Issue 19

Volume 118 Issue 19

The Record

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Horace Mann’s Weekly Newspaper Since 1903

February 5th, 2021 Courtesy ofHM Flickr

Kelly reflects on past year in “State of the School” address Ayesha Sen and Sean Lee Staff and Contributing Writers The Parents’ Association (PA) hosted the annual All School Family Meeting over Zoom to update parents on accomplishments across the school’s four divisions and the PA’s plans for the future.

The event this Wednesday, referred to as Head of School Dr. Tom Kelly’s “State of the Union Address,” replaced the on-campus dinner gathering from previous years. Over 650 people attended the event — over double the attendance of previous years’ Family Meetings.

President of the PA Andrea Madaio P’23 Madaio worked with Kelly to organize the event, along with Kelly’s executive assistant Anne Joao, First Vice President (VP) of the PA Sally Zhang, Second VP of the PA Sonal Pande, Benefit Co-Chair Anne Hyun, HMPA Executive Secretary Sucheta Ponda, and PA volunteer Zilan Shen, she said.

Kelly delivered his speech on the state of the school, reflecting on the hardships that the past year brought onto the school community and the strides that the school has taken to tackle various issues such as diversity and inclusion, quality of education, and COVID-19 concerns.

He addressed the importance of recognizing the need for diversity and inclusion not just in the school’s community, but on a broader scale.

“At a time when there is a clarion call to discuss race at the highest levels of government, we are front and center as we should be,” Kelly said.

Kelly also spoke about the school’s efforts to improve dialogue surrounding race at the school.

He discussed the changes in curriculum in the Upper Division (UD) based on the school’s liberal arts education and the demands of Black Students Demand Change, a student organization dedicated to fighting racial inequalities and a lack of diversity in predominantly white educational institutions. He also mentioned Associate Director, Office for Identity, Culture and Institutional Equity (ICIE) Ronald Taylor’s and the ICIE’s ongoing efforts to improve racial justice efforts.

Regarding COVID-19, Kelly spoke about the school’s

several adaptations to accommodate in-person education during the time of a pandemic, extending his thanks to administrators, teachers, support staff, maintenance and public safety officers, FLIK workers, and divisional nurses.

Board of Trustees Chair Laurence Grafstein P’11 P’12 P’15 also spoke about the school’s priorities of oncampus safety and dedication to creating the best online learning experience possible, in addition to the school’s diversity and related inclusion and equality initiatives, including the newly formed Board Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) subcommittee.

The event also focused on the efforts of the PA to keep the community close together.

Madaio extended her thanks to members of the community and displayed the HMPA’s initiatives and accomplishments, which included projects for faculty and staff appreciation, the New Family Welcome Committee, the HM Has a Heart initiative, and the 20202021 holiday gift fund.

“Given the fact that we are largely a commuter school, connecting and understanding your child’s environment is especially important when you’re in the Middle and UD and the kids don’t really want to hear from you,” Madaio said.

Madaio said that joining the PA would be an opportunity for parents to connect with both their children and parents, highlighting the importance of communication during a time of social distancing.

“Whether you work full time or want to dive in with two feet, the HMPA has something to offer.”

Grafstein thanked the HMPA for contributing to the resilience of the school during these unprecedented times. “You know we’re all practicing social distancing, but the truth of the matter is that because of the HMPA we are not socially distant,” he said. “We may be physically distant, but [the PA] is the glue that brings us together.”

Following Madaio’s speech, Zhang spoke about the lack of photos capturing moments of parents on campus due to social distancing and spending more time online. She also discussed the priceless nature of meeting fellow parents and forging friendships that joining the PA would offer.

The PA then promoted the All see State of the school on pg. 5 Courtesy of Sean Lee

SETTING THE AGENDA Dr. Kelly updates the school’s parents.

FORMER SUBJECT TEST CENTER Students will no longer take Subject Tests at any school.

Students, faculty discuss elimination of SAT Subject Tests Zachary Kurtz Staff Writer The College Board will no longer offer SAT Subject Tests in an attempt to reduce the responsibilities of students applying to college. While some students are glad to have one fewer test to take before applying to college, others will miss the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge in a specific subject.

Over the past 10 years, colleges have phased out their requirement of Subject Tests in their applications, and there are currently no colleges in the United States that require them, Executive Director of College Counseling Canh Oxelson said.

However, the lack of a requirement did not diminish the emphasis placed upon these tests by students, as students knew these tests provided their colleges with another data point in their application, he said.

While Subject Tests allowed students to demonstrate their knowledge of a specific subject, the tests are not a holistic view of students’ skills and do not always provide colleges with an accurate representation of a student’s expertise, Louise Kim (10) said. As such, she supports the decision to eliminate the tests.

While the elimination of Subject Tests decreases the number of standardized tests for students, it puts more weight on other standardized testing scores, such as the SAT and ACT, Jacob Silverstein (10) said. “Not having subject tests makes it more stressful.”

Kim said that she is less stressed about testing because colleges will now consider her application

based more on her passions and her possible contributions to that school. “I feel more celebrated as an individual,” she said.

Indeed, there are ways other than Subject Tests that students can differentiate themselves, such as taking classes that interest them or pursuing research and independent study opportunities, Oxelson said.

Subject Tests showed admissions officers that students have the capacity to test well in a specific subject, but aspects of the application — such as teachers’ comments, which can explain how students push the conversations forward — matter more, he said. “[The tests] just aren’t the best ways to distinguish yourself.”

Fewer students at the school take Subject Tests than most parents expect, Oxelson said. Only 59 students from the class of 2021 — approximately one third of the class — took the Chemistry Subject Test, he said.

Studying for standardized tests often requires preparation books and tutors, both of which cost money.

This creates an inequality between those who are able to afford these materials and those who cannot, Ericka Familia (12) said.

“The people who have access to these resources are the ones who generally tend to do better on these tests, not necessarily because they’re more intelligent [or] because they’re better at this specific subject, but because they’ve had access to a lot of resources that many other students may not have,” she said.

“Standardized testing is not the most equitable evaluation tool for college admissions officers, because

anybody who can pay for a lot of really good test prep is probably going to improve,” Oxelson said. It is always beneficial to eliminate those financial stresses in order to achieve equity, he said.

While some financial stresses are reduced, tutors still exist for other standardized tests such as the ACT and SAT, Miller Harris (10) said.

Students will have more time and resources to devote to studying for these tests, she said.

The removal of the tests provides students more time to focus on their passions, Familia said. Standardized tests as a whole are not a fair measurement of one’s intelligence, or even what one has learned throughout high school, she said.

A subject test that lasts an hour is not always an accurate representation of how well a student understands a topic, Hannah Moss (10) said.

“I think that it will be harder to differentiate students now that test scores are phasing out, but I feel it also allows for more creativity,” she said. “It allows you to do more service opportunities and get involved in extracurriculars that you enjoy that will set you apart from everyone else.”

“Every few years, something big happens in the college admissions process, and it causes all kinds of concern, nervousness, maybe even some anxiety,” Oxelson said. “I believe that dropping subject tests will help us in the long run because it means that kids are really going to have to focus on distinguishing themselves by taking advantage of one of the most interesting and rigorous curricula anywhere out there at a high school.”

CAC hosts World Cancer Day Reflection Jorge Orvananos Contributing Writer During Thursday’s break, the Cancer Awareness Club (CAC) invited the Upper Division (UD) community to reflect on World Cancer Day. The club honored cancer victims by distributing blue and orange stickers, pins, and candies. World Cancer Day, an internationally-celebrated date, is dedicated to raising cancer awareness and supporting the fight against cancer, Rebecca Rosenzweig (12), one of the leaders of the CAC, said.

Additionally, after school, the CAC hosted an I period meeting, where the attendees wrote letters to cancer patients who cannot see visitors on a regular basis anymore due to the pandemic.

During the pandemic, patients have seen a strong decrease in their interactions with the outside world, an issue the CAC hopes to address with their celebration of World Cancer Day, Rosenzweig said.

In a normal year, World Cancer Day is not one of the club’s biggest events, Rosenzweig said. Relay for Life and Cycle for Survival typically attract greater crowds and

more attention towards the fight against cancer. However, due to the pandemic, donations for those two events are not being accepted this year, making Thursday’s celebration of World Cancer Day even more important, she said.

“As the CAC, what we try to do goes a step beyond just telling people what cancer is and what it means,” Rosenzweig said.

“Everybody knows what cancer is, but not everyone knows how they can get involved, which is really easy.” see World Cancer Day on pg. 5

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THE RECORD OPINIONS FEBRUARY 5TH, 2021

The discourse deficit: Start challenging guest speakers

Jack Crovitz “I hate when everyone agrees with me.”

We heard that rare sentence last week at the Upper Division (UD) History Department Speaker Series event, when it was one of the first statements speaker Paul

Butler made. He recognized that disagreement and debate are at the core of academic progress, but — judging from the speaker series as a whole — it is a lesson that Horace Mann needs to learn again.

