Commonwealth Magazine Summer 2020

CM Commonwealth School Magazine Summer 2020

COMMONWEALTH IN A

Time of Change

WHY I MADE IT

BY ALËNA GOMBERG

’20

t

Shtetl Angels

his print, Shtetl Angels, done in the linocut technique, was created with the intent of preserving a cultural history that is deeply personal to me. In the composition the viewer sees two Jews dressed in the simple, frayed clothing typical for the impoverished residents of an Eastern European town in the Pale of Settlement—a shtetl in Yiddish, or mestechko in Russian, my first language.

If one were to “read” the print from right to left—as the Hebrew language is read—the young boy facing left appears to be looking into the future, and the old man faces towards the past. As a viewer with the advantage of hindsight will know, the future conceals the inhuman atrocities of the Holocaust; the past too is filled with grief and poverty.

These two Jews are a representation of the casualties of our cruel history. They suffered so much during their lives, but in this print I tried to give them a respite from pain, fear, and poverty. They are enveloped by a pomegranate tree—a symbol of fertility and a peaceful and sweet future in the Jewish tradition. Wings grow from the old man’s back: the boy and the old man are in Heaven, the garden of Eden, perhaps. They may have suffered during their lives, but here they finally find themselves in peace and in safety. The words that surround them are a quotation from the Talmud (a collection of all Rabbinic writings on the Torah)—my favorite quotation, in fact:

“Even every blade of grass has its own angel that bends over it and whispers, ‘Grow, grow!’”

This print began as my way of making sure my shtetl ancestors, somewhere in the recesses of time, will find their peace under pomegranate trees, but in the process it became an expression of my enormous gratitude to every mentor-angel who has helped me grow in my years as a student.

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CM

Commonwealth School Alumni/ae Magazine

FORTITUDE

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iven the urgency of addressing the persistent racism in our country— further magnified by the health and economic crises wrought by the novel coronavirus—the challenges and responses of a small Boston school may seem trivial. But a close-up view of our successes and failures in recent months arguably affords some worthwhile lessons.

We have had a painful lesson in recent weeks that the inequities that the national protests are highlighting persist in our own community, despite Commonwealth’s longstanding commitment to racial justice and recent efforts to better live up to it. As outlined in the trustees’ response to the recent petition by alumni/ae and students (page 4), we must listen, learn, and examine our academic and social culture to determine how Commonwealth can adapt and change to be more inclusive while maintaining its distinctive place among area schools.

These challenges came on top of those that the need for social distancing has created. Most of our students longed to keep up the in-person classes, routines, and connections we cherish. Carrying on with school this spring, even with reduced expectations, was difficult for all, but students, teachers, and staff showed impressive resilience.

One article in this issue talks about our recent efforts to help our students to manage work, time, and stress thoughtfully. We work to keep our demands at the sweet spot where challenging and reasonable meet, but always hope to equip our students with the tools to cope: to paraphrase an ancient Buddhist monk, we want to give them good shoes rather than cover their world with leather.

Charles Merrill wanted his school to turn out students tough-minded enough to accomplish good in an often difficult, even hostile world. The hardship we all currently face and cope with, the vigor and cogency of the calls our young alumni/ae and students have raised for change, and the contributions of students and alumni/ae to the larger community that you can read about in this issue suggest, I hope, that the school’s dedication to that vision abides, even as we acknowledge the hard work ahead.

Bill Wharton Headmaster

Issue 18 Summer 2020 Editors-in-Chief Melody Komyerov Jessica Tomer Editor Catherine Brewster Assistant Editor Jack Stedman Contributing Writers Catherine Brewster Alla Katsnelson ’92 Jack Stedman Jessica Tomer Design Jeanne Aboud Art Béa de Géa Melody Komyerov Tony Rinaldo Jack Stedman Printing Hannaford and Dumas CM is published twice a year by Commonwealth School, 151 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02116, and distributed without charge to alumni/ae, current and former parents, and other members of the Commonwealth community. Opinions expressed in CM are those of the authors and subjects, and do not necessarily represent the views of the School or its faculty and students.

We welcome your comments and news at communications@commschool.org. Letters and notes may be edited for style, length, clarity, and grammar.

Printed on recycled paper. Please recycle.

@commonwealthalumniae commonwealthschool commonwealthschool commonwealthschool

2 CM Summer 2020

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CONTENTS

Commonwealth School Magazine Summer 2020

Why I Made It

26

1

Shtetl Angels, by Alëna Gomberg ’20

From the Headmaster

2

Fortitude

News of Commonwealth

4

A Letter from the Board of Trustees, Graduation 2020, A Farewell to Bob Vollrath, Coming Together in the Time of COVID, Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and More

All COVID, All the Time

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16

Commonwealth alumni/ae find themselves on the front lines of a global pandemic

Exploring Greater Boston (and the Known Universe)

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Whether they’re in a chocolate factory or the State House, Commonwealth students use Project Week to engage in meaningful, highly individualized work

Commonwealth and the Mindful Workload

23

English teacher Catherine Brewster unpacks the extraordinary results of a recent survey aimed at measuring student well-being and engagement

The Movement of Science

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26

20

Jaime Cheah ’95 found her feet at Commonwealth and forged a path to the cutting edge of her field

Exploring Across Disciplines

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One of Commonwealth’s newest teachers explores his diverse interests with students who share his cross-disciplinary leanings

Meet the Next Generation

30

Get to know Nick Fomin ’20 and his two-continent family, Ilaria Seidel ’22 and her adventures in math, and Alan Plotz ’21 —just be prepared to want to protest

Alumni/ae Events

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On the cover: Winner of our “Commonwealth Community in the Time of COVID” cover art contest, created by Anna Moss, Class of 2006 and current mathematics teacher. Turn to page 36 for our runners-up.

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4 CM Summer 2020

NEWS | Of Commonwealth A Letter from the Board of Trustees

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n the past few weeks, the Board has convened a series of meetings with students, alumni/ae, faculty, and the administration to better understand the depths of the issues at hand and to begin to formulate strategies to deal with the pain that Commonwealth’s shortcomings around equity and inclusion have created. We have heard many voices in our efforts to better understand how we may create a community that manifests to all a commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism. Two recent letters from alumni/ae and students to the board, one with an accompanying petition for change, make it clear that the school still has a great deal of work to do to create an environment where all feel valued and welcomed. We thank the members of our community who have come forward, shared perspectives, and suggested areas for action.

There is no place for racism nor any form of exclusive behavior at Commonwealth School. The fact that a core constituency of our school feels excluded, unwelcomed, alienated, invalidated, subverted, or silenced in any way is clearly unacceptable and is against the very foundations of the school.

As Trustees, our most important duty is to uphold the mission of the school. That mission came out of our founder’s vision to provide a highly academic program in an urban school for students from a wide range of racial, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds. Although Mr. Merrill had some success in pursuing his vision, he also recognized how difficult the work of racial equity and inclusion was, as noted in his book The Walled Garden. After he stepped down as Head of School, the school continued the work toward his mission with some success but never quite lived up to the dreams of our founder.

We must and will push beyond good intentions to meaningful action. As we acknowledge the need for change, we admit that the school’s current leadership and this Board do not have all the answers. It is our priority as the Board to enable the process of transformation and to provide the resources necessary to resolve the many issues we face. Real change for something this deep and this important will take time. It will be an ongoing process requiring strategic commitment.

We have already begun to outline key initiatives and actions, which include: n Committing to an ongoing, open dialogue on issues of race, diversity, and inclusion. n Appointing a leadership group, consisting of two trustees and two faculty/administration members to lead this change: John Dowd (Board Treasurer), Janique Parrott-Gaffney ’04 (Alumna and Trustee), Mónica Schilder (Spanish Teacher and DEI leader), and Sophia Meas (Director of College Counseling). Why and how were they selected? The Board Executive Committee, two leaders from the Diversity Committee, and the Head and Assistant Head chose each of them because of their drive and commitment to carry this work through. This group will engage with individuals and existing groups, including the student and alumni/ae groups that have formed, our existing Diversity Committee, the recently created faculty task force, and our leadership behind Dive In (our summer program for rising eighth graders from diverse backgrounds). It will build on existing ideas and proposals, including those documented recently in the petition by student and alumni/ae groups.

n Engaging outside expertise in the areas of diversity and inclusivity. There are professional resources we can leverage so that we may learn from the experience of others and avoid missteps. n Holding a series of town hall meetings with the Commonwealth community so that we can continue to listen and learn. We must ensure open and inclusive communication on this topic. The objective of these meetings will be to better inform us around the challenges to be overcome, to learn of potential solutions, and to help us work collaboratively to advance the practice of real inclusivity at the school. n Ensuring that our existing search process results in the selection of a Head of School who believes in our mission and is committed to and can further lead our initiatives around diversity, equity, and inclusion. n Providing recurring training for the Board, faculty, administration, and students on anti-racism, diversity, and inclusion. n Hiring an experienced Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, who will report to the Head of School and will present regularly to the Board regarding our progress on such initiatives. n Continuing the ongoing work of assessing and modifying our curriculum and learning environment to better educate our students about anti-racism, diversity, and inclusion, while also creating a more inclusive community through those actions. n Accelerating our work on increasing the racial diversity of the faculty, staff, and Board of Commonwealth School. A more diverse faculty enhances our entire community and can make students of color feel more welcome and a higher sense of belonging. We ultimately believe this will foster a more diverse student body. n Continuing our commitments to Dive In, Homework Project, and the raising of funds for financial aid and student scholarships.

These steps are the beginning of a long journey towards a more inclusive future, which will make our school and the education it provides stronger and more welcoming. We all are stakeholders in Commonwealth’s success, and we have an opportunity and the commitment to bring our community together to make Mr. Merrill’s vision a reality.

