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2021-2022 | The Compendium

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Contents F EAT U R ES

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Soundscapes Whispers, Waves, Wurlitzers, and Echoes of Humanity.

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Is It All About “Noise”? A soundscape experience with 8D music.

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Preparing Our Pioneers to Be Literate Citizens

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Fostering Arts Connections Across Campus STAR Artists are dynamic members of our community.

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A Mobius Transforms a Community

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Belize—Exploration and Adventure in Central America

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Commencement 2022: Remember Next Time A transcription of the faculty address.

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Commencement 2022: Mac and Cheese—A Recipe for Success A transcription of the senior class address.

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Commencement 2022: The Journey of Hope A transcription of the commencement address.

D EPA R T M ENTS

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IFC

Message from the Head of School

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Departing Longtime Trustee Members

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Meet Our New Board of Trustee Members

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School News—Retiring Faculty and Top Stories

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Student Commencement Awards

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The Class of 2022

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End of Year Awards

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Alumni/ae News—Class Notes

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An Honor Roll of Donors

COMPENDIUM 2021–2022 | EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 1


Departing Longtime Trustee Members

With gratitude to our admired friends.

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agle Hill’s growth and ascension to the forefront of education is thanks in no small part to the outstanding vision and leadership of its board of trustees. Unfortunately, but appropriately from a governance perspective, the terms of three longstanding and highly effective board members concluded on June 30, 2022. Remarkably, Alden Bianchi, John Gee, and Jim Richardson served on the board of trustees for a combined 72 years! While their wisdom and support will be sorely missed, each has committed to staying very involved with EHS in their own way.

Mr. Alden Bianchi

Uniquely, John Gee is the parent of an alumnus, Jim Richardson is a former faculty member, and Alden became engaged with the school through his legal practice. EHS has benefitted beyond measure from their investment, expertise, and courage to lead. From dramatic campus expansion over the last twenty years to navigating a global pandemic, they have helped create Eagle Hill’s finest hours and guided the school through its most challenging times. The students, alumni/ae, faculty, and staff of Eagle Hill School are eternally grateful for their contributions. Mr. John Gee

Mr. Jim Richardson

| COMPENDIUM | COMPENDIUM 22 EAGLE 2021–2022 EAGLEHILL HILLSCHOOL SCHOOL 2021–2022


New Board of Trustee Members

Welcome our newest trustee members. James Marvin

Jeff Gerson

James works for Expeditors International of Washington, Inc developing and directing their suite of employee leadership development programs. Additionally, James founded Expeditors’ military recruiting program, Opportunity Knocks for Veterans, focused on hiring veterans in the Continental United States and engaging with the US Department of Defense to support military to civilian transition programs. James is also currently enrolled in the Doctor of Education program at Northeastern University.

Jeff is the founder and CEO of Capital Logistics, a 3rd party logistics provider that specializes in shipping temperaturecontrolled freight throughout the United States. Jeff is also the co-founder of Capital Logistics International, a full-service freight forwarder and customs broker facilitating the movement of goods around the world. From its inception in 2009 until today, Capital has grown to over 100 employees and works with some of the largest retailers and food manufacturers in the world.

Mr. James Marvin

James completed a successful career in the Navy where he served for 20 years on active duty as a Navy Seal. He retired at the rank of Commander (CDR) in September of 2009. While in the Navy, James held a number of operational and staff-level positions in the United States as well as overseas. He has written numerous articles on various topics related to the military and has been a guest speaker on national security and other related topics. James is the father of Charlotte, EHS Class of ’22. He has co-chaired the EHS Parent Advisory Board along with his wife Joanna for the past two years.

Jeff graduated from the University Mr. Jeff Gerson of Michigan in 1992 with a BBA in Accounting and International Business. Jeff went on to receive his MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business in 1995. An avid golfer, Jeff and his wife Lisa are the proud parents of Jane ’22, Ryan, and Cole. They reside in Scarsdale, NY, and are actively involved in supporting various charitable organizations, including the American Friends of the Israel Sports Center for the Disabled (AFISCD), where Jeff is a Board Member.

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SOUNDSCAPES

Whispers, Waves, Wurlitzers, and Echoes of Humanity By Jessica Geary, English and Literature Teacher

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hat the past two years have shown us is that we need to hear and listen to each other, and we need to tune each other out; we need to make sounds of all kinds together to feel human, and we need to seek out silence to feel whole. In this time of transformation, coming out of the pandemic darkness included hearing old sounds again in a new way, and hearing new sounds for the first time in familiar places. Sound and the absence of sound is what keeps us curious, keeps us alert, keeps us informed, keeps us connected, and keeps us balanced. As the University of Virginia English professor Steph Ceraso has said, “Sound is an actor in the world that moves and disturbs, that does things to bodies that may sometimes be surprising and unpredictable” (Sounding Composition: Multimodal Pedagogies for Embodied Listening, 32).

Sound and the absence of sound is what keeps us curious, keeps us alert, keeps us informed, keeps us connected, and keeps us balanced.”

Last spring, while creating our annual one-term course, it was clear that we needed to tune in to what our ears help us experience, and to direct the focus of this year’s interdisciplinary Community Reading course towards sounds—anthropogenic and biological—and acoustic 4 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022

environments in as many ways possible. This focus led each student, staff, and faculty member to some discoveries and experiences that surprised and delighted them, and some that made them cover their ears. Regardless of tastes, what mattered was we did it together. Acting as acoustic designers and inventors, we created the vibrations of ideas, maintained the waves of forward momentum, made harmony out of discord, and chose just the right seats for ourselves at the concert of the 2021-2022 school year at Eagle Hill. Upon arriving at Eagle Hill’s bucolic grounds, one cannot help but experience the peacefulness that rural life provides. The echoes of nature’s inhabitants mixed with the laughter, formal and informal discourse and vocalizations, and the general hum of daily campus life provide an acoustic ecology that is alive with energy and movement. The colloquialisms exchanged between students and teachers who take the time to get to know each other’s habits, senses of humor, trials and tribulations, greatest hopes, and current obstacles are heard throughout the halls and dorms each day. Communication is an exchange of sound and silence, volleyed back and forth between many players. Teachers, dorm parents, coaches, and counselors engage in this play each day with students at Eagle Hill. Whether it’s Pragmatics teacher Ms. Whitaker’s verbal wellness check-in where students can share their current level of mental and emotional health in numbers, songs, colors, or even animal metaphors


Scan and listen to Ms. Whitaker’s class do a verbal wellness check-in.

Scan to hear the different ways Mr. Richard greets students.

with a trusted group of peers, or Graphic Arts teacher Mr. Richard’s sonic brand of greeting that delights students and faculty alike, these exchanges remind students to listen to their inner voice as well as to voices in their community. With our campus and community teeming with both natural and man-made sounds, we embarked on an academic journey to enhance our understanding of how sounds affect us all, what kinds of careers can incorporate sounds, and how the world—before, during, and after a pandemic—grapples with the positive and negative forces of sound waves and the many layers of acoustic environments.

The course was titled Soundscapes: Whispers, Waves, Wurlitzers, and the Echoes of Humanity, and almost every student was able to take the course for one term with teachers Communication is an who were from all exchange of sound and departments. Using two main texts and a silence, volleyed back multitude of resources and forth between to anchor the course many players.” content, teachers were able to create lessons that interested individuals in their classes and allowed them to discuss articles, videos, podcasts, and films, and to get hands-on experience with creating, recording, and editing sounds.

The first core text was David Hendy’s Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening (readers may enjoy bit.ly/EHS-Noise, the BBC radio series that the book is based on). The second core text was the Winter 2019 issue of Popular Science: The Noise Issue (bit.ly/EHS-Listen). These two texts offered a broad-spectrum examination of the ways that human and animal life on earth are intertwined with the existence and development of sounds: those made for protection, entertainment, union, or rebellion; to mark time and schedule; as a byproduct of progress;

and even those whose very existence is mysterious. In addition to these readings, students and teachers drew from an array of selections from literature, film, research, and news of current events. Some students learned about the history and culture of the deaf community and were introduced to sign language with Reading teacher Mrs. Garcia. Others, in several classes, had the opportunity to learn how to make Mathematics teacher Ms. Carter’s Soundscape class and manipulate explored the vibrations caused by sound waves using tuning forks, water, ping pong balls, and salt. sound effects like Hollywood Foley artists, and got to watch animated films that use these methods to create characters we could all connect with in situations where the emotional power of sounds was truly remarkable. Students in Music teacher Ms. Gentleman’s class investigated the concepts of 8D music, which gives listeners an all-encompassing acoustical experience through their headphones. In the Makerspace, Mr. Haupt’s class decided to make a drum set out of PVC pipes and measured the dimensions of the pipes to produce certain musical notes that echo those made by a professional drum set. English teacher Mr. McCann harnessed his love and knowledge of music’s influence on culture to give his students an experience that surely rivaled a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tour, while also letting students try their hand at being a member of the school’s Jam Band. Since sound was incorporated campus-wide this year, the History Department and IB program incorporated audio into an exhibit of primary source World War I memorabilia with ephemera, uniforms, and a new collection of original propaganda posters. Included in the display were sound recordings of veterans’ stories and music from the period that students and faculty COMPENDIUM 2021–2022 | EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 5


Using colored chalk, students in Ms. Green’s Biology class listened to music with different beats, tempos, and sounds to create art.

could interact with while viewing the objects. Next, Ms. Green’s Marine Biology class had the opportunity to meet with NOAA Fisheries researcher and bio-acoustician Genevieve Davis, Ph. D, who shared her vast knowledge of bioacoustics and underwater soundscapes and discussed her specialty of whale research throughout the waters of the Northeast, tracking Right Whales with hydrophones and acoustic buoys to help preserve this magnificent animal (bit.ly/EHS-Fish). Finally, Ms. Gentleman worked with the parents of one of our students, who are professional musicians, sound engineers, and film producers, to create a soundscape installation on campus which allowed people to experience a multitude of recordings of the rhythms, waves, sonic vibrations, and audible emotions and experiences connected to life on campus during the 2021-2022 school year.

Soundscapes with Mrs. Geary created immersive sounds of the environment using everday objects. Scan the QR code and listen how students made the vibrations and sounds of making a campfire.

Each of these classes and activities during the day began and ended at the sound of a bell, which, of course, became part of the project. Each term (every four weeks), a new bell would trumpet through the PA system, and, depending on the individual, would serenade them with a pleasant, interesting, or downright irritating sound bite. At a school meeting at the end of each term, students and teachers were introduced to that bell sound in Scan and listen to the many more depth, including its historical or class bell sounds played cultural significance and context. throughout the year. Many discussions ensued about why we have a bell in the educational system, why we associate a bell sound with our daily schedule, and what would happen

ABOUT JESSICA GEARY Following in the footsteps of her father, Jessica Geary pursued a teaching career with students who have diverse learning abilities. An integral part of her mission is embracing individualized instruction and establishing emotional and academic integrity for all students. Jessica teaches about self-esteem, philosophy, society and human nature, culture, and history through literature and written expression. Some of her favorite literary works include those that promote cultural, global, and ethical awareness in her students. Jessica is actively engaged in creating diverse and enriching opportunities for her own children (Connor,18 and Quinn,15) and students and adults at her school and in her community.

RESOURCES Ceraso, Steph. Sounding Composition: Multimodal Pedagogies for Embodied Listening. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018. Print. Hendy, David. Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening. Profile Books, 2013. Klein, Julie Thompson. “Integrative Learning and Interdisciplinary Studies,” Peer Review (2005). 6 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022


Community Reading and Soundscapes Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening

By Dr. Michael Riendeau, Assistant Head of School for Academic Affairs Ten years ago, we developed a community reading program that has allowed us—as an entire school community—to spend a year reading and thinking about, as well as tinkering with, a common idea.

Students in Mrs. Groner’s General Science class conducted an investigation they designed themselves on human hearing. The data was then analyzed and compared between peer groups and faculty.

Each year, we choose a text with which we will all engage in different ways, and every student—and nearly every teacher—joins a section of a one-term course organized around that text.

if we chose a sound that we, as a community, wanted to hear throughout our day.

Through all the opportunities, students were able to amplify their self-esteem and confidence through teamwork, exploration, and accomplishments. They built stronger character by being challenged to acknowledge that they can’t always choose their acoustic environment and must learn healthy ways to overcome frustrations, and they learned to ask questions and offer their own input.

In a world filled with sound, understanding frequency helps to give one a visual image of how these waves travel past a fixed location, and how their shape and arrangement dictate how the world receives the sounds they produce.”