Even though history students are required to attend speaker series sessions and grades in history classes often depend on students’ ability to review the talks, many students check out of the event time and time again. I cannot blame them: the speaker series is meant to provide us with thoughtprovoking academic discourse, but often no meaningful discourse occurs. Few, if any, serious questions or challenges to our speakers’ revolutionary ideas are raised at any speaker series discussion.

This reluctance to ask our speakers serious questions robs students of the chance to participate in earnest conversations about critical topics and also disrespects

Lauren Kim/Art Director

the esteemed speakers’ intellectual capabilities. We need to reform the speaker series to allow real discourse to occur.

Last week’s session with Butler is a perfect example of our failure to challenge the guest speakers. Butler is an academic who calls for the abolition of the prison system, whose texts were recommended to students prior to his visit. He acknowledges that “prison abolition sounds crazy, reckless, and unsafe,” yet he was never questioned, even mildly, on this proposal.

None of the questions asked raised any significant concerns about his self-admittedly radical ideas — in stark contrast to my two history classes, where many students criticized aspects of Butler’s writings and comments, particularly his proposed age-limit on prisoners and his seemingly cavalier statement about domestic violence.

In his talk, Butler even endorsed Charles Dickens’s remark that physical abuse was a superior method of punishment for criminal activity than incarceration. Mr. Butler said that “[Dickens] said that [incarceration] is worse than hurting their bodies because it ruins their minds. And he was right. He knew that in the early 1800s, and I’m hoping someday everyone will know that in the 21st century.”

This comment about corporal

punishment was not questioned during the event.

I suspect Butler wanted to be provocative to encourage us to think about alternatives to prison.

But when a speaker can suggest that physical abuse and torture would be better methods of punishment for crimes than our current 21st century ones and not be challenged, then it should be clear we are not experiencing real intellectual discourse.

Our failure to challenge speakers’ ideas also disrespects them as distinguished and capable intellectuals.

Respecting an academic necessitates offering them serious questions and giving their ideas constructive criticism. At the beginning of his talk, Butler even explicitly invited critiques of his ideas, saying, “I’m going to try to provoke you, so I hope you’ll tell me… what you disagree with.” I hate to imagine the disappointment Butler must have felt after openly asking for disagreement and receiving none. Our guest speakers deserve to be asked tough questions as evidence that we are taking them and their ideas seriously.

How can we improve the quality of discourse at the Speaker Series?

One solution would be for the moderators to simply pick more student questions that offer serious responses to the speakers’ sometimes controversial ideas. I have submitted such questions at

almost every speaker series event so far (they have never been asked), and I know many other students have as well.

However, some moderators may feel uncomfortable or anxious asking questions that even mildly challenge our speakers. If that is the case, then it may be more constructive for moderators to pick student questions randomly.

Even better, we could cut out the moderators altogether and allow students to ask questions by raising their hands in the Zoom meeting and talking directly to the speakers.

This would be a far more engaging and democratic system and would encourage all attendees to really think about the speakers’ works and ideas.

Whatever path we choose, the speaker series must be reformed so students can voice their ideas and opinions to the speakers. It does not matter whether you agree or disagree with the speakers’ ideas or ideologies. Every student should support actual discussions during the UD History Speaker Series — both for our own academic enrichment and to respect our distinguished speakers.

Real discourse is at the core of the liberal arts. If the speaker series continues in its current format, the Horace Mann security team, whose vehicles are emblazoned “Defenders of the Liberal Arts,” might need to change their slogan.

Let’s cut comparisons and create community

Emma Colacino “Comparison is the thief of joy.” I overheard this phrase on the famous eight-night Dorr trip in eighth grade from a Dorr teacher who had repeated the quote from Theodore Roosevelt. He had said it in response to a student making a light-hearted comparison about themselves and a peer. At first, the pithy saying did not make an impact on me. The phrase seemed odd and vague. But years later, I now believe it is one of the most profoundly true and important things I have ever heard.

Even though I did not realize it at the time, comparisons were constant in my life. As a twin, it seemed as though people’s favorite

questions to ask us fell in the category of “who is better at…” or “who is more…” I honestly never minded these relentless questions because even if my twin was better than me at something, I was able to say that I was better than her at something else.

As time passed, I found that the comparisons I experienced were rarely ever in the form of fun and light-hearted questions about my sister and me from curious peers; rather, these comparisons began to come from myself, as my mind would be drawn to the ways in which my sister was better than I. It did not matter if it regarded to social or academic life; I constantly compared myself to her, which always left me feeling like a failure.

But my comparisons were not limited to my sister: my mind would wander to friends, and I couldn’t help but think about how much better they were than me in every aspect.

As comparing myself to others often caused me to deem myself as “less than,” I would also search to boost my own confidence from the habit. “Maybe someone was better at one thing than me, but I was better at something else,” I thought. Even though saying this phrase made me feel slightly better about myself, the habit of boosting your own confidence through comparisons is just as harmful as knocking yourself down with them. Just as Roosevelt’s quote suggests, these comparisons, both good and bad, really did steal my joy and

Managing Editor Talia Winiarsky Features Henry Owens Emily Shi Vivien Sweet

News Sam Chiang Yesh Nikam Marina Kazarian

Staff

Opinions Maurice Campbell Avi Kapadia Natalie Sweet

Volume 118 Editorial Board

A&E Izzy Abbott Abby Beckler Oliver Steinman

Staff Writers Devin Allard-Neptune, Mia Calzolaio Chloe Choi, Emma Colacino, Yin Fei, Lucas Glickman, Claire Goldberg, Tuhin Ghosh, Liliana Greyf, Lauren Ho, Hanna Hornfeld, Purvi Jonnalagadda, Oliver Lewis, Rowan Mally, Simon Schackner, Morgan Smith, Arushi Talwar, Katya Tolunsky, Nathan Zelizer, Max Chasin, Alex Lautin, Jillian Lee, Hannah Katzke, Vidhatrie Keetha, Zachary Kurtz, Clio Rao, Ayesha Sen, Emily Salzhauer, Aden Soroca, Emily Sun, Madison Xu Staff Photographers Kelly Troop, Sophie Gordon, Amanda Wein, Emma Colacino, AJ Walker, Lucas Glickman, Lauren Ho, Sean Lee Staff Artists Eliza Becker, Felix Brenner, Vivian Coraci, Riva Vig

confidence.

When comparing yourself to others, it is incredibly easy to see the worst in yourself while only seeing the best in others, which ultimately leads to feeling completely inadequate. But there is also the flip-side to this which is equally bad: comparing yourself to others as a way to feel better about yourself and your attributes.

Feeling as though the only way to be confident and pleased with yourself is by putting someone else down, even if it’s just in your own mind, creates a habit in which your own opinion does not matter and your own self approval is useless. It forces you to view yourself in the most simplified version: as if the only important thing to your existence, is the fact that your grade is better than another person’s grade, for example. That is why this phrase is so meaningful; it not only means that pessimistic comparisons are the “thief of joy,” but that all comparisons can negatively affect our mentalities.

Refraining from comparing yourself to others is not an easy task, especially at such a rigorous school filled with talented people, where the culture of comparison is incredibly prevalent. It seems like the first instinct of students after receiving a grade back is to turn to a friend and urgently ask “What did you get?” These habits may not make an impact on your own feelings about your grades,

Editor-in-Chief Julia Goldberg

Lions’ Den Yotam Hahn Alison Isko Josh Underberg

Middle Division Adrian Arnaboldi Bradley Bennett Jack Crovitz

About Founded in 1903, The Record is Horace Mann School’s award-winning weekly student newspaper. We publish approximately 30 times during the academic year, offering news, features, opinions, arts, Middle Division and sports coverage relevant to the school community. The Record serves as a public forum to provide the community with information, entertainment, and an outlet for various viewpoints. As a student publication, the contents of The Record are the views and work of the students and do not necessarily represent those of the faculty or administration of the Horace Mann School. Horace Mann School is not responsible for the

Felix Brener/Staff Artist

but they contribute to a larger feeling of competence only derived from comparison to others. Because of how widespread these comparisons are, I feel it is necessary to break the habits of toxic comparisons and harness your energy on your own positive attributes and accomplishments that are not in relation to others’ successes. After receiving a test, try to reflect on your own achievements.

Is it naive to think that my suggestion to stop these comparisons, which are so firmly ingrained in the mind of many of us, will actually change someone’s mentality?

Probably. But breaking the habit is well worth it, not only to help make the Horace Mann community more truly reflect the premise of a “caring community,” but to gain a greater appreciation for yourself.

Issues Editor Adam Frommer Design Lowell Finster John Mauro Sarah Sun

Editorial Policy

Art Annabelle Chan Gabby Fischberg Lauren Kim Rachel Zhu

accuracy and contents of The Record and is not liable for any claims based on the contents or views expressed therein.

Editorials All editorial decisions regarding content, grammar, and layout are made by the senior editorial board. The unsigned editorial represents the opinion of the majority of the board.