The Board of Trustees of Commonwealth School is making these commitments, Therese A. Hendricks, Chair

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Class of 2020 Colleges and Universities Boston College Boston University Brandeis University Brown University Carleton College Columbia University Harvard College Haverford College Johns Hopkins University King’s College London Macalester College New York University Northeastern University Reed College Rhode Island School of Design Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology School of the Art Institute of Chicago Swarthmore College Tufts University University of California, Berkeley University of California, Los Angeles University of Rochester Vanderbilt University Yale University

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NEWS | Of Commonwealth

Graduation 2020

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ommonwealth’s sixtieth graduation, held Friday, June 5, was certainly unlike any other in the school’s history, but the extraordinary sense of pride in the graduating class was familiar. The morning’s virtual ceremony featured tremendous performances from senior speakers Alok Ramakrishna Shetty and Abigail L. Tenenbaum and pianist Nevan Kenaz Suntareja. During the afternoon, almost all of the class’s thirty-one seniors and their families came to 151 Commonwealth Avenue at pre-arranged times to pick up their diplomas in person. Headmaster Bill Wharton greeted them (from a distance) and faculty advisors tuned in via Zoom to wish students well, with one particular sentiment shared over and over again: we will see you soon.

Left page, starting from top row, left to right: Amelia Michael ’20, Lillian Fang ’20, Alok Shetty ’20, Pamina Falk ’20, and Margo Moore ’20; Travis Chaplin ’20; Anne Murphy, Kathryn O’Rourke ’20, Brian O’Rourke, and David O’Rourke; Isabel Berkenblit and Eleanor Berkenblit ’20; Lennie Manioudakis ’20 with his brother (and their puppy!); Dr. Rekha Abichandani and Rohan Abichandani ’20; Alëna Gomberg ’20 and Luke Gomberg This page, starting from top row, left to right: Aunnesha Bhowmick ’20; Noa Popko ’20 and Michael Popko; Josiah Thompson ’20; Headmaster Bill Wharton; Ella Markianos ’20; Collin Gray ’20 and David Gray; Lisa Bina and Lindsay Bina ’20

PHOTOS BY TONY RINALDO 7

FACULTY re tirement

Bob

Vollrath FRENCH TEACHER

I once submitted a self-indulgent essay in French class, complaining in my adolescent way about the disappointments of growing up and realizing one’s own limitations. Bob wrote in the margin: “Mais on peut toujours prendre plaisir.” In English, “But we can always have fun.” I often think of that excellent advice.

—Jared Wunsch ’89

I met Bob Vollrath on the day I interviewed at Commonwealth in 1985. His midwestern warmth (he is a native Minnesotan) made me, a child of Chicagoland, feel welcome. After I was hired, I discovered he would be my student in a second-year Greek class. That elective, in which we puzzled our way through Plato’s Apology of Socrates together, was an important introduction to Commonwealth’s collaborative ethos: Teachers often took each other’s courses, sitting side by side with students, sharing moments of earnest inquiry, deep discussion, and genuine delight.

In those early years, Bob spent his summers running Camp Courage, a camp in Minnesota for the hearing impaired. He once told us, with mischievous delight, of an inspector from the state who, upon testing the camp’s “hot” water with his finger, remarked, “My, that’s kind of cold.” Bob pulled out the thermometer he had for just this occasion to demonstrate it was exactly the temperature prescribed in state regulations.

That, too, was a lesson: always be mindful of the gap between policy issued from on high and the experience on the ground.

Bob’s role at the camp made sense to me, given what I’d seen of his meticulousness and warm devotion to his students. In the lean years of the early 90’s, Bob helped take up Commonwealth admission for a few years. His ability to connect with nervous fifteen-year-olds, to listen and give them reassurance, got the school’s recovery from low enrollment underway. And Bob’s organizational efficiency and tact made him the ideal Hancock Czar, dealing out staff roles, booking busses, and managing relations with Camp Winona.

Most important, Bob put together a French program that, in its rigor and its emphasis, reflected the best of Commonwealth. A challenge of teaching any foreign language in the United States is giving students a sense that the subject is substantive, that it is more than a classroom exercise or polite duty. With the French exchange program; with the immersion in film, literature, and culture; and with the friendliness, energy, and commitment he brought to the classroom for thirty-eight years, Bob made it real—and fun.

—Bill Wharton, Headmaster 8 CM Summer 2020

NEWS | Of Commonwealth The highest purpose of education is to help us fulfill our purpose in society; here, Bob has been an educator, in this deepest sense, in the school community at large. He had more a choreography than a methodology in class, teeming with energy, moving around the classroom, pausing at the more “arresting” quotations and ideas, crouching and gazing in the distance to evaluate some new category up close, turning slowly to individual students to invite them to weigh in….and he also sought to cultivate harmony and universal respect within the school itself.

—Dan McLellan ’84 n

n

n

Bob is a fantastic teacher and mentor. It is hard to convince teenagers that you are on their side while giving sound advice. I speak a foreign language every day at work, and I might not have been able to do so without the confidence, study skills, and curiosity about language that I learned in Bob’s French class.

—Eric Kosinski ’97 n

n

n

Bob was a dynamic French teacher and so full of humor and joy, but he also invited me to serve as a counselor at the camp he ran in Minnesota for hearing-impaired kids. It was my first time away from home, and it was so challenging, empowering, and just incredibly fun! I will always be so grateful to him for inspiring me and giving me that opportunity. Few teachers bring it like Bob did.

—Jeremy Creelan ’87 n

n

n

I asked Mr. Vollrath to be my advisor quite randomly...

It turned out to be one of the best choices of my time at Commonwealth. Mr. Vollrath always offered invaluable counsel and spurred me on through those teenage years with great kindness, for which I am deeply grateful. I remember many bright moments shared with Mr. Vollrath and a fellow advisee over plates of soup dumplings in Chinatown.

—Jay Husson ’13 n

n

n

Bob will forever be entwined with images of Hancock in my mind. I see him hanging out in the dining hall, wearing his old-school Commonwealth jacket, the one that says “Bobby” on the sleeve. Hancock under Bob has run like a well-oiled machine. His meticulous attention to detail in the planning stages, weeks (even months) ahead of time, and his close work with the faculty and staff means that by the time we’re scheduled to transport the entire school away for a long weekend in the woods the whole thing looks effortless.

That’s not to say there isn’t sometimes a disastrous meal, a trip to the ER, or a bat in a cabin, but there is Bob, calm and collected in his jacket, helping to smooth things over. It’s not going to be the same without him.

—Rebecca Jackman, Assistant Head of School

for more tributes visit: www.commschool.org/retirements 9

Virtual Commonwealth:

Inside Our New

Educational Adventure

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he crackling conversation of an English class. A chorus of birthday wishes at recess. An attentive crowd peppering an assembly speaker with insightful questions.

So much of it felt...normal. And it all happened within Virtual Commonwealth, behind 184 screens in 184 different places.

Thursday, March 12, was the last official day at 151 Commonwealth Avenue in the 2019–2020 school year. In the following two weeks, over spring break, Commonwealth’s faculty and staff overhauled the school’s curriculum and student services for the virtual setting (all while adjusting to the pandemic in their own lives).

The result—Virtual Commonwealth, the school’s online learning platform—brought a semblance of normalcy to a world reeling from the coronavirus pandemic.

Powered by the now-ubiquitous Zoom, Virtual Commonwealth simplified and centralized the online classroom experience. More importantly, this digital space, unique to Commonwealth, served as a proxy for that beloved brownstone on Comm Ave. By adhering to much of the “normal” schedule, each day in Virtual Commonwealth retained a familiar rhythm, and many classes went on much as they normally would—albeit with more cameos from small children and pets.

Science courses relied on online simulators and written “labs.” Art teachers challenged students to create using the materials at hand.

Even admissions went digital, with an array of virtual events for admitted students and their families.

Morning recess became a meaningful daily touchpoint early on. Students continued calling club meetings and shouting out birthday wishes as they have all year. April, being National Poetry Month, saw readings of both original works and the likes of W.H. Auden and Pablo Neruda. And themes like hats, outrageous hair, and twin day enlivened the gallery view in Zoom.

Commonwealth’s virtual assemblies were welcome returns to normal as well. The first saw poet

Major Jackson conducting readings before a full “house.” Then came Natasha Dow Schüll, presenting her research on how technology mediates our everyday life; alumnus Jake Kreilkamp ’91, discussing his career in law and social justice work; and Whitney Phillips, who asked attendees to examine the ethical implications of their online behavior. Students took the assembly spotlight as well, sharing projects and capstones that ranged from helping deliver baby goats to examining the sociolinguistic gender dynamics on an early-aughts emo music website.

By the end of the semester, the academic ground covered had met and in some cases surpassed expectations, adjusted as they were for the online format. As Headmaster Bill Wharton made clear early on: this was not fully developed online education, which takes months if not years of tailored curriculum design. Rather, it was education in a time of crisis. But students, faculty, and staff rose to the challenge.

By adhering to much of the “normal” schedule, each day in Virtual Commonwealth retained a familiar rhythm, and many classes went on much as they normally would— albeit with more cameos from small children and pets.

10 CM Summer 2020

NEWS | Of Commonwealth UNCOMMON COMMUNITY: How Commonwealth Stayed Connected As they came to grips with the realities of social distancing, Commonwealth students and staff were quick to find ways to keep their community connected and spirits strong...

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rom the very first day of online classes, it was clear that students and faculty were eager to be back together, if only virtually. Even regular lunch tables opted to meet in Virtual Commonwealth so they could continue eating as a group.

Though some teachers initially reported more subdued classes as students adjusted to the new format, others spoke of the same lively discussions they knew so well, even of enhanced engagement, as some usually quiet students could contribute to discussions more easily using chat. Still, concerns about the increased screen time remained top of mind.

