Commonwealth Magazine: Winter 2022

CM Commonwealth School Magazine Winter 2022

Also in this Issue: Catching Up with Dive In Equity and Interconnectedness Advanced Math at Commonwealth Alumni/ae Entrepreneurs

Back to Normal(ish)

Dinosaurs Before Dark

WHY I MADE IT

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BY AYLA LADHA ’22

nce they are overflowing with pictures and stories, my sketchbooks are tucked away in the back of my closet, only coming to the surface every year or so when I inevitably find them while cleaning.

On a summer evening in 2020, I was flipping through one of them, lying on my bedroom floor as one does halfway through tidying their room. This sketchbook happened to boast a fifth-grade attempt to draw the first Magic Tree House book as a comic, combining my favorite stories with my favorite medium. The drawings were rough and I’d only made it through the first couple of chapters, but I was impressed with my ten-year-old self’s dedication. It seemed like a real challenge, and I was struck with the urge to try again. So those old Magic Tree House novels resurfaced from the closet, too. I read the first couple of books, leaning against the wall in the slowly setting July sun.

Though enjoying the bliss of nostalgia, I also realized how straightforward these stories were. The first one, Dinosaurs Before Dark, featured only two characters, and the dialogue read like a script due to the basic sentences built for elementary schoolers.

With the series having such a simple structure, I thought this project would be easy: read the book and draw the panels as you read. What I considered to be the hardest part of making comics (coming up with the plot and the storyline) had been done for me. This assumption was quickly proven wrong. I had to tell someone else’s story, portray the same charm, sentiment, and suspense, without the words. There was also a lot of action—and a lot of dinosaurs—that needed to be drawn, and that involved a lot of working and reworking the layout of the pages.

Several failed attempts later, it was August, and I had a system of reading, storyboarding, and cutting and adding dialogue so the important moments and scenes could fit onto the page.

The over-writer in me was given the challenge of shortening a jam-packed eighty-page novel into what ended up being thirty pages of drawings. The artist in me had to figure out how to draw the characters, the Jurassic world, and that library of a treehouse. This particular book also offered the unique challenge of needing to research how the various dinosaurs looked and moved. The action that fills this story—not only the hunting and flying dinosaurs, but the children who climb, run, and jump— gave me the opportunity to play with the layout of the pages and panels, and to call on the skills I practice in Life Drawing. Though they are cartoon representations of people, the characters I draw in my comics use the proportions and gestures of a life-drawing figure. Whether it’s a model in class, a superhero in my notebook, or Jack and Annie climbing up that rope ladder, I use my drawings as exciting explorations of the pose, expression, and movement of the human body.

I ended the summer with a sketch of each page that I continued to rework and refine over the next year. There is something incredibly satisfying about finishing something, even if it took seven years of growing as an artist to do it. Though it may not do justice to the charm of the original series, the comic now sits in a green folder on my shelf, remembered rather than banished to the back of the closet.

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Commonwealth School Alumni/ae Magazine Issue 21 Winter 2022

ON TEACHING

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ne of my happiest responsibilities as Commonwealth’s new Head is a return to teaching. It’s been a long—twenty-five year!—hiatus for me: my last students were undergraduate teachers-to-be at Michigan State University. But from my days as a Commonwealth student and my current glimpses into our classrooms, there’s still a high bar for teaching excellence. I remember Mr. Merrill’s charismatic presence in the classroom and his insistence that we propel ourselves into the Old Testament’s stories. (What would we have done if we were Abraham leading Isaac up the mountain? What sense did we make of the woes of Job and the meanings of fairness?)

My own class is quite different, derived from the questions that have preoccupied me over the arc of my career. Called Education Policy and Politics, the class meets three times a week, when a diverse group of seniors walks into my office and flops into the sofas and armchairs. The course is organized around an essential question: “What are the purposes of education?” It’s one I would like each student to be able to answer from a personal perspective—“What is the purpose of my education?”—as well as to engage through wider lenses.

We’ve been reading about education in Korea, Finland, and (nod to Mr. Merrill) Poland as well as in the United States. International comparisons make it easier to see our own practices as the products of specific cultural values and political decisions.

We’ve been unpacking practices—high-stakes testing, school athletics, the math curriculum—and asking how our democratic system promotes and impedes change.

We debate education’s purposes: Social mobility? National economic development? Democratic participation? And we address the most heartbreaking questions: To what extent does our education system provide equal opportunities and to what extent does it reify inequality? Our seniors are alternately open-minded, skeptical, curious, and opinionated. They come from a variety of public, private, and charter schools and from varied communities; their experiences serve as cases in point.

They are willing to look under the idea at hand and spin out the implications. I’ve been impressed, inspired, and eager to keep up with them.

As the year proceeds toward graduation, we’ll keep asking ourselves: What does it mean to have had access to an excellent education? And what are we called to do with the gifts we’ve received?

As you proceed through this issue, you’ll read about other exciting approaches to education here at Commonwealth: our Dive In Commonwealth program, our Hughes/ Wharton grants, and our advanced math curriculum. These stories resonate deeply for me as I again experience the joys and challenges of the classroom.

Jennifer Borman ’81 Head of School 2 CM Winter 2022

Editor-in-Chief Jessica Tomer Editor Catherine Brewster Assistant Editor Claire Jeantheau Contributing Writers Jennifer Borman ’81 Catherine Brewster Sasha Eskelund '92 Claire Jeantheau Ayla Ladha ’22 Wesley Morgan ’06 Jack Stedman Jessica Tomer Lillien Waller Art and Design Ayla Ladha ’22 Tony Rinaldo Photography LLC Samantha Nieto Vargas Susan Thompson Jessica Tomer 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 feedback: communications@commschool.org.

Letters and notes may be edited for style, length, clarity, and grammar.

Printed on recycled paper. Please recycle.

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CONTENTS

Commonwealth School Magazine Winter 2022

Why I Made It

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An illustrated retelling by Ayla Ladha ’22

A Letter from the Head of School

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On Teaching

News of Commonwealth

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Scholastic and sports successes, Dive In updates, an otherworldly fall play, faculty projects, new faces, and more

Equity & Interconnectedness

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Two alumnae work towards just outcomes for all

Running the Show: Stories from Commonwealth Entrepreneurs

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Students and alumni/ae innovate across industries

“As Far As You Want to Go”: Advanced Math at Commonwealth

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Get to know our college-level math electives and the students who take them

Hancock, Then and Now

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A look back at sixty years of Hancock, including our first post-COVID trip

Helping Students Grow: Language and Culture with Mandarin Teacher Rui Shu

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Ms. Shu explains how accessible—and meaningful—learning this often-intimidating language can be

Where to Go? One Student’s Quest to Increase Bathroom Access

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A Commonwealth sophomore develops a much-needed digital tool

CWSAA

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Events and updates from the Commonwealth School Alumni/ae Association

20 Questions with Wesley Morgan ’06 Journalist relates advice for students from war and writing

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Correction: The summer 2021 issue of CM incorrectly referred to the COMMUN conference held in April 2021 as the fourth of its kind. The 2021 conference was the sixth COMMUN event, as the conference was founded in 2016.

On the cover: Math teacher Al Letarte; learn more about his advanced courses and the students who take them on page 20.

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The Autumn of

STUDENT ORGS

Avery Selk '23, one of the co-founders of the Commonwealth Pirate Association, during Dress Like a Pirate Day, with Soomin Lee '23

Ping-Pong Club members Henry Furman '25, Aritra Ghosh '25, Felix Metral '25, and Tomer Barzilay '25 practicing in the Cafegymnatorium

Anya Ratanchandani ’25 and Lillian Walsh ’25 enjoy the Halloween festivities organized by COMMunity, our student social group

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he fall of 2021 may go down in Commonwealth history as a standout season for new student organizations, with groups springing up to meet a variety of interests. Some clubs are a natural extension of the passions students find in Commonwealth’s academic and art classes. Competitive Programming, under the guidance of Will Du ’23, compares “pros and cons of different ways of solving the same problem” at its meetings; meanwhile, Film Club watches and discusses movies over several lunch periods. French Club, coordinated by Ayla Denenberg ’23 and Penny Orwant ’23, eats treats and practices skills by watching Frenchlanguage clips and shows, like Netflix’s Au Service de la France (A Very Secret Service) and the Eugène Ionesco play La Cantatrice Chauve (The Bald Singer). “It’s a place to engage with the language outside of class, in a more relaxed atmosphere—Penny and I know from experience that it’s much easier to learn French that way,” says Ayla.

Other groups open up a space for play. Ping-Pong (aka Table Tennis) Club, founded by Harrison Hu ’24, held a tournament with student and faculty participants. When not in official gameplay, the sounds of their practice rounds—and laughter—echo through the Cafegymnatorium. Go Club, dedicated to the Chinese strategy game, has “had a few introductory lectures, held a demo game….and watched pieces of a documentary on AlphaGo,” says Milo Kron ’22.

“Mostly though, people have been playing games, while a few of us wander from board to board to offer tips.”

Then there are organizations that resist categories.

According to co-founders Margaret Hines ’23 and Avery Selk ’23, the Commonwealth Pirate Association—more commonly known as Pirate Club—grew from efforts “to unite the would-be adversaries” on the Fencing and Sailing teams “under one banner: piracy. Why argue about whose sport is better when you can have fun in the spirit of both?” Their swashbuckling activities have included Dress Like A Pirate Day and a joint meeting with the Gender and Sexuality Alliance on the queer history of piracy. And finally, the enigmatic Anti-Club Club, carrying on Commonwealth’s unorthodox spirit, is known to gather (loosely) on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall at lunch.

Fall Sports Successes

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oth Cross Country and Boys’ Soccer brought their competitive energy to several strong matches this fall.

After defeating the Academy at Penguin Hall and Salem Academy in a non-conference meet, both Boys’ and Girls’ Cross Country had two top-ten finishers in each of their events at an October 19 race. In the teams’ final meet, Will Du ’23 placed 12th in the all-league rankings.

Meanwhile, Boys’ Soccer wowed us all with a victory over Boston University Academy in October and went on to advance to the playoffs. We congratulate all our athletes on their fantastic work this season, especially seniors Muhammad Abdur Rahman ’22 (Cross Country) and Brandon Chen ’22, Connor Chaplin ’22, Kyle Roke ’22, Hanming Xiong ’22, Thomas Fomin ’22, and Tom Greany ’22 (Soccer), who competed in their final events this year.

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Boys' Soccer team, with coach César Pérez

NEWS | Of Commonwealth

NATIONAL MERIT

Semifinalists and Commendations

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e congratulate the thirteen Commonwealth seniors recognized by the 2022 National Merit® Scholarship Program for their high performance on the PSAT. Six students were Semifinalists representing the state of Massachusetts: Milo Kron ’22 Avery Mangum ’22 Elan Peng ’22 Daria Plotz ’22 Kyle Roke ’22 Raphael Yamamoto ’22 These Semifinalists join a nationwide pool of approximately 16,000 students, representing less than one percent of U.S. high-school seniors and including the highestscoring entrants in each state. Seven additional students earned National Merit Letters of Commendation, placing their PSAT scores among the top five percent of test-takers nationally: Connor Chaplin ’22 Miles Kodama ’22 Dina Pfeffer ’22 Ilaria Seidel ’22 Nia Suresh ’22 Kai Tjia ’22 Hanming Xiong ’22 Approximately 1.5 million juniors in about 21,000 high schools entered the 2022 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2020 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test®. Finalists will be announced in February of 2022, and National Merit Scholarship winners will be announced between April and July. n

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Above, clockwise from top left: Rev. Irene Monroe, a presentation from Mira Bernstein ’89 P’20, Simon Gronowski, and Elizabeth Parada with students

Stories From Fall Assemblies

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ven as they shared diverse expertise in art, music, data analysis, and human-rights advocacy, our fall assembly speakers all came with a common purpose of telling stories about who we are and how we ought to address critical issues. Diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant Elizabeth Parada and Reverend Irene Monroe both showed how their personal journeys—moving from Colombia to the United States in high school and working with churches during the AIDS crisis, respectively—translated to their advocacy work. Holocaust survivor and musician Simon Gronowski shared his experience, in part, through piano, telling us that “I didn’t bring with me a message of sadness, but one of joy.” Mira Bernstein ’89 P’20, who spoke on gerrymandering and algorithmic bias, and Dr. Carl Wunsch, an expert in oceanography and climate change, both used data to point to compelling narratives. Our final speaker of 2021, Wesley Morgan ’06, discussed his work in journalism and in Afghanistan in particular. (Turn to page 36 to get to know Wesley a bit better.)