In a world filled with sound, understanding frequency helps to give one a visual image of how these waves travel past a fixed location, and how their shape and arrangement dictate how the world receives the sounds they produce. This year, the campus was very much a secured place where individual students and faculty passed through with daily highs and lows, where their speed and intensity shifted, and where the various melodies of our academic institution rang out with a vast array of joyful noise.

Over the years, we have read Shakespeare, Adiche, and Nguyen together, thought about recreational mathematics, read about climate change, and immersed ourselves in soundscapes. Often, our reading has taken us beyond a text to author visits, makerspace projects, and art installations. The chance to set aside a little time for a shared experience has allowed us all to make new connections, to hear convergent and divergent perspectives, and to share in a special way in the intellectual life of the school.

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Is It All about

“NOISE”?

A Soundscape Experience with 8D Music.

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By Isabella Gentleman, Music Teacher and Academic Advisor

ith the goal of understanding the sounds around us, my Soundscapes classes each studied unique sounds they found important in. I always asked my classes how they related to sound and music in their everyday life. We talked about sounds that help them calm down, sounds that create anxious spaces, and sounds that we aren’t always conscious of until they aren’t there.

8D is a production technique that manipulates the stereo of a track to make the listener experience sound from all directions. 8D was developed to give digital music a “live” effect. We agreed as a class that listening to the music felt like you were experiencing the music more than just listening to it.

8D music is most effective with headphones.”

In term four, Maggie T. ’24 and Josh B. ’24 were intrigued by music they had heard on TikTok and YouTube made for neurodivergent brains and how it helps productivity and relaxation. The music was produced using a method called 8D. Together as a class, we 8 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022

learned more about how the music is made and why it helps neurodivergent minds.

8D music is most effective with headphones, so that you can fully experience the stereo techniques used to send the music all around you; with one headphone, phone, or


computer speakers, you lose the surround sound effect of the music traveling through your mind. Once we understood 8D music, we looked at the effects it has on neurodivergent listeners as seen on TikTok. Though there are not any conclusive studies to suggest why this music is effective, listeners with ADHD who explain their experience say that the complex dimensions of this music provide a sense of relaxation or focus because it quiets their other brain activity. As one listener put it, it feels “like a brain massage.”

Scan this QR code, sit back and listen to Eagle Hill’s Soundscape Experience.

As neurodivergent students, Maggie and Josh tested this music with their own study and relaxation time throughout the term and agreed that it was effective for calming down after a long day and staying focused on long tasks.

As one listener put it, it feels “like a brain massage.”

Being a part of a neurodivergent community, Maggie and Josh put together a playlist of the 8D songs they listened to on Spotify. They created an infographic explaining 8D music and the experiential benefits for neurodivergent people and shared the playlist by making a Spotify code.

(above) Throughout the year, students, faculty, and friends worked together to create the Eagle Hill Soundscape Experience. Scan the QR code above and listen to the curated sound collage of the soundscape installation, Is It All Just “Noise”? (below) Students Maggie and Josh created a Soundscape 8D poster and playlist called Neurodivergence. Scan the Spotify code to play the music.

These flyers went up around campus and many other students and teachers expressed their excitement about listening to the music on their own. The experience of feeling the music, instead of just listening to it, is what Maggie, Josh, and many others found most intriguing about 8D music.

Neurodivergence Playlist You can listen to the Soundscape 8D playlist called Neurodivergence by scanning the link below. Note: You will need to log on to Spotify to scan and listen.

Maggie and Josh were keen to note in their learning that 8D music can occasionally cause sensory overload, nausea, and dizziness in some listeners. Please be aware of these effects when listening.

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One of the most attractive academic offerings to prospective families looking at Eagle Hill School is that we do not have a traditional English Language Arts Department. Instead, we have a Reading Department and an English Department.

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n the Reading Department, students learn strategies to decode words and strategies to comprehend the meanings of texts. Our students learn and practice these skills by engaging in lessons and activities that promote phonemic awareness, phonics, morphological awareness, fluency, and vocabulary and text comprehension. Our hope is that our students will grow and develop into proficient readers who also, in the process, cultivate a love for reading. Our English Department offers students courses in both writing and literature. In these courses, students read and write in ways that guide them in their negotiations between self and world, and in ways that guide them in developing a clear sense of their own beliefs as well as a clear sense of how their value system intersects with others’ value systems. In both departments, we recognize that when an individual transforms into a reader, writer, maker, and critical thinker, our society transforms into one that is culturally and intellectually rich. Our departments are also connected in our fundamental concern for offering our students a robust approach to reading, writing, and multimodal communication as literacy practices that will prepare them for their lives at home, at work, and in their communities. In this article, I want to share with you what

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theoretical strands, pedagogical practices, and personal experiences inform how I envision Eagle Hill students reading, writing, and making as they grow and develop into literate citizens.

Pluralizing Literacy To Literacies Before the turn of the twenty-first century, literacy as an academic discipline was strictly limited to reading and writing, and research on literacy was mostly performed by anthropologists. Literacy was understood by teachers and researchers as a matter of decoding and encoding language. However, in the last fifty years, educators across academic disciplines have come to see literacy as a set of intellectual resources needed to enter economies and contribute productively as citizens of nation-states. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (2005) pluralized literacy to literacies, arguing that children and adults must learn multiple meaning-making practices with fluency for lifelong learning and the ongoing creation of societies that learn and grow (448). It is the Reading Department and the English Department’s shared mission to foster spaces and a curriculum in which our students will


Preparing Our Pioneers to Be Literate Citizens

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By Matthew A. Kim, Ph.D Chair, English and Reading Departments

learn and grow as readers and writers for a world that demands of them these skills. There are two movements in literacies studies that guide me as I continue to collaborate with teachers and administrators to facilitate a fulfilling literacies curriculum at Eagle Hill School: the ethnographic turn in literacies studies and the multiliteracies movement. The ethnographic turn in literacies studies can be traced back to John Szwed’s 1981 article “The Ethnography of Literacy.” In this seminal text, Szwed wonders if teachers “know what writing and reading—beyond teaching both as abstract skills—are for in students’ lives” (422) and argues that teachers and other education stakeholders should research the social meaning of literacy. What Szwed came to realize is that even among

those who are considered literate citizens, there are different patterns and performances of what these citizens read and write. Therefore, Szwed argues that we move from literacy to a plurality of literacies. Szwed informs readers that along with the reading and writing that students learn and perform in school, there is also “bedside reading, coffee-break reading and lunch-time reading, vacation reading, reading to children, Sunday reading, reading during illness, educational reading, crisis reading, commuter reading, and reading to prevent interaction with others” (425). I first read this article twenty years ago in a graduate course I took at Michigan Technological University with literacy guru Dr. Cynthia Selfe. Rereading it for this Compendium piece, I am struck by how our students are balancing reading and writing for school with far more crisis COMPENDIUM 2021–2022 | EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 11


reading than I ever did—and maybe more than you have done, too. Along with reading Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, The Handmaid’s Tale, Macbeth, We Were Liars, and the poetry of Basho and of Billy Collins, and writing persuasive essays on the American Dream and journalistic texts on athletics and drama, students at Eagle Hill and students elsewhere are reading medical and social guidelines around COVID-19 and are reading online what to do in the event of an act of violence at school or in their community. Our students are also reading and writing not only in books and on Google Docs, but also in Blackbaud drop boxes, classic composition notebooks, leatherbound journals, text messages, Instagram posts, Snapchat snaps, Twitch livestreams, and Discord discussions. Szwed proposes that teachers and researchers across disciplines write literacy ethnographies that keep the studies of literacies within the logic of everyday lives so that we may gain insight into specific groups of people who are reading and writing (429). Szwed’s study opened the floodgates, and literacy ethnographies rushed through English education and composition studies. By the time I arrived at Michigan Technological University in 2003 to earn my master’s in rhetoric and technical communication under the direction of Drs. Cynthia Selfe and Robert Johnson, the literacy ethnography was a popular genre with which to explore previously unexplored groups of people and their literacy practices. I was able to write and publish a literacy ethnography on a student gamer (Bunce, Hebert, and Collins “Taking Flight”). What I discovered then—which is still the case now—is that the organization, focus, and audience awareness that students learn while playing video games transfers into the classroom. I also realized that it is possible for a gamer’s virtual identity to shape his real-world identity in positive ways by way of what James Gee calls a projective identity, or an Other space where a gamer can bring together self and avatar. This is all to say that for me, writing that literacy ethnography and several others afterwards did prove to be a useful exercise for my present

understanding of how literacies impact our students’ lives. At those moments when I recognize that students’ interests, values, and attitudes about literacies are changing, I conduct informal literacy ethnographies so that I and my colleagues in the English and Reading Departments can continue to offer relevant learning strategies to our students.

The Roles of Literacy Sponsors Two studies that emerged from the ethnographic turn that still inform my teaching and research are Deborah Brandt’s Literacy in American Lives and David Barton’s Literacy: An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language. Brandt makes a compelling argument for why educators need to pay attention to how and why literacy learning continues to change. What stood out to me about Brandt’s scholarship twenty years ago as a young graduate student is what still stands out to me today as a seasoned educator, and that is her ideas on literacy sponsorship. Sponsors of literacy “are any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy—and gain advantage by it in some way,” or, in other words, those agents who “deliver the ideological freight that must be borne for [others] to access” literacy (Literacy and Learning 25-27). Reflecting on my own Eagle Hill School experience both as a student and as a teacher allows me to fully grasp the magnitude of what it means to be a literacy sponsor to our students. Like so many of our students, I came from a public school where I spent hours a week in a resource room filling out xeroxed math worksheets and grammar drills. I did not gain much experience reading literature and informational texts because my school thought I would not be able to meet standards. I did not gain experience writing because my school thought that without a proper understanding of spelling, whatever I had to say would not matter much. During my seventh grade IEP meeting, my parents and I were told I would be lucky to pump gas at the town gas station. My teachers

It is the Reading Department and the English Department’s shared mission to foster spaces and a curriculum in which our students will learn and grow as readers and writers for a world that demands of them these skills.

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and school district withheld literacy opportunities from me. This, of course, is a common occurrence with students who are labeled learning-disabled. When we have literacy sponsors who suppress and withhold literacy from us, we are put on a path to lead precarious lives filled with obstacles that exclude us from participating in our roles as citizens of a democracy. This is not to write that I was alone in the world without any positive literacy sponsors. My parents were literacy sponsors that modeled reading and writing for me. My father was an avid reader of paperback mysteries. My mother would write letters to her parents and friends, and sometimes she would write letters to me and to my sister. But I did not have literacy sponsors at school who would model reading and writing for me until I began eighth grade at Eagle Hill. It was here on this campus where I was first introduced to academic and social literacies such as writing a researched argument, reading Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, writing a lab report, reciting a poem, watching a play, seeing indie films in Northampton, learning how to cook pasta and sauce and how to bake corn muffins from a Jiffy box, and where to find the list of ingredients and nutrition facts on grocery store items and the cost of these items on the grocery store shelves. Students at Eagle Hill have literacy sponsors in the academic buildings and in their dormitories. We understand that students labeled learningdisabled will face social, civic, and economic hardships without having access to certain literacies, and it is our life’s work to be literacy sponsors who teach and model to our students so that they may break down the barriers to happiness and success.

practices will impact them as individuals and impact the society in which we all live on micro and macro levels: their abilities to live and thrive in urban or rural areas; to raise families, pets, and even plants; to learn in compulsory school and then learn more in college; to work in corporate America or at a trade; and to play games on boards or on computers or in parks. Each of these goals that our students might desire at a point in their lives are contingent upon reading, writing, and using technology. This metaphor works for me because it connects to our school’s Learning Diversity teaching philosophy. Part of understanding each of our students as whole, individual learners is understanding that each of our students’ reading, writing, and making practices are unique. Each of our students, before coming to us, has been part of a variety of literacy events— events where our students participated in a conversation about a piece of reading or writing—and bring to those events literacy practices, or the cultural knowledge one has going into reading or writing a text. At Eagle Hill School, we create opportunities for students to participate in new literacy events while at the same time respecting our students’ already established literacy practices. We desire to create opportunities for our students to acquire new practices that align with our school’s attitudes and values of learning. Some of our literacy events for students include reading and writing for our school’s nationally recognized literary journal, Elm and Quill; open mic, where students can read their original writing and sing and play instruments among their peers and teachers; Read-Ins and genre-specific literary events in our school’s library; and our bringing featured speakers, such as Pultizer Prize-winning author Viet Nguyen and National Book Award finalist Ibi Zoboi, to host a writer’s workshop and reading; and the everyday literacy events we offer our students, such as being in classrooms with teachers who actively read and write with them. The literacy practices we hope our students acquire along with their existing practices are an open-mindedness to read and write about unfamiliar topics; the empowerment to choose their own books; an empathy that makes a connection between them and real audiences, fictional

It is our life’s work to be literacy sponsors who teach and model to our students so that they may break down the barriers to happiness and success.