Opinions Opinion columns represent the viewpoint of the author and not of The Record or the school. We encourage students, alumni, faculty, staff, and parents to submit opinions by emailing record@horacemann.org.

Letters Letters to the editor often respond to editorials,

Photography Jackson Feigin Julia Isko Maxwell Shopkorn

Faculty Adviser David Berenson

articles, and opinions pieces, allowing The Record to uphold its commitment to open discourse within the school community.

They too represent the opinion of the author and not of The Record or the school. To be considered for publication in the next issue, letters should be submitted by mail (The Record, 231 West 246th Street, Bronx, NY 10471) or email (record@ horacemann.org) before 6 p.m. on Wednesday evening. All submissions must be signed.

Contact For all tips, comments, queries, story suggestions, complaints and corrections, please contact us by email at record@horacemann.org.

HORACE MANN FEATURES FEBRUARY 5TH, 2021

Meet our nurses:

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Nancy Jensen and DeAnna Cooper

Jackson Feigin/Photo Director

Emily Sun Staff Writer School nurse Nancy Jensen was halfway through an endoscopy when the patient began to throw up. The doctor, who was pregnant at the time, became sick as well upon seeing the patient.

Rather than panic, Jensen sat the patient up, pulled the scope out of her gastrointestinal tract, and found someone to look after the doctor. “[The patient’s] husband was thankful that we were there and cared for her like we would have done for our own family,” Jensen said. Moments like this, where she can make a difference in someone’s life, have kept her going during her 34 years as a nurse.

Jensen brought her nursing experience to the school this September. She and Nurse DeAnna Cooper handle immunizations, student injuries and illnesses, and contact tracing for COVID-19.

Jensen decided she wanted to study nursing when she was 17, she said. “I always wanted to be a mom because I wanted to care for people, so I decided to be a nurse.” She graduated from Kingsborough Community College with an Associate Degree in Nursing in 1987.

After college, she went to nursing school, where she learned how to administer morning care, medication, IVs, and more. “When I was a student nurse, I had no idea how to diagnose a situation and handle it on my own,” she said. “It’s scary when you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Jensen knew she could not be a pediatric nurse because it was difficult for her to see children with abusive parents or illnesses, or those at the end of their lives, she said. “I would drive home crying every single day of the three month [pediatric] rotation.”

However, she enjoyed working with labor and delivery. “It was to witness a miracle every time a child was born,” she said. “I almost wanted to push the doctor over and say, ‘Let me catch the baby.’”

Once Jensen passed the tests to become a registered nurse, she took her first job as a medicalsurgical nurse at Kings County Community Hospital, where she worked from 1987 to 1989.

She then became a supervisor at a nursing home in Victory Memorial Hospital for five years, overseeing 150 residents and six nurses.

The job taught her how to make quick decisions under pressure and use critical thinking to assess patients, she said.

“I was very nervous at that time because I was a young nurse,” Jensen said. Even choices such as whether to call an ambulance when a patient fell from their bed were nerve-wracking, but she grew more confident as she accumulated experience.

These critical-thinking and response skills were crucial when she worked as a visiting nurse between 1998 and 2003, Jensen said. She met patients in their homes and had to decide how to treat them by herself.

Once, she was taking care of a patient with mad cow disease when he started to bleed, and she could not stop it, Jensen said. “I freaked,” she said.

“I remember thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, what am I going to do?’” She dialed 911 in time, and the patient recovered.

From 2003 to 2010, Jensen worked at the Morristown Medical Center Gastrointestinal (GI) Suite. She was often on call, which meant she had a beeper that would sound any time she was needed at the clinic for an emergency.

“I was laying in bed at two a.m. one morning, and the beeper went off,” she said. “A patient was bleeding out.”

Her past experiences in high-stress situations helped her stay calm and rise to the challenge, she said. On the 40-minute drive from her home to the hospital, she prayed and listed all of the tools she might need to help the patient, so that she was ready upon arrival. “If I didn’t have the right equipment, their life was at stake,” she said.

Another time at the GI Suite, she noticed a patient had started to tear at his clothes. She recognized it as a sign he was about to go into respiratory arrest and immediately called a rapid response team. They tried to save him, but the patient did not make it.

The incident happened because of the domino theory, where one medical error caused a chain of events that had fatal consequences, she said.

“For weeks afterwards, I thought, ‘What could I have done differently? Did I cross every t and dot every i?’” She even considered the possibility that nursing was the wrong path for her.

By reviewing where communication between the patient and other medical personnel failed, she learned how to prevent similar scenarios in the future, she said. “Policies are reworked based on mistakes, and unfortunately, there has to be an adverse patient event in order to move forward.”

Jensen’s most recent job prior to working at the school was as a nurse at the Wound Healing Center at Morristown Medical Center. She began to work there in 2007 and treated wounds such as pressure, venous, and arterial ulcers.

“A human being is like an onion: you have to peel back the layers and get to the core to see what’s going on,” she said. Even though a wound was on one area of the body, she needed to examine a patient’s entire body and medical history to determine the right care. “We didn’t just treat the hole in the patient, we treated the whole patient,” she said.

Over the years, Jensen developed close relationships with the patients who came to the clinic weekly, she said. While she had

AJ Walker Staff Writer “I will be home with my three kids, so be prepared for some little faces on Zoom,” school nurse DeAnna Cooper wrote in an email leading up to a Zoom interview.

During the interview, amidst the noise of children playing and a dog barking, she calmly and cheerfully spoke about the connections between her role as a mother and as a nurse.

Cooper has worked as a nurse for 14 years and is currently in her third year at the school. She loves the energetic and pleasant atmosphere, she said. “Everyone is so supportive and welcoming, and I really enjoy interacting with everyone in the community and being part of the community.”

Prior to working at the school, Cooper worked in the Pediatric ICU at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Roosevelt Hospital, and as a school nurse at a school for students on the autism spectrum. “I have worked primarily in the hospital setting, but I love being a school nurse, and now I don’t know if I will return to the hospital,” she said.

Cooper’s favorite part about working as a school nurse as opposed to a pediatric hospital is that she can watch kids grow up.

“Working at a hospital, you might have some patients who come back, but for the most part it’s a short term experience,” she said.

“You don’t get to develop and establish that relationship [with children], which I think is a really nice aspect of school nursing.”

Since graduating from college, Cooper has exclusively worked with children either in hospitals or in schools. The biggest difference between working with children and adults are the interactions and connections established with families when

Samuel Stern/Staff Artist

compassion for them, she also learned to step back from situations so she could assess how to help her patients as a nurse.

“If I let a patient sink and I sink with them, then we’re both sinking,” she said. “Instead, I tell them that ‘I will let you cry, but I will also make you stand up, dust yourself off, and work towards getting better.’”

At the start of the pandemic, Jensen enforced policies to keep elderly and immunocompromised patients safe, she said.

The clinic allowed one patient in at a time, instructed them to wear masks, and allowed families to FaceTime one another from outside the clinic since they could not enter.

“The unknown was scary, but I had to be strong while I was at the clinic,” she said. “When I got home, I could have a moment alone in the shower or in my bedroom where I could fall apart and regroup.”

After 13 years at the Wound Healing Center, Jensen decided to step down and let younger nurses, who she mentored, take her place, she said. She joined the school because she wanted to try school nursing.

Jensen is also pursuing a Master’s in Nursing Education from Chamberlain University. In the future, she hopes to teach nursing courses online or at clinics.

Her education at nursing school was often fear-based: she felt like she could not make mistakes, which hindered her learning and selfconfidence, she said. As an educator, she wants to empower new nurses so they have faith in their abilities. Otherwise, they cannot apply their knowledge and make decisions in real-life situations, she said.

“You are empowered when you feel confident, and nurses need to be empowered,” she said. “We are the first line of care.”

working with kids, she said.

“We know that kids really depend on their parents for comfort and they really can’t heal properly if they don’t have that support,” she said. “A lot of it is teaching parents how to care for their child if they have a particular disease process going on, or they’re going to need some additional care.”

While Cooper loves working as a nurse, she initially majored in ecology at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. “I knew going into college that I liked science, which held true from early on in my life, but I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do,” she said. “I did like the idea of doing something tactile, so that was one of the things that drew me to ecology.”

However, after graduating from college, Cooper was unsure whether or not she wanted to continue with ecology. She joined a community service program, Americorps, where she was able to try out many potential career paths while volunteering. “You partner with different nonprofits and do volunteer work in lots of different

Jackson Feigin/Photo Director

areas, so I got to do trail building in national parks and state parks, and I got to work in schools and hospitals,” she said.

While volunteering in these schools and hospitals, Cooper began to consider nursing.

“I really liked talking to people, connecting with people, [and] helping people,” she said.

“I liked that nurses provided comfort to families.” She later attended an accelerated program at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she received her second bachelor’s degree in nursing, with a focus on pediatrics.

Cooper took a five-year break from nursing from the time her first child was born until he was in kindergarten to focus on “just being a mom,” she said. “I had three kids during those years, so those were busy years.”