Commonwealth Recognized Among Niche’s Best Schools

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e tend to eschew typical academic honors and rankings here at Commonwealth, enjoying learning for its own sake.

But we still appreciate when our uncommon approach draws community interest. We are grateful to have been voted on Niche: Bonnie Wang ’25 embarks on a canoe ride at Hancock

#1 in Best Private High Schools in Suffolk County #4 in Most Diverse Private High Schools in Suffolk County #4 in Best High Schools for STEM in Massachusetts #5 in Best Private High Schools in Massachusetts #24 in Best Private High Schools in America

Hancock—At Last!

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ot even torrential downpours could stop this fall’s Hancock, a trip delayed for nearly two years due to the pandemic. In between art projects, rounds of soccer, a bonfire, and the preparation of some truly delicious meals, students returned to well-loved traditions, from apple pie making to a talent show under the stars. But this isn’t the first time Hancock has evolved. Turn to page 25 for more than sixty years of memories...

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DIVE IN

Catching Up with Dive In Commonwealth

BY SASHA ESKELUND ’92

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hen Dive In Commonwealth welcomed its first group of students three years ago, it felt like a grand experiment.

Everything was new, for us and for the five girls who walked in the door on the first morning in July of 2019. The only students in the building, they were giddy with the novelty of it all—and a bit intimidated by one another. But in the weeks that followed they opened up to their warm English teacher, Katie Hodgkins ’11, and began laughing and bonding over what music to play in the ceramics studio with Kyla Toomey.

The girls made the space their own that summer, voices echoing in the Cafegymnatorium as they set up tables for lunch, feet pounding as they sprinted up and down the stairs, forms curled up around the building to do homework, just as Commonwealth students do. And they worked hard, solving math problems on the board, writing personal narratives and discussing poems, and sculpting boxes of popcorn and using homemade pinhole cameras to take photos, which they would proudly show their parents when they visited the school. We took plenty of field trips that summer, too, and the girls laughed and learned their way through the Harvard Museum of Natural History, a day of canoeing and fishing on the Charles, and, in a surprise hit, the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the U.S. Senate with then-Headmaster Bill Wharton (he wasn’t so scary after all). Those students—five girls from Chelsea, East Boston, and Cambridge recruited through our alumni/ae network—helped shape the Dive In program just as they gleefully shaped clay in the fifth-floor ceramics studio.

The next summer—of 2020—was, well, different. The pandemic seemed to be calming but we were still in its grip, so we decided to run a hybrid program, with students coming to the building in the mornings and taking virtual classes from home in the afternoons.

Despite the challenges, the hybrid program brought some wonderful changes, too: we had more Commonwealth teachers to work with our students and added week-long mini-courses, including “Owning My Story” with Mónica Schilder, Chinese Language and Culture with Rui Shu, Computer Science with Matthew Singer, and more. Our original group of girls was preparing for ninth grade, and we offered them courses in biology, chemistry, and history with the goal of bolstering their skills and confidence for high-school work.

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Those mornings at school were pure joy, with our returning group thrilled to be reunited and our new cohort of rising eighth-graders bonding quickly and engaging fully in their classes. Charles Robertson, the father of one of those younger students, recently had this to say: “Sienna just had so much confidence for trying new things after Dive In. The courses and the test prep built her confidence in academics, but she grew just as much in how she interacts with her peers. Learning to make new friends, being around a diverse group of kids and getting to know them…it changed things for her.” Sienna, who is in ninth grade at Noble and Greenough School in Dedham, Massachusetts, this year, added, “I’ve started sitting with random people at lunch just to meet people.

I think I really got that from Dive In, knowing that I could make new friends, with different kinds of people from all over the place.”

The summer of 2021, we were relieved to return to six full weeks of in-person learning. Our rising ninth graders hadn’t seen one another in person since July of 2020, though they’d met on Zoom throughout the year, while our new cohort of eight rising eighth graders joined us with some anxiety but lots of excitement after an almost entirely remote year.

On the first afternoon, students were already exchanging phone numbers and joining a group chat, and those friendships grew as they engaged in classes, collaborated on art projects, salsa danced, and played endless games of UNO. The laughter and the fun were irresistible, and the building never felt empty with our fourteen students in it.

We welcomed a new English teacher, too: Michael Samblas, a Ph.D. student at Boston University studying American and Caribbean literature, taught stories by Ann Petry, Charles Chestnutt, Junot Díaz, and Kate Chopin to our students, who left his class discussing and writing about literature with new sophistication. We were able to resume field trips as well. Don Conolly, who taught a history course on the Ancient Maya, took the group to the Museum of Fine Arts to visit galleries featuring Mesoamerican art and artifacts. And Ms. Shu culminated her course with a scavenger hunt through Chinatown, where a few students were even brave enough to ask for directions in Mandarin.

Above, Dive In students during the summer of 2020; on the following page, Ceramics, a splash-filled field trip, and Introduction to Biology

NEWS | Of Commonwealth On our last morning together in August, we asked graduating students about what they would take away from their fourteen months of Dive In. Beyond the friendships and inside jokes, they all agreed that they’d gained a deeper understanding of mathematics with Al Letarte, observing that this was because he showed them why problems work the way they do, rather than just asking them to find the right answers. In Al’s words: “I have the same standards for students in Dive In as I do with any student I teach: I want them to start asking questions. I don’t want them to believe everything I say. I want them to challenge and question me. I’m trying to give kids a perspective on the subject that includes thinking about the conceptual underpinnings and historical context.” It was deeply gratifying to hear the students and their teacher in agreement about the value of the education we offer. As Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Lisa Palmero McGrath said after spending time with the students, “They know why they’re here.”

Parents from all three Dive In cohorts have told us that their children return to school better prepared for their classes and more self-assured.

Preditta Cedeno, whose daughter Iyana joined Dive In as a rising eighth grader this year, said “Iyana went back to school [Lincoln Public] with so much self-confidence. She has a much stronger sense of herself after her summer at Dive In.” Ms. Cedeno added that “the Dive In program and teachers encouraged her to be the driver of her learning and not just a passenger.” Farhia Ali, whose daughter Sumaya also joined us as a rising eighth grader, said that Sumaya’s experience in Dive In “had a huge impact on her.” Ms. Ali added that “seeing different teaching methods, a different school environment where she was able to express her opinions and talk freely in class, changed her mind about the kind of high school she wants to attend. Dive In made her think about education and what she wants. Now she’s the one exploring options for her education.”

Sumaya is applying to several high schools this year, and she tells us that Commonwealth is her first choice because of how much she loves Dive In’s small, discussion-based classes.

One of our goals, of course, is to bring Dive In students into Commonwealth, increasing access to the school for children and families belonging to groups historically marginalized from the world of independent schools, whether by socioeconomic status, racial or ethnic background, or middle schools that didn’t have the resources to prepare them for schools like Commonwealth. Redressing these inequities in our community is the central aim of Dive In, and it became clear early on that this wasn’t only a matter of academic preparation. We try to build a space where students from an array of underrepresented backgrounds can discover the incredible joy in learning that Commonwealth offers its students.

Dive In has grown each year as we’ve attracted more applicants, increased the size of our cohorts, and raised the number of students who ultimately attend Commonwealth. One of our first five students

is now a sophomore at Commonwealth, while three from our second cohort are with us as ninth graders. (We’re happy to see other Dive In students go to the schools that were right for them, too, be it Noble and Greenough, The Cambridge Matignon School, or Boston’s exam schools.) Carrie Healy, our Director of Admissions and Financial Aid, has worked closely with Dive In students in the past three admissions seasons, offering financial aid workshops for families and walking students through the application process. We have high hopes for welcoming more Divers to Commonwealth this year!

We’re growing at the administrative level, too. Ms. McGrath met with our students last summer, and she now supports those attending Commonwealth with one-on-one meetings, in which she helps students plan for internships and think about college. These conversations are helpful for all of our students, but for those who might not feel an innate sense of belonging at Commonwealth or who might go on to be the first in their families to attend college, it’s especially important. With the arrival of our new Head of School, Jennifer Borman, we’ve also begun to consider the future of Dive In, taking time to assess what’s worked so far and what we need to improve. It’s a process involving lots of conversations with Dive In students and families, past and present, as we develop a vision of how we’ll want to build the program in years to come.

As lucky as we are to have amassed this dedicated team of Commonwealth teachers and staff, we’re incredibly sorry to be saying goodbye to Samantha Nieto, who has taught photography to every Dive In cohort and served as the program’s Assistant Director for the past two years.

She’s been an invaluable member of our administrative team, helping shape the scope of Dive In, managing program assistants, and running a tight ship during the summer, all while sharing her personal experiences with our students, who adore her as much as we do. Samantha said recently that “getting to know the students, seeing them light up and have so much fun together” has provided her with the most satisfaction in her role, and that she’ll be watching from a distance as the program grows.

We’re delighted, though, that Mónica Schilder, Commonwealth’s longtime Spanish teacher and former Diversity Director, has now joined us on Saturdays. After her first two sessions, Mónica said, “I can already see how vibrant and how ready for this place they are!”

Mónica hopes “that everyone comes out of the program feeling that they’ve gained not only knowledge but friendship” and that they leave saying, “It’s so cool. I’ve learned so much!”

While we hope Commonwealth will be the right fit for our Dive In students, our aim is to help each student succeed in the next phase of their education, wherever it may take them. t Sasha Eskelund, Class of 1992, is an English and Creative Writing teacher at Commonwealth and the Director of Dive In.

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Crossing Over to

The Other Shore

CALLIGRAPHY BY SUN HUADING GP ’22

Above, Paris ’24 as The Woman dons a mask created by Adara '23.

To the right, Halle ’24 as The Plaster Seller; Michael ’22, Kerem ’23, Paris ’24, and Halle swim to The Other Shore; Michael as The Man and Kerem as The Card Player

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NEWS | Of Commonwealth

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he Commonwealth community was invited to step beyond the world of the living on December 3 and 4, 2021, during this year’s fall play, The Other Shore by Chinese author and Nobel Prize winner Gao Xingjian. The experimental work centers around a man’s journey to the land of the dead, intercut with flashbacks from his life before he entered this mysterious realm.

The play’s title has Buddhist connotations, alluding to a state of enlightenment in another plane of existence. But The Other Shore is also imbued with political themes, with director Susan Thompson describing its central conflict as “the individual against the masses, with oblique references to the Chinese Communist Party at the time.” (The Chinese government blocked rehearsals for the play’s intended premiere during the 1980s.) The show featured the acting talents of Halle Demmelash ’24, Kerem Pauwels ’23, Michael Karezin ’22, and Paris Wu ’24; each student played multiple roles, as the play’s structure goes outside a linear narrative.

“It’s nice to put on different personas,” says Halle.