After one month of Virtual Commonwealth, students were surveyed about their online learning experiences, with a particular focus on pacing, workload, and screen time. Responses were largely positive, though many students found the online format challenging: of the seventy students who responded, 58.5% said it was “harder” or “substantially harder” to focus on their schoolwork (36% said it was about the same). Seventy-two percent reported spending a hefty seven or more hours in front of a computer or other screen (not counting television) every day, with virtual classes constituting a majority of those hours. Fortunately, students seemed to balance all that screen time with physical activity; a majority (40%) said they exercised at least once per day, and 33% said they did several times per week.

Only 4% did not exercise at all.

As for student wellness, Commonwealth’s faculty advisors were the first line of defense, attending to individual students’ academic and emotional needs. Almost all students (97%) said they met with their advisors every week.

As it often is, Commonwealth’s small size was one of its biggest strengths throughout the spring ordeal—and will likely continue to be so as the school adjusts to whatever the 2020–2021 school year may bring. Hybrid classes (a mixture of online and in-person sessions) seem likely, and the school is prepared to make a rapid shift to all-online classes again, should the need arise.

In short, Virtual Commonwealth won’t be going away any time soon. But, as students and teachers learn to use the online format to their advantage, that may not be a bad thing.

n After-school athletics continued with biweekly

dance, yoga, and running (well, pre-run stretching) groups, while some of our most active students, such as Ryan Phan ‘22, shared their favorite exercises conducive to being inside, like squats, toe touches, and crunches. n Student groups hosted movie nights with Netflix

Watch Party, tuning in for Alex Strangelove and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (which, perhaps unsurprisingly, is as cool now as it was thirty years ago). n Led by Kathryn O’Rourke ’20, Commonwealth

students started a quarantine book club, opting to read The Spoils of Poynton, by Henry James. n Commonwealth’s art and literary magazine,

Helicon, launched a special feature on joy, calling on Commonwealth students and teachers alike to submit poems, stories, and other works in real time. n Early in the shutdown, Alec Bode Mathur ’20

launched a pass-around story, with students writing in a shared Google Document, each using a different font so later contributors could see the evolution of the story. (There were dogs, there were UFOs, there was professional-wrestlerturned-actor John Cena.) n English teacher Mara Dale started a collection of

recipes, The Mermaid Pantry-Recipe Cookbook: Good Food for Hard Times. n Students shifted their volunteering strategies, as

when Alan Plotz ’21, Aunnesha Bhowmick ’20, and Amelia Michael ’20 turned the school’s annual supermarket drive to support a local daycare for homeless children into an Amazon wishlist.

Others launched new initiatives, including multiple tutoring opportunities and fundraisers for personal protective equipment (PPE). n Emi Neuwalder ‘21 and Dina Pfeffer ’22 called on

their peers to sew reusable masks for healthcare workers and patients.

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NEWS | Of Commonwealth

Fomin Brothers Recognized as Basketball All-Stars

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omin brothers Nick ’20 and Thomas ’22 were named as All-Stars in the Massachusetts Bay Independent League.

The sibling duo led the team throughout the season, which ended in a first round playoff loss to Marie Philip.

Andrew Haggerty ’21 Wins Crescendo International Competition

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ianist Andrew Haggerty ’21 won first place at this year’s Crescendo International Music Competition, in which he performed Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York City. It is his fifth first-place finish in this competition, a staggering number for the junior.

“I was very honored and excited to perform in such a contemporary venue in front of a large audience,” Andrew said.

Ninth Grader Wins Inaugural Award in National Math Competition

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inda He ’23 was awarded an inaugural Maryam Mirzakhani AMC 10 Award as a top-five female scorer in the Northeast region of the tenth-grade mathematics competition. The awards were granted to 149 female students across the U.S. While the next rounds of this year’s competition are on hold, Linda looks forward to seeing how far she can go in the years to come.

12 CM Summer 2020

NEWS | Of Commonwealth

Dramatist Places Third in State Shakespeare Competition

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malya Labell ’21 finished third in the state-wide English-Speaking Union Shakespeare Competition. She performed a monologue from Antony and Cleopatra, Sonnet 40, and a cold reading from Romeo and Juliet alongside other high schoolers from across Massachusetts.

In January, Amalya earned the honor of representing Commonwealth in the competition after winning the school’s annual Shakespeare assembly, in which students presented monologues to the whole school and a panel of guest judges. From there, Amalya advanced through the regional competition to get to the state-wide event.

Senior Co-Authors Published Paper on Neural Networks

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he International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN) accepted a paper co-authored by Alex Ding ’20 and a group of postdoctoral researchers at UMass Lowell for publication. The paper shares research findings on improving diagnosis of Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) using neural networks and machine learning.

“ROP is a retinal disease primarily affecting premature infants,” Alex explains. “Many developing nations, such as China and India, lack trained ophthalmologists to handle the large number of premature infants, so scientists have attempted to automate the diagnosis of ROP using computer vision, especially machine learning.”

Two-Person Debate Team Takes Top Spot

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he Commonwealth Debate team, represented only by Nick Gabrieli ’20 and Miles Kodama ’22, took first place in a March tournament hosted by Hopkins School in New Haven, Connecticut. It was a remarkable showing from the duo, usually part of a team composed of eight students, competing across the novice and advanced levels.

Miles finished in first place and Nick third in the advanced individual speaking category, and the pair finished first in the two-person advanced category to finish in the top spot overall, beating out The Hotchkiss School and Joel Barlow, a public high school in Connecticut.

Afterwards, Nick was offered a spot on the Debating Association of New England Independent Schools team for their upcoming Worlds competition. (Learn more about their debate coach, Commonwealth teacher César Pérez, on page 28.)

COMMUN Conference Goes Online

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espite the disruption caused by COVID-19, the student organizers of COMMUN, Commonwealth’s Model UN Conference, successfully transitioned to a virtual format, reimagining months of work in a matter of weeks. Bringing together around sixty middle-school delegates from Boston-area schools and Model UN clubs, the event was a testament to students’ flexibility and ingenuity, as they preserved the face-to-face engagement essential to the event.

“I’m incredibly proud of how adaptable both our team and the delegates were through the process,” said COMMUN’s Secretary-General Alec Bode Mathur ‘20. “It was great to be able to preserve the event since I know a lot of people spent a long time looking forward to attending it, and we’ve all had to forgo so many of the things we’d had planned for the spring.”

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NEWS | Of Commonwealth

S C H O L A S T I C A R T & W R I T I N G AWA R D S

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his year, as is often the case, a bevy of budding artists from Commonwealth’s art studios have been recognized locally and nationally by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

With the creative and collaborative environment that flows through the halls of Commonwealth, it is no wonder that so many students gain recognition for their work. One finds musicians jamming in cubby areas and sharing lyrics that could turn into poems. Doodles fill the pages of the student newspaper, The Commonwealth Chronicle, as a testament to the restless energy and creative juices that pour out onto notebooks in every classroom.

“In the creative arts and in writing, our students know what it is to give themselves fully to a task,” Headmaster Bill Wharton said. “When we talk about the liveliness of the life and work at Commonwealth, we’re pointing to this full commitment, and that shared commitment enables our students to turn out distinctive work year after year.”

Students commit to their work under the guidance of a dedicated arts faculty, which provides expertise in a large number of disciplines. In one of the three studios in the building, students experiment with and choose from drawing, painting, printmaking, ceramics, and photography. In English and Creative Writing classrooms, students hone their voice with the written word and might publish their work in the aforementioned Chronicle or in Helicon, a literary and art magazine produced by students.

“It is incredible to see their hard work and creativity pay off,” photography teacher Samantha Nieto added. “It truly shows what our students are capable of achieving.” n

Vivian Ye ‘22: First Pride

Alok Shetty ‘20: Only Begotten Son Hannah Jenkins ‘22: Globe Light 14 CM Summer 2020

NEWS | Of Commonwealth

Pamina Falk ‘20: Downright Beastly

Pamina Falk ‘20: Lady Moon replaces her horns

SCHOLASTIC ART & WRITING AWA R D S W I N N E R S The Gold Key, Silver Key, and Honorable Mentions are given on a state-wide level.

WRITING Gold Key Alec Mathur ’20, Personal Essay and Memoir, “How To.” Ella Markianos ’20, Poetry, “Salt Stains” Markus Tran ’21, Poetry, “Homesick” Silver Key Ella Markianos ’20, Writing Portfolio, “New Thoughts, Old Thoughts” Honorable Mention Alec Mathur ’20, Short Story, “States of Dependency” Ella Markianos ’20, Poetry, “A Few Love Poems” Amelia Orwant ’21 (2), Poetry, “Fragments” and “Boston Winter”

Alëna Gomberg ‘20: The Master’s Last Goodbye

VISUAL ARTS National Gold Medal James Wu ’21, My Cowboy Life, Colored Pencil* Silver Key Alëna Gomberg ’20, The Master’s Last Goodbye, Printmaking James Wu ’23, Time, Colored Pencil* Honorable Mention Hannah Jenkins ’22, Globe Light, Photography Pamina Falk ’20, Lady Moon replaces her horns, Digital Art Pamina Falk ’20, Downright Beastly, Comic Art Alok Shetty ’20, Only Begotten Son, Ceramics & Glass (15 inches tall) Vivian Ye ’22, First Pride, Oil on Canvas*

James Wu ‘23: Time (left) and My Cowboy Life (above)

*These works were produced independently, outside the Commonwealth classroom.

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All COVID, All the Time Commonwealth Alumni/ae on the Front Lines of a Global Pandemic COVID-19 has left no industry, no country, and practically no individual unaffected. For these three Commonwealth alumni/ae, the pandemic came particularly close.

THE EPIDEMIOLOGIST: SUSAN BORUCHOFF ’73

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“

here’s no one to step into my shoes if I go down,” says Susan Boruchoff, M.D., ’73 As the—not “a,” “the”— epidemiologist for Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Boruchoff has served a critical role in combating the coronavirus in one of the nation’s most afflicted areas. So vital, in fact, that she had to stop seeing patients when the virus started tearing through the area in March of 2020, because the hospital couldn’t risk her getting sick.

