling and educational changes, some have been so successful that they have been incorporated into the residency structure for the longer term.
—emily cross ’04
I am a clinical social worker at NYC’s Department of Education working in two elementary schools just a few blocks from Brearley. To pivot whole schools to e-learning within a week in March 2020, despite all the Google Classroom hiccups and challenges, was an amazing feat—only the first of countless rapid adaptations we are still making on a weekly basis. I have been endlessly moved by the passion and dedication of teachers to their students, as well as the collegial support we have shared, all while experiencing personal traumas and challenges. I think schools now really understand how much more effective it is to meet each child’s needs by adapting approach versus insisting a child conform to curriculum; “student-centered learning” is no longer just a buzz phrase, we have lived it. I hope the spirit of innovation and flexibility we had to embrace to survive in the pandemic will permeate planning around curriculum, technology, student supports, school culture, inclusivity and everything that lies between.
—elizabeth diaz-cruz sarosi ‘94
COVID-19 TASK FORCES
2020–2021
Starting last summer and continuing throughout the year, Brearley’s interdisciplinary groups of medical professionals, trustees, administrators, faculty and staff met on a weekly basis to advise on, implement and adapt Covid protocols and guidelines. Their efforts enabled school to stay open and ensured the protection of our students, faculty and staff. As we prepare for next year, we remain committed to the safe running of school and the health and well-being of our community.
We extend our sincere appreciation for the service and expertise of these dedicated members.
BOARD TASK FORCE
Christine Alfaro ‘91 Jane Foley Fried Stephanie Perlman Susan Berresford ‘61 Doris Coleman Maria Duckett James Mulkin Eileen Racanelli Becky Scott Jocelyn Strauber Rahul Tripathi Lauren Taggart Wasson Maria Zimmermann
INTERNAL TASK FORCE
Tim Brownell Doris Coleman Jo David Elizabeth Donovan Maria Duckett Arlene Fabio Jane Foley Fried Danielle King James Mulkin Betty Noel-Pierre Eileen Racanelli Colin Samuel Becky Scott Rahul Tripathi Maria Zimmermann
Christine Alfaro ’91 Trustee, Parent Jane Fried Head of School Dr. Stephanie Perlman Trustee, Past Parent
Susan Berresford ‘61 Trustee Tim Brownell Head of Middle School Student Life Doris Coleman Director of Construction and Facilities Jo David Director of Communications Dr. Elizabeth Donovan Director of Counseling and Wellness Maria Duckett Director of Special Projects and Research Initiatives
Arlene Fabio Director of Human Resources
Dr. Becky Scott Medical Consultant Danielle King Director of Athletics Dr. James Mulkin Assistant Head of School for Academic Life Dr. Betty Noel-Pierre Head of Upper School Student Life Eileen Racanelli School Nurse
Jocelyn Strauber ’91 Trustee, Parent Rahul Tripathi Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer Dr. Lauren Taggart Wasson Parent Maria Zimmermann Assistant Head of School for Student Life; Head of the Lower School Colin Samuel Director of Technology