Even as they adopted new characters, The Other Shore’s cultural references gave some students the chance to connect the work to their heritage—like Paris, who read the full play in its original Mandarin Chinese as well as English. Throughout the rehearsal process, he provided a deep and invaluable understanding of the play’s context, Ms. Thompson notes in the program, crediting Stage Manager Vivian Ye ’22 and Mandarin teacher Rui Shu for their insights as well. (Turn to page 30 to meet Ms. Shu.) “I feel like I’ve been given the chance to shine a light on the ambiguity of the play and convey the dated cultural elements without understating or exaggerating them,” Paris says. “While it might be hard for me to be reminded of the dark past of China’s history [and] how outdated the Chinese culture back in the twentieth century was, I am also glad that it can be used to contrast with modern Chinese society, where some progress on achieving liberalism has been made.”

Assistant directed by local artist Michael Cordero, the production also featured original music and sound design by Jo Axel ’23, lighting design by Peter Luo ’23, and mask and costume design by Adara Trout ’23.

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Hughes/Wharton Projects Fueling Curiosity in the Classroom Named after the late John Hughes, who taught English at Commonwealth for nearly thirty years, and after recently retired Head of School Bill Wharton, who established the original Hughes fund in 2001 and championed faculty scholarship throughout his tenure, the Hughes/Wharton Fund for Teachers ensures faculty can pursue their academic passions, access fulfilling professional development opportunities, and have the latitude to create new courses and reinvigorate existing ones.

What do those projects look like in practice? Below you’ll find excerpts from four faculty reflections explaining their recent Hughes/Wharton endeavors. You can read the full reports and others at commschool.org/meet-our-faculty.

REINVIGORATING U.S. HISTORY COURSES WITH MS. HABER '87

History teacher Melissa Glenn Haber ’87 reflects on her summer spent exploring ways of decoupling reading and writing skills, as well as adding more diverse voices to Commonwealth’s history curriculum.

My project sprang out of an observation from the City of Boston course I teach: students who sometimes struggle to get their ideas on paper in classes like Ancient History or English 9 can write quite vividly about subjects they know well. This led me to a truth that like all truths is obvious when you see it: writing is hard when you’re not sure what you’re saying. Much of my subsequent research into reading comprehension focused on variations on the themes of “slow down and rephrase what you’ve read” and emphasized the importance of embedding questions in the sources. And so this year the sourcebook includes more of those embedded questions in the primary and secondary sources. I’ve also tried to come up with more heuristics of what to look for when you don’t know what you’re looking for, drawn from my experience as a graduate student in history (and whose last U.S. History class had been right here at Commonwealth with Mrs. Kaplan in 2C!).

I also added some new material that stems from my ongoing efforts to include more non-white, non-male voices in history assignments about general topics, such as a primary source from 1833 when the Wampanoag sought to free themselves from their Harvard (!) overseers, capitalizing on the 1832 nullification crisis and the outrage over Georgia’s encroachments on Cherokee land; more material on the lived experience of free Black Americans in the North, including works by Major Martin R. Delany after he was accepted and then disinvited to the Harvard Medical School, as well as a collection of love letters from one free Black woman to another; and the visions of Rebecca Jackson, a Black Shaker Eldress, related to the Second Great Awakening.

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NEWS | Of Commonwealth DESIGNING A MESOAMERICA COURSE WITH MR. CONOLLY History and classics teacher Don Conolly applied his Hughes/Wharton Grant to crafting one of the school’s newest electives, Mesoamerica, a course that introduces students to the rich if often undervalued ancient history of Central America, from the warriors of the Teotihuacan metropolis to the beautifully blurry line between language and art in Maya culture.

Among the reasons I find the Classic Maya so compelling is their use of writing. We have many Mayan texts inscribed on stone stelae throughout the Maya area, painted on vases and written in the four surviving Maya codices. When I first started this project, I told myself that there was no way I could ever learn to read the beautiful but complicated Maya glyphs. I soon realized, though, that their particular system of writing was so central to Maya culture that the course needed to cover it in some way. As I tried to memorize even these few glyphs, I found that they just wouldn’t stick in my mind—not until I started to write them on my own. This became a bit of an obsession, and I tried to learn a few elements of the Maya syllabary each day. (Like Egyptian hieroglyphs, the writing system is a combination of syllabograms and logograms, which can be combined to form new words in the manner of a rebus puzzle.) I soon discovered how intertwined Maya writing and Maya art are as well: because the writing system is so pictorial, there is a blurry line between narrative and pictorial representation. Indeed, the Maya had only one word for both scribe and painter, tz’ib: there was simply no distinction between these two art forms. This aspect of Maya culture is the one I am most eager to explore on my own and with my students. In fact, I have decided to anchor the course itself around the analysis of images, in the manner of an art history class.

THE NEUROSCIENCE OF LEARNING WITH MS. SUNDBERG

Commonwealth students come from a striking variety of backgrounds: other independent schools, homeschooling, and public schools across the Greater Boston area. And because the school strives to meet every student where they are, providing malleable introductory material helps usher in each new class of learners. Such was the impetus for Emma Sundberg’s recent updates to her Biology 1 class...

The driving force behind my revision to the Biology 1 curriculum was the observation that the pandemic has exacerbated the pre-existing disparity in students’ scientific backgrounds. Traditionally, Biology 1 begins with an introduction to chemistry and experimental design. During the first weeks of the year, I also strive to instill strong study habits in students, spending time in class discussing strategies for note-taking, problem solving, and test preparation. The early material is generally presented as review, but for some students, the material is new. To address this issue, I developed an introductory unit investigating the neuroscience of learning. We begin with the question “what is a memory?” and the different ways in which this question is answered by depictions in pop culture, by psychologists, and by neuroscientists. Students then learn the anatomical structures of the brain in order to determine, as a class, the order in which regions of the brain are engaged as we form a memory. Drawing inspiration from a case study, we will consider memory from an evolutionary perspective, discussing why we remember and why we forget. This will lead into a subsequent discussion of the foibles of memory and whether these are, in fact, a boon to our species’ survival.

COMPUTER SCIENCE THEORY AND PRACTICE WITH MS. BOPPANA Drawing on both her time in Silicon Valley and her work as a mathematician, Meena Boppana set out to make the theoretical practical in her third-year computer science course by introducing more industry-standard programming languages while helping students understand the more esoteric aspects of Web development.

I began my Hughes/Wharton project with a goal of illuminating the theoretical underpinnings in Commonwealth’s Computer Science (CS) 3 course with programming assignments. I knew that students would be eager to see their knowledge applied and benefit from this motivation. I surveyed the curriculum and picked out a handful of topics that lend themselves to implementation: sorting algorithms, topological sort, binary search trees, and dynamic programming. Previously, students were allowed to choose from a number of languages for any programming required, including Racket and Java, which they had used in CS1 and CS2. However, with a renewed emphasis on programming assignments, I decided that introducing a new language, Python, would be best. Due to its lightweight structure, Python is often used for writing short programs (“scripts”) and is most commonly employed in algorithm programming interviews in the tech industry. Students will benefit from knowledge of Python programming outside of the confines of the course. (Turn to page 21 to learn more about advanced math in Ms. Boppana’s CS3 course.)

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New Faces 1

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1. Bronwen Callahan, History Teacher

A sabbatical replacement for Ms. Grant, Ms. Callahan earned a B.A. from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University where she concentrated in Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic. She then spent three years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in both Jordan and Georgia, where she taught English to K-12 students. In 2019, she obtained her master’s in Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity School with a focus on Islamic Studies. From 2019 to 2021, she taught Ancient and Modern History at King’s Academy in Madaba, Jordan.

2. Dethie Faye, Chef Manager

Chef Faye joined Commonwealth as Chef Manager in June of 2021. He received an A.S. in Culinary Arts and a B.S. in Food Service Management from Johnson & Wales University. As a student he turned an internship at a Maine restaurant into four consecutive seasons in the kitchen, eventually becoming sous chef. He later made his way to Boston, joining the management team for British Airways International Lounge at Logan Airport before coming to Commonwealth. Even in his free time, he is cooking, especially making pasta—trying different shapes and introducing new fillings. He also enjoys basketball, art, fashion, and travel.

3. Adam Hinterlang, Director of Information Technology and Facilities

Mr. Hinterlang comes to Commonwealth after working in a variety of IT and facility positions that range from an Emmy Award–winning motion graphics and design company to interactive event management. He received an M.F.A. in Electronic Integrated Arts from Alfred University

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and a B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute, where he double-majored in Photography and New Media and Art History. You can find him in his studio working on his drawing and animation practice, playing guitar and bass, collecting vinyl records, or making hot sauce. He loves spending time with his wife, Commonwealth ceramics teacher, Kyla Toomey; their son, Harry; and their bad dogs, Ruby and Kilgore.

4. Claire Jeantheau, Communications Coordinator

Ms. Jeantheau graduated from Dickinson College with a B.A. in Classical Studies and Educational Studies. During college, she spent nearly a year studying abroad in Greece and Denmark. In her free time, she can be found running or biking—especially on the Esplanade—or browsing at the library.

5. Abby Lawrence, Advancement Coordinator

Ms. Lawrence earned her B.A. in English and Educational Studies at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where she specialized in Creative Writing. Abby is a triplet whose birthday lands on Halloween!

During her free time, she enjoys cycling on the Minuteman Bikeway, indoor rock climbing, and doing all things crafty.

6. J ake MacDonnell, Librarian and Registrar

Mr. MacDonnell earned his B.A. in English literature from Oberlin College, and his M.S. in Library Science with a concentration in archives and records management from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has worked in academic, governmental, and school library settings. Outside of work, he enjoys reading books, playing pickup basketball, watching movies, and seeing live music.

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Equity Interconnectedness

BY LILLIEN WALLER

W

e often conflate equity with equality. But equity seeks fairness: it recognizes differences between people in status, context, or history.

It is a more nuanced and—depending on who you ask—a more contentious concept than equality: the distribution of the same resources, rights, and opportunities to everyone regardless of circumstance. Keep reading and you’ll meet two Commonwealth School alumnae whose work and passions, empowering girls and advancing health equity in communities, are dedicated to helping us better understand what equity really means, why it is an urgent social justice issue, and what a more equitable society might look like.

In the Interest of Public Health

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f there’s one thing that Pietra Check ’95 wants you to understand about health inequity, it’s that it isn’t just about differences between groups; rather the system itself is rife with disadvantage, and everything is connected. “There will always be differences between groups. And health risks and health exposures and health outcomes and health inequities occur when those

Pietra Check ’95 poses in a COVID-inspired public art installation and meditative space she contributed to near her home in Arlington, Massachusetts, created by artist Nilou Moochhala.

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differences are unfair, unjust, when those differences arise from social and economic conditions and structural disadvantages,” she explains.

Pietra is Senior Program Analyst in the Occupational Health Equity program at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She is also completing her doctorate in public health at Tufts University School of Medicine.

“When we look at it from another angle and talk about health equity, what we are talking about is creating structural conditions in which individuals and communities at the population level can really enjoy and achieve the highest level of health and well-being,” Pietra says. This understanding forms the foundation of her work around occupational health equity, particularly the social determinants of health, which are a set of conditions—such as the work we perform, where we live, and how much education we have—that affect our health throughout our lives. Pietra points out that biomedical and technological advances in the last several decades have enabled public health to develop more sophisticated approaches to understanding and mitigating disease and illness.

But, unless we look at health equity from a social-justice perspective, inequities between workers will likely persist.

Different workers are exposed to different work-related health risks; according to the Occupational Health Equity program, this is true even between workers who are performing the same job. Take, for example, farmworkers and whether they have access to Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) protections on the job. “If you work on a farm in the United States that has ten employees or fewer, OSHA is prohibited from spending any money to enforce occupational safety and health laws. If the farm is a smaller operation with fewer resources, it may not be in a position to voluntarily choose to protect their workers,” Pietra says. “Protections are necessary. We have a good idea of what’s needed to protect people. And there are standards and laws and policies around what employers may or may not do. But some employers just cannot do that. So some workers are afforded protection and other workers are excluded.”