Under normal circumstances, Boruchoff would balance her time between clinical, hospital epidemiology, and academic work, as she is also a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Now it’s all COVID, all the time.

Each day starts with Boruchoff checking in with the hospital’s COVID response teams, which rapidly evolved to provide the primary in-patient care as the first coronavirus patients began arriving in March. First it’s emergency-room doctors, then the people who do bed control (monitoring where patients are and if they need to be moved to a different floor), then the pulmonary specialists. Boruchoff also frequently joins administrative meetings with the hospital’s president, chief operating officer, chief medical officer, and others from finance to security to assess the hospital’s short- and long-term needs.

That’s just the morning.

In between WebEx or Zoom meetings, editing notes from her Infectious Diseases fellows, and filling out insurance paperwork, Boruchoff fields questions about individual patients or policies all afternoon and often into the evening.

Boruchoff is not the decision maker, she insists—more like the cog in the center of a huge machine grinding away at a common goal: ensuring the hospital is responding efficiently and effectively to the virus. By necessity, the crisis has streamlined hospital processes, forcing Boruchoff and her fellow practitioners to develop a more unified approach to patient care that reduces redundancies. “It really feels like a much better way to practice medical care, where we talk directly with the primary doctors every day in a very focused, multidisciplinary, efficient patient-centered approach,” Boruchoff says. “It’s given me the opportunity to control an awful

16 CM Summer 2020

ALUMNI/AE ON THE FRONTLINES

“It really feels like a much better way to practice medical care, where we talk directly with the primary doctors every day in a very focused, multidisciplinary, efficient patient-centered approach,” Boruchoff says. “It’s given me the opportunity to control an awful lot of the patient management in ways I don’t usually have.”

lot of the patient management in ways I don’t usually have.” She hopes some of these changes outlast the pandemic.

“This has, in some ways, been a very invigorating experience,” Boruchoff says. “The whole system could change in ways that would be potentially beneficial—or it could go back right to the way it was.”

The rate of infection in New Jersey declined steadily throughout the spring from the peak of about 4,000 cases a day in mid-April. Boruchoff still worries about the long-term effects of the pandemic, and even as the numbers went down over the spring, she remained concerned about the potential for a second (or third) wave of infections due to relaxed restrictions, including what that means for burnt-out healthcare workers.

Being so close to New York City, one the pandemic’s early epicenters in the U.S., the hospital has seen a relentless flow of patients. And the physical, emotional, and even financial wherewithal it takes to keep showing up at the hospital every day “is not a renewable resource,” Boruchoff says. The idea of an onslaught of avoidable infections due to people’s carelessness is particularly demoralizing. “Everybody’s scared except the people who aren’t scared enough,” she says. And there’s no excuse for thoughtlessness during a global pandemic that’s already claimed more than 140,000 lives in the U.S. alone.

Boruchoff learned to hold others—and herself—to high standards at Commonwealth. “[The school] fostered my bent toward critical thinking. It made me really value striving towards excellence,” she says. “It comes down to trying to help the world, not just sit with it.”

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THE POLITICIAN: WILL BROWNSBERGER ’74

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Right now, with so many constituents with such acute needs, much of his work comes down to problem solving, he says. Sometimes that’s helping an individual navigate the unemployment process; sometimes it’s getting an organization, like a nursing home, essential personal protective equipment.

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ith the pandemic wreaking havoc on virtually every sector, industry, and neighborhood, folks are turning to their elected officials for answers. That starts at the local level with people like Will Brownsberger ’74, a Massachusetts state senator with about 170,000 residents in his district.

Representing the needs of tens of thousands of people is challenging in the best of times. During a global pandemic, “it’s moving and troubling and an honor,” Brownsberger says.

Right now, with so many constituents with such acute needs, much of his work comes down to problem solving, he says. Sometimes that’s helping an individual navigate the unemployment process; sometimes it’s getting an organization, like a nursing home, essential personal protective equipment. Typically, the government doesn’t need to get so intimately involved in all these systems, Brownsberger says. But these clearly aren’t typical times.

“What’s happening right now, so many systems are changing so fast, a lot of things just run on a day-to-day basis,” he says. “Now we have to be involved in a whole lot of different things to try to help them change.”

From Back Bay to Brighton to Belmont (where Brownsberger got his start in politics), Brownsberger’s constituents span an enormous socioeconomic range. “People do have different needs, and different concerns, and I like the chance to work with people coming from different places,” he says. (Commonwealth, with its student body hailing from all over greater Boston, gave him his first taste of what it’s like to work with people from a variety of backgrounds. “I learned to feel comfortable with a wide range of people,” he says. “That was a good starting place for me.”)

Brownsberger thinks Massachusetts has, by and large, done a good job guiding and enforcing “radical” social distancing and other preventative measures, thus preserving human life and health while not overwhelming the state’s healthcare system. By the end of May, the rate of new infections had declined enough to lead Governor Charlie Baker to unveil a fourphase plan for reopening the state; by June, Massachusetts had the lowest COVID-19 transmission rate in the country.

But the successes have not been uniform, and those populations that have suffered due to lack of social distancing and higher risk factors— including nursing homes and long-term care facilities, low-income neighborhoods, and prisons—continued to trouble Brownsberger. The state has also reported gross disparities along racial and ethnic lines, with the virus hitting Black and Hispanic populations disproportionately hard.

Emergency legislation, like Bill H.4672, An Act addressing COVID-19 data collection and disparities in treatment, enacted by the state House and Senate in late May, is just one measure designed to combat those inequities.

“It’s very rough and messy, and it’s hard to know exactly what’s going on, but I feel like we’re doing what we should be doing,” Brownsberger says. “It is a time when we can make a difference for people, and so I’m glad to be here and have that opportunity.”

Brownsberger is keenly aware of the need to help his districts reopen as quickly and safely as possible. But with researchers still scrambling for answers to fundamental questions about the virus, like how—or if— immunity might be achieved, Brownsberger, like the rest of the world, can only plan so far ahead.

“What happens next? I haven’t got past where we are to really start thinking about that,” he says. “I think we’re going through a time when we don’t know what the next few years are gonna look like, much less what the next ten years are gonna look like.”

ALUMNI/AE ON THE FRONTLINES

THE JOURNALIST: ANTHONY KUHN ’81

A

s an NPR correspondent stationed in Seoul, South Korea, Anthony Kuhn ’81 has seen the coronavirus pandemic play out quite differently than his peers with domestic beats have.

“I learned how a country can be well prepared for and successfully control an outbreak of a highly infectious disease,” he says. “I also learned what a society that pulls together to confront an epidemic looks like.” In short, that looks like mass testing, contact tracing, and public participation, with citizens readily adhering to guidance like consistent mask wearing—all made possible by years of investment in basic healthcare infrastructure.

South Korea received praise for its early containment of the pandemic. Of its more than fifty million people, fewer than 300 have died from the coronavirus, a stark contrast to the United States. Massachusetts, Kuhn’s home state and an early hotbed for the virus, had twenty-seven times the number of COVID-19 fatalities as South Korea, despite being one-seventh the size.

“Not all the elements of South Korea’s approach will work for other countries, but many are worth learning from,” Kuhn says. “And all societies need to take this opportunity to think about the role of the government in providing basic services, society’s responsibility to cooperate and participate in responses to emergencies, and the balance between individual rights and public safety.”

“Times and crises like this highlight the importance of media literacy,” Kuhn says. “This includes understanding the purpose of journalism in a democratic society, critical consumption of content, distinguishing between reliable and unreliable sources of news, and distinguishing news from advertising and propaganda.”

Despite being largely confined to his home as part of those public-safety efforts, Kuhn kept reporting throughout the spring of 2020, conducting interviews by phone—though he still prefers meeting face to (masked) face. Some of his dispatches included stories about South Korea’s legislative elections in April, drivethrough COVID-19 testing centers, and the privacy issues inherent to contact tracing. (He covers Japan and North Korea as well, but he’s been shut out of those countries since the pandemic hit.)

As the virus spread around the globe, so too did a demand for news—news of treatments, of timelines, of assurances of any kind. But that also led to a proliferation of misleading and loosely vetted information, with real consequences. Misinformation about hydroxychloroquine, a drug typically used to treat arthritis, for example, caused a spike in demand that took the medication out of the hands of people who actually needed it.

“Times and crises like this highlight the importance of media literacy,” Kuhn says. “This includes understanding the purpose of journalism in a democratic society, critical consumption of content, distinguishing between reliable and unreliable sources of news, and distinguishing news from advertising and propaganda.”

Actionable, authoritative information is particularly critical, Kuhn says. Without it, people end up circulating misinformation, even conspiracy theories, that can derail real progress in fighting the disease.

Even as an industry insider, Kuhn is not immune to the effects of a barrage of bad news, however well reported. “The news these days can be infuriating and/or depressing,” he says. “I hope people can learn to protect themselves and their family from its negative influences, consuming it in measured amounts and allowing it to equip and empower us.” n

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PROJECT W EE K 2020 :

Exploring Greater Boston

(AND THE KNOWN UNIVERSE)

By Jack Stedman

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hether they’re working at a chocolate factory or the State House, an antique instrument shop, or an astrophysics lab, Commonwealth students use the school’s annual Project Week to engage in work they find meaningful in highly individualized ways. Luckily, this year’s Project Week—held about a month and a half before the pandemic shuttered most businesses—was no different.

Somerville Chocolate

H

annah Jenkins ’22 was distracted by chocolate

in chemistry class. But she wasn’t daydreaming about lunch; she was thinking about how crystal structures form.

A few weeks prior, she had spent her Project Week at Somerville Chocolate, a small-batch chocolate shop.