When she returned to work, she found that motherhood had enhanced her nursing abilities. “I have a deeper understanding of what it means to be a parent, because I am one, and I think it helps me to provide better care to someone else’s children,” Cooper said.

Outside of nursing and being a mother, Cooper loves the outdoors and hiking, she said. “It brings people together, it can be very healing, and it helps with anxiety to be outside.” Especially during the pandemic, she has found hiking with her family to be a nice, safe activity, she said.

Cooper lives in Westchester, where she enjoys access to hiking trails and the outdoors.

She grew up in the Midwest in Indiana.

“People usually tell me I speak slowly so they can tell I’m not from New York,” she said.

Cooper loves to travel and is looking forward to traveling again post-pandemic, she said. “My husband was born in Switzerland, and we had a trip planned to go to Italy and Switzerland with my kids pre-COVID,” she said. “That’s near the top of the list [for after the pandemic] because he really wants to show them where he grew up, and I think they’re getting to the age where they would get something out of it.”

Due to the pandemic, Cooper’s job as a school nurse has shifted significantly. Because of the daily symptom check, which keeps students who show any symptoms of the virus home, she has seen a decrease in the number of sick students in her office, she said.

Instead, the bulk of her work currently involves contact tracing, educating the school community about COVID-19, and helping the school stay as safe as possible during in-person instruction. She spends her days monitoring students’ COVID-19 symptoms and test results, as well as updating the school on new information regarding COVID-19 protocols. “I am looking forward to the day where I can go back a little bit more to regular old school nursing, so hopefully that’s not too far in the future,” she said.

Cooper has found it challenging to explain COVID-19 to younger children who may not understand the gravity of the situation, she said. “You want to explain to them when they’re comfortable and willing and open to talk about what is going on and why it is important to keep everyone safe,” Cooper said. “Kids are still processing this just like we all are.”

Despite the challenges the pandemic has brought to her job, Cooper chooses to remain positive, she said. “When I see all the students on campus and everyone’s so energized and happy to be together, I know that’s what the work is for,” she said.

“I think we all need a little bit of normalcy right now.”

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THE RECORD FEATURES FEBRUARY 5TH, 2021

Teachers grapple with facilitating discussions concerning race Emma Colacino and Claire Goldberg Staff Writers Following the death of George Floyd last June, Orchestra teacher Nathan Hetherington instructed his students to take 60 seconds of peace to reflect on the event, he said. After the 60 seconds, Hetherington proceeded to check in with each student and asked them to share any thoughts or feelings on the event. After all the students had spoken, the event was not brought up again, he said. “I know that there is a better way to start to have these conversations in the context of Orchestra, I just don’t know what that is yet.”

In all disciplines, discussions concerning race result in a variety of comfort levels for teachers and students. While some white teachers feel qualified to lead conversations about race because of their educational background or experience, others feel hesitant and uncertain.

As a result, conversations about race are still not fully integrated into the school.

Despite feelings of discomfort, it is important for people of all races to participate in these discussions, Acting Director of the Office for Identity, Culture, and institutional Equity (ICIE) Ronald Taylor said. Should the space be safe for them, people of color (POC) should feel empowered to share their experiences so that others can empathize with them, and white people should consider how they can use their privilege to dismantle systems of racism, Taylor said. “It’s important to have the action of people that don’t identify [the same way] as me to show up in spaces of power to enact changes that I may not be able to do.”

For many teachers, leading discussions regarding race is a relatively new task, Hetherington said. “I don’t have a responsible level of expertise in this yet,” he said. “I’ve done some personal work to understand race and its place in my subject area, but I’m still working on translating this into something tangible that can benefit the students in the classroom.”

Within conversations about race, math teacher Benjamin Kafoglis does not want to create a situation where white students unintentionally offend students of color. “As white people, we often say racist things without realizing it,” he said. “I wouldn’t want a discussion to lead to more harm for people in my class — that’s often my greatest concern.”

Theater teacher Benjamin Posner has found that his identity as a white man makes him feel unqualified to lead conversations about race and racism at times. “I’m a total novice,” he said. “It’s uncomfortable for me, because these conversations make me realize that I am complicit at times in perpetuating systemic racism because I haven’t done anything about it.”

History teacher Dr. Ellen Bales, who identifies as white, feels that historical knowledge and expertise can lessen the discomfort around discussions of race in her class, she said. “These conversations don’t rely on the teacher having the identity of the group of people whose experience we’re talking about,” she said. “They rely on the teacher to be scrupulously honest and say there are limits to my knowledge.”

Without a background in the subject, science teacher George Epstein does not always feel like he is qualified to lead

Riva Vig/Staff Artist

discussions about race, he said. For example, after the Grand Jury’s ruling in September to not indict the cops involved in Breonna Taylor’s murder, Epstein did not feel like he had the expertise to lead a conversation about it, he said.

“I did not feel like I was necessarily the right person or the correct person to facilitate a full group discussion, at least not on my own.” As a result, his class did not have a group discussion about the incident.

“

“Teachers might find that it is easier to avoid those conversations than to tackle them head on and deal with the discomfort in the classroom or the discomfort within themselves.”

-Destiney Green

Destiney Green (11) understands why teachers might feel unqualified or uncomfortable to talk about race, but people should try to lean into this uneasiness, she said. “Teachers might find that it is easier to avoid those conversations than to tackle them head on and deal with the discomfort in the classroom or the discomfort within themselves,” she said. “But the only way to solve some of the problems in our world and in our community is by having these discussions.”

Hetherington prefers to invite students to share how they are feeling with the rest of the class, he said. “I try to think of a way to create a space where my students feel like what they’re going through is acknowledged even if I don’t quite feel ready to lead those discussions myself.”

Despite his concerns of not being qualified or experienced when it comes to discussions concerning race, Hetherington understands the importance of starting these discussions. “These conversations definitely make me nervous, but I also feel that as a teacher, it’s important that I’m not seen as excusing myself from the conversation,” he said. “Not so much for my own social or professional cachet, but as an example to my students.”

In creating spaces to discuss race, Green thinks that while it is important for teachers to create spaces where students feel open to participating, the point of discussions about race is not to be comfortable. “Students are afraid to say the wrong thing or to say something the wrong way, but you need to say those things so we can talk about it,” she said.

When beginning conversations about race, too often the onus of both starting and instructing conversations falls exclusively on POC, Jaden Richards (12) said. “It’s part of the burden that comes with being a marginalized group.”

Students of color are often the only participants of these discussions, Krish Gandhi (9) said. “I participate in these talks more than others, because I personally experience racism, and therefore I have more to share.”

To try to alleviate the burden on students of color of beginning conversations about race, Kafoglis said it is important that he starts and facilitates them. “Especially since racism fundamentally is a problem of whiteness in many respects, it’s really the responsibility of white people to figure out their role and figure out how to address these problems,” he said.

As a way to create a space for white students to proactively figure out their role in conversations about race, Kafoglis co-runs a white student affinity group with French teacher Caroline Dolan. “Whiteness is a thing that white people need to figure out,” he said. “I envision this as the place where white students can come and be a little messy while trying to figure out their identity as a white person.”

The group aims to learn and practice antiracist approaches and techniques through

looking at texts, participating in role-playing activities, or just debriefing about personal experiences, Dolan said. “It’s a space where we can work on accountability and practice things that we’re working on as white people to try to be a more supportive member of our community, knowing that it is a predominantly white institution.”

Jonas Jacobson (12) joined the white affinity group after the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests over the summer to take time to reflect on his identity. “It has helped me think about what I can do to make Horace Mann a more equitable space, and that starts with knowing who I am,” he said. “While a lot of affinity groups are for comfort and community, the white affinity group is more for understanding and growth.”

Having multiple spaces to discuss race is important because these conversations should not be confined to any specific class, Dolan said. “Problem-solving how to address systemic racism doesn’t stop at an English class,” she said. “It doesn’t stop at a history class. Those are things that we’re feeling in every single part of our society, and those impacts are going to be felt no matter where you are or what subject you’re teaching.”

For the past few years, Dean of Faculty Dr. Matthew Wallenfang has been looking for a way to have discussions about how race plays a central role in his AP Biology course. “I’ve been wanting to incorporate race beyond what biology teachers traditionally do, where they might, for example, only discuss skin color as a polygenic trait to explain why you see a spectrum of skin colors,” he said.

To delve into the topic more, Wallenfang decided to teach the book “Superior: The Return

to help guide these conversations.”

While racial underpinnings in health are overt, the racial implications of math and science classes are more indirect, Epstein said.

“When you tell stories about famous scientists, we’re not acknowledging the vast works of diverse groups of people whose contributions were overlooked.”

Within the field of mathematics for much of history, only white people were given the tools necessary to succeed, Kafoglis said. For example, while many attribute the Pythagorean theorem solely to Pythagoras, there were many people who had similar ideas before him. “And yet, that’s how it’s known.”