OSHA protections are a structural issue, but social conditions are always at play, as in the debate around whether to raise the minimum wage. “Your wage determines whether you have enough money to eat,” Pietra explains, “whether you can eat at all, much less healthy foods. Which foods are less expensive and more accessible to you? Do you have access to health care? Do you have time—leisure time, shopping time, cooking time, time to spend with your family? Do you have time to help your children with their homework? The jobs you are able to get and what your work looks like are all a part of that.”

What becomes clear is that work is a determinant of health. And occupational health equity is inextricably linked to a number of other issues beyond just job safety that, for some workers, represent “an overlapping and mutually reinforcing system of disadvantage.”

Know Better, Do Better

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he Occupational Health Equity program “promotes research, outreach, and prevention activities” to address the structural and social conditions that put some workers at greater risk for workplace injury, illness, and even death. The program is, however, working to move public health research in a more equitable direction. Explaining the social determinants of health and their effects is an important part of it. So is an equity agenda within occupational

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health and safety research: the research establishment must consider how the work they are doing impacts different populations, and the best way to do that is to employ a collaborative research model.

“To paraphrase Maya Angelou, all of us have a responsibility, now that we know better, to do better,” Pietra says. “We need to be doing inclusive research, and we know how to do that. So the program is working on guidance for researchers, which shows them how to create research partnerships with workers, communities, and worker organizations. This allows them to do better research that’s more representative of the working population and will, therefore, be more successful in finding ways to promote health equity.”

The third piece of the puzzle, Pietra says, is to diversify the CDC workforce—a fact not lost on the organization, of which occupational safety and health is a part. She notes, however, that diversifying the organization’s base of researchers must occur “along all different social axes: gender, race, ethnicity, as well as discipline. We need social-science expertise to understand these issues. It will strengthen our ability to do this kind of work and create a pipeline for people who want to enter the field.”

Prior to her current role at NIOSH, Pietra was Deputy Director of the Office of Agriculture Safety and Health. She moved back to Boston to work on her doctorate in public health, and her research and community engagement are an expansion of equity issues she has worked on, and cared deeply about, for years. Her dissertation explores the lives of immigrant women who have moved to the United States from Central America and Mexico during the wave of immigration that began around 2011, when migrant demographics began to shift from mostly men to women and children. Whereas single male migrants, who would come to send money home, had been more common, families of migrants are on the rise due to changes in social and political conditions in Central American countries, particularly El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.

Viewing migration to the United States through a lens of health equity, Pietra wants not only to understand these migrants’ experiences and the particular social conditions and work that influence health but also examine migration itself as an act that impacts health. “How do people who migrate—and essentially cut off their local social support system—protect and promote their health when they come to a new place?

How do they re-establish themselves, and what does that system look like? So I’ve been looking at migrant health after migration, particularly in recent immigrants from these countries where they’ve experienced trauma plus the trauma of migration itself. How does that translate here?”

Using research models of community engagement, Pietra has partnered with the Women of Color Health Equity Collective, the Migrant Education Program, and the Brightwood Clinic in Springfield, Massachusetts. So far, she has found that the migration experience is extremely traumatic for many of these women, who have often been detained at the border, stripped of their belongings, and given barely enough food for themselves and their children. A common experience, Pietra explains, is that the women will be given bus tickets and told to report back on some future date. They often arrive at their final destination with little orientation about how to get help, and end up at places like the Pioneer Valley Workers Center in Northampton, another one of Pietra’s community partners.

Pietra hopes her research can show the humanity of these migrants and help lead to more humane policies, but she makes the point that all of these policy issues are connected to actual people and to each other.

“What happens regarding immigration is inherently related to health. Immigration policy is health policy. Economic policy is health policy. These are all conditions and structures that shape people’s ability to be healthy and well.”

Raising Girls’ Voices

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he groundbreaking 2020 Ready to Lead report, published by Girls Leadership, found that Black and Latinx girls (age 12–18) are more likely to self-identify as leaders than girls of other races, but they are also more likely to encounter external gender and racial bias in school and society that undermines their leadership aspirations.

“Leadership is often explored through a scarcity model, of who doesn’t have enough of it or who doesn’t have the capacity for it,” writes Monique W. Morris, Ed.D., in the report’s foreword. “For girls of color, this routinely manifests in the failure to recognize their potential to lead.”

Ready to Lead surveyed 2,012 girls and interviewed their parents and 601 teachers to answer the question: What support systems help girls develop as leaders and, conversely, what barriers do they encounter?

Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Girls Leadership Simone Marean ’95 began the work that would eventually become Girls Leadership in 2002 with Co-Founder Rachel Simmons. At the time, she “didn’t really identify as the leader,” she says. “I wasn’t drawn to the leadership aspect of it. We started to work together because Rachel had this leadership curriculum, and I had this approach to teaching and learning using theater. And I think what made me want to take the leap and leave my job was that what we were teaching the girls was really the missing curriculum in my own life.”

Simone’s revelation may be ironic, but it isn’t unusual. Current data reveals that, by the age of six, girls start to believe that boys are smarter. And their leadership ambitions peak between eight and ten years old. For girls of color, however, the obstacles to their ambition come not only in the form of gender bias but also racial bias and lowered expectations in school. That’s why the work of Girls Leadership is so crucial and why it centers the needs “of the most marginalized girls in order to best serve all girls,” Simone says.

The organization develops programs for girls in grades K–12 using a social-emotional learning paradigm and works with the network of influential adults around girls, including parents, caregivers, teachers, and guidance counselors, and partners with schools and community organizations. The goal is to keep girls connected to their self-knowledge, to cultivate the power of their voices—which entails understanding the issues at stake from an equity perspective. Different girls experience different structural, personal, and social barriers.

“About five years ago, Girls Leadership was going through a moment in which we examined who the girls were that we were impacting,” Simone says. “Do they reflect the makeup of girls in our community? We realized that they didn’t, really, and we wanted to change that.

So many of our participants were predominantly white, middle class, and affluent, which connected to much of the research at the time of the girls who had been studied. There’s one school, a private school in Ohio, that was at the center of a lot of the research thirty years ago, and it’s still at the center of many of the New York Times–bestselling books on girls. But those girls don’t look like the girls of the Bay Area and the girls of New York, who are predominantly girls of color, who are predominantly low-income. And so we started a journey to do our first quantitative study on girls of color.”

That study became Ready to Lead, which found that, for Black and Latinx girls, the barriers were more external and were most often occurring in schools where the teaching force is predominantly—eighty percent—white women. “We were listening to the girls, building relationships, and co-designing the solutions that they deserve and need,” Simone says. “But we were waiting for the data. And the data solidified it. That was when we could quantify the bias of teachers who presumed

Simone Marean ’95

that these students are coming from a home culture that has a leadership deficit and made assumptions about income level, education level, and family structure. Now we had numbers that we could take to our board and to our funders to say, ‘This is how the challenge is different for different girls.’”

The report found that, contrary to the assumptions made about them in school, Black and Latinx girls have the highest rates of leadership ambition, come from families with the highest rates of leadership identity, and possess the highest rates of leader-ready skills—more than their white, affluent peers.

Armed with a keener understanding of its focus, methodology, and mandate, Girls Leadership has scaled its impact from 10,000 girls per year to 100,000 girls per year. Because the organization works with teachers, Simone emphasizes, the impact reaches hundreds of girls within each teacher’s sphere of influence and a broader diversity of girls. More than sixty-five percent of the girls in Girls Leadership programs qualify for free or reduced school lunch, and more than sixty-five percent are girls of color.

In fall 2021, in partnership with Mattel Brands Barbie®, Girls Leadership produced another report, She Knows Her Power, an innovative youth-led research study of girls in grades K–5. The organization is also partnering with the WNBA. A study of how programs designed for marginalized girls affects boys is ongoing, and Girls Leadership is also working to create a stronger culture within its own program staff.

“We’re designing our own culture and our own work practices to center wellness,” Simone says, “so we can take care of the teachers in the schools and the community-based organizations, so they have a fighting chance of showing up for the girls that they interact with every day.” t Lillien Waller is a poet, essayist, and editor. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets, and she is editor of the anthology American Ghost: Poets on Life after Industry (Stockport Flats). Lillien is a Cave Canem Fellow and a Kresge Artist Fellow in the Literary Arts. She lives in Detroit.

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Running the Show Stories from Commonwealth Entrepreneurs

BY LILLIEN WALLER

Founding—and running—a business or organization is difficult even in the best of times. It puts your skills to the test and pushes your boundaries to discover, and develop, new ones. Statistics vary widely on how well start-ups fare in the first few years, whether they are primarily for- or nonprofit. But there’s no denying the outsize commitment, risk, and even humility it takes to run the show, as these student and alumni/ae entrepreneurs can attest.

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Alex Li ’22, Raphael Yamamoto ’22, Vivian Ye ’22, and Sophia Ying ’22 Co-Founders, History2Us

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Sophia Ying ’22, Vivian Ye ’22, Alex Li ’22, and Raphael Yamamoto ’22

n a world where we no longer sit around the dinner table or around the campfire telling stories, we thought that it was really important to promote that kind of environment but adapt it to today’s digital society,” says Sophia Ying ’22 on the relevance of History2Us, an organization that collects, shares, and archives oral histories of everyday people.

In 2019 Sophia and co-founders Alex Li, Raphael Yamamoto, and Vivian Ye (all ’22) launched the organization as a way to more deeply connect with and better understand their own family heritages. But in the past two years—despite the limitations imposed by a pandemic—it became much more.

“We didn’t know about the stories of our grandparents and older generations in general, so we found that really sad. Even with all of the technologies available, their stories weren’t being preserved,” Alex says. “So we wanted to find a way to make that easily accessible. Our idea was to do oral histories where younger people would interview their grandparents. But we also wanted to broaden that perspective.” That meant moving beyond their own immediate family circles to hear and archive stories throughout their communities. The stories participants have recounted so far—of child- and adulthood, of living as an immigrant and losing loved ones—reveal both American and local history, from the Vietnam War draft to the cultural taboo around divorce to the Boston busing riots of the 1970s to the invisible yet palpable boundaries of racial segregation.

At first, the worsening pandemic made collecting narratives logistically difficult, occasionally impossible. But Vivian, Raphael, Sophia, and Alex were able to interview a nurse, who described the emotional toll of working with COVID patients, and an infectious-disease specialist, who discussed the tensions surrounding vaccination.

“One of the powerful things about oral history in particular is that it allows you to realize the humanity of the story,” Raphael says. “A lot of history is told to you, and it’s sort of distant. It feels disconnected because you’re hearing about it for the first time. But when you can hear actual personal stories of people going through these things, it makes the events a lot more real.” That sense of history-made-real has also given the four students an opportunity to reflect on their own lives, values, and aspirations—who they are and who they would like to become.

“You learn a lot about yourself,” says Alex. “By talking with these people, you’re struck by their perseverance. It can inspire you to try to be better.” Vivian agrees. “We had a couple of key questions that we were looking for answers to. But it turned into something a little more conversational, and so we mostly just heard stories about their lives and life lessons.”

The process of establishing History2Us as an organization—an archive with a website, still under development—came with its own learning curve as well. “One of the biggest challenges we faced was that there are so many ways in which you can tackle making an organization. And, because we had so many ideas, it was really hard to manage all of that,” Alex says. “So we made a master schedule and said, ‘Okay, we’re going to meet each Thursday.’ And I think a lot of

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it was also realizing that it’s very easy to say what you want to do, but to actually implement that can be a lot harder.”

Commonwealth faculty like former history teacher Will HolubMoorman and math teacher Anna Moss ’06 helped ground the students’ focus by encouraging them to avail themselves of the many opportunities in Boston and connecting them with a radio journalist and a business professor at a local university. The four eased the workload by taking turns attending workshops through Harvard Innovation Labs, an opportunity they discovered with the help of Commonwealth alumna Joy Ding ’19. The program has provided them with an “arsenal” of resources, including tools and strategies for marketing, publicity, branding, and website development.