An Ecological Model for Literacy Barton is interested in how literacy in the United States is integrated into citizens’ socialization and everyday activities. He examines how reading and writing impact school, home, and work. The ecological metaphor Barton offers readers “emphasizes diversity. . . which is a source of strength, the roots of possibilities of the future” (31). I think it is clear that our students’ literacy

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characters, and one another; respect for themselves, their families, their peers, and their teachers; opportunities to positively influence their campus community; and ownership over their learning. I want to share with readers of Compendium what an everyday literacy event and the articulation of specific literacy practices look like in an English, or Reading classroom at our school. But, first, some personal history: as I was pursuing my doctorate in English studies at Illinois State University, I was a graduate instructor teaching two courses—Composition and Critical Inquiry and Writing in the Disciplines. The forward-thinking pedagogical movement in that English department was Cultural Historical Activity Theory, or CHAT. CHAT investigates literate activity, or, rather, it investigates the activities and tools people and communities take up to become literate citizens. The first rule of CHAT is that there is not one way to write well, and not all good writing has the same qualities because one’s writing changes as the writer, herself, changes; as the time and spaces in which the writer writes changes; and as the cultural and historical moment changes. As we all know too well after having lived fragilely and lost profoundly during the pandemic, the historical and cultural moment can shift without our input or our permission.

accomplish what each claims—to create ready writers—because cultural and historical situations are always changing, and genres that we take as tried and true are either disappearing or becoming hybrid with other writing genres. Many readers are not going to want to hear this, but the five-paragraph essay is not useful for students. There are more relevant, exciting writing genres that we introduce to our students to teach them the fundamentals of narrative writing and argumentation. Colleges, too, have moved away from teaching the five-paragraph essay in favor of writing genres that undergraduates will encounter in their careers. At Eagle Hill, we privilege individuation, emergence, and adhocracy, which means that the classroom as an everyday literacy event is never exactly the same. Of course, there is always a teacher and always students and always a lesson or project, but the needs of our students change and the needs of our society change. Therefore, what we read and what we write and how we approach both with our students changes. However, what does not change is that we inform our students’ literacy practices by teaching them that texts are complex, produced at socio-cultural moments, and produced based on activities, technologies, and processes available to them at certain times and in certain spaces.

At Eagle Hill, we privilege individuation, emergence, and adhocracy, and that means that the classroom as an everyday literacy event is never exactly the same.

As there is no one way to learn to read or to write, there is no perfect model for teaching, either. That is why at Eagle Hill we do not subscribe to a particular method to teach reading and writing. In the Reading Department, students engage with Orton-Gillingham, Wilson, and Structured-Word Inquiry–to name but a few of the approaches of which our teachers are expert practitioners. In a writing course, we do not subscribe to a workshop model, such as Lucy Calkins’ The Art of Teaching Writing, Nancie Atwell’s In The Middle, Bonnie Singer’s EmPower, or Judy Hochman’s The Writing Revolution. These models do not prepare students to consider what it means to write in different genres, at different times and spaces, and for different audiences and purposes. These models cannot 14 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022

In practice, students read and write texts while engaging with the following questions: what are the actual practices and actions that accompany the creation of a text? When do these practices and actions involve conflict and difference? What were the means through which this text was produced? What people, places, and technologies shape the production of this text? How do people, including the writer, think about and plan a text? What ideologies influence how people, including the writer, represent material in a text? These questions are asked in conjunction with other, more familiar rhetorical questions, such as: who is the audience of a specific writing assignment? What is the purpose of a specific writing assignment? And what is the situation that necessitates this specific written response? These are the types of questions teachers invite students to consider because they


position students to consider how texts are produced and how those texts shape who we were in the past, who we are in the present moment, and who we might become in the future.

The Multiliteracies Movement: A Look into the Future of Literacy Education at Eagle Hill School During the pandemic, I had time and space to consider the future of our English and Reading Departments at Eagle Hill School and what it is that we must offer our students. What we offer our students presently—emergent spaces and literacy sponsorship that cultivates a love of reading and writing and opportunities to engage in critical conversations and activities to read relevant texts and produce meaningful pieces of writing—we will always offer. Moving forward, I am creating professional development opportunities for faculty and classroom opportunities for students to engage in a multiliteracies approach to teaching and learning reading, writing, and making. I was first introduced to the New London Group and their theory of Multiliteracies in 2003 by Drs. Cynthia Selfe, Dennis Lynch, and Randall Fresinger in a course titled Introduction to Teaching Composition. I remember thinking then that the possibilities of this new pedagogy would offer students and teachers ways to access and participate in the many political, social, and cultural conversations happening around us. I still believe that, and in 2022 it seems even more important for students to access and smartly join the many conversations happening in the world today. The New London Group (1996; 2000), a group of educators, linguists, and educational researchers from across the United States, England, and Australia, set out to theorize a literacy pedagogy that could counter the Fordist model of education, the decline in civic participation, and the invasion of private space. The New London Group’s educational motives dovetail nicely with our motives for Learning Diversity, as one of our primary motives is to offer students an opportunity to be educated away from a bureaucratic model of school.

The two arguments made by the New London Group in their seminal text published in The Harvard Education Review were that educators need to focus on “the increasing multiplicity and integration of significant modes of meaning-making, where the textual is also related to the visual, the audio, the spatial, and the the behavioral,” and that educators also need to focus on “the realities of increasing local diversity and global connectedness” (64). Multiliteracies invites its practitioners to take on the role of designer—which encompasses reader and writer—whose goal is to use the available means of meaning-making, or what the New London Group calls semiotic resources. The term that is most associated with multiliteracies is multimodality, the idea that every text that we read, write, and make is constructed of multiple modes of communication. I, and several other teachers in both the English and Reading Departments, discuss multimodality often in our classrooms. Jessica Geary, who also has an article in this issue of Compendium, is a teacher who engages her students in multimodal composition, particularly aural composition. Jim Haupt and Tony McCaffrey engage their students in making across modes of communication with a range of materials, including metal, wood, resin, and coding. Kim Bonica, too, often incorporates drawing and making in her courses. Matt McCann incorporates music into his writing courses. Mary Ann Welsch invites her students to not only study word sums but also choose words that are meaningful to them and draw them out on posterboard. The Reading Department hallway is decorated with the reading work that our students engage in every day. Over the years, I have invited students to compose podcasts, short documentaries, and collages as rhetorical artifacts. It is not only writers and students in writing classes who take on the role of designer, but readers and students in reading classes too. Frank Serafini argues that readers “not only construct meaning from what is depicted or represented, but also design the way the text is read, its reading path, what is attended to, and in the process construct a unique experience during their transaction with a text” (qtd. in Serafini and Gee 2017).

Multiliteracies invites its practitioners to take on the role of designer—which encompasses reader and writer—whose goal is to use the available means of meaning-making.

COMPENDIUM 2021–2022 | EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 15


The New London Group did not only want to emphasize the variety of semiotic resources available to practitioners of multiliteracies; they also desired to put forth a pedagogy in which students and teachers could put multiliteracies into action. Their pedagogy has four components: situated practice, or having students draw on the experience of meaning-making in their lives; overt instruction, or developing an explicit metalanguage of vocabulary for discussing the elements of design; critical framing, or interpreting the social contexts and purposes of meaning; and transformed practice, or when students, as meaning-makers, become designers of their social futures.

such a pedagogy honors rhetorical invention, students’ voices, and a blending of academic and experimental discourses. A multiliteracies pedagogy affords students an opportunity to tap into their imaginations and skill sets to articulate to themselves in reading and writing, and in other modes of communication, who they are and what their values and attitudes are about our shared cultures, so that they can then write about their place in the world among others with the goal of creating positive social change on our campus and in their communities.

A multiliteracies pedagogy is valuable for our students even when they are not composing a multimodal project or reading a webtext. For example, a student writing a researched argument in a Writer’s Workshop course is still going to need to begin an assignment drawing on his or her past experiences writing. This means recalling steps in the composing process he or she took to write and recalling rhetorical facets that he or she considered in previous writing assignments. A student writing a researched argument will still benefit from overt instruction, learning terms such as invention, drafting, and revising and when and how to engage with the ideas and actions these terms represent. A student writing a researched argument engages in critical framing when they understand how they as a writer engage in the writing process and how their readers might engage with the final product. Will his or her readers, for example, act in a specific way or take up a new attitude or belief about the world? Or will the readers of the researched argument repurpose the student’s text in another genre for another set of readers? Once a student writer becomes competent in his or her abilities to write in a specific genre—in this example, the researched argument—he or she will be confident to help his or her peers compose within that genre. This would be an example of transformed practice.

As I put the finishing touches on this Compendium article, I look up from my laptop to find inspiration for my conclusion. I’ve been teaching writing for twenty years, and I still struggle to end a piece of writing. I do not want to offer you some parting, pithy advice. I look around my classroom. There is inspiration all over: books on shelves that my students have read at first with apprehension and then with zeal, analytical and experimental papers that students have written hanging in file folders so that I can show them off next year and the year after as text models, and the student artwork on my walls. My students are always my inspiration. I just celebrated ten years of teaching English and reading at Eagle Hill. My first decade has gone by in the blink of an eye. In ten years, not much has changed in terms of how we approach reading and writing with our students. I jotted down a quick list of what Eagle Hill English and reading teachers still do:

Closing Thoughts: Literacies Matter!

It is imperative for our students to read, write, make, and think often and with a purpose. There is too much at stake to not learn and embrace multiple literacies.

Another value I see in teachers adopting a multiliteracies pedagogy in the English and Reading Departments is that 16 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022

We still invite students to choose their own books based on their interests.

We still teach students how to read and write using practices that meet each student’s needs.

We still champion the idea that writing is a social activity and that writing is important and even—gulp—fun, and more fun when writers come together as a group in class or after school as a club.


• •

• • •

We still are proud literacy sponsors to our students and to one another. We still teach students a basic composing process, and we still tailor that composing process so that students can learn to write in a variety of genres.

We still host events on campus that invite students to get involved in the humanities.

relatives and friends, and our favorite hangout places have closed. •

We read and write with our students knowing that their world has become more precarious in terms of cultural, social, and economic stability, particularly for people labeled learning-disabled by society.

We read and write with our students knowing that regardless of political or social ideology, there is a lot of information which students will need to sort out and respond to responsibly and rhetorically.

We read and write with our students knowing that the communities they will live in, work in, and play in are

We still offer students new courses each year that are created by our teachers and which are often based on students’ interests. We still can brag (though we don’t…yes, we do!) that our graduates leave Eagle Hill stronger, more articulate readers and writers.

We read and write with our students knowing that we survived a pandemic but not unscathed: we have lost

We still encourage students to express themselves in writing.

Yet, in these ten years, everything has changed in how we approach reading and writing with our students. I jotted down another list: •

fraught with potential risks to physical and emotional safety, and that is not going away any time soon. I am now reading and rereading these lists. I keep coming to the same conclusion: it is imperative for our students to read, write, make, and think often and with a purpose. There is too much at stake not to learn and embrace multiple literacies. When our students can read, write, and make across available designs, they can access and participate in the important conversations occurring presently on the international stage; Now more than ever, we need our students’ voices to be heard and our students’ ideas to be experienced. Being a literate citizen matters!

ABOUT MATTHEW A. KIM, PH.D Dr. Kim is chair of the English and Reading Departments. His areas of research are rhetoric and experimental writing. Dr. Kim believes that the teaching of writing must emphasize collaboration, conversation, spatial awareness, divergent and convergent thinking, and play.