Arts and photography can also be used to spark conversations of race, photography teacher Aaron Taylor said. The photos of the BLM protests displayed in Fisher Hall played a role in creating these discussions. “Having those images on campus was a really great reminder of the good work that students do and how they can use their art to bring change and awareness,” he said.

In orchestra, Hetherington tries to incorporate composers of color into the curriculum while also being mindful of tokenism, which is the practice of making a perfunctory effort to be anti-racist. “The model in the classical music world is that every February orchestras do a Black History Month concert where they play an entire program of Black composers, but the rest of the year they don’t play any Black composers,” he said. “I’m trying to be more mindful and intentionally inclusive than that.”

This year, Hetherington instructed Sinfonietta in playing a piece by the African American composer George Walker, he said. “I struggled a bit because I didn’t always know to what extent

Vivian Coraci/Staff Artist

of Race Science” by Angela Saini in AP Biology, which discusses the ways in which science has been misused to support racist ideas, he said.

The class reads and discusses a chapter for homework each month.

The book has inspired some of the best conversations in that class all year, Wallenfang said. “The number of students from all different identities who wanted to contribute to the conversation was really encouraging to me.”

Assistant Athletic Director Amy Mojica also discusses race within her health classes; however, conversations about race are relatively new to her. “I had the white privilege of never having to address race growing up,” she said.

“So in my adulthood I have been putting in the work to be able to get the skill set to have these conversations, almost like playing catch-up.”

Topics in her health classes can be relevant to the discussions about current events, Mojica said. For instance, the insurrection at the Capitol coincided with her class’s mental health unit.

“We had the opportunity to dig in deep with how we were feeling and discuss all of the events — both political and racial — that are affecting our mental health,” she said.

Health class already holds tough conversations, so the course is the perfect environment to hold discussions about race, Mojica said. “In health class, pretty much all topics are sensitive — from addiction to nutrition — so you need to get comfortable leaning into discomfort in this class,” she said.

“For me, it’s just about creating a space to do that and then being willing, as a teacher, to try

I should address [race] in rehearsal,” he said.

Hetherington ended up holding discussions with Sinfonietta and assigning autobiographical readings on Walker. “In the end, it seemed important to let the composer speak for himself,” he said.

It is important that the teacher moderates conversations about race to prevent a situation where students could feel offended, Ailill Walsh (11) said. Last year, after Breonna Taylor’s murder, one of Walsh’s teachers opened up the floor for discussion, and a white student made a factually incorrect comment that many students percieved to be offensive and racist. The comment insinuated that the peaceful protesters were “thugs” who made civilians feel unsafe on the streets, he said.

However, the teacher reaffirmed this problematic comment. “You could just see that there were students in the Zoom call that were really, really upset,” he said. “People were even crying. After such an earth-shattering event we really needed teachers to step up as mentors for us, and in that situation the total opposite happened.”

When he is a part of conversations regarding race, Julian Silverman (11), who identifies as white, tries to listen to the experiences of POC both inside and outside of the classroom.

However, he wishes he could hear from the experiences of more POC than he currently does, given that the school is a predominantly white institution, he said.

“In a school like Horace Mann, it’s pretty obvious that there are not many Black students,”

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HORACE MANN NEWS & ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT FEBRUARY 5TH, 2021 Silverman said. “And that’s not what the world is like, so it’s I think it’s incredibly important to listen to what other people have to say.”

In these conversations both in and out of the classroom, students often make racist comments without knowing it, Gandhi said. “I haven’t experienced direct racism in the school community, but there are indirectly racist and awkward moments all the time.”

In discussions of race, merely creating a space for conversations underlines a key problem at the school which is that many teachers do not feel comfortable or qualified leading conversations about race and will therefore not lead the conversations, Richards said.

“Teachers should be willing to try and to make mistakes.”

Rather than creating spaces for discussions, teachers need to be actively engaging students in these conversations, Richards said. No one should resign themselves to thinking that it is not necessary to volunteer their opinion, especially those who identify as white, he said. “I think about many of the activists like abolitionists and women’s rights activists, and they’re not just sitting and saying, ‘It’s not my job to make this country a better place.’”

On the other hand, Connor Dwin (11) thinks that while teachers need to start the conversation, students generally can lead the discussions on their own, he said.

“If you bring up the topic, the students can do the rest.”

As a result, teachers have no excuse for not bringing the conversation up — not even discomfort, he said.

While there will always be both teachers and students who steer clear of discussions regarding race, teachers have no excuse, Dwin said. “A teacher’s job is not just to educate; it’s also to facilitate dialogue between kids and make sure that they are able to have tough conversations,” he said. “In shying away from conversations about race when it is so integral to American society, I think they’re not doing their job. This is part of their job description.”

Students and teachers should work to find a balance in these conversations between creating an echo chamber — where all participants only agree with each other, which inhibits learning — and saying something controversial and offending students, Aaron Shuchman (12) said.

“There’s a lot of fear among people who aren’t POC at Horace Mann to share what they think about class discussions in fear of offending people, even if what they are saying is 100 percent right,” Shuchman said.

This balance can be achieved by considering arguments rhetorically, Shuchman said. “Even if the class agrees on a topic, it might be helpful to discuss why the other side thinks the way they do,” he said. “I think the standard for what qualifies as ‘controversial’ is far too low these days, especially in a more ideologically homogeneous community like Horace Mann. Even if someone thinks something in class is controversial, we shouldn’t ascribe malice to that person, but instead try to understand their reasoning.”

Classroom discussions regarding race can become more natural if people are exposed to diversity from a younger age, Richards said. “It would be preferable if kids were having these discussions six or seven years ago and not in high school, but it can just ruin the experience for everyone,” he said. “Ultimately, there aren’t very many Black students here, and it’s hard to learn about something that you’ve never seriously interacted with.”

Richards hopes that race continues to be incorporated into the school community in impactful ways. “If you integrate race meaningfully into all your classes, and you make it truly matter, then it will not only become second nature for students, but they’ll eventually learn how to develop the vocabulary and have impactful discussions on this subject,” he said.

An example of this would be discussing how the depiction of Black women in the modern day has connections to their depictions in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade or discussing the Tuskeegee syphilis trials in a science class, Richards said.

One way faculty members of all disciplines can work to incorporate discussions of race into the curriculum is by attending and encouraging their students to attend the Race and Ethnicity Speaker Series, history teacher Dr. Emily Straus ‘91 said. The speaker series is a yearlong series that discusses the historical roots of current issues regarding race and ethnicity, according to its website.

The series also includes a monthly faculty reading discussion group, where faculty members come together to read a piece by the speakers and discuss it, she said.

“This helps not only to educate ourselves but also to have people from all disciplines feel equipped to have these discussions with their classes following the event.”

The discussions provide a model for holding conversations about race in a classroom setting, Wallenfang said. “As someone who typically has taught more textbook-based science material, it’s been great to participate in discussions about these issues with a multi-disciplinary group of colleagues,” he said.

Upon starting to hold discussions on race in his classes, Posner has adopted a new outlook on racism in society from Kyle Tran Mhyre, a poet and activist, he said. He recalled a quote from Mhyre in an episode of Button Poetry: “White supremacy isn’t a shark in the water; it is the water, and we’re all swimming in it.”

“The stakes of discussing race are so high, I would rather make a fool of myself in trying and showing my vulnerability than to do nothing at all,” Posner said.

from State of the school page 1

Jackson Feigin/Photo Editor

PROMOTING AWARENESS CAC leaders Rosenzweig and Lita Crichton (12) host school reflection.

from World Cancer Day page 1 “The CAC puts on events that are meant to be both opportunities to learn about issues related to cancer, but they also do a really good job bringing the community together for such an important cause,” Dean of the Class of 2024 Stephanie Feigin said.

CAC members have taken the initiative in planning Thursday’s event, CAC faculty advisor Dr. Susan Delanty said. The club’s leaders ordered all supplies necessary for the event.

However, the snow day on Monday and other scheduling changes posed an issue to planning the event, Rosenzweig said.

“The biggest problem has been the snow, since mail and deliveries have been slowed down,” Rosenzweig said. “There have been some COVID-19 cases in the school, and a lot of people who are really essential to our club have been placed in

quarantine.”

After the event, the club sent out resources to the UD to inform the community of different types of cancers and to provide the school with another opportunity to involve themselves in the fight against cancer or to donate to the cause.

“Students already know a decent amount about cancer and the fight against cancer, but not much on how to be active in that fight,” William Choi (9) said. The snacks and chocolates distributed during break reminded students that there are easy ways to participate in the fight, he said.

The day led Matteo Monti (9) to reflect on how he could contribute to the cause, he said. “The CAC’s event for World Cancer Day made me more aware about how important the fight against cancer is.”

Erica Jiang/Staff Photographer

DEAR ________, Community members write letters of support.

School Benefit, the HMPA’s largest fundraising event, which will occur on March 12. This year’s benefit, unlike previous years, will be hosted online via an augmented livestream platform to keep participants engaged.