There, she learned the art and science of tempering, or the heating and cooling of chocolate to specific temperatures to ensure a smooth and consistent crystal structure.

Hannah now has a wealth of knowledge on the chocolate-making process: she can tell you all about sustainable sourcing, roasting beans, and the arduous task of wrapping individual bars. She can also tell you about running a small business and how much creativity, flexibility, and labor is involved in that venture.

Somerville Chocolate is located in a communal space shared by the hip Aeronaut Brewing Company and other vendors. As Hannah stepped out of the Commonwealth classroom and into this business playground, she found a robust environment of collaboration. On a typical day, she might meet the person who hand-paints signs for the brewery, chat with the man who rents shop space to make cacao-based health foods, or observe someone who runs community meetings in the taproom space.

While homework may seem like the most laborious task a tenth grader can think of, Hannah has seen the trials and tribulations of self-employment. One key takeaway: the ability to multitask, like checking emails in between stirs while refining a chocolate batch.

If you stop by Somerville Chocolate, you can experience this creative space for yourself. And you can try Hannah’s favorite, the Hawaiian dark chocolate.

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Hannah Jenkins ‘22 (left) with Eric Parkes, owner of Somerville Chocolate

PROJECT WEEK

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

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o sit down with Sasha Bates ’21 and Sol Gutierrez-Lara ’21 is to hear a new language—

that is, if you hadn’t studied astrophysics before.

During Project Week, the pair studied and worked at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, where they attended lectures, toured the facilities (which include a 173-year-old telescope, once the biggest in the U.S.), and collected data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray telescope.

Now, they talk excitedly, and often in their own sidebars, about tidal disruption events (what happens when a star gets sucked into a black hole), quasars (quasi-stellar radio sources), or Roger Blandford’s work on black holes (did you see the recent black hole picture that went viral?).

The pair took on the universe, gaining not just a greater comprehension of a complex subject but also a working knowledge of how scientific progress unfolds. As one of their mentors explained, “Everyone has their own focus, their area of expertise, and each has their own bit of knowledge and understanding to contribute; when we put it all together, piece by piece, we begin to map out the universe.”

Working at the Center introduced Sol and Sasha to scientists from around the world who truly wanted to share in every finding. They say they benefited greatly from these generous mentors who make Project Week possible—those who are willing to open their doors to high schoolers and generously give them their time and space. Through “life chats,” mentors imparted wisdom and inspired Sasha and Sol, reminding them that their work, however small, makes a difference in the grand scheme.

Working at the Center introduced Sol and Sasha to scientists from around the world who truly wanted to share in every finding.

Sasha Bates ’21 (left) and Sol Gutierrez-Lara ’21 sitting in the Great Refractor telescope at Harvard College Observatory

Massachusetts State House

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ommonwealth students stay informed and involved. That ethos is on display every day at recess, as students clamor to share news, swap lunch cleaning duties, and discuss current events. One student might announce a Feminism club meeting in room 2C, and a shout for Robotics in 4B comes next. Then a student reminds everyone to vote.

For Project Week 2020, ninth graders

Romen Der Manuelian and Ayla Denenberg took that culture to heart, interning at the Massachusetts State House for Rep. Denise Garlick and Sen. Becca Rausch, respectively. They learned about the processes behind government while attending briefings, budget meetings, legislative breakfasts, and more.

It was no surprise that either student chose to work under the iconic golden dome. Romen can often be heard in the halls, encouraging people to fill out presidential-primary predictions, for example. And Ayla already had experience volunteering for Sen. Rausch’s campaign in her hometown before coming to Commonwealth.

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Despite being in the same environment, Romen and Ayla came away with distinct observations. Ayla took special note of the fast-paced schedules and flexibility required in the life of a state senator. Patience, politeness, and sticking to a schedule came in handy for Ayla as she observed the senator moving from meeting to meeting in her district while addressing the many grievances that people shared, often without warning.

Romen, on the other hand, reflected on the scope of politics and the often slow inner workings of government.

The long road from bill to law doesn’t seem so abstract to him anymore. He would feel comfortable taking a friend, he says, and walking right up the steps of the State House and into any public meeting or briefing that’s taking place.

As Romen and Ayla can attest, the political process is more accessible than it seems. And Beacon Hill is just a few blocks away.

Romen Der Manuelian ‘23 (left) and Ayla Denenberg ‘23 (right) at the Massachusetts State House

He learned that dipping a bent bridge in cold water and then microwaving it can make it as good as new.

New England Violins

M

ichael Roberson ’23 walks past New England Violins often. As a cellist, he decided that he wanted to pursue his art for Project Week, so he emailed the owner of the classical instrument shop. When he didn’t hear back, he simply decided to stop in and ask if he could work there for the week.

This strategy is encouraged among Commonwealth students looking for projects: don’t be shy, put yourself out there, it doesn’t hurt to ask. Such was the case with Michael, who suddenly had access to rare and antique instruments and a mentor with knowledge and skills in abundance. At times, it seemed like a strange new world, with priceless instruments passing through the shop daily.

Well, not quite “priceless”...

“I learned a lot at New England Violins, but after exchanging multiple high-grade strings and playing on multiple handmade antique cellos, I learned that classical music costs a pretty penny,” he noted in his Project Week report.

As with the Commonwealth culture of diving into a subject and examining it up close, Michael dug into his musical craft. He learned to differentiate between the subtle sounds a string can make, gaining a new vocabulary for describing their distinct tones: bright, focused, dull, metallic, smooth. He would practice by changing out strings, again and again. He learned that dipping a bent bridge in cold water and then microwaving it can make it as good as new. And he saw how new strings and a repaired soundpost can make a cello sound (nearly) priceless too.

Michael came away from the week with a new bow, new strings, and a new appreciation for his instrument’s unique sounds, which echo through the hallways of Commonwealth as he rehearses with his fellow orchestra members, the sound bright, focused, and strong. n Jack Stedman is the Communications Assistant at Commonwealth School.

22 CM Summer 2020

Commonwealth and the

Mindful Workload

BY CATHERINE BREWSTER

How does a Commonwealth education—and the Commonwealth workload— measure up against not just other schools but our internal perceptions and expectations?

A recent student survey helped us uncover the answers, as English teacher and twentyyear veteran of the school Catherine Brewster explains.

E

very day at announcements, when Ms. Dale or another teacher reserves 2A for guided meditation the next morning, I wonder briefly how different alumni/ae might respond. Would it be a “Great idea; I could have used that back in my day” from some; a “Ha! When I went to Commonwealth, we prided ourselves on how much we could take” from others?

A relatively new practice within our walls, meditation is only a small piece of the outcome of an ongoing process that began in the spring of 2019, when we began studying our culture with the same intensity that we direct toward every other subject: How do our students—both those who speak up about it and those who don’t—feel about their work here?

How many hours do they spend on it? How do, and don’t, they handle the stress built into their lives? Is Commonwealth a more stressful place than its peer schools? (Spoiler: no.)

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Also as with all the subjects we study, we started with conversations.

The Peer Advocates worked with each other and with Josh Eagle and Eben Lasker (dean of students and school counselor) to develop a set of questions about stress and school culture. They surveyed their classmates and helped shape the inception of a group of faculty and staff called the Student Life Task Force.

That task is really the same work I and other advisors do one-on-one, with every student from ninth grade all the way to graduation.

As teachers, we ask the very best of our students’ intellectual selves, but after any class, the next period might find us sitting with an advisee, talking over the calculus jokes wafting in from the gang of friends sitting in the hallway, in pursuit together of ways to get enough sleep, exercise, and joy. We’re also aiming to make sure the homework part of the day includes joy, too.

So the “force” part of “task force” means, you might say, articulating those priorities on a larger scale, and broadening and deepening their reach. More nostalgic Commonwealth graduates might point out a past form of this endeavor: the Roller Skating Committee, the group of students devoted to upholding and updating the spirit of Mr. Merrill’s famous “only rule.” (For those who haven’t memorized it, this was “Don’t roller skate in the hallways. Don’t be a damn fool. Give some thought to your actions and how they affect other people.”) Mr. Merrill and the Roller Skaters started from the premise that teenagers can learn to lead thoughtful lives built around a larger sense of the meaning of school.

These are aspirations. Lots of us who “cling like barnacles” to the place, as Eric Davis once put it toward the end of his decades teaching English, fervently believe we live up to them. But Mr. Wharton’s Language and Ethics students learn about confirmation bias. Can student and teacher barnacles ever know to what extent students, as a whole, embrace these principles?

Measuring

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he building also teems with scientists, who seek out data when they want to test their assumptions. This quest led the task force to a group of researchers at Stanford University. The group’s vision includes ideas that overlap with ours: “Challenge Success recognizes that our current fast-paced, high-pressure culture works against much of what we know about healthy child development and effective education. The overemphasis on grades, test scores, and rote answers has stressed out some kids and marginalized many more. We all want our kids to do well in school and to master certain skills and concepts, but our largely singular focus on academic achievement has resulted in a lack of attention to

24 CM Summer 2020

other components of a successful life—the ability to be independent, adaptable, ethical, and engaged critical thinkers.”

To this end, Challenge Success has been surveying students, 30,000 at ambitious high schools, public and private, across the country. Ninety-eight percent of our students took it in the late fall of 2019, with truly exceptional results.

In relaying the figures on “purposefully” and “fully” engaged students (see sidebar), as well as academic honesty, the researchers said they “had never seen a school like this,” and called Commonwealth “off the charts.”

Numbers and Individuals

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ny teacher or administrator would rejoice at this endorsement. Some advisees told me they were relieved that Commonwealth’s identity had been affirmed, that “hard” work would remain at its core. Two-thirds of our students think their homework load is about right. But that means another one-third said they had too much, including other advisees of mine. If we dismissed their responses, that would change the school’s identity.