REFERENCES Barton, David. Literacy: An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. Print. Brandt, Deborah. Literacy and Learning: Reflections on Writing, Reading, and Society. San Francisco: Josey-Bass, 2009. Print. Brandt, Deborah. Literacy in American Lives. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. Print. Bunce, Matthew, Marjorie Hebert, and J. Christopher Collins. “Taking Flight: Learning Differences Meet Gaming Literacies.” In Cynthia L. Selfe and Gail E. Hawisher (eds.) Gaming Lives in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 191-202. Print. Cope, Bill, and Mary Kalantzis. Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. London: Routledge, 2000. Print. New London Group. “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures.” Harvard Educational Review 66 (1), 60-92. Print. Serafini, Frank, and Elisabeth Gee (eds.). Remix Multiliteracies: Theory and Practice from New London to New Times. New York: Teachers College Press, 2017. Print. Szwed, Jon F. “The Ethnography of Literacy.” In Ellen Cushman, Eugene R. Kintgen, Barry M. Kroll, and Mike Rose (eds.) Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook. Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2001. 421-429. Print. UNESCO. Education for All: Literacy for Life; EFA Global Monitoring Report. Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 2005. COMPENDIUM 2021–2022 | EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 17


Fostering Arts Connections Across Campus

E

STAR artists are dynamic members of our community. By Molly Romaker, Marketing Manager for The Center at Eagle Hill and Performing Arts Teacher

ach year, a select group of artists makes Eagle Hill their home for three months. As participants in the STAR Collaboration (Students, Teachers, Artists-in-Residence), these select artists live, learn, create, and collaborate as members of our community. STAR residents can be at any stage in their careers, and may work in a variety of disciplines, including visual, literary, musical, and performing arts. The common thread between all STAR residents? They are educators at heart, who want to work with young people while expanding the definition of what being an educator means; they are interested in novel, interdisciplinary educational approaches and thrive on collaboration with others.

of new performance material. Ahead of his residency, a new one-term course was created titled Devised Theater Workshop. Mr. Hunter began work with students in the course immediately upon his arrival to Hardwick, introducing them to collaborative theater-making techniques. Creative explorations the class undertook together became the seeds of future material. Mr. Hunter has continued to grow these seeds after departing Eagle Hill as “The Elviad”: a theatrical exploration of American mythology.

Sarah Elliott, a visual artist and painter, joined the Eagle Hill community from January to March 2022. Ms. Elliott came to us having recently finished her MFA in Painting at Boston During the 2021-2022 University and having spent academic year, Eagle Hill numerous years living and welcomed three incredible teaching abroad in France, STAR residents. Sam Hunter, Hong Kong, and mainland Sam Hunter performing The Elviad, a theatrical exploration of American Mythology. China. While on campus, Ms. a theater artist currently based in Berlin, Germany, Elliott collaborated with faculty kicked off the program year, joining us from September to across disciplines, joining classes in the Reading Department, December 2021. During his time on campus, Mr. Hunter contributing to one-term Soundscapes classes, leading created a first draft of a theater project—about 40 minutes after-school experimental drawing workshops for interested

STAR Collaboration at Eagle Hill School The STAR (Students, Teachers, Artists-in-Residence) Collaboration invites artists from visual, literary, musical, and performing arts genres to join Eagle Hill for a semester of focused art work, and to come together with our students and teachers to facilitate novel learning opportunities. The STAR residency program is open to artists at any stage of their careers. STAR artists are educators at heart who want to work with students while expanding the definition of what being an educator means; they are interested in novel, interdisciplinary educational approaches and who thrive on collaboration with others. 18 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022


Janelle Bighinatti, a visual artist focusing on photography, rounded out our slate of STAR residents for the year. Ms. Bighinatti’s interests in photography center around photojournalism; she sees the world through the lens of history and, through her art, makes it come alive.

Sarah Elliot’s Musical Composition.

students, and mentoring and instructing students in Portfolio and IB Arts classes. Caitlin M. ’23 reflected on her time working with Ms. Elliott in Studio Art & Portfolio Preparation: “It was a great opportunity, and I am beyond grateful for what I have learned from her. I learned so many new techniques…and how to just have your own personal process while doing your artwork.”

Sarah Elliot working with students in Studio Art and Portfolio class.

As a serendipitous tie-in to Eagle Hill’s year-long exploration of sound, Ms. Elliott’s own work also focused on the subject. By the time she departed from campus in March, Ms. Elliott had created 120 small oil paintings in a variety of colors and surface textures to act as visual notations of sound, easily moveable to create an endless range of “musical compositions.” Sarah Elliott left us with these words: “I’m hugely grateful to Eagle Hill School and the wonderful students, teachers, and staff for offering me this chance

During her residency, Ms. Bighinatti launched a campus-wide art project. For the last month of the school year, several 35 mm film cameras were placed in select locations across campus, along with simple operating instructions and photo prompts. Students, faculty, and staff alike were invited to take a portrait, and then join Ms. Bighinatti in the dark room to develop and print the resulting photos. The project asked the Eagle Hill 35 mm cameras were set up around the school for Janelle community to Bighinatti’s campus-wide art project. consider how art can interrupt or play a role in daily life, and many community members jumped on board! This year was one that saw new connections in the arts sprout up all across campus. From after-school workshops and community installations to class-specific integrations and mentorship, our STAR residents have played a large role in fostering these connections, and have laid a groundwork for the next group of artists to build from. Who will join us on campus next year? Stay tuned.

Learn more about the 2021-2022 STAR artists: Sam Hunter – www.samuelhunter.com Sarah Elliott – www.sarahelliottstudio.com Janelle Bighinatti – www.bighinatti.com

to develop as an artist and teacher!” COMPENDIUM 2021–2022 | EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 19


A

A Mobius Transforms a Community By Chris Komenda, Director of Marketing and Communications

mazing!

Upon first entering the math wing, the first word spoken by nearly everyone who sees the massive thirty-foot wooden sculpture is amazing. On the second floor of the PJM STEM Center stands a new public art display called the Mobius: a functional piece of furniture, a social gathering spot, and a fascinating community story.

A Community Project Begins Eagle Hill has a long history of creating community projects (one example is the Aspire Mural outside the Abby Theatre box office), where many people can be part of a big project, and no one person is responsible for the whole thing. So when the construction of the PJM STEM Center and the adjoining academic buildings were in the planning stages, the new math wing featuring a wide-open space and barrel-vaulted ceiling provided the perfect place for a new community project. In the early design phases, the first thought for this project was to make a writable whiteboard surface that would also be a Mobius. We considered several ideas using different materials and manufacturing methods, but none seemed satisfactory for various reasons, including cost. We didn’t give up, though, as large-scale community projects such as this offer all types of opportunities to solve problems. That is how, after watching a TedX episode, Mr. Jeff Myra, woodshop teacher, came across Nick O’Donnell at Terraform, who created furniture with the same Mobiuslike sense we were seeking.

Just a few members of the vast community who worked on the Mobius.

Terraform provided programming information and cut sheets, including detailed parts lists. The intent was to manufacture all the individual Mobius sections using the school’s Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines and assemble them on site.

Multiple Challenges to Solve Once the design was greenlit, new challenges began to emerge. The first challenge was scheduling classes to involve as many students as possible. A year-long Mobius curriculum was created for students. Some classes worked on the CAD software programming to router material on CNC machines, some students figured out how to store and organize the individual sections, and others worked on assembly. “It was really fun!” said Diamond James ’22. “It was a one-term class for me, and I really enjoyed the process of assembling the Mobius.”

Some sections were made of three or four pieces and might be cut Diamond working on the Mobius assembly. at different times on the CNC O’Donnell agreed to help, machines, to be joined later in the and after several months of production. Storing and retrieving all these pieces became a logistical exchanging ideas, a final Mobius design was approved. Using Rhinoceros 3D and parametric modeling software, challenge. A simple coding system was created and routed with the 20 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022


CNC on each piece to be accessed and assembled later. In addition, the CNC machine allowed for some personalization. “We tried to CNC as many students’ initials and graduation years as we could on some of the pieces,” Mr. Myra explained. “The initials are not really seen, but they are there. It’s like a time capsule.” Finishing was another big challenge. Initially, individual pieces were spray finished as they were made, but that didn’t work out. There were many conversations about how to spray the Mobius by covering it with a tent in the room. Right now, the Mobius is unfinished, and it looks great as is! Another challenge was how to orient the Mobius. It was not as simple as it seemed to decide which way to start and end this massive structure. The Mobius had to be moved a couple of times during assembly. Weighing approximately 2,000 pounds, moving the Mobius seemed like an overwhelming challenge. However, when twenty-six people joined in and helped move it a little, the whole structure slipped into place. Lastly, going back to retighten or adjust the connecting rods and bolts wasn’t possible during assembly. And as the Mobius increased in size, the weight of the material caused it to twist and torque, which caused some sections to misalign. More muscle was needed to lift and reposition sections to create the Mobius shape.

are created to go around whatever sized-Mobius that takes shape. Therefore, every one of the Mobius’ shapes and curves can be a math problem. Solving these problems is just algebra using the basic quadratic equation (y = ax2 + bx + c). As students progress into the higher-level courses, such as algebra II, pre-calculus, and trigonometry, they can solve more in-depth abstract problems with ellipses and oval shapes like those within the Mobius. In the future, new classes can be part of the math curriculum on how to solve these parabolas using the quadratic equation and other formulas.

The plywood edges were filled with putty and sanded smooth.

Although it seems as if the Mobius, which fits so perfectly in the math wing, were always meant to be there, its presence is due mainly to the students and staff who came together to solve problems and work collectively to create a one-ofa-kind amazing community project. “Every time I walk around the Mobius, I am reminded how amazing it is to sit on it, to look at it, and to hear everyone who comes into contact with it say, ’Wow, this is really something,’” said Mr. Myra.

“For me, the most important part of the Mobius is so many people had a hand in it—some in design, some in building it, and so on,” The last piece is attached! said Dr. Michael Riendeau. “The mix of adults and students trying to figure out problems and the concerted effort working together is really important.”

Why a Mobius? “Math is everything,” laughs Mrs. Karen Nastasi, mathematics teacher and academic advisor. “We wanted to get math involved since it would be in the math wing. The CNC machine is involved because a formula is programmed to create each piece. From a math perspective, our intention is to figure out each formula.” Each section of the Mobius is a different parabola. A Mobius can go on and on in infinity—forever—so, in theory, an infinity of parabolas

Creating the Mobius 160 (approximately) sheets of plywood 900+ CNC machined pieces 333 sections (some had 3-4 pieces per section) 236 threaded 5/16” rods: 18tpi ,11.5” long 1,888 5/16” hex nuts 2,027 wooden spacers: 1” diameter x 1” long COMPENDIUM 2021–2022 | EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 21


Belize exploration

and adventure in Central America By Andrew Ward, Science Teacher

By Molly The Cente

22 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022


y Romaker, Marketing Manager for er at Eagle Hill and Performing Arts Teacher

I

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”

—Neale Donald Walsch

n February of 2020, fifty-nine members of the EHS community, including students, parents, and staff, were anxiously awaiting our annual overseas trip. Many of them had already started packing bathing suits in anticipation of leaving the cold New England winter for the sunny beaches of Belize. News of a possible pandemic began to emerge. The information that EHS was receiving from the experts we consulted with at the time painted a grim picture that the rest of the country would eventually take weeks to realize. We were the first school to cancel our overseas tour and the first to switch to a remote learning platform. While initially disappointed, we were hopeful that things would be normal in 2021, but the pandemic kept us state-side for two full years. Two years later, only sixteen of the original group remained on the tour as the majority of students had graduated. This provided an opportunity for a whole new class of freshmen and sophomores to get involved. The anticipation couldn’t have been higher as students who originally registered as sophomores—now seniors—were anxious to travel to a place they had been waiting years to get to. While new challenges existed in traveling during the ongoing pandemic, parents and faculty were willing and able to jump through any hoops to make this trip happen for our kids. In the end, every inconvenience was worth the effort. While there existed a number of challenges in putting things in order to travel to Belize, the country is one of the easiest for US citizens to navigate. The official language is English, US currency is accepted practically everywhere, and the exchange is a constant 2:1, so calculating how many Belizean dollars you’re spending is always a snap. The country is also quite small, about the size of New Hampshire, so traveling from one region to the next doesn’t take up precious time. Many of the countries we’ve traveled to in the past have required twelve to twenty hours of flying time, so five hours of flying was a welcome change this time around. We left Boston early in the morning and found ourselves having lunch in Belize on the same day. COMPENDIUM 2021–2022 | EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 23


We met our guide, Herbert, in Belize City, which we used as a launch point for our tour. Herbert personifies the Belizean way of life rather seamlessly. You would rarely find Herbert without a smile on his face. His cool demeanor helped set those with some set of travel anxiety at ease. While I like to think of myself as pretty cool and collected most times on these tours, Herbert caught me at a moment on the very first day and told me to “drop my shoulders,” reading my body language and seeing that I was trying to rush something that didn’t need rushing.

meaningful adventures often starts, with a first, sometimes intimidating, step into the unknown.