Hyun, Pande’s Co-Chair, reiterated the importance of supporting the benefit.

“Last year, we were able to raise an unprecedented $1 million to support the school, and this year we’re really hoping for 100% participation,” Hyun said. “While we know it’s been a very challenging year for many, we do hope that you’ll consider supporting the school’s efforts.”

Finally, at the end of the event, attendees asked questions regarding travelling guidelines, end of year festivities, finance and economic courses in the UD, vaccinations, and sports.

A main concern in planning the event this year was accomplishing as much as past dinners did, Madaio said. “In years past, we have found it very successful that the school would host a dinner so parents were able to come together as a community, meet other parents, and listen to what Dr. Kelly and Mr. Grafstein had to say.” The main question of planning the online event was how to reach most parents and remain engaging, she said.

PA Lower Division (LD) Vice Chair Narda Chin P’31 found comfort in Kelly’s state of the school address, both as a member of the PA and the LD community. “Dr. Kelly’s continued commitment, his thoughtfulness and his leadership during this unprecedented time has really helped everybody remain calm. As a community we trust him with whatever direction he believes we should go in,” she said.

“It makes our big community, with its four campuses and many, many people feel small and intimate in the moment.

I think of it as the one community building event that links us all together,” Secretary of the Middle Division PA Stephanie Lofgren P’19 ‘22 ‘25 said. “All things student, staff, and faculty, across all divisions and departments get their moments to shine.”

HMTC presents “Unity Through Motion” Allison Markman Contributing Writer The Horace Mann Dance Company (HMDC) sought to bring “unity through motion” over Zoom last Friday at their annual studentchoreographed dance concert.

HMDC and members of Dance Department Chair Allison Kolinski’s dance workshop and PE classes performed a mix of solo and group routines.

The production’s goal was to connect people through dance and movement, Julia Grant (11) said. “No matter how far away we are, we can still stay together through dance.”

HMDC co-Presidents Yana Gitelman (12) and Mikayla Benson (12) choreographed the opening and the final numbers before winter break, and taught the routines both online and in person, Gitelman said.

Benson, who edited the concert together, aimed to create a story arc within the choreography that paralleled HM’s remote learning schedule. She began with a dance number recorded at school, followed with an online performance, and concluded with another performance at school. “It’s this arc of where we actually have gone in the past year, now we’re celebrating and we’re finally back together after our winter break,” Benson said.

To prepare for the performance, the dancers met

multiple times a week to learn the choreography, Jillian Lee (10) said.

Dancers were not allowed to have physical contact with each other, which limited the routine itself, as students could not perform lifts or other maneuvers in their choreography, Gitelman said. “Trying to keep a group dance interesting for three minutes when everyone is doing separate movements, in separate places, six feet apart, is hard.”

Rehearsals also became difficult as the school switched between online and in-person learning; Dancers needed to rehearse in their own homes when online and work around COVID-19 protocols when in school, Gitelman said. While online, dancers found it challenging to learn choreography through video tutorials and without the guidance of their fellow dancers, Lee said.

The HMDC decided to use these limitations as a source of inspiration and creativity, rather than a constraint, Gitelman said.

The choreography took advantage of the online platform by incorporating artistic elements only possible through computer technology, she said.

Following HMDC annual tradition, both presidents performed their own solos, Gitelman said. Gitelman’s solo

piece was choreographed to the song “From the Dining Table,” by Harry Styles, and her performance centered around her nostalgia for her time at the school, she said.

Benson dedicated her solo to her mother, performing to a song titled “To Mother”

by Brandi Carlile. Benson said the various ways her mother “drives” her — both physically and metaphorically — inspired the solo. “She helps me emotionally, she drives me with motivation, and in a very endearing way,” Benson said. She took advantage of the online format, layering videos of herself on top of each other to create the illusion of two dancers.

HMDC also featured one of Giselle Paulson’s (10) dance animations. Paulson’s animation was made up of over

1,000 hand-drawn pictures of a ballerina performing various movements in stopmotion, she said. The show also featured Paulson’s selfchoreographed dance, which her D-period dance workshop class performed to the song “Primavera.” “‘Primavera’ reminds me of a sea anemone and just the way that it expands and contracts and just moves so fluidly with the current,” Paulson said.

The final piece of the performance was set to a song entitled “Together” by Cynthia Erivo. It speaks to the strength the school displayed throughout the year, Benson said. The song is upbeat, as the performers wanted to focus on the positive aspects of 2020 and their high expectations for 2021.

Courtesy of the HMTC Website

Five, six, seven, eight! Students practice a dance routine.

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THE RECORD ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT FEBRUARY 5TH, 2021

When I try to breathe Still, under the weight of my body i feel The minute, milky seed of my sixth rib creamed stiff at the coordinate center in below the knave of my breastplate.

Deeper In the center desperate reserved yearning for skin under the arm, shoulders, under my arm your shoulder your strength held me complete, me, completed, a completed me.

I don’t drown in air but i cannot breathe it Fatal cuts but waiting, blood doesn’t burst like in a film its quick, my throat in vertical, sliced open in segments Angle of the tip of the sharpened chefs knife sprinting motion my breath I gasp for 3 times a minute, The shallow waves moisten the aerolic bulbs of my lungs The chicken-breast-like organ, mistake it for pig meat.

Parboil a pork loin medallion before roasting and chew through it with your animal molars rip my skin apart and season me with salt and humiliate my body. Eat. me. rip me open with the thrust of your cheek, your jaw will never know what it has done.

Excerpt from this is for my great grandmother who rode horses bareback On her birthdays, my great-grandmother asked for summer, Waited for hot rain to fill the empty rice paddies dried by winter. Back when even the poor village women bound their feet, sacrificed their deftness to teeter in the ways of the rich, My great-grandmother untied her own​— peeled white bandages from her soles That should have been like a second skin, And let the mud of the rice paddies swallow her toes.

My great-grandmother asked for home from the unwrapped corner of a sweet bean bun, the first bite that bounces back on aching teeth.

A midday cloud that disperses the blistering hum Of heat that lies stagnant over sorghum fields, The tall stalks that kept from sight the bob-bob-bobbing heads Of running children, and later The muzzles of smoking guns that Crack open unborn pods so that they too bleed red.

My great-grandmother’s husband was shot dead by bandits, The hooves of his own frightened horses pressed his back into The cold face of the Changbai Mountains.

No one knew what happened until a few weeks later when They found him face down, his limbs stiff from The unforgiving Jilin winter and rigor mortis.

Suddenly, my great grandmother became a single mother with Almost nothing to her name.

Jordan Wasserberger (11)

Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Each year, Horace Mann students submit their work to the Scholastic Art & Writing competition. The Record has chosen to showcase a few of this year’s winners.

Madison Xu (10)

gasp The air burns my skin at 160 degrees c

Tomoko Hida (11)

Exerpt from Blankness of America I wonder how it feels to not find death everywhere.

The sidewalks of my town are baked hard with the cement of skeletons, In every conversation I have with my mother she crafts coffins from cautious lips and I no longer know the difference between a funeral home and our kitchen, The news a fragmented eulogy it has not yet been declared who has died but I see our country’s obituary proclaimed on every channel.

I wonder how it feels to not see the stripes of our country as only red from alternating bloodstains.

I once was so distracted by the stark whiteness of stars I forgot that their points were sharp enough to cut through the flesh of their people, The golden string that threaded us together, seam ripped from flapping in wind that whistled our national anthem like a warning sign, I now see how easily gilded coating reveals itself.

Jacob Shaw

Jacob Shaw (11)

I wonder how it feels to not see America as a silent cemetery.

Our country is a graveyard overflowing with the guilt from blank and blank and blank, so we shoveled too many bodies into the ground without tombstones, formed their names into numbers, citizens now statistics and we wonder why our history books feel so empty.

They have dissolved into the soil of our nation,

Maeve Goldman (9)

Jacob Shaw

Gabby Fischberg

Rachel Zhu

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HORACE MANN ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT FEBRUARY 5TH, 2021

UD Playwriting classes holds staged readings Arushi Talwar and Athena Rem Staff and Contributing Writers

Playwriting students had ten minutes — to present a world of their own creation to the school community. This Tuesday and Thursday, members of the Horace Mann Theater Company (HMTC) performed staged readings of plays written and edited by students in the Upper Division (UD) Playwriting Class over Zoom.

Students performed eight plays on Tuesday and six more on Thursday. Each play was ten minutes long, posing a challenge for the playwrights, Madison Xu (10) said. “You can’t just capture a single moment like we do during our exercises in class,” she said. “You have to have a full plot with a beginning, middle, end, and a progression.”

Xu’s play focused on two sisters from a wealthy family, now adults, who both live in New York City.

“The focus of the play was the difference between [the] sisters and how two people from the same background can become so different,” she said.

Through her story, Xu wanted to highlight the dayto-day reality of the working-class in the city while incorporating the theme of the American Dream, a topic commonly discussed in her history and English classes, she said.