While feedback from friends, family, and the Commonwealth community has been positive, the reality is that all four students will graduate soon, moving on to college and, eventually, careers. Will History2Us move with them?

“We have discussed continuing this ourselves as we go into college,” Sophia replies. “It’ll certainly be a greater challenge across geographical and time barriers. But this is something really important to us all. And whether it’s us continuing it or finding other people to continue this initiative, I think you could see it going in a lot of different directions.”

Tamara Griggs ’89 Founder and Executive Director, Threadable Books

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hreadable Books was the career-changing opportunity Tamara Griggs ’89 didn’t see coming. A specialist in eighteenth-century European history, she had been teaching at Harvard for six years before cofounding the business in 2018. “I was making a move to teach part-time, and my

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officemate had a connection to an investor,” Tamara explains, “who had been trying to find a historian to help him with a project. It all sounded a bit vague in the beginning, but I agreed to meet him for coffee to see if I could do some consulting work for him part-time.

We ended up talking for about two hours.”

The investor turned out to be Peter Kolchinsky, a virologist, biotechnology investor, and cofounder of RA Capital Management in Boston. “He was reading presidential biographies at that point, and he had started to wonder whether anything existed to guide him or provide a different perspective than the one that was being given by the biographer,” Tamara says. “Together, we decided to create this new e-reader. Initially, I was just doing some research, but I converted to full-time as Executive Director, and [Kolchinsky] happily went back to his work in biotechnology so that I could run it.”

Threadable Books is an innovative e-reading platform that gives curious readers a way to learn, discuss, and share what they are reading inside the pages of the digital book. It’s “social,” but not in the way we’ve come to expect: historical and literary experts and authors serve as guides through each text, and anyone from solo readers to book clubs can weave threads and share insights within a book’s margins. The guides offer curated experiences for readers who seek context but not necessarily the scholarship found in footnotes.

“Think of it as if you had someone sitting next to you while you’re reading who knows more about it than you do, but they’re not lording it over you,” says Tamara. “So, for example, you’re reading [Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass], and Douglass is writing about being threatened with being sold down South.

A guide can point out why it was more dangerous for an enslaved person to be sold to Mississippi or Alabama rather than Maryland.

They can provide historical context—a bigger picture—about what the writer is saying at that moment. Or they can point to something the writer couldn’t have known at the time that historians have since figured out.”

The platform includes classic texts in the public domain from the late eighteenth century to 1923, and Tamara hopes eventually to include contemporary fiction and nonfiction. But Threadable Books already boasts an impressive roster of guides, including Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times; Princeton historian Kevin Kruse writing on Martin Luther King, Jr.; and journalist and environmentalist Bill McKibben writing on James Hansen, the scientist whose 1988 congressional testimony helped broaden awareness around climate change.

Tamara points out her own learning experience as someone who had been “thoroughly embedded in academia” for most of her life.

“Very quickly, I had to learn about software development and what that process entails. I had to develop ideas about what would be effective in an e-reading application. I knew how Kindle and Apple Books work, but I didn’t know the first thing about making an app.”

The real challenge, according to Tamara, has been determining what a reader might want if they’re reading a digital book and how to bring in another interesting perspective without bogging them down in extraneous research. “With the Internet, you could teach yourself almost anything. Problem is, how do you do that? We’re trying to figure out, in some sense, how to bring that to the reader in the application.”

Threadable Books’ full-time team consists of Tamara and historian Peter Pellizzari, an Americanist who joined in September 2020 as Managing Director and is now a Co-founder. Around that same time, Threadable hired a Boston software development company, Upstatement, to develop the mobile iOS app. Currently, Tamara

RUNNING THE SHOW is focused on building out commentary for the e-reader and hopes to eventually develop a feature that would help solo readers find like-minded communities.

Regarding whether the free platform can turn a profit, Tamara says: “Fortunately, we are not really concerned about that right now.

We want this to exist, and we want a new way of reading to exist. But it’s important to grow the audience before growing the company.”

With a formal launch pending, Threadable Books went live in August 2021.

Raphael Kohlberg '06 Founder and CEO, Rakoh

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he U.S. fashion footwear market generated more than $90 billion in revenue in 2019. For Europe, that figure rests just north of 70 billion euros. Footwear is the single biggest segment of the global fashion industry, so it’s easy to wonder how a small, independent start-up could find its niche. Financial success notwithstanding, what if you just want to build a better boot?

What if your primary goal is to create the best possible version of a shoe, making it as comfortable as it is stylish?

That’s what Raphael Kohlberg ’06 began to ask himself in 2018 while completing his M.B.A. at Harvard Business School. He was pondering whether to join a start-up or strike out on his own, and, ultimately, it came down to a personal pain point. While in graduate school, Raphael found that he needed to transition from a day of walking to evening social events. “I can’t be the first person whose feet hurt when they’re not wearing sneakers. I looked at a lot of brands that claimed they were comfortable and I tried them out, genuinely hoping they would be because I just wanted them for myself. And I was really disappointed. There were shoes that were comfortable, but I felt like they really weren’t stylish or that the style wasn’t classic.”

His decision? Rakoh, a footwear brand emphasizing timeless style, impeccable craft, and comfort.

The company’s flagship shoe is the “All Day Chelsea Boot,” handcrafted in Italy with leather or suede uppers, performance soles, soft leather lining, and above-standard comfort insoles. As Raphael explains, partnering with an Italian manufacturer for such a shoe—in Tuscany, the center of leather tanning and manufacturing—was itself a process.

“Shoes need many suppliers because there are a lot of pieces coming from different places, and every step in production needs a person; it’s not automated and there’s still so much artistry. It’s a combination of art and science. There are traditional methods and materials, and knowledge that is passed down from parent to child; it’s generational. But within the ecosystems where this knowledge exists, they are still making investments in new technology.”

Raphael scoured his network for advice from anyone who had started a fashion business and eventually connected with someone in Italy who had the right relationships and could make the necessary factory introductions. “These are factories that work with Ferragamo, Tom Ford—the biggest names in the business—and I’m just some person. I had to convince them that what I was proposing was a good idea.”

Designing the actual shoe is a collaborative process, Raphael explains. “My brand isn’t about inventing new-looking things.

It’s about reworking things that are classic, so, by definition, they already exist. What are the details I definitely want to keep? What details are unnecessary or detract from the shoe being a classic or are trendier?”

It sounds simple, but Raphael points out that the cycle from concept to completed shoe is anything but. From creating “the last” (a foot-shaped form) and revising the design to testing shoe prototypes in the real world, creating a Rakoh boot requires a number of crucial decisions in design and construction, including sourcing the materials for and developing the comfort insole. And each step in the cycle must be repeated as often as it takes to get it just right.

It can often come down to millimeters of difference between what works and what doesn’t. “If I want the shoe to be the perfect shoe, to me that means you want to wear it all the time, which means it needs to be comfortable,” he says.

The factory in Italy can make dozens of pairs of shoes a day.

But typical considerations, like getting slotted in the factory’s schedule, have become subject to atypical conditions. The pandemic has given way to supply-chain delays, increasing production times dramatically. Raphael notes that what used to take a month to produce could easily take three months now.

He remains committed, however, to producing the best possible version of a Chelsea boot, and plans to expand into other apparel in the future. Sometimes the decisions he makes come at the expense of keeping costs lower, Raphael says, but he believes those decisions will, ultimately, make the product better. “I’m not sure how I’ll translate this into a selling point, but when someone buys my product and then actually wears it for a while, they’ll feel the difference.

They might not know why, but they’ll feel it.” t Lillien Waller is a poet, essayist, and editor. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets, and she is editor of the anthology American Ghost: Poets on Life after Industry (Stockport Flats). Lillien is a Cave Canem Fellow and a Kresge Artist Fellow in the Literary Arts. She lives in Detroit.

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“ A s Far As “ You Want to Go”

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t’s definitely fun to do math for seventy-five minutes,” says Kyle Roke ’22, reflecting on taking the American Mathematics Competition exam. And he means it.

Now a senior, Kyle came to Commonwealth, in part, because he heard a rumor that the school offered a Category Theory class for a single student. (Status: confirmed.)

“I don’t know that a lot of schools would have been able to offer something like that, which is really nice,” he says. “I found that totally interesting and compelling.” So Kyle applied, was accepted, and ended up placing into Calculus 1 Advanced as a freshman. There he got his first taste of mathematical proofs—though his teacher, Rob Sherry, assured him: this was just the beginning. Theoretical Calculus was where the real fun began Kyle, with his long-standing interest in math (his parents happen to be actuaries) and accelerated progress through Commonwealth’s math curriculum, may not be an average math student—but he’s not too many standard deviations from it. Most Commonwealth students progress through a math curriculum of geometry or algebra to precalculus to calculus, with the option of branching into full- and half-credit electives such Abstract Algebra, Statistics, Topology, and Axiomatic Set Theory. The

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latter two courses, currently offered to cohorts of four and eight students, respectively, are among the most advanced math electives Commonwealth offers—and they exist because students like Kyle, having already seized upon other advanced courses like Theoretical Calculus, asked for them.

“That they’re willing to create new classes to help us pursue our interests is really cool,” Kyle says. “I had seen myself going in some very applied math direction. But I think now, going into pure math and research math would be really, really enjoyable, something I would really love to be able to do. And I wouldn’t have known about that as an opportunity if I hadn’t taken the classes at Commonwealth.”

Keep reading to learn more about what it’s like to take and offer advanced math courses in high school, from curriculum to community, and what success in these classes really looks like…

A College-Level Curriculum

“Whatever mathematics courses a student is ready for and interested in, we can offer. We have that ability,” says Al Letarte, a ten-year veteran of Commonwealth’s math faculty. And we have “that

Advanced Math at Commonwealth

BY JESSICA TOMER

ability,” in no small part, due to his great relish for developing those courses and shepherding students through them. (Axiomatic Set Theory was a jaunty summer project for him.)

“I was really impressed because we had two advanced math electives…just because a couple of juniors and seniors requested it,” says Linda He ’23. “I think it’s really extraordinary that I can take Topology as a junior. It feels like this school will never run out of high-level math courses.” Linda isn’t sure what math classes await her senior year, but she’s intrigued by Complex Analysis, a class that Commonwealth doesn’t offer—yet.

“The promise that we make—to take kids as far as they want to go—is one we can actually keep. And we do,” Mr. Letarte says.

“These courses are not offered in any other high school. They’re not. And I’ve looked everywhere.” He teaches the advanced math electives “exactly,” he says, the way he learned them as a thirdyear undergraduate math major. “I’m using the same curriculum, I’m using the same textbooks, and I have the same expectations of the students,” he says. “We’re talking about full-scale college-level courses that would normally be available only to math majors.” A fact many graduates corroborate, he notes with mirth, when they come back to visit Commonwealth.

“I think the depth at which we learn to think about math is really unique to Commonwealth,” says Ilaria Seidel, another senior and student in Topology and Axiomatic Set Theory. “My Commonwealth classes taught me not just how to apply the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus but how to prove it from the axioms of the real numbers; I learned not just how to choose the right formulas, but to understand the structure underneath each concept or proof.”

Not only are the courses technically rigorous, but they respect historical contributions to math, Mr. Letarte says, asking students to consider such breakthroughs as trisection of the angle (Wantzel, 1836), proof of Euclid’s fifth postulate (Beltrami, 1868), and quadrature of the circle (Lindemann/Weierstrass, 1882), to say nothing of the foundations of math dating back to ancient Mesopotamia. To even have such conversations requires a thorough understanding of the mathematical concepts at play. “Even as early as geometry, we are giving kids an appreciation for the development of research math,” he says.

Mr. Sherry agrees. “We have different levels of classes and different ways of teaching for different students,” he says. “We’re trying to be able to meet students where they are. And for the more

21

“ That is what people misunderstand about math.