The beginning of the most meaningful adventures often starts with the first, sometimes intimidating, step into the unknown.

The kids liked him immediately, and he gained their respect and attention right at the start. His popularity may have only come second to our driver “Charlie” who may have been one of the most well-liked drivers we’ve ever had. After a night in Belize City, Charlie and Herb took the group west to the Cayo region of Belize. No trip to Central America would be complete without a zipline tour through the forest canopy. On our way to San Ignacio, the group donned helmets and harnesses and climbed through a maze of platforms set throughout the jungle. Several students and a few adults, as well, were challenged to step out of their comfort zones as they stood high on a platform fixed in the trees. From the platform, they stared down a cable that stretched so far into the canopy that the end of the line could not be seen. Here at the very start of our tour, the students had this perfect symbolic challenge. The most 24 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022

Cheers of encouragement rang through the forest as the group reassured one another to take that first step. Wide eyes filled with trepidation turned to gleeful smiling faces as the group moved from one line to the next. As each group member rode the last line over a crystal-clear river to the final platform, they had completed their first challenge of the tour and were eager for more. Cayo would hold many more adventurous challenges for the group to take on. After taking a hand-cranked ferry over the Mopan River, we traveled to the remote Mayan ruins at Xunantunich, surrounded by forest on the border to Guatemala. The 1300-year-old temples were far larger in person than the images we had studied in class. We got a better sense of this as we got quite a workout climbing to the top of each temple to take in stunning views of the surrounding landscape.

Our guides were exceptionally knowledgeable of the surroundings, and some were actively involved in the continued excavation of the site. The kids were a bit more interested when one of the guides “excavated” a tarantula out of its hole on the perfectly kept lawns surrounding the site. With the fear of heights and spiders conquered, the group ventured to St. Herman’s Blue Hole.


At the Blue Hole, the group challenged themselves to venture into a winding cave along a shallow river on inner tubes. With plenty of headlamps to light the way and competent guides to push us along, the fear of the dark and tight spaces was easily kept at bay. That was until everyone turned off their headlamps at the farthest end of the cave, giving everyone the opportunity to experience a complete absence of light. By that point, many were glad to get back to the green glow of light penetrating the exit of the cave. For the rest of the tour, we would be bathed in sunshine as we headed east to the ocean. Most of our tour centered around exploring the second-largest barrier reef in the world, which extends along the entire coast of Belize and beyond. In the southern section of the country, the reef is miles offshore, so we traveled by boat to a private island that would gain us immediate access. For many in the group, this would be their first opportunity to see a wild tropical reef ecosystem up close. Two years earlier, we traveled to Australia and Fiji and had similar opportunities. In a previous Compendium article, I wrote about the impacts of climate change on the world’s reefs and why I felt it was important for us to travel to these places. I felt our kids should see the diversity of the reefs as they are now. Warming waters and ocean acidification paint a grim future for the diversity of these systems. Seeing the reefs in April gave us the opportunity to view the corals before the warmer summer months, which often cause bleaching, a phenomenon that in the past occurred rarely but now happens almost annually. We were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to explore two other locations in the north COMPENDIUM 2021–2022 | EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 25


along Ambergris Caye, including Hol Chan Marine Reserve and the Coral Gardens. Watching the kids build on their freediving skills was as rewarding to me as the surrounding wildlife. Kids who were uncomfortable and awkward in the water at the start of the tour found themselves diving to the bottom and petting nurse sharks at the end. There was so much more to this tour than daring adventures. We learned how to make tortillas, chocolate, jewelry, and pottery using the same tools and techniques the Mayans did. We learned how to dance, drum, and sing as the Garifuna do. I learned how to drop my shoulders and relax Belize-style. John Steinbeck once said that people don’t take trips, trips take people. People like Herb, Charlie, the countless other guides, and a wonderfully helpful group of parents and teachers made this such an enriching tour. The most rewarding part of this tour for me was to see the 26 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022

countless opportunities the kids had to overcome their fears of the unknown. I think many of them realized along the way that fear is only temporary, but regrets can last forever. I can say with confidence that we had few regrets in the end.


The

Annual Giving

Fund

The Annual Giving Fund at Eagle Hill, like the school itself, is unique in its scope and purpose. Whereas typical annual funds cover day-to-day operations and costs, ours exclusively supports faculty compensation, benefits, and professional development. This yearly effort ensures that we bring the very best faculty to Eagle Hill. In an ever-more-competitive market for top talent, the Annual Giving Fund allows us to ensure that our students are taught, coached, and mentored by educators of the highest quality.

ATTRACT Like the world around them, Eagle Hill and its faculty are constantly evolving. New personalities, talents, and passions invigorate students and inspire novel pursuits, both academic and extracurricular.

+

RETAIN Longstanding faculty carry with them the expertise of Eagle Hill cultivated from the generations of students and families with whom they have worked. They are mentors to students and faculty alike.

Your gift to the Annual Giving Fund will ensure that the Eagle Hill students of today and tomorrow continue to experience a life-changing education. Please consider making a difference for those that make such an impact.

Music Teacher

Makerspace Coordinator

Jim Haupt

Jenna Hubacz

“Music is an opportunity to connect as a community.”

“Be curious of the outcome and don’t be afraid.”

“We teach students to be resilient and strong self-advocates.”

Faculty since 2019

Faculty since 2019

Faculty since 1999

Isabella Gentleman

Dean of Faculty

www.eaglehill.school/agf | T: 413.477.6000 | E: development@eaglehill.school – |

COMPENDIUM 2021 2022 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 27


SCHOOL NEWS-Retiring Faculty Three admired and longtime Eagle Hill faculty and staff members retired in 2022 as the academic year came to a close. Through their years of commitment and dedication, they have inspired hundreds of students. With gratitude and appreciation, the entire Eagle Hill community wishes them well in retirement! Here are a few of their parting thoughts on their experiences and time at Eagle Hill School.

I WILL MISS MOST: I will miss Eagle Hill, especially my students and the pool.

19

YEARS

FAVORITE MEAL IN THE DINING COMMON: Lamb stew.

Ms. Tatyana Malyk World Languages Teacher WORD TO DESCRIBE EHS EXPERIENCE: Fulfilling

HAPPIEST MEMORY: My first Toga Party with Caroline Toomey ’07, Brian Halpin ’08, and Mr. Barnett.

18

YEARS

Dr. Chui “Andy” Hwang Mathematics Teacher WORD TO DESCRIBE EHS EXPERIENCE: Independent HAPPIEST MEMORY: When I was hired!

WORDS TO SUCCESSOR Teach Latin and make it fun!

Carp e Di em! MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT: The expression of fear during white water rafting. I was very embarrassed!

Toga Party 2022

ON MY BUCKET LIST: Travel—first on my list is New Mexico!

28 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022

Mathematics Department 2005 Mrs. Nastasi*, Mrs. Nahorniak (retired), Mrs. Southwick (retired), Mrs. Bachtold (retired), Mrs. Linnehan*, Dr. Hwang (retired) * still teaching Mathematics at Eagle Hill School


MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT: When I forgot my duty night.

31

YEARS

Mrs. Maryann Jackson Education Secretary

FAVORITE MEAL IN THE DINING COMMON: Baked salmon and mussels. I WILL MISS MOST: My bright classroom.

WORD TO DESCRIBE EHS EXPERIENCE: Extraordinary ON MY BUCKET LIST: Spending time with family, reading, gardening, quilting, and traveling. And watching the first snowstorm from my couch and not driving to school!

FAVORITE MEAL IN THE DINING COMMON: Salmon dill chowder, sweet potato ginger soup, and the delicious desserts.

THE BEST THING ABOUT TEACHING: Thankful students.

HIDDEN TALENT: Dr. Hwang is an accomplished classical guitarist!

FAVORITE THINGS: Fresh cut flowers! HAPPIEST MEMORY: Helping to fill in washing dishes with Jeanette during a past Family Weekend. It was a hysterical I Love Lucy reenactment and we were forever known as Lucy and Ethel after that!

I WILL MISS THE MOST: I will miss the camaraderie of co-workers who are like family.

HIDDEN TALENT: Helping Dr. Riendeau figure out the copier machine!

Maryann with Jeanette Tetreault (retired), aka Lucy and Ethel.

COMPENDIUM 2021–2022 | EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 29


SCHOOL NEWS-Top Stories Title Town for Eagle Hill Athletics It was a banner year for Eagle Hill athletics with four new championships to add to the school’s winning history.

Winter Teams Are Hot Competing against eight teams from around eastern Massachusetts, Eagle Hill’s varsity wrestling team took home the Eastern Independent League (EIL) Championship on February 12, 2022. This recognition is the first wrestling championship for Eagle Hill School’s athletic program. Eleven Eagle Hill wrestlers took home top-four finishes in their weight classes and three were overall winners. In addition to winning the team championship, Eagle Hill’s captain Aden H. ’22 was voted the Most Outstanding Wrestler of the EIL tournament. Following the EIL tournament, eight EHS wrestlers qualified to compete at the New England Preparatory School Wrestling Association (NEPSWA) Championships. The NEPSWA tournament, held at Deerfield Academy, hosted four preparatory school wrestling leagues from around New England, including the Class As, the Western New England Independent School Wrestling Association (WNEISWA or Westerns), the Independent School League (ISL or Graves-Kelsey), and the EIL. In recognition of their performances at 30 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022

the NEPSWA event, two Eagle Hill wrestlers, Tyler F. ’25 and Ethan S. ’26, qualified to travel to the 86th Annual National Prep Wrestling Championship in Maryland, competing against the very best high school wrestlers in the country. With both national qualifiers and several talented teammates returning next year, the future is bright for EHS wrestling. Adding to the winter sports excitement, the boys’ varsity basketball team secured another River Valley Athletic League (RVAL) Championship. Remarkably, this represents their third league championship since 2018. The team traveled north to Dublin School in New Hampshire, a perennial contender that had defeated Eagle Hill in a close contest during the regular season. Eagle Hill was ranked #2 going into the tournament. Hampton C. ’23 was the top scorer in the game with thirty-one points. With determination and teamwork, they played a hard-fought, intelligent game and avenged the earlier loss to take home the title.

Spring Sports Dominate The school’s varsity golf team outplayed five other teams in the Southeastern New

England Independent Schools Athletics Association (SENE) to win the 2022 SENE Golf Tournament. The SENE Tournament was played on Eagle Hill’s home course at Cold Spring Country Club in Belchertown, MA. Competing in the tournament were five schools, including Rocky Hill Country Day School (East Greenwich, RI), St. Andrew’s School (Barrington, RI), Providence Country Day School (East Providence RI, and The MacDuffie School (Granby, MA). Each team played with four of their school’s top players.

Students competed in groups of four mixed with players from each opposing school. The tournament was stroke play, in which the four scores from each school were added together to determine an overall winner after a full eighteen-hole match. All four of Eagle Hill’s top-seeded team members to play in the tournament were recognized as SENE All-League Players.


Eagle Hill’s Josh D. ’24 was named the SENE Varsity Golf Player of the Year for winning the tournament with the lowest round at seventy-five.

Elm & Quill Earns High Praise The National Council of Teachers of English commends Eagle Hill School’s literary magazine. Eagle Hill School’s literary magazine Elm & Quill was awarded the 2021 Recognizing Excellence in Art and Literary Magazines (REALM) award. The REALM certificate with the designation “Excellent” was announced via email on January 31, 2022, by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Eagle Hill hosted the inaugural SENE 2022 Ultimate Tournament at Pioneer field on May 4. Four New England Preparatory School Athletic Council (NEPSAC) teams in the SENE league participated: Dublin School (Dublin, NH), CATS Academy (Braintree, MA), The MacDuffie School (Granby, MA), and Eagle Hill School (Hardwick, MA). Not to be outdone, the varsity ultimate team won the 2022 SENE Ultimate Tournament, beating out the three other rival schools. This tournament marks the school’s first ultimate championship win.

Elm & Quill’s “Excellent” designation was achieved for its high-quality level of writing, variety of students represented in the magazine, artistic quality, rhetorical variety, editing, and other qualifying criteria. The magazine is a collection of student writing, poetry, photography, and artwork arranged by a group of student editors and two faculty advisors. The school has produced three issues of Elm & Quill, with a total of three issues planned each year.