My advisees were representative of the “it’s too hard” group in that they were younger. Crunching the numbers, we saw that eleventh and twelfth graders actually report less academic stress and better time management. In conversation, my junior and senior advisees and students said they and their classmates no longer bragged about how little sleep they’d gotten. They described it as a ninth-grade habit that people got over (as they also learned, in fact, to get more sleep).

So the numbers didn’t end the conversation, and they weren’t supposed to. The Student Life Task Force sought to channel it more reliably. The faculty agreed to two homework-free weekends this year, which were enthusiastically received even by students who didn’t think they were overloaded. This fall, each class elected two representatives, who serve as liaisons between their classmates and the task force. Dr. Christopher Willard spoke about mindfulness to the faculty, at a parents’ evening, and at an assembly.

As they have since 1957, students and teachers will go on generating and arguing over ideas about how the place could be better. A faithful band of students with the name COMMunity is organizing movie nights and other activities at school. For one lunch last fall, the Task Force grouped teachers and students together without telling them why they were at the same table. Another day, small groups of students—equal parts “athletic” and not—got together to talk about Commonwealth’s sports program and how it could fit better among their other commitments. On all these days, any alumnus or alumna could have found some change to be elated or dismayed by, while another could have pointed out what’s the same as ever: students having fun in class, chattering idly, making art, complaining, exulting, and doing their homework. n

COMMONWEALTH AND THE MINDFUL WORKLOAD

Student Perceptions Designed to help schools improve student well-being and engagement with learning, the Challenge Success Student Survey for middle- and high-school students “measures perceptions of their academic engagement, connection to the school community, physical health and well-being, technology use, family norms, and how they use their time outside of school.”

129 of 133 Commonwealth School students took the survey online in November 2019. Here are some notable results. ●

Support and Engagement n 85% feel they have an adult they can go to at school n 85% report being purposefully or fully engaged in their schoolwork (compared to 61% of students at small and medium non-public schools, and 39% of all students surveyed) n 4.6 average response, on a scale of 1-5 (between “agree” and “strongly

agree”) when asked about the level of teacher care and support

Stress n 3.4 average response, on a scale of 1 to 5 (between “never” and “always”) when asked about how often homework makes them feel stressed (This number was significantly below the average for the comparison group.) n 2/3 of students say their workload is about right n 74% report experiencing a stress-related health symptom (such as difficulty sleeping or headaches)

Interesting ACADEMIC Rigorous

Homework

Fun

n 91% feel at least three-quarters

of their homework is useful n 79% multitask as they do homework (includes listening to music and eating)

Challenging

Small

n 3.0 average hours of weekday homework

Welcoming Words students most frequently used to describe Commonwealth

Sleep n 6.8 average hours of sleep on a typical school night n 11:00 p.m. most common weekday bedtime

Extracurriculars n

81% play school sports

n 52% participate in school clubs n 10.5 average hours of extracurriculars per week

Researchers said they “had never seen a school like this,” and called Commonwealth “off the charts.”

25

ALUMNI profile

Movement Science

THE

OF

JAIME CHEAH ’95 | By Alla Katsnelson ’92

I

n the middle of Jaime Cheah’s laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on a hexagonal table, sits a yellow robotic arm. The device allows biologists to automatically move two-inchby-four-inch plastic plates containing hundreds to thousands of miniaturized experiments from instrument to instrument, through a complicated series of steps.

It’s a powerful piece of machinery, the centerpiece of the technological armament Cheah oversees as the director of the High Throughput Sciences Facility at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. Her lab is a core facility, which means her primary job is not to conduct her own research but to help all kinds of MIT scientists—biologists, mostly, but also mechanical and chemical engineers, materials scientists, chemists and more—use the multimillion-dollar suite of automation and robotics tools to enhance and accelerate their research. The tools allow scientists to run massive numbers of tiny experiments at once—that’s the “high throughput” part—in order to screen chemicals that might treat a certain kind of cancer, for instance.

“I get to figure out how to maneuver and manipulate the technology to help researchers answer any question they want,” Cheah says. “I love when people come in here with some wild and crazy idea, and they ask, ‘Can we make it happen?’ And I go, ‘Yep, we’re going to figure out how to make this happen.’”

“I love when people come in here with some wild and crazy idea, and they go, ‘Can we make it happen?’

And I go, ‘Yep, we’re going to figure out how to make this happen.’”

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Cheah had a strong interest in science even before high school, and she forged her passion for biology as a student at Commonwealth between 1991 and 1995. She came to Commonwealth from the Cambridge public schools with the help of A Better Chance, a program that helps students of color access scholarships to private schools. The transition wasn’t easy. For one thing, Cheah was two years younger than most incoming ninth graders; she started kindergarten at age four when her family lived in Guam, and she also skipped third grade.

Although Cheah had always been a top-notch student, she found classes at Commonwealth to be much more intensive. “I distinctly remember in ninth grade English listening to Mr. Davis talk about ‘the tone in which an author speaks.’

Writing my first essay about Dickens’ tone, I was lost because it was so different from public school, which is like, ‘What happened in Chapter 3 of this book,’” she says. “It took me about a year to figure out what was expected of me.”

One major grounding force as Cheah found her feet was dance with Jacqueline Curry, an activity she did for her full four years at Commonwealth. “It gave me a different level of discipline and an outlet for expression,” Cheah says. Almost three decades later, Curry, who retired from Commonwealth in 2019, warmly remembers Cheah as a talented and dedicated student. “What a beautiful young dancer she was,” Curry recalls. “Such a quick study—the minute I showed something, Jaime’s got it. And she was so quick to help others.”

The student’s and teacher’s connection ran deep. A photo collage that Cheah put together of dance students from 1994–1995 still hangs in Curry’s study. “It’s beautiful, and it’s something I shall cherish all of my life,” Curry says. Curry knew well that all the hours Cheah spent in the dance studio provided her a way to embrace a more fluid mode of being than was prioritized in academic coursework. As a dancer, “you’ve got to take time to breathe, you have to harness your energy,” Curry says.

“This is not biology; this is dance—you speak with your body.”

Commonwealth’s science offerings back then were rigorous, yet somewhat basic. That didn’t faze her, Cheah says. For Project Week her first year, Cheah wanted to do something related to biology, but the school’s network wasn’t especially strong in the sciences at the time. Luckily, she lived in Kendall Square, a hotbed of MIT students.

And she had a very forward mother. “My mom basically walked next door to our neighbor and was like, ‘You’re an MIT scientist, can my daughter come sit in your lab for a week?’” she says.

Cheah loved the experience, and through her personal community lined up lab-based projects over the next three years. For Project Month her senior year, she worked in a Harvard Medical School lab

THE MOVEMENT OF SCIENCE studying the crystal structure of proteins; she did experiments and discussed them at lab meetings. “I’m pretty sure that what I did would not be allowed in most universities now, but it was really cool.

They treated me almost like an undergrad or a grad student,” she recalls. “It really opened up my eyes to bench science, so when I got to college I knew that’s what I wanted to do.”

Cheah carried on with research in structural biology as an undergraduate at McGill University in Montreal. Then, for her doctorate at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, she wanted to try a different field, and another student suggested she do a rotation in the

lab of neuroscientist Solomon Snyder—one of the field’s venerables, who had done foundational research on how molecules called neurotransmitters pass along signals in brain cells. “I didn’t plan to do my Ph.D. in neuroscience, but I landed there and I totally loved it,” Cheah says. As a bonus, Snyder was a fantastic mentor, who gave students solid guidance on their research projects while giving them ample space to explore intellectually. “I lean on my experience as a graduate student for how I mentor people because I was so well mentored by Sol,” Cheah says.

Cheah initially thought she might apply her Ph.D. to industry “because it’s the most direct path to patient impact.” She did a

All the hours Cheah spent in the dance studio provided her a way to embrace a more fluid mode of being than was prioritized in academic coursework.

postdoctoral fellowship at the pharmaceutical company Novartis, but then ended up back in academia, at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, using high throughput technology to correlate genetic features of cancers to drug response, with the end goal of personalizing treatments for specific types of cancer.

In 2014, she took up her current position directing the High Throughput Sciences Facility. It’s been a perfect fit, says Angela Koehler, a Professor in Applied Biology at MIT’s Koch Institute who has worked with Cheah for close to a decade. “Jaime is a technology development wizard, searching for bottlenecks in the drug discovery process and working with a broad array of scientists to remove those bottlenecks,” says Koehler. “She reminds me of Matt Damon in the movie The Martian when he says he needs to ‘science the shit out of this.’”

Last December, Cheah returned to Commonwealth for the first time since graduating to give an assembly at which she discussed her career trajectory as well as technology in cancer research. “Students were as I expected Commonwealth students to be: attentive and inquisitive, asking great questions about both the science presented but also about future patient impact and possible blockades,” she says.

Cheah found a school that more actively embraces the hands-on and creative side of sciences than it did in the 1990s, says Emma Sundberg, Commonwealth’s current biology teacher. A 2015 renovation of the school’s science labs has made it possible for students to conduct quite advanced molecular-biology experiments; this year, students in Biology 2 did a long-term cloning project.

There’s also a diversity of innovative electives, such as a course on the chemistry of materials used in ceramics and other arts.

The sciences are also popping up more often in student projects; they study the cosmos at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (turn to page 21 for more), explore neurological research at Massachusetts General Hospital, and engage in artificial intelligence development at Cheah’s home base of MIT. Who knows—Cheah might find current Commonwealth students knocking on her laboratory door soon too. n

Alla Katsnelson ’92 is a freelance science writer and editor specializing in biology, health and medicine, technology, and science policy.

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FACULTY profile CÉSAR PÉREZ | By Jessica Tomer

Exploring Across Disciplines

M

uch like those of the students he now teaches, César Pérez’s varied interests have pulled him in different directions from his earliest days. As a child in Cuba, he imagined himself among the stars, like in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. At seven years old, he was certain he was going to be the first Cuban in space...