They think somehow that if you bang your head against the wall, it means you’re a bad mathematician. The people who are amazing mathematicians are amazing because they know that that’s a normal part of the creative process that goes into doing high-level math.”

advanced students who can do abstract work, I don’t know of any [high] school that has the offerings that we have.”

The students in these classes already have “mathematical maturity,” Mr. Sherry says. “I didn’t start thinking about math in that way until I was a junior [studying math at Yale].” Abstract Algebra, a year-long course at Commonwealth, is comparable to a semester-long undergrad college course, he says. Topology is closer to a graduate-level topic.

Commonwealth courses like Mathematical Logic and Axiomatic Set Theory even brush against Mr. Letarte’s dissertation research (“Covering Properties on the Hyperfinite Timeline”), meaning he can discuss concepts with his students—like using model theory to build a non-standard universe—that are beyond their years and thrilling to teach. “It’s amazing,” Mr. Letarte says.

“I mean, this is what math really is.”

22 CM Winter 2022

Students sit for the American Mathematics Competition (AMC) exam in November of 2021.

Finding a Math Community

“When I came to Commonwealth, everything changed,” says Thomas Du ’24, who also placed into Calculus 1 Advanced as a freshman. “All of my math classes were engaging, and I was able to ask questions and receive direct feedback on my work.”

He says he appreciated Mr. Sherry’s “lighthearted nature and teaching style” in those classes, particularly his willingness to adjust the textbook curriculum to meet his students’ needs. Mr. Sherry, a fixture in Commonwealth’ math department since 2000, also helped guide Thomas’s progress through the math curriculum.

Thomas decided to take Theoretical Calculus because he wanted the challenge of a proof-based class, joining the upper-level course as one of two tenth graders. “It felt intimidating at first,” he says, “but I quickly got to know my classmates better. No one treats you as inferior just because you are in a younger grade, and it isn’t hard to start up a conversation, especially when it comes to math!”

Linda, now in her junior year, also came to Commonwealth ready to take Calculus as a ninth grader—despite only having studied algebra I and geometry at her middle school. But she taught herself the intervening math (precalculus and algebra II) and “escaped to calculus,” given her performance on Commonwealth’s math placement test for incoming students. “I really appreciated the opportunity to do that,” she says. “I didn’t have experience with advanced math. I had a tiny bit of competition background. But [Mr. Sherry and Mr. Letarte] explained things really well.”

Linda excelled and found her place in Commonwealth’s “math community.” From there it was sophomore year with Differential Equations and auditing Abstract Algebra—and COVID-19. Despite the challenges of hybrid learning, the class

ADVANCED MATH “went through the entire book and most of the material for Differential Equations,” she says. “Even though the material is hard, I think the students inside the class all tried really hard.

There was a good environment.”

Linda is also a member of Commonwealth’s Math Team, which is actually co-captained by Ilaria and Kyle, with fellow senior Daria Plotz ’22. They prepare a new lecture for the group each week on topics like “Young Tableaux,” “Farey Series,” and “The Math Behind SET” (the card game). The student leaders also help members prepare for competitions like the Massachusetts Math Olympiad, New England Math League, and the aforementioned American Mathematics Competition, an annual opportunity for students to test their skills on a national level. All Commonwealth students are automatically registered for the AMC exam, though they are not required to take it, to ensure no one is left behind who might want to compete.

Math Beyond the Classes

“Doing more math makes you think about the world more quantitatively and abstractly,” Linda says. “In the Axiomatic Set Theory class, we went back to the foundations of math, like constructing sets and all that. It’s very cool to see how such easy notions of sets can have very abstract constructions.”

Calculus 1 Advanced and Differential Equations gave Linda a “solid background” for her advanced science classes, like Physics, which features some multivariable calculus. And friends in Commonwealth’s third-level Computer Science class, The Theory of Computer Science, have found their experience with set theory and abstract math helpful as well. “Problem solving is an important life skill that I am teaching through my math classes,” says CS3 teacher Meena Boppana. “The skill of breaking down a novel problem is more important than any specific content. I try to incorporate problem solving into all my classes, but it especially comes across in Computer Science 3.”

Mirai Duintjer Tebbens Nishioka ’24 sees those connections, too. “I now notice more how math is involved in different things in the world,” he says, from the shape of buildings to robots using derivatives to the computer code he enjoys writing to the harmonies he plays on the cello. “There’s so much in math, so many different branches,” Mirai says. “They’ve helped me appreciate math and how much there is to it.”

Before coming to Commonwealth, Mirai also had relatively advanced math experience, studying algebra, precalculus, geometry, and number theory in middle school. That robust foundation made joining Calculus 1 Advanced a natural fit for his freshman year. (“I wanted to challenge myself,” he says. “It ended up going really well.”) Now, as a sophomore, he’s taking Theoretical Calculus alongside Thomas. Both have a predilection for proofs, despite their challenging nature. “It’s often difficult to understand the proof,” Mirai says, “but I can see myself getting better at it, which is nice.”

Mirai echoes his classmates on the applicability of math in his science classes. He recognizes the formulas in chemistry and anticipates next year’s physics class will be that much easier given his familiarity with calculus. “I think it really helps to know more advanced math,” he says.

Proof-based courses in particular help students cultivate logic skills and the ability to quickly form cohesive, rational arguments, even outside of math. Ilaria says she can “follow a logical proof

in [her] mind, even when it leads to a startling conclusion in the physical world,” particularly in her Theory of Relativity class.

“It’s been really exciting to try to wrap my mind around these counterintuitive ideas. I see special relativity as a sort of ‘axiomatic’ version of physics, because we spend a lot of time deriving laws consistent with two original postulates. This perspective has made the material easier to think about.”

“Learning about mathematical proofs made me appreciate the logic inherent in a lot of philosophy,” Kyle says. Taking Axiomatic Set Theory, for example, has led to some heady questions; among them, “What is truth?” Advanced math classes help students ask and try to answer that kind of question, he says.

“While there is a general notion that math is linear—there is only one answer to each problem—as you get more advanced, there becomes more than one way of doing a problem or proving a statement,” Thomas says. “It’s our job as mathematicians to find these methods.”

For Ilaria, the relationship between math and other classes is symbiotic. “Honestly, I think that my other classes have more significantly impacted the way that I think about math,” she says, unable to choose a favorite course this year between Topology, English, Relativity, Bible History, and Life Drawing. “Even though I love math and I want to pursue it in the future, I’ve learned to enjoy every other subject as well, and I’m grateful to all of my teachers who share their enthusiasm every day.”

The Path to Success

So, do all students come to Commonwealth fully formed math rock stars? No. And even those who do arrive with the passion and experience of Yale undergrad math majors still find the work challenging.

“People think that the kids in our advanced math sections are there because they can put together high-level stuff with no effort.

That’s not true,” Mr. Letarte says, drawing a parallel between writing and solving math problems. The notion that “good writers” can sit down and bang out brilliance with no effort “is completely false.” And the same is true of mathematicians. “The people who excel in writing excel because they understand that if they labored over something for an hour and have to crumple it up and throw it away, that doesn’t mean that they’re bad writers. Part of the process of turning out amazing writing is understanding that you have to bang your head against the wall. And that is what people misunderstand about math. They think somehow that if you bang your head against the wall, it means you’re a bad mathematician.

The people who are amazing mathematicians are amazing because they know that that’s a normal part of the creative process that goes into doing high-level math.”

“One of my favorite things about Commonwealth math classes is that it’s easy to ask questions,” Ilaria says. “The math teachers create a friendly atmosphere, and even the hardest classes I’ve taken are filled with excitement. I’m never afraid to take a guess or make a mistake.”

All agree that homework is the secret to success, and the students are quick to note that it’s not “busy work.” “For me, doing math homework often takes a while, but I think it’s really worth it because the homework helps me understand the topics better,” Mirai says. “There is a lot of homework, but it pays off when you realize how much you actually learn!” Thomas adds.

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Ilaria Seidel ’22

Ms. Boppana agrees: “For me it boils down to: No ‘drill and kill.’

Every homework problem is different. You will have to think about it rather than just applying a formula.”

In his homework assignments and classes, Mr. Letarte urges students to lay out their mathematical arguments with elegance and brevity. But as any mathematician (or writer) will tell you, elegance and brevity take time. “Math at the high level is nothing but creativity,” he says. “And there’s a kind of beauty in a mathematical argument that is exactly like the feeling you experience when you listen to incredible music, or you read a literary piece that’s beautifully written with not a single unneeded word in it. And people don’t realize that.”

Advice for Students

Mirai Duintjer Tebbens Nishioka ’24

Kyle Roke ’22

Linda He ’23

Pursuing advanced math courses at any grade level can be intimidating, but these students recommend taking the leap. “Just go for it!” says Thomas. “Advanced math classes are definitely very challenging and time consuming, but it’s well worth the effort. The teachers here make sure you understand the material, and your deepened understanding of math is the result!”

Diving into the rigorous Calculus 1 Advanced proofs as a firstyear student prepared Kyle for his upper-level math ambitions, and he suggests other students with similar interests do the same. “Trying to prove [mathematical] ‘truth’ isn’t as grand as it sounds,” he says. “Don’t be as afraid of it.”

If you don’t rack up the prerequisites to take classes as advanced as, say, Topology, you can experience the same sort of “pure math” during courses like Theoretical Calculus, which is totally attainable by senior year, says Mr. Sherry. “It’s proof based on axiomatic systems,” he says. “It’s the same approach.”

That exposure to pure math actually starts as early as Geometry at Commonwealth, he notes.

In addition to attentive teachers, other students often help guide their peers through Commonwealth’s math offerings, even if they’re beacons from afar. Ilaria came to Commonwealth largely due to the math offerings and because she met some female students who were taking advanced STEM courses in particular. “I didn’t know many other girls interested in math at the time; that made me really excited about Commonwealth,” she says. “Those students were inspirations to me throughout my time at Commonwealth, and I hope that, now that I’m a senior, I’ve become the same kind of role model for one or two of the younger students.”

For younger students, including those considering Commonwealth, Mr. Sherry stresses patience. “You don’t have to be intimidated by people who just have had more exposure [to math] than you have,” he says. “Give yourself time. Don’t feel you have to decide now. Just be open. And who knows what you’ll actually find exciting.” If a love of advanced math blossoms later in high school, you can always pursue it in college. “What we want is for you to be challenged by math, for you to grow as a math thinker, and to learn whatever you learn from it well,” Mr. Sherry says. “That’s the most important thing, not how many courses you get through.”

It takes guts to push yourself academically, Linda says. But don’t let those advanced classes intimidate you. “Follow your heart,” she says, “and join the Math Team!” t Jessica Tomer is the Director of Communications at Commonwealth School.

Thomas Du ’24

Hancock, Then and Now Step inside our first post-pandemic Hancock weekend—and step back in time through Hancock’s history...

I

t’s September 25, 2021, around 7:00 p.m., and nearly every Commonwealth student, teacher, and staff member is sitting under the stars.

Wrapped in winter coats, next to Lake Tarleton and surrounded by New Hampshire’s White Mountains, the crowd’s collective gaze is fixed on a porch-turned-makeshift-stage, strung with lights and electric with talent show performances. From a hauntingly restrained acoustic version of “Hotel California” to a horror story reading that is simply haunting, from improvised musicals to improvised kazoos, from soaring faculty solos to a band of seniors rocking out, each act enjoys a rapt crowd punctuating their performances with full-throated cheers.

In this era of COVID, such events remain a rare occurrence at Commonwealth. (We’re still holding recess virtually, and the few in-person events we have hosted had attendee limits, vaccination re-

quirements, and other safety measures.) But that cheery, supportive, and—because we were outdoors, unmasked—crowd felt blissfully normal.