During this one-day invitational, each team played three games. The first team to reach eleven points was declared the winner. Team captain Ryan F. ’22 was named SENE Player of the Year and All-League Player.

NCTE’s REALM program publicly recognizes excellent literary magazines produced by students with the support of their teachers. A total of 209 literary magazine entries were submitted by schools across the country and were scored by national judges. REALM is designed to encourage all schools to develop literary magazines that celebrate the art and craft of writing.

School spirit and emotions ran high this year with outstanding performances by all our athletes. Four new banners will proudly hang in the Baglio Sports and Fitness Center commemorating this memorable year.

The magazine is full of creative work and artistic talent that characterizes the Eagle Hill community. Scan the QR Code to the right to enjoy all three award-winning issues. These issues showcase the creative talents of Eagle Hill’s student writers and artists. Please take a few minutes to appreciate the accomplishments of these students!

Scan to read all three awardwinning issues of Elm & Quill.

COMPENDIUM 2021–2022 | EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 31


SCHOOL NEWS-Top Stories One-Act Play Wins METG Regionals Competition For the second time in Eagle Hill’s theater history, the school’s one-act play advanced to the Massachusetts Educational Theater Guild (METG) 2022 High School Festival State Finals. Eagle Hill was one of fourteen schools across the state to win the regional championship and is recognized among the very best in high school theater for this outstanding achievement.

Helping Our Pollinators

Teaching our students about the agricultural food chain. Here at Eagle Hill, we are thrilled to see continued interest from our student body concerning the importance of pollinators in nature. We offer studies in both ornithology (birds) and melittology (bees) and discuss the importance of both species to our global food supply. In All About Birds class, students learn from Ms. Ashley Green about pollination, identification, migratory patterns, and more. Students also collect maple syrup and learn how to prepare it for consumption! In Beekeeping, Dr. David Leahy teaches students how to build a hive, manage a honeybee colony, as well as how to harvest wax and honey for sales, including through the creation of lotions and lip balms.

METG’s annual drama festival is a competitive program that includes 112 one-act plays produced by member high schools across the state. The competition is usually organized across three levels—preliminary, semi-final (regionals), and state finals —with student excellence in acting and technical design being recognized at each level. There were no state finals in 2022. On Saturday, April 2, 2022, students performed the school’s one-act play, Games Played at Terryville High, at Leominster High School. Thirty-nine high school One-Act plays competed for regionals. Fourteen one-act play performances were Scan the code to watch the named state finalists and chosen as winners play on-demand. Please note of the regional championship. the play contains adult themes In addition, six students were recognized for the following exceptional accomplishments: All-Star Acting—Declan M. ’23 All-Star Acting—Howie B. ’22 All-Star Acting—Andre L. ’23 Lighting Design—Ashton C. ’23 Sound Board Operations—Tuva P. ’23 Sound Design—Alec S. ’24 32 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022

and strong language that may not be appropriate for younger audiences.

This year Dr. Leahy reached out to Massachusetts Agriculture in the Classroom, an educational, non-profit organization. Eagle Hill School was awarded a grant which allowed the school to plant a large area of blueberry bushes, wildflowers, and apple trees, helping both our local birds and bees to grow and thrive. In a field next to the hives, are twelve apple trees—four varietals: Cortland (four), Fuji (four), Empire (two), and Red Delicious (two); and fifty blueberry bushes—two varietals: Elliot (twentyfive), and Northland (twenty-five). Hopefully, soon our students will be able to pick their fruit for themselves, as well as selling these products and honey at our local farmers’ markets!


Lights, Camera, Action! There was plenty of glitz and glamour at this year’s Hollywood-themed prom. This annual fun-filled dance party was held at Eagle Hill School under a large tent set up in the amphitheater. Outside the tent, an oversized Hollywood sign was the perfect spot to take early evening photos and to gather before dinner and dancing. Entering the tent, attendees paraded down a red carpet for a quick celebrity photoshoot before joining the party swirl inside. The interior was transformed into a glamourous Academy Awards party, including a prop-filled photo booth, colorful lights, swag gifts on the tables, and selfie sticks . Catered by our own Eagle Hill culinary team, the multicourse meal and desserts were exceptional. DJs Mr. G. and Mr. McCann kept the dance floor packed with a rocking selection of music. Our thanks go to the prom committee and the many people who worked tirelessly to make this special celebration a night to remember.

See more prom photos by scanning this QR code.

COMPENDIUM 2021–2022 | EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 33


Commencement 2022 Remember Next Time

A Transcription of the Faculty Address By Dr. Eric Stone

F

irst, let me say I am truly—and I don’t use this word lightly— honored to be here in front of you, your families, my fellow faculty, and invited guests. My talk starts with a snippet of a poem that has rattled around in my head since I read it. The line comes from a poem titled “Pursuit” by Stephen Dobyns. It is: “Each thing I do I rush through so I can do something else.” This one line got me thinking about all the time we—that’s all of us—fail to live in the moment. How many times have you said: “I can’t wait for the day to be over,” “I can’t wait until the weekend,” “I can’t wait until vacation,” “I can’t wait until…” fill-in-the-blank. I have been saying to students over and over again not to rush through life. The next thing isn’t always better than the thing you are doing right now; the hope that it will be or the possibility that it will be is always there, but it minimizes the here and now. Maybe the older

34 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022

we get, the more we realize that the here and now is good enough. At least I think so, but even I forget to take my own advice. Here’s a good example: I had to stop myself during the writing and practicing of this talk from saying, “I can’t wait until this is over so I can enjoy the graduation,” instead of feeling good about the process and being selected to give this talk. Maybe you are thinking the same thing right now: “I can’t wait until Stone is done so I can go pack up, be with my family, and get graduation over with so I can do what I want to do now and next year.” My hope is that at least once this weekend you will stop and appreciate what you have in a particular moment—the presence of your family, the nervous jitters, the anticipation of finishing high school, the love of your friends. It’s important because you will never feel this feeling again. Sure, you’ll graduate college or other programs or finish training somewhere, but you will never again get to feel the moment of graduating high school or this particular moment right now.


Thinking about moments in life got me reminiscing about parenthood. I was speaking to Dr. Miller about the invasion of our children into our beds in the middle of the night and the chaos it causes in the form of no blankets, kicks to the kidney, nine inches of sleeping space, or the occasional foot in the face. All three of my children, at some point in their childhood, climbed into bed with my wife and me, sometimes all three at once. And then it stopped. I remember thinking when my youngest, Nathan, was eight or so, that any night he came into our bed could be the last time he did it. I can’t tell you what the last time was like. In fact, I can’t tell you when it was, just that it stopped. For as much of an inconvenience as it was when it was happening, I will never get those times back. Look around—this is the second-to-last time you will all be together as a class. Isn’t this a moment worth remembering? Is it worth rushing through just to get to tomorrow? I started thinking about my childhood and significant moments. Part of it, I think, is that I often ask myself: what moments, when I was your age, would I want to hear about from someone like me? I had a sort of mixed childhood in terms of stability. My grandparents raised my sister and me because both of my parents were battling alcoholism and drug addiction. The transition to living with my grandparents and my alcoholic father happened for me in the third grade. I learned about living in the moment because I never knew what the next moment would bring. Despite my grandparents providing a solid home life, I still had to contend with a father who, at any moment, could be drunk or going through withdrawal. The alcoholic seizures started when I was twelve, and I knew during any of his abstinence cycles he could have a seizure. I savored the moments of calm when he was neither drinking nor withdrawing. When these moments occurred, he was the father he was supposed to be, but when he wasn’t…Let’s just say I have a lot of bad memories of him, like going to parent-teacher nights with him drunk or showing up at my high school football games drunk, or the last time I saw him alive. A long story short—I was 26. He was living in a rooming house by this time, drinking himself out of his family home and then out of his girlfriend’s apartment. I picked him up for Easter dinner at my grandmother’s house, but he couldn’t make it past the first course. He was withdrawing from alcohol, and he was suffering from the shakes and vomiting. I remember I was pretty upset with him for ruining yet another

family function and because I had to leave and take him back to his rooming house forty minutes away. I gave him a few bucks and told him I would see him later. No “I love you.” No “goodbye.” A “see you later.” Two weeks later I got a call at work from my wife saying that the police had found him dead. He had been lying there for two or three days. That was the first night I cried since I was a little boy. I didn’t know if it was because he had died or if it was because of our last meeting. I still don’t. My point, I guess, and I have thought about this a lot, is even when things seem like they are bad, we owe it to ourselves to live in the moment. I remember that I cried, and I allowed myself to feel sadness that night and not push it away. Would I have felt differently if I had said something other than “see you later”? I don’t know. Maybe. Perhaps. Would I focus on the bad memories like this one instead of the good ones that I also had, despite his alcoholism? I don’t know, but it does shape the way I approach my life now. I realized over time that I don’t have to regret the past or ignore it, but rather try to live in the moment. And when I catch myself wishing for the weekend or vacation or for a lousy situation to end or whatever, I try to stop those thoughts and key in on the here and now and feel whatever it is I am supposed to be feeling.

The two most powerful words in the English language are ’next time’. ”

If you think about it, everyone is obsessed with time. Think of all of the sayings or phrases associated with time: time waits for no one, time is money, running out of time, overtime, ticking like a timebomb, timestamp, time flies. Or songs: “One Moment in Time,” “Closing Time,” “Baby One More Time,” “One Last Time,” or who could forget “Time Flies” by Drake. The list goes on and on—believe me, I looked it up. And of course, it’s in literature from poems to novels. Which brings me to my next piece of advice, and once again, I can’t take credit for it being an original thought; I read it in a novel and the words resonated with me, and more importantly, I think it’s perfect advice. The line goes something like, “Do you know what the two most powerful words are in the English language?” Stop! I know what some of you are thinking… The two most powerful words in the English language are “next time.” You might be thinking, “What’s so powerful about those two words?” Those two words allow you infinite possibilities. They allow you to make a mistake. They allow you to pick yourself COMPENDIUM 2021–2022 | EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 35


up and try again. Screw up a test—next time. Make a mistake at home or on the job—next time. Say something you shouldn’t have said—next time. The words don’t absolve you from the mistake or the error, but they give you an opportunity to get

You have the power to make changes, to try something new, to approach any circumstance with optimism because you know that you have the chance to improve.”

better the next time you do whatever it was that you messed up. You are not defined by your mistakes, nor are you limited by them. You have the power to make changes, to try something new, to approach any circumstance with optimism because you know that you have the chance to improve. You, of course, have to learn from mistakes, own them, and apologize if warranted, but you have an opportunity to do it again and do it better. We all make mistakes—“facts” as you kids like to say—but you don’t have to be afraid of taking risks or making those mistakes if you

know that those two words exist. Remember—next time. The last thing I want to talk to you about relates to time as well. This deals with the giving of time. Give yourself time to explore new things and ideas. Give yourself space to grow. Give yourself time to develop into the young men and women you are supposed to be, not some Instagram version of you. Give back to your community in any way you can—feed the needy, visit the elderly, volunteer at an animal shelter. It boils down to taking time away from you and giving it to others. This will help you see who you are and make you right-sized, and it will slow you down. More importantly, it will allow you to see that you are not the center of the universe—as impossible as that may sound to you right now. You need time to figure your life out. Do it on your own terms and your own timetable. Don’t worry about what others are doing around you. In case you were actually thinking about graduation tomorrow and weren’t paying attention, here are the major points. Don’t rush to the next thing. Live in the moment. Give yourself some time to figure out who you are and who you want to be. Give your time to people and institutions in your community that need it. And remember, you always have... Next time.

ABOUT ERIC STONE Dr. Eric Stone, a twenty-five-year faculty member, is Eagle Hill School’s Dean of Education, an English teacher, and an Academic Advisor. Before joining Eagle Hill, Dr. Stone spent four years as a crew member on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise as a Machinist Mate. In 1997, Dr. Stone reaffiliated with the Naval Reserves the same year he started at Eagle Hill. He served two tours of duty in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. After completing twenty-four years of naval service in 2015, he retired as Chief Petty Officer. Dr. Stone received his BA in English and teaching certification from the University of Massachusetts, and a master’s degree in education, a Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies in Curriculum and Instruction, and a doctorate in education from Cambridge College.

STUDENT COMMENCEMENT AWARDS Ronald M. Baglio Student Life Leadership Awards: Nia McInnis ’22 and Charlie LeStage ’22 Headmaster’s Cup Award: Nia McInnis ’22 Thomas A. Schneider Entrepreneurial Award: Diamond James ’22

36 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022

Egenberg Character Award: Sophia Cranford ’22 Be Like Brit Award: Charlotte Marvin ’22 Citizenship Award: Audrey Plumb ’22 and Charlie LeStage ’22

Watch Dr. Stone deliver the faculty address.