In addition to lessons learned in school, both Xu and Tess Abraham (12) drew inspiration from TV and popular shows to create a story that truly interested them. While Xu initially found herself overthinking her story arc, once she came up with

characters, the rest of the play came naturally to her, she said.

Abraham started her play with a single moment — a couple at dinner — and built it from there.

In her play, the character Jess proposes to Jane; however, Jane has fallen out of love and is disgusted by the proposal. The plot is reminiscent of traditional sitcoms from which Abraham drew inspiration.

As the students in the class learned, playwriting calls for more creativity than a traditional analytical essay does, theatre teacher Haila VanHentenryck said. “Unlike typical schoolwork, in playwriting, there is no right answer,” she said. “We have to unlearn academic class habits and relearn ones that are about trusting yourself.”

Aside from the occasional comedic piece, Ryan Rosenthal (12) is accustomed to writing non-fiction papers for his classes. However, in playwriting, Rosenthal challenged himself to write a play with more somber undertones. “I wanted to go out of my comfort zone and write something very serious.”

Rosenthal’s play titled Hot Chicken Soup centered around a rapidly deteriorating relationship. The chicken soup serves as a metaphor for the formerly happy relationship, as characters Logan and Emily used to share the meal regularly.

VanHentenryck encourages her students to part ways with their “inner editors,” the strict

Courtesy of the Abby Beckler

THE EVENING AFTER Mekhala Mantravadi (11), Divya Ponda (10), Dylan Chin, and Taub act.

Courtesy of Abby Beckler

NEVER TRUST THE PLAYWRIGHT Oscar Shah (9), Bailey Hecht (10), Shaw, and Chris Smith (9) act. voices inside their heads that are accustomed to a different style and method of writing, she said.

“I don’t want [them] to change their playwriting voice or their ideas,” she said. “I want to create an environment where their ideas can be showcased.”

The literary and creative freedom apparent in the students’ plays exists in the class itself, Abraham said. The discomfort and vulnerability in “discarding our self-doubt and learning to trust ourselves” is a fundamental class goal, she said.

Although the stories and plots of each play differ, VanHentenryck’s help in developing each one was crucial, Abraham said. While revision is usually her least favorite part of the writing process, Abraham enjoyed the revision process, largely thanks to VanHentenryck, she said.

The performance was the first time the playwrights saw their characters brought to life.

New actors had a few days to learn the scripts and familiarize themselves with their respective characters. Since the plays were only staged readings, one weekend was enough time to prepare, Sarah Taub (11) said.

Taub acted in four plays, playing characters ranging from a young man about to graduate college to a girl in her senior year of high school.

The plays had a variety of overarching themes, including high school and friendships, she said.

“Some of them were funny and some of them were serious, but they all came down to those relationships.”

Jacob Shaw (11), who also acted in four plays, enjoyed the experience. “I never really thought of

myself as much of an actor,” he said. Since actors didn’t audition for specific characters, Shaw had the opportunity to experiment with multiple roles.

Since the actors rehearsed little before the performances, there were several surprises throughout the course of the first evening. Shaw was caught off guard when one of the actors had to leave mid-production. With only a minute’s notice, he had to fill the role, he said.

Rosenthal looked forward to seeing his own piece in a new light. “We only know our own mannerisms and how we tend to read characters, so it [was] very interesting to see how people who don’t know our own playwriting styles interpret our characters.”

Abraham was excited for the actors to understand her characters as intricately as she did, she said. She hoped the staged readings would make more people interested in taking the class.

“The school’s course of studies is huge so people don’t really notice playwriting, but it’s a great space to workshop your creative ideas and to grow as a writer and to be more vulnerable with your writing and allow it to show who you are as a person,” she said.

Shaw, having taken the playwriting class himself, admired the playwrights’ dedication to the work. “For a lot of the playwrights, it’s their first time writing a play of this length,” he said.

“It’s very cool, as a playwright myself, to see people who took the same class I took be able to express themselves.”

Do’s “Light and Air of Summer” exhibition opens at Blue Mountain Gallery Audrey Carbonell Contributing Writer “There’s a kind of communion with the world that I like, where I become part of nature,” Visual Arts Teacher Kim Do said about the beauty of painting the outdoors. “It’s almost like a loss of individuality in some way that I look for. It feels transcendent to go beyond oneself.”

“Light and Air of Summer,” an exhibit of Do’s last 25 years of work, consists of his paintings of the Catskills and northern California.

His show, at the Blue Mountain Gallery in Chelsea, will remain open from February 3 to 27. Do will be in the gallery most Saturdays to interact with visitors, whom he hopes will feel reverence for the natural world within his work, he said.

Do’s painting “Our Backyard,” which will be displayed in the exhibition, is one of his most impressive paintings, he said. He painted “Our Backyard” in August of 2001, a month before the September 11 attacks, he said. “It kind of speaks to the innocence of the American backyard,” he said. “It harkens back to an earlier time in American history and the idealization of the American home.”

Do has loved art from an early age, he said. “When I was a toddler, the house painters came and painted the living room a beautiful clean white, and I took an orange crayon and I made a big circle on the wall and filled it in,” he said.

Based on a concept from Yale University’s art school in the mid-

20th century, Do focuses on creating challenging work that is rich in detail, he said. He sees each shape as a small structure, and he works with small brushes on large canvases to give purpose to each individual form, he said.

When working outdoors, Do prefers to use oil paint because it allows him to work with the canvas for longer periods of time to blend colors together. However, he said that his artistic vision and the transference of his personality through his artwork matters much more than the paint he uses.

Since Do uses observations instead of reference photos when he paints, it’s impossible for him to capture a single moment in time, Do said. As the sun moves, the light conditions change,

Courtesy of the Blue Mountain Gallery

OUR BACKYARD One of Do’s favorite contributions to the gallery, a large canvas painting.

Courtesy of the Blue Mountain Gallery

EARTH MOVES Do used oil paint on canvas. resulting in inconsistencies in the direction of the shadows. However, it appears that Do has depicted a snapshot of time to viewers, he said.

When creating his pieces, Do works in five-hour sessions. While a small painting can be finished in one session, his larger paintings require multiple sessions to be completed, he said.

Do draws inspiration from many artists, including Frederic Church, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Rackstraw Downes, Neil Welliver, and Monet. One of his favorite painters is Williem de Kooning, a DutchAmerican abstract expressionist. “I really love the way his paint looks on the surface, the way that it interacts with other colors, forms and shapes with overlapping and underlapping,” he said.

Also on display in the “Light and Air of Summer” exhibition are three of Do’s oculus paintings, created on circular canvases. To begin, Do first draws a circle around himself in the dirt that is divided into nine pie-shaped wedges of 40 degrees, he said. He then draws the same circular

diagram on his canvas. “I look at each section at a time, and try to translate each of the pie shaped wedges onto the canvas,” he said. Do sees these paintings as experimental and contemplation pieces, he said.

Although Do has shown his students pictures of his artwork online, it is difficult to recognize the size and detail of the paintings from photographs, he said. It was only when he showed a timelapse in which he set up his exhibition that students realized how large the paintings are.

“Seeing artwork live is different,” he said. “I think the energy that one pours into something comes out of it, and when you’re in the presence of those objects you can feel those energies.”

The official opening for Do’s show is 12 p.m. on Wednesday, February 3. Due to health precautions, Do will not have an opening ceremony, and only 10 people will be able view his exhibition at a time, he said.

Additionally, the gallery will keep its windows open and require masks to ensure the safety of the viewers, he said.

Lions’ Den Record Sports

Who does HM predict will win the Super Bowl?

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

34.4%

Kansas City Chiefs

65.6% Based on responses from 190 UD students

FEBRUARY 5TH, 2021

8

Born this way: Amy Mojica has promoted wellness since childhood Yin Fei Staff Writer “I have been tying ice bags in the athletic training room since I was three years old,” said Head Athletic Trainer and Assistant Athletic Director Amy Mojica. Mojica’s father was an athletic trainer, so she always knew she wanted to work in the health field. She would accompany her father to competitions, watching games from the sidelines, meeting teams, and observing as he assisted with injured players.

Rather than following in her father’s footsteps and majoring in athletic training, when she enrolled at the University of New Hampshire, Mojica decided to study medicine instead. “All of a sudden I was like, ‘I don’t want to do exactly what my parents are doing,” she said.

At the end of her first year, however, Mojica realized she had made the wrong decision. “For me, it was a lot of classwork and not hands-on fun stuff,” she said. “You’re taking the organic chem, you’re slugging through all those classes, and you just feel like it’s boring.”

Over the course of freshman and sophomore year, Mojica switched her major from premedicine to nursing to psychology, before landing on the athletic-training major in the middle of her sophomore year. She fell in love with the immersive courses she was taking for her degree, she said.

“You’re doing kinesiology and anatomy and physiology, but you’re also interning as a student athletic trainer and working with a team, so you’re immediately implementing everything out on the field,” Mojica said.