The rest of the weekend, our first “real” Hancock in two years, also felt much like the Hancocks of old, with kayaking, crafting, and playing board games. Preparing massive meals. Apple picking and pie baking. Cocoa and s’mores around a firepit. Movie nights (Ratatouille and Everybody’s Talking About Jamie). And the general giddiness of running around in a darkening wood. Of course, precautions like masking indoors, HEPA filters buzzing in cabins, and an afternoon of supplemental rapid antigen testing served as reminders that, indeed, a global pandemic continues on. But there was a simple joy in being together, reminded of the depth of our connections beyond Commonwealth’s classrooms. Just as Hancock was always intended to do.

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Hancock Through the Years

H

ancock dates back to the school’s earliest days, when the school’s founder and then-Headmaster Charles Merrill, Jr., brought all students and faculty to his family’s farm in Hancock, New Hampshire, for a rustic school-wide bonding adventure designed to teach students about shared responsibility and the value of cultivating relationships, skills, and interests outside academics.

Since then, Hancock has remained one of Commonwealth’s most enduring traditions, with the school embarking on twiceyearly trips, every fall and spring, with those same goals and same sentimental “Hancock” name, though the location has changed several times. In particular, the fall Hancock is a time to reconnect with old friends and colleagues after the summer while welcoming the newest members of the Commonwealth community into the fold. The spring weekend is generally more of the same, with the graduating class savoring their final Hancock and the rising juniors learning from them what it takes to lead. It all happens over fireside chats, hours of meal prep, ambitious hikes where (almost) no one gets lost, and, once upon a time, “corvée” duty of chopping firewood and even shoveling latrines.

After settling into cabins or tents, students spend their mornings engaged in planned activities, like marathon reading sessions, apple picking, tie-dying, and games of various stripes (on boards, fields, courts, etc.). Afternoons are free time often used for swimming, boating, and hiking. The weekend usually includes dancing and the aforementioned talent show on the final night, too.

Between these frivolities, students, faculty, and staff are responsible for the work of Hancock as well. With minimal faculty oversight, student organize meals (for ~200 people, largely made from scratch), clean-up crews, and activities, growing into leadership roles over the course of their years at Commonwealth.

For decades, Hancock weekends came and went largely without incident—save for a few trips to the ER and that time a raccoon got stuck in the ceiling. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and it quickly became clear that the spring 2020 Hancock weekend could not happen as scheduled. But with quarantining deepening the hunger for connection, the school rallied to organize an event befitting the times, with a morning of virtual happenings; an afternoon of masked, outdoor, distanced, and cohorted activities; and an evening talent show over Zoom. Subsequent “Hancock-in-the-City” events became the pandemicera alternative to weekends in the woods, grounded in the community-building ethos of Hancock.

As the fall 2021 semester got underway—fully in person and with ninety-six percent of the school community vaccinated against COVID-19—reviving the traditional Hancock weekend was a priority. And after planning on an ever-shifting foundation of public health stats and safety recommendations, the school set off for a weekend in the woods, once again reveling in all that Hancock represented. Toiling over pancakes and pie crusts.

Giggling in the darkness after lights out. Shaking barn floors with dancing feet. Smiling, even behind the masks. t 26 CM Winter 2022

Turn the page for more memories....

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Relive more memories from Hancocks past on Commonwealth’s Flickr page: flickr.com/ commschool

28 CM Winter 2022

Circa 1959: Mr. Merrill brings all students and faculty to his family’s farm in New Hampshire for the first Hancock trip.

1961: The first class of students graduates from Commonwealth.

1981: Charles Merrill retires as Headmaster, though Hancock weekends at the Merrill family farm continue until the school outgrows the space.

1997: The school begins a long relationship with Camp Winona in Bridgton, Maine— though the “Hancock” name remains.

2007: Experimenting with a day trip rather than a full weekend away, the school travels to Provincetown, Massachusetts, for the spring Hancock weekend. Verdict: Full weekends are vastly preferred.

2008: Experimenting with an earlier spring Hancock weekend, the school travels to Camp Wing in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Verdict: April is too soon for Hancock.

2009: Spring Hancock returns to Camp Winona in Maine.

2020, spring: As the world grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Commonwealth community gathers for the first virtual Hancock, with events such as a Bollywood watch party, pet show-and-tell, Hip Hop Appreciation Seminar, and talent show via Zoom.

2020, fall: With the school engaging in hybrid learning (only half of the student body in the building at a time), Commonwealth conducts the first Hancock-in-the-City, a day-long event with virtual morning activities like Pandemic Mnemonic Poetry, a Hangry Hancock food chat, and Overly Complicated Board Games, with an afternoon in-person scavenger hunt and kickball game.

2021, spring: A more robust Hancock-in-theCity event sees the school taking over Daisy Field in Jamaica Plain for small group activities like croquet, friendship bracelet making, and a “Bad Fiction Appreciation Chat.” The following day, the senior class (now vaccinated!) journeys back to the Merrill family farm in Hancock, New Hampshire, for a special overnight trip (less corvée, though, due to social distancing…).

2021, fall: After months of cautiously optimistic planning, consulting with epidemiologists, and carefully watching COVID-19 vaccination and infection rates, Commonwealth goes on the first Hancock weekend away in two years, also the school’s first to Kingswood Camp for Boys in Piermont, New Hampshire.

Jennie Brown ’04 oversees a dissection with her students

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Helping Students

GROW Language and Culture with Mandarin Teacher Rui Shu

E

veryone speaks a different language, says Rui Shu, Commonwealth’s Mandarin teacher since 2016. Sometimes the difference is literal; other times, metaphorical. Regardless, studying another language reminds students that there are other worlds, other experiences, that they know nothing about—a lesson too often forgotten, she says. “Stay curious and stay open-minded by taking a foreign language, no matter what the foreign language is,” Rui urges.

“You gain access to a whole different culture. I think that’s amazing and really, really rewarding.”

Ms. Shu grew up immersed in and enamored with education. She says watching her father, a college professor of civil engineering in Beijing, and having excellent middle- and high-school teachers inspired her to consider teaching as a career. Becoming a language teacher, specifically, appealed to her because of what it represented: connection.

“I want to be that bridge to bring two cultures together,” Ms. Shu says. “I had so much fun learning English and had it open up a new world, both in terms of interacting with real people and also being able to read a lot of things in English that I wouldn’t have access to in Chinese. That was really liberating.”

Combined with a hunger to explore the world beyond her home in Beijing and a fascination with the intricacies of language, her career path became clear, and she majored in teaching Chinese as a foreign language at Beijing Foreign Studies University. She then earned a master’s at the Harvard Graduate School of Education here in Massachusetts. But the path to post-grad employment became a bit murkier, given the logistical challenges of having a student visa. “A lot of schools or companies don’t sponsor for a work visa, so it’s extra hard to find a job, but luckily I got an offer in Houston,” Ms. Shu says. There she taught Mandarin in a charter school for a year before coming to Commonwealth. (She learned of the open position from another alumna of her master’s program, Commonwealth’s then–Mandarin teacher Stacy Tan.) Happy to return to Boston, Ms. Shu’s challenge became making the curriculum her own—and overcoming Mandarin’s notorious reputation as an inaccessible language for non-native speakers. That’s a mindset and misconception she would like to change.

“I just hope that students know that even though a lot of people say that Chinese is difficult to learn to a point where it is impossible, it is not,” Ms. Shu says. Furthermore, the challenges of learning Mandarin can foster a growth mindset, helping students—with the keen and caring oversight of teachers like Ms. Shu—learn how to persevere. “You’re not always going to be good at something or bad at something,” she says.

“As long as you put in the work, you can see the results.”

30 CM Winter 2022

HELPING STUDENTS GROW Mimicking Mandarin’s subtle intonations and pronunciations is not as hard as it seems, Ms. Shu insists, and it also doesn’t matter as much as one might think. It’s important for Mandarin students to internalize that message so they don’t feel discouraged, she says. “When people consider taking Chinese, they’re always scared by how difficult tones [the four core intonations used across the language] are, which are hard. But I also have been teaching for quite a while now, and I’ve run into students who are really talented, and tones are not really a problem for them.”

Ms. Shu also encourages her students to make speaking Mandarin a full-body experience when they first start to learn tones. “If your body moves when you say things, that actually helps,” she says. You can use hand gestures to help remind yourself when there should be a rise in tone (second tone) or lower your head to signify a fall in the tone (fourth tone).

Grammatically, English and Mandarin have more in common than one might expect, Ms. Shu says. “In many cases, the word order can be very similar. If you want to say something in English, you can just translate word by word, and then you get the Chinese version.”

reading in another language,” Ms. Shu says. “You feel like you’re actually using the language.”

Of course, finding the perfect books for Commonwealth students is something of a challenge: though the seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds in her advanced classes are sophisticated readers and thinkers, their Chinese language skills are closer to that of a ten-year-old native speaker. But Ms. Shu, herself a bookworm, has been able to identify fitting young-adult books like Doudou by Window, by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi (originally written in Japanese and translated into Chinese), a semi-autobiographical novel about a young girl trying to find acceptance in school, despite having a unique, energetic personality that puts her at odds with the rigid expectations of her education system. “The language is relatively simple, but then what they’re talking about is fascinating,” Ms. Shu says. “Students talk about the progressive philosophy and practices—some they agree with, some they don’t—and they compare those with our school [and] schools they’ve been to, and it’s quite interesting.”

Like her students, Ms. Shu is prone to immersing herself in the subjects that fascinate her, whether cycling,

“ Plants will take their own time to grow roots, and there’s nothing you can do to rush them. So it’s similar to what I do, when you see the kids grow.”

Recognizing and writing characters is another common concern Ms. Shu is used to disarming. “Students have to think very differently when they’re using Chinese compared to when they’re using English,” Ms. Shu says. She encourages her students to change the way they look at Mandarin characters, imagining them as Lego blocks they can arrange or rearrange. “That’s the beauty of Chinese: the characters are very different than [English] letters, and they all have very interesting meanings or stories behind how the characters are constructed.”

Building on the successes of earlier Mandarin courses, Ms. Shu offers Mandarin 4 and 5 to her most invested students, those with both technical skills and real passion for the language. With classes conducted primarily in Mandarin, only one or two students advance to this level each year. “At the upper level, students can suggest what they want to do,” Ms. Shu says. “I then design a course that will be the most beneficial to them.”

Earlier Mandarin levels use the Integrated Chinese college textbook series; after reaching level 4 or 5, students usually pick a novel that reflects their interests. “I think it’s really fun, and it’s nice for them to be able to read a real book, as opposed to a textbook. They can know the joy of

running, or hiking (“COVID forced me to be in a more active lifestyle”), or portrait painting. “When I have an interest in something, I just go full in,” she says. “I’ll just watch all the YouTube videos available to get to know that thing. And then I will ask people around me who are experts.” For example: that “one time [she] really got into ukulele.” She particularly enjoys playing music with students, though her duet of “Lava” during the fall 2021 Hancock talent show with math teacher/guitarist Rob Sherry was a highlight of the evening.

The pandemic also led Ms. Shu to developing her green thumb and experimenting with plant propagation.

Beautiful, low-maintenance, and persevering pothos is her favorite. “They’re just thriving on their own,” she says.

“I think that's really nice.” Teaching, she says, is a bit like her gardening hobby. “Plants will take their own time to grow roots, and there’s nothing you can do to rush them.

So it’s similar to what I do, when you see the kids grow,” she says. And though teachers can and must guide their growth, there’s only so much influence one can exert.

“You need to be patient with them and let them forge their own path and learn from their mistakes. Each person grows differently and in different ways.” t

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W

here do you go when you have to go?

After hearing about his grandparents’ struggle to find public bathrooms, Amith realized how pervasive and problematic this issue really is.

“What about UPS drivers? What about Uber, Lyft

drivers? Post Office workers? They’re always on the go—where do they go?” asks the Commonwealth School sophomore.