COMMENCEMENT 2022-Graduating Class

Jason Anthony Barba New England Institute of Technology

Owen Reich George Gap year

Charles Richard Griffin LeStage Texas A&M University

Yushi Helen Sanford Dean College

Rowan Fisher Bernier University of Denver

Jane Talia Gerson Dean College

Ryan Joseph Sarnelli Western New England University

Howard Jake Brown Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts

Eden Rose Gesund Endicott College

Weston Ricketts Maechling SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry

Jessica Isabella Brown Skidmore College

Sophie Faye Goldberg Occidental College

Christian Maxim Bunnemann Loyola Marymount University

Jonathan Edward Haskett University of Denver

Ethan Butterfield Kennesaw State University

Philip Aden Hutchinson California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo

Sophia Reed Cranford Endicott College Cameron Travis Dike The College of Wooster Ryan Eugene Riley Fleming Lynn University Sarah Aislinn Garelik Lynn University

Scan QR code to view graduation photos.

Diamond James Morgan State University Jacob Cohen Jankowski Lynn University Sofia Kedros Mansfield Hall / Madison, WI Nicolas Federico Keller Texas Christian University Declan Thomas Kenney Sacred Heart University Chiara Lanaro Mansfield Hall Dean College, Class of ’27

Charlotte Marie Marvin University of New England Nia Jordan McInnis North Carolina A&T State University Caroline Grace Orend Lynn University Audrey Martha Plumb Rochester Institute of Technology Sean Colin Rabbitt Westfield State University Samantha Pearl Resnick Lynn University Mason Frederick Rice Belmont University

Jacob Wade Schrauth Chapman University Elias Jackson Sherman Mansfield Hall / Champlain College Henry Noble Sorkin Gettysburg College Sander Zebedee Stein Madison College Wentworth Institute of Technology Class of ’27 Mathew Benjamin Symonds Gap year Hamburg Tyler Tang Ohio Wesleyan University Sydney Kay Thomas Northeastern University

Cristina Rodriguez Mitchell College

Tejas Marshall Varma Occidental College

Jack Michael Thomas Roffler Lynn University

Ethan Noble White Fairleigh Dickinson University

Ainslee Virginia Rotondo Southern New Hampshire University

Luca Zappi Union College

–2022 | EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 37 COMPENDIUM 2021 2021–2022


Commencement 2022 Mac and Cheese—A Recipe for Success A Transcription of the Student Address By Nia McInnis and Sophia Cranford

P

Nia McInnis’ parts of the speech are printed in Roman font and Sophia Cranford’s words are printed in Italic font. arents, friends, relatives, faculty, trustees, and the class of 2022—welcome! We’ve made it to the finish line. I don’t want to be cheesy, but today I’m going to talk about mac and cheese. In thinking about my experience here at Eagle Hill and the perfect metaphor for it, I decided on mac and cheese. I know, I know, one doesn’t usually equate school with mac and cheese, and one certainly doesn’t think about mac and cheese when thinking about Eagle Hill, but bear with me. Think about the perfect mac and cheese…Close your eyes and think about the steaming melted cheese on top of perfectly cooked pasta. Can you smell it? I can. Good. Now that we are all on the same page, I would like to suggest that Eagle Hill is like my mother’s mac and cheese. My mother’s mac and cheese has the following ingredients in it: elbow pasta, heavy cream, egg, garlic powder, black pepper, and cheese. Like my mother’s mac and cheese, Eagle Hill has given me all the ingredients needed to make me the person I

38 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022

am today. The base, and probably one of the most important parts of any mac and cheese, is the pasta. Think about it: the elbows are kind of what makes mac and cheese mac and cheese. What makes Eagle Hill Eagle Hill is the faculty. During my time here I have worked with very dedicated faculty members who work to see all of us succeed. I remember a time I was really struggling in math. I was just complaining to Dr. Riendeau about not liking the class and not understanding the work. I knew I needed to go talk to my teacher, but I was very hesitant to go. He told me that we could go together. We then went to go talk to my teacher and discussed a plan where I would go and get the help I needed. After that conversation, I went to that teacher almost every morning. I finally began to understand what was going on in, class and my grades improved. If I did not have that conversation with Dr. Riendeau, I wouldn’t have pushed myself (or really—have been pushed) to get the help that I needed.


This year, I had a class I just knew I couldn’t do well in. I, too, went to Dr. Riendeau to plead with him to move me to another section. Riendeau just gave me that look, rolled his eyes, and said, “Not happening, Misery.” I put on my miserable grumpy face (yes, I deserved that nickname!), and I was pretty upset with him, too, but now, I want to thank him for telling me no and for teaching me to get over myself to become myself.

]

Back to the recipe. The egg is also quite important in mac and cheese. The egg is essentially what holds the mac and cheese together. This reminds me of my days just sitting in Mrs. Kelly’s office and watching her work. She was and is always focused on getting what needs to be done done, but will still take the time to talk to me about my day. She is always on the move, and it can be hard to find her. Trust me, I know, I was her assistant, and I still couldn’t track her. She is truly essential to holding life here together, much like the egg in the mac and cheese. I know all of you have moments with faculty who have held you together by simply being understanding or willing to listen.

allowed me to share my ideas “EagleandHillconsider the ideas of others. ”

Or willing to tell you to get over yourself. I think another underrated ingredient in my mom’s recipe is the heavy cream. The heavy cream is what gives the mac and cheese the richness that makes it so good. The variety of people that I’ve met here has given me a rich experience. I’ve met people from different places across the country and around the world. My friends are the reason I’ve had fun and created great memories. Fun is only part of the rich experience; I have also gotten to see different viewpoints and different perspectives from people I may not otherwise have interacted with. Eagle Hill allowed me to share my ideas and consider the ideas of others. I know all of you have had this experience, and some of you have even shared your ideas with me or vice versa. I am “richer” for the experience, an experience that has also sometimes been stressful.

]

For example, I have always felt nervous around crowds of people and worried that people would have no interest in what I might have to say. Standing here, speaking to hundreds of people, many of whom I have never met, is something that I never thought I would do. The thought of standing up here made my stomach turn, my forehead break out in a very cold sweat, and my mind start shrieking “NO WAY.” And yet, here I am. I am standing up here right now sharing something really personal with all of you.

]

My experience here has been, first and foremost, about confidence, conquering fears, and tough love. And that’s where the faculty comes in. Because of course, the night before this speech was due, and I had secretly breathed a huge sigh of relief that I had escaped the speech-writing, a teacher tracked me down. He found me, and he yelled with his big voice right across the dining hall, in front of everyone, as soon as I walked in, “Sophia, WHERE is your speech?” So, here I stand. Here I stand doing what I have come to realize IS in my nature: accepting challenges and proving to myself that I can conquer my fears, and I can reach for my dreams. We all can, and I think that has been Eagle’s Hill’s greatest gift to our class.

]

I began my journey at Eagle Hill in the eighth grade along with Ethan, Rowan, Charlotte, Owen, Wade, and Jack. And when I first arrived, I was a completely different person than I am today, and I mean that. I think you could ask anybody who knows me well, students or teachers, and they would say the same thing. I doubted myself. I doubted my capabilities. In fact, I KNEW I was not capable. I was doubtful about math. I doubted I could handle the challenges of high school. In a nutshell, I had no confidence. All of my life people have said, “Have confidence in yourself.” But that is not how confidence happens.

Eagle Hill builds you up, not by making “things easy but by teaching you to have the confidence you need to do the hard stuff.”

To me, the faculty are the living definition of tough love. Looking back, I see now how they have always pushed us (sometimes in a way that felt downright unfair) to be our best selves: to accept the challenges, COMPENDIUM 2021–2022 | EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 39


to meet the challenges, and to find the success that allows us to stop doubting ourselves. In eighth grade, I didn’t know what this meant, but don’t worry, now I do. In eighth grade, I never would have dreamed I could conquer the endless and torturous anatomy exams that I fretted constantly about (thank you, Mr. Ward!), or that I could qualify to swim at New England’s (thank you, Mrs. Kelly!). I often hear that parents hesitate and worry about sending their kids to Eagle Hill because it is a school for students who learn differently. Possibly they worry it will be easier than it should be, or that the curriculum will be “dumbed down” because we have been given labels like dyslexia or ADHD. But I am here to tell you that Eagle Hill is the opposite of that. Eagle Hill builds you up, not by making things easy but by teaching you to have the confidence you need to do the hard stuff. Eagle Hill allows you to have a say in the challenges you take upon yourself and to make the work as hard as you want it to be.

]

started out being closer to acquaintances who would just say “hi.” Then Sophie and I had math class together, and everyone knows math class is a great bonding experience. This year, Sophie and I had four classes together. I was spending literally eighty percent of my day with her. And there truly isn’t a single person with whom I would rather spend that much of my day. I’m so glad we bonded so much over the years and look forward to our friendship continuing to grow. I imagine we’ll help one another unpack our cars as our own daughters move into Harmsworth Hall one day.

of you to think about the people “ inI askyouralllives that have added some spice to your time here. ”

These are the lessons that last. And I know that each one of my classmates has memories just like the ones I have described. So my plan is no longer to hide from the challenges, because if I do, I will hear that booming voice across the dining hall calling me out. I encourage you all to do the same because I know we are all capable. I have those memories that Sophie describes, and I think we have come to rely on each other just as much as we have relied on the faculty. Every cook knows the importance of seasoning their food. For my mother it is garlic powder and black pepper. My good friends Diamond James and Sophie Cranford have been that seasoning in my life. But I don’t want to say who’s the garlic or the pepper, but you get the idea. They added spice to my time here.

]

40 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022

I ask all of you to think about the people in your lives that have added some spice to your time here. It doesn’t have to be one or two people exclusively—it could be a group of people or a team you played on—but take a moment to reflect on how someone has added some spice in your life. Well, Nia, I think the time has come for us to finish this recipe. As we all know, the best part of mac and cheese is the cheese. What even is macaroni and cheese without the cheese? For me, Dr. Eric Stone is the cheese. Dr. Stone has been my biggest supporter since Day One. My very first interaction with him was my very first day on the Eagle Hill campus.

We have come to embrace our true “natures, to accept challenges, and to prove that we can conquer our fears. ”

Diamond has been my rock since we’ve come here. We move as a duo, and it’s gonna be a bit odd not having her around next year, considering we’ve been together for the past seven years. Sophie and I have a friendship that has grown stronger over time. We

]

]

It was summer, and I was moving into my dorm room with my parents. I remember seeing a man helping his daughter move into her room next to mine. This man I’ve never seen in my life strikes up a conversation with my mom.

I wasn’t thinking too much of it then, but little did I know he was a person that would become such a big part of my life. For the last four years, having Dr. Stone around has been great. I don’t know how I would have gotten through these years without him. Whenever I got in over my head and overwhelmed, Stone was there to tell me that it would all be all right. Stone was


always there to poke fun at me and tell me not to take things too seriously. The highlight of many of my days was simply coming into his office and yelling “STONEY” just to come bother him.

Mac and Cheese—A Recipe for Success Nia McInnis’ special ingredients for a delicious dish.

Stone is one of a kind. I love and appreciate everything he has done for me for the past four years, and I don’t think there are any words to express my gratitude. I think all of you can relate to that, having one person you connected with that made you feel special and worth it. I am so glad that I came to a place that knows how to make each recipe individually and find out what ingredients were right for us.

Ingredients:

We all have new and exciting destinations that await us. For me— and for Nia—it’s nursing school, for Sofia it’s Mansfield Hall, for Sarnelli it’s Western New England, for Samantha and Ryan it’s Lynn University, while Tejas and Sophie are off to Occidental, and the list goes on and on. I have had countless people tell me how rigorous and difficult the college curriculum can be. The old me never would have believed she would be going to nursing school, and most likely would never have applied. But now we all know we are capable. And no longer afraid. We have come to embrace our true nature, to accept challenges, and to prove that we can conquer our fears. And as an aside, as Dr. Riendeau likes to tell me, I will be rewarded at the end of this nursing school journey—by coming back to push him around in his wheelchair! I may just hit a couple of potholes on purpose, just to remember old times. Always remember the secret ingredients: confidence, conquering fears, and a dash of tough love, Riendeau and Stone style. Congratulations, class of 2022!

Watch Nia and Sophie deliver the Student Address.