“I still remember my disappointment when I read in the newspaper that some Cuban pilot was going to participate in a Soviet space flight,” César says. (He grew up immersed in the countries’ Cold War allyship.) Thus, he “gave up what might have been a magnificent career” as an astronaut, he says, quoting Saint-Exupéry tongue-in-cheek.

As a teenager, César’s attention shifted earthward, to journalism, which he opted to study as an undergraduate in Cuba, “a place where ‘free press’ is more than an oxymoron,” he says. Still, he entered college “with dreams of becoming a war correspondent or a hard-nosed reporter hellbent on exposing corruption and abuse—you know, like the ones in American movies,” he says. A tour of the “incredibly dull and uninspiring” state-run media dashed those dreams just one week into his college career. “I finished journalism school knowing already I didn’t want to work as a journalist, at least not in Cuba,” he says.

So César moved to the Dominican Republic, where he worked “a series of almost hilariously low-paying jobs.” Then he got an offer to teach journalism at a local university. “I immediately got hooked on teaching,” he says. “Since then, I haven’t looked back.” But he did look north.

Like many native Cubans, much of César’s family lived in the U.S., including his mother and younger brother, and the plan was always to reunite with them. In 2002 he finally arrived on a student visa to enter a graduate program at the University of Iowa. He then attended the Romance Languages and Literatures graduate program at Harvard. Except for a two-year stint in Connecticut when he taught at the Hotchkiss School, César has lived in Boston ever since.

He came to Commonwealth School in 2018, joining both the language and history departments, teaching all levels of Spanish as well as Medieval World History.

28 CM Summer 2020

EXPLORING ACROSS DISCIPLINES “I have felt from the beginning most welcomed and surrounded by colleagues who are extremely committed, not only to the education process per se but to the social, personal, emotional, and community aspects of growth,” César says. “It is humbling and exhilarating to come to work every day to a place where people are working for a common goal with such a mix of competence and humanity.”

The feeling is mutual.

“César is simply a fabulous colleague,” says Commonwealth colleague and fellow history teacher Barbara Grant. “Our conversations are informed by his deep and broad curiosity.” Barbara also designed and now collaborates with César on the school’s Medieval World History course. “As a scholar of medieval literature in Spain, César brings a unique understanding to the course,” she says.

“He is so deeply thoughtful, as well, about how to explore the primary sources with our students.”

César has always found medieval history to be “full of events and people and intellectual ferments that are still incredibly relevant.” Indeed, he had the curious experience of teaching the Black Death in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It is not difficult to make connections to make

programs and more practice time. “We have been able to punch above our weight because of a small but very talented and committed group of debaters that have elevated each other’s game,” César demurs. He is quick to praise the students for practicing independently and the parents for their generous support of the team, especially Hilary Gabrieli, mother of team captain Nicholas Gabrieli ’20, who was the gentle force behind the team for the last two years.

“Debate is a very complete discipline that stimulates mental acuity, inspires its practitioners to stay on top of current events, allows them to practice public speaking, and teaches the useful and often overlooked ability to look at both sides of an issue,” César says. Perhaps unsurprisingly, César believes every student could benefit from joining the team, even—or perhaps especially—those who think themselves too shy. And if only more students would sign up for debate and soccer, which César also coaches at Commonwealth, they’d “have all the developmental bases covered,” goes his not-sosubtle pitch.

César can’t pick a favorite among his classes and activities at school, and one of the best things

“It is humbling and exhilarating to come to work every day to a place where people are working for a common goal with such a mix of competence and humanity.” the experiences of medieval peoples accessible to contemporary students,” he says, “but it is important to strike a balance, instilling in these young scholars the habit of reading critically and inquisitively but also contextually, resisting the temptation of looking at medieval topics through our twenty-first-century lenses.”

Prescient textbook chapters aside, the material is also simply fascinating. “Maybe it is the medieval nerd in me speaking here, but I find it incredibly fun,” César says.

Also incredibly fun? Arguing.

“I enjoy arguing to an almost comical extent, as many of my family and friends can attest,” César says. Accordingly, he also serves as Commonwealth’s debate team coach. Under César’s tutelage, the debate team has stayed competitive in a field full of bigger schools with well-established

about Commonwealth is that he doesn’t have to.

“There might be schools where I would have found some resistance crossing into other people’s turf, but since that kind of cross-teaching is hardly unusual here I have not experienced any resistance, quite the opposite,” he says. This flexibility allows him to engage with students as excited about academic exploration as he is.

“Our students are not only intellectually stimulating and socially conscious; they are a funny, quirky, complex bunch that makes up for their small number with the enormous variety of their interests and talents,” he says. “I always say the students are lucky to have such a consistently excellent faculty and staff, but we are even luckier.” n

Jessica Tomer is the Director of Communications at Commonwealth School.

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STUDENT profiles

ALAN PLOTZ ‘21:

Mobilizing

for

Change

A

t recess, Alan Plotz regularly sets the standard for Bill Wharton’s “concise and essential” announcements: “Politics Club will meet in 3E to talk about the impeachment hearings. A lot of people are interested in where the attacks on Vindman are coming from, so we’ll discuss that along with Trump’s legal strategy and the precedents for it.” Or: “Next week I’m going to the GBRSAC meeting [Greater Boston Regional Student Advisory Committee, to which Alan’s classmates elected him as a representative]. Let me know about topics you think I should bring to the group, or if you’d like to know what we’ve been working on.”

These offer only a glimpse of Alan’s vast array of activities. Through his work with United 4 Social Change, he has been writing a curriculum to train less privileged students to find paid internships, an opportunity much more readily available to those with professional parents and connections.

He has also organized protests: As a ninth grader at Commonwealth, he put together a walkout after the Parkland shootings. We weren’t in session during the national walkout, but when we were back from our March break, Alan ran our own event, organizing student speeches while working with faculty to minimize disruptions to school.

Another cherished project, with Boston Mobilization, examined inequities in school discipline. Alan looked at data from numerous schools, working to clarify the relationship between disciplinary action and the race of the students involved. Through GBRSAC, he also managed to wrangle access to students’ responses to questions about school climate on the MCAS. Closer to home, he’s organized a one-day Model Congress at Commonwealth. For this, he started with the list of schools on the back of the T-shirt from Harvard’s multiday Model Congress. After many emails, Alan ended up with enough schools to run the conference, including some whose students don’t often find their way into our building.

Most recently Alan joined several of his fellow students and alumni/ae— Mosammat Faria Afreen ’16, Iman Ali ’18, Gueinah Carlie Blaise ’16, Tristan Edwards ’18, Kimberly Hoang ’21, Alexis Domonique Mitchell ’16, Ryan Phan ’22, and Tarang Saluja ’18—in petitioning the school to more closely examine the ways in which it historically has not fully supported all students of color, as well as those who are first generation and/or come from lowincome backgrounds. As Commonwealth, along with the rest of the country, reckoned with racism, privilege, and white supremacy in the 30 CM Summer 2020

Alan Plotz ‘21, far left, with his fellow Supermarket Drive planners in 2019 (Kim Hoang ‘21, Elise Requadt ‘19, Anirudh Nistala ‘21, Lawrence Wang ‘21)

wake of George Floyd’s murder, this group advocated for the school to address the inequities within its walls. Their petition sparked conversations bringing together the whole of Commonwealth’s community in what can only be the beginning of a much larger movement.

Whenever he talks about social-justice work, Alan’s joy is evident, but he also describes his struggle to remain aware of his own blind spots as a privileged student. Last summer, he stepped into another kind of uncomfortable position: in Tajikistan, learning the language through a State Department program. Like most Americans abroad, he came to understand his own values better as he puzzled over those of his hosts, who seemed to place the interests of their own families ahead of those of the larger community or the nation. As he played with his host family’s kids, he came to see these priorities as logical: because of their country’s recent history, it made sense to value stability above all else.

Without Internet access, Alan also had to step outside the relentless productivity of his life here. What made that worth it, for someone who loves getting things done? “Who knows,” Alan observes, “whether I’ll have the time to study abroad in college.”

This long-term planning invites us to wonder what we’ll hear about Alan’s doings in five, ten, or thirty years.

The print version of this article omitted the names of all student and alumni/ae petition organizers. We sincerely regret the oversight.

NICK FOMIN ‘20:

Nick Fomin ‘20 (center) and his brother Thomas (Class of 2022, left) celebrate finishing a course along with one of the other participants

The

Two-Continent Family

P

lenty of Commonwealth students speak another language at home: Mandarin, Russian, Spanish, Vietnamese. Many, sometimes to their parents’ frustration, tend to use English with their siblings. In Nick Fomin’s Brazilian family, he says firmly, “we make sure” everything is in Portuguese. The “we” includes his brother Thomas (Commonwealth ’22) but extends to a vibrant network of relatives and friends in both countries.

Anyone who has seen Nick in school on the last day before a vacation knows the joy in his face as he anticipates another visit to São Paulo, especially to his maternal cousins. “They’re not just cousins,” he says; they follow the same soccer teams, Netflix shows, and memes. The cousins know it gets under his skin when they call him a gringo, and he knows he can’t keep up with all of the culture when “there are only five Brazilian TV channels here.” At the same time, he declares cheerfully, “I’m an American.” When he talks about his family, he shifts fluidly among his father in Brazil and his mother and stepfather here, his “American cousins” on his father’s side, and others who move easily back and forth between cultures and countries.

In this web of relationships, many threads converge on the cafés his family operates: seven branches in Brazil and one here, now in Framingham. The cafés originate eight years ago, when his father, in a park in São Paulo, made a friend who became his business partner. The story of their first café includes Nick and Thomas taking two-week courses, getting up at 5:00 a.m., to learn to work as baristas. By now, Nick says, “I think every single person in my family is involved.”