Bathrooms, by their nature, are fairly taboo. But relieving oneself is an essential biological function, and public bathrooms are a critical municipal service. After all, we acknowledge the importance of access to fresh drinking water by sharing the location of water bottle– filling stations. And if the city will tell you where to fill your bladder, Amith says, why don’t they tell you where you can relieve it?

Like many homebound people during the pandemic, Amith’s grandparents turned to neighborhood walks for fresh air, exercise, relaxation, and simply a change of scenery. But they found they couldn’t walk far from their home, because they knew they wouldn’t have access to a bathroom. The reality for many people, particularly older individuals, is that they simply need to use the bathroom more frequently, Amith says. This was challenging enough before COVID-19, but private businesses have become all the more reluctant—or unable—to allow non-customers into their facilities.

So Amith created bathroomaccess.com to map out and list public bathrooms—a multifaceted project/crash course in computer programming, data collection, and coordinating with local officials. His website, like its subject matter, is purely practical: overlaid on a Google Map or in list view, you can see the bathroom’s address; hours, which can also serve as a filter; and general notes.

There are other apps and maps that plot bathrooms; Boston has one, in fact. But Amith says the existing apps are hard to find, and they can have incomplete data.

They often include private restrooms as well, “which would be just as good as walking around and finding a McDonald’s,” he says. “You don’t really need an app for that.” And many cities, including Somerville, had nothing at all. Amith set out to change that, one line of code at a time.

“In addition to people being able to find public restrooms, my main aim was that our local city governments need to project inclusivity,” Amith says. “If there are no mentions of public restrooms on any of the city websites, how inclusive are they being? Over time, my goal became equally balanced between helping people find restrooms and advocating for our local communities to acknowledge all biological needs and be welcoming to all who use their public spaces.”

32 CM Winter 2022

Where

to

One Student’s Quest to Increase Bathroom Access

Go? 33

Luckily, Amith had a Commonwealth connection to contacts in local governments: history and City of Boston teacher Melissa Glenn Haber ’87, who has served as a sounding board throughout the app’s development. “She was really helpful and helped me think through the project,” Amith says. “She also set me up with the higher ups at the Somerville HHS [the Department of Health and Human Services], and, to their credit, they were really interested in my project.”

With contacts in hand, Amith called the city government inquiring about all of their public buildings, like libraries, police stations, and city hall. These buildings only reopened their public bathrooms in July of 2021, and information was often out of date, stymying Amith’s research for a time.

The view of public bathrooms in Somerville and Cambridge on bathroomaccess.com An overburdened government didn’t help. “I was spending hours and hours refreshing my inbox [waiting for a response], like three or four times a day,” he says. “My mom was like, ‘They have a lot of things to deal with!” But already a seasoned government interloper, Amith now knows the key is to “give them time Amith started working on bathroomaccess.com in May of 2021, in and and make them interested in what you’re doing. You need to pitch to around his final exams at Commonwealth; progress was slow then, he them in a way that they will understand.” His persistence paid off, with says, but he worked in earnest over the summer. Even now, Amith spends individual contacts ultimately providing invaluable intel. Somerville Parks most of his free time on the site, he says, and he estimates having devoted and Recreation Director Jill Lathan was particularly helpful in supplying about 100 hours to bathroomaccess.com thus far. locations of porta-potties, for example. From there, it was a matter of Starting with just a basic familiarity with HTML, Amith ultimately using the government data—and filling in the gaps by visiting neighbortaught himself the programming language Django to bring his idea to hoods on foot. “Finding the restrooms wasn’t too big of a deal,” Amith life, deepening his existing knowledge along the way. “I had to figure says blithely. out how their systems worked, and then I also needed to relearn all this In cities like Somerville, “public bathrooms” sometimes mean stuff,” Amith says, since programming languages can evolve significantly permanent plumbed buildings, sometimes just porta-potties in a semi-perover time. He’s dipping his toes into mobile development as well, making manent location. But Amith notes that they vary widely by community, sure his website is responsive on smartphones. and residents have wildly varying levels of access. While he could’ve done The database is powered by a library Amith installed that takes an his bathroom research independently, getting government buy-in was address and uses its latitude and longitude to plot it on a map. Of course, important to him. “If you’re not showing where people can go to the Amith had to squash some technical bugs along the way, like when he bathroom and how inclusive your community is, you’re sort of shunning tried to populate his own address and his program spit out a location in Uber and Lyft drivers. You’re shunning your Post Office workers,” he the wrong state. says. “The apps are just trying to fill the void.”

Amith’s app dovetails nicely with his Commonwealth course work.

He’s taking Computer Science 2: Designing with Classes, a college-level course focused on the mathematical underpinnings of computation. “I really like CS,” he says. “I already know a little bit of Java, so right now, Amith worked with Dan Moore, the Web Developer and Multimedia it’s a little bit easier for me, but I know it’ll just pick up a lot more. I’ll be Designer for the City of Somerville, to find the best online placements learning a lot more of Java, and I’m really excited.” He chose Commonfor bathroomaccess.com; the site will be featured on the Shape-Up wealth, in part, because of its strong STEM offerings. (“I just felt like Somerville site, the “New Residents” guide, and their “Be Somerville” what Commonwealth had to offer was really great…. It’s been a great and SomerServe pages (as an example of a creative and civic-minded voldecision.”) The algorithmic nature of his computer science classes—that unteer project), to start. The Rotary Club of Weston & Wayland recently it’s more than web development—appeals to Amith as well. “Web develrecognized Amith for his work on bathroomaccess.com with their Rising opment is like when you already have something, and you just need to Youth Leadership Award as well. figure out how to put it on a website, whereas algorithms and stuff like In addition to adding more cities and towns to his database, Amith that are about ‘how do I make this idea.’ It’s more logical.” hopes to expand the breadth of his research, perhaps adding a facility “cleanliness” field or noting if a porta-potty is seasonal. He’s intrigued by the idea of crowdsourcing the information but wary of what that might do to the accuracy of the site. He also plans to tackle these tasks over Programming the app is the easy part. Working with people is harder— Project Week, an annual happening at Commonwealth where students particularly when you’re a young person trying to catch the government’s engage in deep work on a subject of their choosing. attention in the middle of a pandemic. “I’m not really on the list of priorUltimately, Amith hopes to make local communities more openly ities,” Amith says, though he recognizes that attending to the COVID-19 inclusive of the needs of all their citizens and to make it less taboo to acpandemic has been and must be the government’s top concern. He also knowledge that all humans have basic biological needs. “I thought, why appreciates that it would unexpected even under non-pandemic circumdon’t I just do it for all the city governments that are near so that people stances to have “a fifteen-year-old who doesn’t go to school in their dislike my grandparents, or people like our taxi drivers, don’t have to worry trict, who doesn’t live in their cities, asking them some random question.” about where they’re gonna go?” t

The Programming Part

What Happens Next?

The People Part

34 CM Winter 2022

CWSAA Commonwealth School Alumni/ae Association

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tay connected to Commonwealth through the Commonwealth School Alumni/ae Association.

All alumni/ae are members, and a dedicated CWSAA board plans and coordinates the association’s work and events, from virtual reunions to social mixers and other happenings designed for a socially distanced world.

Learn more about the CWSAA, its leaders, and how you can get involved at commschool.org/alumniae.

DON'T MISS A MEETING All Commonwealth School alumni/ae are invited to join us, in person at school or via Zoom, for our upcoming CWSAA meetings.

Please save the dates below. Registration info will be shared in advance of the events. n

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Wednesday, March 2, 2022 Monday, May 16, 2022

If you are interested in joining the CWSAA board or just want to learn more, contact Director of Annual Giving and Alumni/ae Relations Morgan Chalue: mchalue@commschool.org.

HOW TO GET INVOLVED Share a Class Note

Class Notes are now online! This means more space for your stories and more timely updates from your classmates. Share your news at commschool.org/notes

Become a Mentor

As you may well recall, mentors can change the trajectory of a young person’s life, and our students rely on alumni/ae mentors for Project Week, Senior Projects, the college search, and more. Here’s your chance to pay it forward: commschool.org/alumniae

Keep in Touch

Get every Commonwealth update, every time, by ensuring your contact information is up to date: commschool. org/update

Follow On Facebook

Make sure you’re following the alumni/ae Facebook page for the latest school news and all of our fun flashbacks (memories of Merrill Cup or original Hancock, anyone?): facebook.com/commonwealthalumniae

Questions?

Reach out to Morgan Chalue, Director of Annual Giving and Alumni/ae Relations, at mchalue@commschool.org

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20 Questions with...

Wesley Morgan ’06

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fter his time at Commonwealth and Princeton, Wesley Morgan ’06 started working as a freelance journalist in Iraq and Afghanistan during the summers. He reported on the Bush and Obama administrations’ surges in the two wars and before covering the Pentagon for Politico during the Trump administration. In March of 2021, Random House published his book The Hardest Place: The American Military Adrift in Afghanistan’s Pech Valley.

1. What three words best describe Commonwealth?

Brownstone, hard, small.

2. What was your favorite Commonwealth class?

Ninth-grade Ancient History with Mr. Conolly.

3. What’s your #1 piece of advice for Commonwealth students?

Write simply and clearly.

4. What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

“Try to step in the footprints of the point man with the minesweeper,” maybe.

5. If you could study any field aside from your own, what would it be?

Whatever field it is where you get to study the behavior of killer whales across populations.

6. Whom do you most admire?

Journalists who cover wars happening in their own countries.

7. When and how did you first become interested in journalism?

I was writing for my college newspaper when I got a chance to cover the 2007 surge in Iraq. While I was there I met really good war reporters like Evan Wright, Michael Gordon, and Alissa Rubin and got to watch them work, which convinced me that was what I wanted to do.

8. What is your favorite aspect of your career?

Getting to try to figure out puzzles, basically, and the satisfaction of feeling like you’ve figured out an explanation for how and why something happened on the battlefield that killed people or affected people’s lives.

9. What book do you wish you had read sooner?

The Trees by Conrad Richter.

10. If you could have dinner with one person—alive or dead—who would it be?

Under certain circumstances, an Egyptian al-Qaida operative named Abu Ikhlas al-Masri, who I always wanted to interview for The Hardest Place but was never able to find. He was the antagonist to a decade’s worth of U.S. commanders in and around the Pech valley.

11. Coffee or tea?

Neither, really.

12. Pen or pencil?

Pen.

36 CM Winter 2022

13. Scripted or improvised?

Improvised.

14. What is your favorite museum?

The American Museum of Natural History in New York.

15. What is your favorite mode of transportation?

Bike.

16. What is your favorite paradox?

The bracketing paradox.

17. What do you bring to a potluck?

Chocolate chip cookies—actually ones conforming to a recipe that my eleventh-grade U.S. history teacher, Ms. Rome, used, I think.

18. What was your go-to Boston eatery?

Newbury Pizza (RIP) and Kashmir were the two.

19. If you could live as a local for forty-eight hours anywhere in the world, where would you go?

The Pech valley in Afghanistan.

20. What is the best gift you have ever received?

High on the list is a Swedish novel about Vikings, Frans Bengtsson’s The Long Ships, which my dad gave me.

Commonwealth students cheer each other on. They work collaboratively on weekly jobs. They study and explore new topics together. And they share in each other’s victories.

The Commonwealth Fund bolsters this caring and collaborative environment. Your support helps us broaden opportunity, hire and retain expert faculty, and invest in the strength of our community.

Your contributions to The Commonwealth Fund make this school year possible.

Thank you for your generosity.

To make a gift to The Commonwealth Fund, visit commschool.org/give If you have any questions, please contact Director of Annual Giving and Alumni/ae Relations Morgan Chalue at mchalue@commschool.org

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151 Commonwealth Avenue Boston, Massachusetts 02116 www.commschool.org

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Perhaps the only tradition as constant as Hancock itself is music at Hancock (and guitar music at that). The fall 2021 trip—our first weekend away as a school community in two years—was no exception. Learn more and relive the memories on page 25.