As a result of her late switch, Mojica spent an extra semester in school before graduating in December of 2004, she said. Following her graduation, Mojica worked as a head athletic trainer for a football team that required her to constantly travel, and as a result, she began craving more stability in her professional career. Through a recommendation from a college she had applied to work at, Mojica found her way to the school, where she was hired as the Head Athletic Trainer.

Mojica always considered teaching as a potential career path. In college, she took some teaching classes with her athletic training ones. Those, along with some jobs as a substitute teacher during

college breaks, sparked her interest in higher education. While working at the school, Mojica decided to earn her master’s degree and spent three years taking night classes at Lehman College, she said.

Now, Mojica’s job requires her to prep for her classes, check in on athletes, and sanitize supplies to prevent the spread of COVID-19, she said.

“Every day is a mash-up of running from one task to another, which is awesome because it’s different all day, but it’s also a lot of balls to juggle in the air,” she said.

In addition to working as Head Athletic Trainer, Mojica runs the Athletic Training Department and Sports Medicine, where she works alongside a staff of two assistant athletic trainers to manage sports injuries. She oversees impact testing and concussion protocol and facilitates the Habitat for Humanity community service program that sports teams participated in up until this year.

Two years ago, Mojica became the Upper Division Physical Education Department Chair, where she serves as the voice of the department for all public information regarding physical education activities and curriculum.

Director of Athletics, Health, and Physical Education Robert Annunziata said he is in awe of Mojica’s ability to manage all of her roles within the department. “Her impact directly relates to our school core values, especially that of maintaining a safe, secure and healthful environment,” Annunziata said. “[Mojica] embodies that every day — she goes beyond just addressing her immediate responsibilities and looks at the holistic approach to everything she oversees.”

Mojica enjoys the freedom she has in expanding programs, solving problems, and exercising her creativity. She created the sports medicine program in the Middle Division (MD) and the expansion of the health program in the Upper Division (UD), she said.

Because the MD didn’t have enough space in their P.E. rotation, Mojica designed a sports medicine class. The program took a group of students into the old athletic training room in order to teach them the fundamentals of athletic training.

Mojica taught them the basics of anatomy, physiology, first aid, and taping. “They also got to sit in the ice tub and feel what it feels like and

measure their flexibility in the hot and the cold,” Mojica said. “It teaches them the importance of warming up before sports.”

However, the program is no longer running, since Mojica needed to focus on the UD’s new Health program, she said. The transition to semesters for the academic year meant that the P.E. department had to implement a quarterly rotation for their curriculum.

“But what happens if you switch the classes of Phys. Ed to quarters is you lose 10 days –– from 30 to 20 –– which is an enormous amount of time,” Mojica said. “We had to find a solution to make sure that we’re not shortchanging this information.”

With that in mind, Mojica worked with the department to extend the student health requirement to one class sometime within the ninth and tenth grades and then again in 11th and 12th. “This way, you get a little more flexibility of working it into your schedule, which is a benefit, and we gained 10 days rather than losing time,” Mojica said.

Assistant Athletic Trainer Jaime Pachesa admires Mojica’s dedication to boosting her health students’ education, she said. “During the day or after school when [students] come for evaluations or with any sort of health question, she’s very knowledgeable and she’s always willing to take the time to listen and to teach,” Pachesa said.

Mojica recently designed the training suite next Courtesy of Amy Mojica

IN HER ELEMENT Mojica stands inside the Training Suite.

Just Dance: Dancers adapt to online classes Sophie Rukin and Neeva Patel Contributing Writers

Sophia Paley (9), who mainly practices tap, jazz, hip-hop, and ballet, sees dance as a way to express her passion for the arts as well as a way to freely express herself.

Similarly, Mabel Runyon (12) is deeply passionate about ballet, which she has pursued throughout middle and high school.

However, now that their dance classes have been switched to Zoom, Paley and Runyon don’t feel the same confidence or devotion to the sport.

By nature, tap dancing requires teachers to have a full visual and auditory range of their students’ dancing, Paley said. “My footwork could be off but I wouldn’t realize unless I directly ask my teacher for advice,” she said. That flaw, along with others that go undetected, prevents Paley from quickly learning new skills.

While tap dancing, it is important for teachers to hear their students’ feet moving, because it signals whether the dancers are performing their steps correctly, she said. “Since I am muted, my teachers can’t hear my feet, which makes it hard for me to fix my position.” If students were unmuted, the amount of noise would be overwhelming and students’ sound would meld together, meaning teachers would be unable to productively lead their classes.

It’s also difficult for teachers to articulate corrections necessary without touching dancers’ bodies, Avery Lin (11) said.

In order to improve, Paley has had to put extra effort into her dance classes. “I’ve been scheduling many more private lessons with my teacher to catch up on my dances, which I normally wouldn’t do,” she said.

Julia Grant (11), who primarily dances hip-hop but also dabbles in jazz and ballet, has also found that having lessons over Zoom causes considerable miscommunications. “It’s definitely hard trying to figure out which arm or which leg or which direction to move,” she said.

Teachers’ Zoom screens are sometimes inverted, which can easily cause confusion. Since the screen is flipped, students might get into the wrong stance , which could cause them to learn the whole dance number incorrectly, Grant said.

“It’s very helpful when you are in the studio because you have a huge mirror, and at home it’s hard to learn the dances since you don’t

to the new fitness center. Mojica improved on the previous training room by adding an ice bath, a private doctor’s office, and a separate room for water coolers.

“Most people don’t have the chance to design their very own athletic training room with the resources we have,” Mojica said. “[The school] basically came to us and said ‘If you could build your dream athletic training room, what would you have?’”

Mojica has loved watching students’ successes and being there for their injuries and recoveries from middle school to high school, she said. As a former athlete herself, she understands that athletics comprise a large portion of peoples’ identity and that injuries can take mental tolls.

“To work with somebody — especially with those who have major injuries — to get them back to the point where they’re back on the field, back on the court, ready to face adversity, it’s really amazing,” she said.

Annunziata said Mojica’s attitude and passion towards her work is telling of her impact on the school. “Her approach to the wellness of Horace Mann, in and out of the department, is something she has always embraced with enthusiasm,” Annunziata said. “We are very fortunate to have her at HM, and for her care for the overall wellbeing of our community.”

have that reflection of yourself,” she said. “Obviously, you can see yourself in the Zoom box, but it doesn’t even come close in terms of clarity or size.”

It’s also harder for dancers to learn from each other over Zoom, Lin said. “The times when I have to dance solely on Zoom are isolating, because you can’t necessarily see what the other dancers are doing while you’re dancing,” she said. “Because of this, you have Courtesy of Avery Lin

AND HOLD Lin practices a leg lift. to be more on top of learning the combinations.”

The limitations that come with dancing over Zoom were a difficult adjustment for Lin, she said. Last year Lin had to set up a Marley square — a type of flat, vinyl flooring used for dance — in her living room. She also had to use a dining room chair as a barre. “I definitely felt constrained dancing in that space, especially because my sofa was behind me, and it all just wasn’t very large.”

Because her setup was uncomfortable and cramped, Lin decided to find a new location more similar to her usual standards. “Later

Lauren Kim/Art Director

on this year, I was able to use a little gym space downstairs in my building, which was nicer, but I am still using a random piece of workout equipment in place of a barre,” she said.

Although Paley bought equipment, such as a tap board, to use at home, she still finds it frustrating to practice outside of her studio.

“The board I dance on isn’t always big enough to do all of the tap moves my teacher requires and, since I don’t have a ballet barre, I have to use a shelf or a chair during ballet classes,” she said.

For safety reasons, Runyon has recently taken a pause in her practice of ballet. Although her studio, Ballet Academy East, was offering online classes, Runyon stopped attending them since it was difficult to dance with such limited room and performance area at home. “We can’t do anything across the floor or with barres, so it is really tough to work all the way to my potential,” she said.

Household disturbances have also contributed to Paley’s frustration. Her dance classes are constantly interrupted by her family or her dog, who consistently comes over to her when she hears the noise of tap shoes, Paley said.

Despite these struggles, performing over Zoom has benefited Paley in ways she didn’t anticipate. “I have noticed myself becoming more flexible this past year online since I dedicate more of my time to exercise and physical activity,” she said.

In order to keep students in shape while remote, Paley’s teacher has added a new stretch class to the curriculum. As well as exercising during class, Paley has made it her goal to independently work out on machines she has around her house.

However, Runyon said she has experienced a great decline in her physical activity since COVID-19 struck. “Keeping up my stamina and staying motivated to exercise while behind a screen is very hard to do, especially if you don’t have the same level of access to a studio space as you did in-person.”

Runyon hopes that, in the future, she will be able to continue with the freelance dance classes that she stopped taking at the start of the pandemic and regain some of the skills that she lost.

Next year, Grant hopes to work with the school’s Spirit Squad to share dance with everyone and promote a sense of community. “I am really missing the Spirit Squad and performing at Homecoming, but I hope that next year we can do something more COVID-friendly that works out,” she said.