Nick’s stepfather managed the café here in its first location on Newbury Street. His mother and his paternal grandmother, who love to bake, work together in the kitchen when his grandmother is here.

The more you hear about the cafés, the easier it is to understand why Nick says, “I have never felt like the child of a divorced family.” His father and mother are separated but talk all the time. He describes his grandmother as effectively an aunt, not an ex-mother-in-law, to his mother; they come from the same town in Brazil. He calls his father’s business partner “pretty much a member of the family.” Just as Nick’s cousins are also his friends, no one seems stuck in a single role. That includes Nick as an employee in the cafés. He notes that it’s more fun in São Paulo, where the pace is faster, the dishes pile up at rush times, and he has to jump in wherever he’s needed.

When he’s in Brazil, Nick says he pushes back against one prevailing idea of the culture here: that “Americans don’t get it.”

At Commonwealth, he sees his classmates as “aware of what’s going on in the world.” He doesn’t take credit, but he could, for contributing to that awareness within this community.

When he’s in Brazil, Nick says he pushes back against one prevailing idea of the culture here: that “Americans don’t get it.”

At Commonwealth, he sees his classmates as “aware of what’s going on in the world.” He doesn’t take credit, but he could, for contributing to that awareness within this community.

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STUDENT profiles

ILARIA SEIDEL ‘22:

Racing and Exploring

I

Quoting one of her early math mentors, she describes competition math as “racing,” research math as “exploring.”

32 CM Summer 2020

n middle school, says this self-effacing tenth grader, “I didn’t have much of a work ethic.” By this, Ilaria Seidel means that instead of homework she threw herself into competition math and got serious about the flute, which was easier to practice during her family’s two years in New Jersey. She had played the piano since she was four, but the flute started in third grade when her father took her to a wind-quintet concert. Ilaria said she wanted to play the piccolo. “It was a joke, but the next day, my mom brought home a flute.” As the more social of the two instruments, it became her favorite. Since moving to Boston, she has played in New England Conservatory’s preparatory orchestras.

Ilaria says her life changed when she came to Commonwealth in that, rather than “really needing to find things to do” she had to start making hard choices among passionate interests. To begin with, “my eighth-grade self would never have believed I would love homework so much.” She placed into Calculus Advanced as a ninth grader but visited geometry classes for fun. This past year, she audited Creative Writing, reluctantly dropping it because “I had to find ten hours a week” when she was accepted to a research program called PRIMES. This entails working on original scholarship in a small group with a graduate-student mentor. Ilaria apologizes for not getting very far in conveying her group’s topic, enumerative combinatorics, to a curious English teacher. “It took me three weeks to understand it,” she explains.

But when she talks about PRIMES, Ilaria crisply defines a pair of categories: competition math and research math.

Quoting one of her early math mentors, she describes competition math as “racing,” research math as “exploring.”

To train for math competitions, students practice solving problems fast, reviewing concepts so they can apply them on the fly and drilling to build up speed. Exploring enumerative combinatorics means “you’re trying to solve a problem over a whole year, which means you’re stuck most of the time.”

You have to fight through a lot of frustration, she says, and sometimes just stop and go for a walk.

The racing/exploring boundary is permeable, though.

Ilaria has noticed that Commonwealth kids who loved competition math in middle school “because they were bored in math class” eagerly embrace the “exploring” our proof-based courses entail. As they progress through the curriculum, their hunger for “racing” tends to fade. Members of the math team sometimes resist using the meetings to train for competitions. Ilaria herself now takes exams like the AMC and AIME without any preparation. At the same time, she wants to keep qualifying for the next level of competition. Her goal is the Math Olympiad, with its nine hours of…proof-based problems. n

Passing the Torch: An Update on Commonwealth’s Search for a New Head of School

O

n January 20, Bill Wharton announced that he would be retiring at the end of the 2020–2021 school year. Commonwealth’s Board appointed a Search Committee comprised of seven trustees to lead the search for a new Head of School. A consulting firm, RG175, was engaged to support the search and recruitment process. Since then, significant progress has been made.

To view the school’s Position Statement along with the most current updates, refer to the Head of School Search page on Commonwealth’s website: commschool.org/headsearch.

33

ALUMNI/AE EVENTS Our spring events may not have unfolded quite as planned this year, but our alumni/ae gamely made the best of things, meeting virtually to reminisce and reflect, with all the good humor and flexibility you would expect of our Commonwealth community. As soon as we can celebrate in person, we will!

New York City In what was to become our last in-person alumni/ae event of the 2019–2020 academic year, members of the Classes of 1967 to 2010 enjoyed cocktails and conversation in New York City.

PHOTOS BY BÉA DE GÉA

Below, from left to right: Polly Trottenberg ’82, Laverne Berry ’67, David Hershey-Webb ’78

Above, back row (from left to right:) Bart Horn ’03, Oliver Entine ’02, Benjamin Weisman ’02, David Moo ’89, Headmaster Bill Wharton, Eric Li ’10, Peter Hall ’10 Middle row (from left to right): Erin McCabe ’04, Lindsey Weisman, David Hershey-Webb ’78, Laverne Berry ’67, Kate Hurowitz ’93 Front row (from left to right): Cynthia Swartz Abramson ’80, Polly Trottenberg ’82, Amy Hershey-Webb, Diantha Parker ’90, Corinna Snyder ’82, Director of Advancement Alisha Elliott ’01, Associate Director of Development Carly Renshaw

Eric Li ’10 and Peter Hall ’10

Amy Hershey-Webb and Cynthia Swartz Abramson ’80

David Hershey-Webb ’78 and Alice Gleason ’81

34 CM Summer 2020

VIRTUAL REUNIONS Class of 2010 The Class of 2010 gathered from far—as far as Singapore and Barcelona!—and wide to ring in their ten-year reunion, sharing lots of memories and joined by a dozen current and retired faculty and staff excited to catch up with their former students.

Class of 1970 As the newly minted Class of 2020 was celebrating their graduation on June 5, the Class of 1970 was gathering on Zoom to celebrate fifty years of being Commonwealth grads! Special shirts made for the occasion even revived a vintage mermaid icon.

FAMILIAR FACES We were delighted to have several alumni/ae roaming our virtual halls this spring (left to right): Jake Kreilkamp ’91 joined us for an assembly to discuss his career in law and civil rights work, and musician Jonatha Brooke ‘81 and actor Hamish Linklater ‘94 shared their well-wishes for the Class of 2020.

CWSAA

Commonwealth School Alumni/ae Association

T

he CWSAA is excited to announce its two new co-presidents for 2020–2021: Isaac Slavitt ’04 and Rachel Salzman ’87, P’24! We cannot wait to see what you have planned. Many thanks and best wishes to outgoing CWSAA president Laura Pedrosa ’10, who has served in the position since 2017, as she heads off to graduate school at Carnegie Mellon School of Design.

Want to be more involved with the Commonwealth School Alumni Association? Email Carly Renshaw, Associate Director of Development, at crenshaw@commschool.org.

35

CLASS NOTES ARE NOW ONLINE!

This means more space for your stories and more timely updates.

New publication, new job, new city, new member of the family (including the four-legged ones): tell us about it.

We love reading and sharing your updates—we know you will too.

Share your news now: commschool.org/notes

CM Commonwealth School Magazine Summer 2020

COMMONWEALTH IN A

Time of Change Alëna Gomberg ’20

CM Commonwealth School Magazine Summer 2020

COMMONWEALTH IN A

Time of Change Amelia Michael ’20

CM Commonwealth School Magazine Summer 2020

COMMONWEALTH IN A

Time of Change Alice Liang ’22

CM Commonwealth School Magazine Summer 2020

COMMONWEALTH IN A

Time of Change Anirudh Nistala ’21

CM Commonwealth School Magazine Summer 2020

COMMONWEALTH IN A

Time of Change James Wu ’23

CM Commonwealth School Magazine Summer 2020

COMMONWEALTH IN A

Time of Change Maoz Bizan ’21

Students, faculty, and staff were challenged to capture “Community in the Time of COVID” for our CM cover art contest.

Here are the runners-up. Our thanks to all who participated!

36 CM Summer 2020

Thank you

MAN ON THE ROAD by Sol GutiÊrrez-Lara ’21, created for a post-pandemic Photography class assignment

Commonwealth students learn from and with their teachers and peers. The Class of 2020 graduated into an unfamiliar world, but as alumni/ae, they will share their wisdom and apply their impassioned curiosity to some of the most complex and challenging issues of this century. We look forward to learning from them in the years to come.

Thank you for supporting The Commonwealth Fund at this critical time. Your generosity further proves the strength of our community. We are so grateful.

To learn more about The Commonwealth Fund and to make a donation, visit commschool.org/makeagift.

If you have any questions, please email Associate Director of Development Carly Renshaw: crenshaw@commschool.org 37

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The Class of 2020: Socially Distanced but Still Together From top left to right: AlÍna Gomberg, Travis Tristan Wang Chaplin, Lindsay Bina, Rachel Estelle Weinberg, Aunnesha Bhowmick, Lennie Spyros Manioudakis, Rohan Abichandani, Wilder Henry Perkins, Amelia Kogut Michael, Nevan Kenaz Suntareja, Declan A. Manning, Josiah Thompson, Kathryn O’Rourke, Collin Gray, Nathan Le, Jocelyn Roseann Olum, Alex Ding, Benjamin Mawn-Mahlau, Isabella Dowd, Lillian Keyun Fang, Nicholas Ferraz Fomin, Alec Bode Mathur, Pamina Frances Falk, Noa A. Popko, Jacob Rast, Abigail L. Tenenbaum, Margo Xi Moore, Eleanor Revelle Berkenblit, Alok Ramakrishna Shetty, Nicholas Gabrieli, Ella Poiger Markianos