One box elbow pasta

Two blocks Cracker Barrel brand marble cheese

One block sharp cheddar cheese

One block mozzarella cheese

Two large eggs

Heavy cream

Black pepper

Garlic powder

Directions: Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook until al dente. While the pasta is cooking, start shredding all the cheese. As soon as the pasta is ready, drain in a colander and set aside. Now grab a bowl and crack two eggs, then add a decent amount of heavy cream, black pepper, and garlic powder. Mix together. Pour the egg and cream mixture into the pot with the elbow pasta and stir. Using an oven safe dish, pour about half the pasta in the dish. Spread some cheese on the pasta and mix into the dish. Add the rest of the pasta and remaining cheese on top. Lastly, bake in the oven for 375° for about 40 minutes.

COMPENDIUM 2021–2022 | EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 41


Commencement 2022 The Journey of Hope Commencement Address

By Ms. Cherylann Gengel, Co-Founder of the Be Like Brit Foundation

L

en and I have three amazing children: Britney, Bernie, and Richie. They grew up in Rutland, which is about twenty-five minutes from here. In September 2009, both our boys were here at Eagle Hill School: Bernie, a senior getting ready to apply to colleges, and Richie, a freshman. Britney was a sophomore in college at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida. (I know some of you here will be attending Lynn University—GO KNIGHTS!) That following December, they were all home for the winter break, which I loved having all three of them home together. We celebrated Christmas, the New Year, and Brit’s birthday (which she thought was a national holiday, but to her disappointment, it wasn’t). Before you knew it, it was time for the boys to go back to EHS and for Brit to go back to Florida. We were excited for Britney because when she went back, she was going to be going on a mission trip to Haiti with Food for the Poor and Lynn University to help the poorest of the poor.

42 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022

Brit was just a regular kid. She loved hanging out with her friends; she had this beautiful smile, and she lit up the room when she walked in. She just had this energy about her that people wanted to be around her. And just to keep it real, she wasn’t perfect. Just ask her brothers. Many of the Eagle Hill community already know this story, but I thought I would share it with those that don’t. One day Brit and her best friend WANTED TO/HAD TO have a Coolatta from Dunkin Donuts. They could have walked to the center of town; it was a very short walk from our house. However, they thought it best that they borrow the car and drive there. Not a big deal, right? However, IF Brit had been 16 ½ AND had her driver’s license (because that’s the law in Massachusetts) it would not have been a big deal. BUT she was only fifteen. I like to say she “borrowed” the car… Stealing seems so harsh. I wish I could say that was the only not-so-proud-parent moment; but it’s not. However,


even with those “few” indiscretions, Brit had a huge heart. She couldn’t stand bullies, she hated when people were mean, and she was always the first to defend her friends and family. She really was a voice for those that didn’t have one. Brit had gone to Lynn University as a communications major with a minor in social work, so the opportunity to go to Haiti was amazing. Twelve students and two professors would be going on the trip called The Journey of Hope. They arrived in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Monday, January 11. That Monday and Tuesday, they went and helped at an all-girls orphanage, helped at a handicapped orphanage, helped with feeding programs, and visited Cite Soleil (which is one of the most dangerous areas in Haiti).

Hubacz, explained what was going on and that we needed to get Richie home, and of course, she said, “Not a problem, I’ll bring him home.” She was just so kind! In the meantime, Dr. McDonald was on his way to a meeting in Boston and heard what was going on, and instead of going straight to his meeting, he came to our home. Dr. McDonald was THE first person that showed up at our house. I will NEVER forget him walking through the door: “Are you okay? Are the boys okay? What can I do?” For the next few days, we waited with family and friends at our house. Local and national media were outside our doors. We hadn’t heard from Brit; we didn’t know what happened to her. Then on Thursday, we received a phone call that they had the group and that they would be coming back to the US that night! Our house erupted and we were celebrating, high-fiving, crying with relief. Len, Bernie, Richie, and myself jumped on the first plane out of Boston and headed to Florida to pick up Britney.

Twelve students and two professors would be going on the trip called The Journey of Hope.”

I was lucky to be able to speak to her on the phone, and I could hear it in her voice: something had touched her deeply. She had fallen in love with the country of Haiti, but especially the people and even more the children. However, the poverty was overwhelming for Brit. Seeing the extreme malnutrition, no infrastructure, no access to clean water, and so many children not attending school just broke her heart. On Tuesday, January 12, Brit sent me a text, saying, “They love us so much and everyone is so happy they love what they have and they work so hard to get no where, yet they are all so appreciative. I want to move here and start an orphanage myself.” Three hours after I received that text message, Haiti had a devastating 7.0 earthquake. It was all over the news. I had just come home and my phone was ringing off the hook—friends and family asking if I knew about the earthquake, was Brit okay? I had just spoken to Brit less than an hour ago. I knew she was okay, but told everyone I would call her and just check in to make sure that she was safe. I tried, but it went right to her voicemail. Well, obviously it’s going to her voicemail, they just had an earthquake; the communication system was down. A little panic starting setting in. Bernie was already home from Eagle Hill, but Richie was still there. We decided we needed to get Richie home; we didn’t want him to hear about the earthquake from friends or the news. We called his advisor, Mrs.

When we arrived on campus, we went to the main building and waited to have Brit run into our arms. However, as the president and other faculty came to greet us, they brought us into a room, sat us down, and said, “We’re sorry, we had bad intelligence. We don’t have six members of the group, Britney being one of them.” I couldn’t breathe. For the next thirty-three days (along with the five other families of Christine, Courtney, Stefanie, Dr. Bruno, and Dr. Hartwick), we did everything we possibly could to try to get to them and to get them home. On the thirty-third day, which was Valentine’s Day, we received a phone call from the State Deptartment. They had recovered Britney’s body, and in fact, she was one of the 300,000 people that were killed on January 12. Not one day— or for that fact, one hour—goes by that I don’t miss my Britney, but we are so grateful for that text she sent. That text was her last wish, and as a family, we decided to make her last wish come true. Thanks to thousands and thousands of people from all over, including the Eagle Hill family, we have been able to, and continue to do it! We built an orphanage (which we now call Brit’s Home) in the COMPENDIUM 2021–2022 | EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 43


shape of the letter “B” for Britney. It’s all about Brit; it is 19,000 square feet because Brit was nineteen when she passed. We built it with the same seismic standards as San Francisco, and that was extremely important to us. If there was to ever be another earthquake, we didn’t want anyone to go through what our family did. We knew we would use US standards when building with the blocks, so we created our own block factory. Being sustainable is important to us, so we have solar panels, a nano-technology water filtration system, and over an acre of fruits and vegetables that we grow on site. I like to say that’s our snack drawer for the kids.

Len spent two years in Haiti building Brit’s Home. He knew that we were part of the community in Grand Goave and that there were not many jobs (if any) in our area. In Haiti, there’s no welfare system, so if you don’t have a job, you don’t make money. That means you can’t feed your family or even send them to school. Because in Haiti, you don’t even have the right to go to school unless you can pay. Hundreds of people would show up trying to get a job. Len would hire 125 people from the community each week, and each week he would hire different people. He wanted to give as many people as he could a job. A job so that they could feed their families or possibly even send their children to school.

Now that Brit’s Home was built and we were bringing in the children, people (family, friends, strangers) wanted to go to Haiti to help, to experience what Brit had experienced, to see what she saw. We call these missionary/service trips Britsionary Trips— again after Brit. These past twelve years we have had over 1,800 Britsionarys, Dr. McDonald being one of them. Britsionarys would each bring in a fifty-pound bag of supplies that had been donated to us (like peanut butter, toothpaste, soap etc.); they came for a week to help build a home for a family in need. The families we built for lived under tarps or in a lean-to. And when I say a home, it’s really the size of a shed, sixteen by twenty feet.

Though Haiti is extremely challenging, the resilience of the people is both humbling and inspiring.”

As Len was building Brit’s home, people would come by on a daily basis to try to give him their children. Not because they didn’t love them—it’s because they did. They knew that this home would provide the basics: food, water, shelter, and education. When Len was in Haiti, I was back here working with our program committee, coming up with guidelines on who would be living at Brit’s Home. It took us two years, many meetings, a lot of discussion; after all we were going to change the lives of children, hopefully for the better. We used the United Nations Rights of a Child as our guideline. We decided that we would take in children between the ages of three and eight years old, but if they have brothers or sisters, younger or older, we would bring them in is as well. We didn’t want to break up a family. We decided we would have thirty-three girls and thirty-three boys representing the thirty-three days that Brit was missing in the rubble. We brought in our first child,-ShaSha, on what would have been Brit’s twenty-third birthday. 44 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022

It’s built with hurricane bracing, a tin roof, and concrete on the floor so when it rains the rain goes around the home and not through it. We would build a bed, give food for a month, and give kitchen supplies. To date we have built 150 homes in the community. Their new home is shelter; it is a sense of security; it is life-changing. Unfortunately, due to COVID and now the political unrest, the Britsionary program is on hold. We are unable to bring supplies into Haiti, and we are unable to build homes for those that need it most. For us this is just heartbreaking for many reasons. Though Haiti is extremely challenging, the resilience of the people is both humbling and inspiring. No matter how hard it is, our family is committed to Haiti for the rest of our lives. Both Len and I spend all our time running Be Like Brit here in the states and in Haiti, our son Richie goes around and shares the story of Be Like Brit, and our son Bernie, who works for the foundation, spends most of his time in Haiti helping to oversee the operations. He also handles all of our technology, like the website, and has created computer and technology classes for our children. Our children were attending the local schools; remember, in Haiti you have to pay to go to school, so for many of our children, this was the first time they attended school or attended school on a regular basis. As the academic years went on, some of our children were struggling in school, really struggling. We suspected that many of them learned differently. There is no diagnosing ADD/ADHD/ central auditory processing disorder, no 504 plans or IEPs.


Having a little experience in this area, we made the decision to start Brit’s Academy four years ago. The eight children that began at Brit’s Academy had individual learning plans and teachers that were able to teach to their needs: sound familiar? The following year we decided to expand Brit’s Academy through sixth grade, which was one of the best decisions we made for our children. They were going to receive a first-world education in a thirdworld country. Always being respectful of the Haitian culture, in addition to the regular classes like math, French, science, and history, our children were also going to have music, art, and technology, and they were going to learn English as a second language. We wanted them to learn English so that when they got older they would be able to compete on a global scale. They could then have jobs in Haiti, making US dollars, and be able to help Haiti from within.

Nothing of what we have been able to accomplish, have we done alone. People are good; they have helped us and continue to help us on this journey. We wouldn’t have believed you if you had told us twelve years ago that we would have to live every single day without our daughter, that we would build an orphanage in a third-world country, that it would be some of the most challenging work we’d ever do, and that there would be days that we feel like quitting. I’m sure you seniors wouldn’t have believed it if people told you when you were in kindergarten that you’re going to work harder than most people your age, you’ll have extremely challenging days, and there will be days you are going to feel like quitting.

What I can tell you is that one person can make a difference in this world. People are good and kind, and people do show up.”

With the success of Brit’s Academy, we had hoped to someday expand it through the high school years. Be careful what you ask for. When COVID hit, Haiti went into shutdown, which meant children outside of Brit’s Home were not able to go to school, including our older children. So, if anything positive came out of COVID, it is that we did expand, and now all of our children are attending Brit’s Academy. Our goal is to raise the next generation of leaders in Haiti. We are always looking towards the future for our children, wanting to give them as many opportunities as we can. This year, thanks to a generous donor, we purchased land in Delray Beach, Florida. We will be building a home where some of our children, who want to come for an internship or possibly go to college, will be able to stay. It is not a place for them to come and live permanently. It’s like a study abroad program.

YOU didn’t quit and neither did we. However, none of us have done it alone; we had our family, including the Eagle Hill family, friends, and total strangers that have helped us on this path. Many that we don’t even know. They have made a difference in our lives, something that we are eternally grateful for. They were kind people that showed up for us. Just like Dr. McDonald showed up for us that very first day, he showed up for you, your very first day. He and the Eagle Hill community are still with us at Be Like Brit, and they will always be there for you, too! I wish I could tell you that life won’t have challenges after today, but I can’t. What I can tell you is that one person can make a difference in this world. People are good and kind, and people do show up. So as you move on from Eagle Hill, make a difference in this world. Be kind and good and show up. You can Be Like Brit, you can be like Dr. McDonald, you can Be Like YOU! Congratulations, class of 2022!

ABOUT CHERYLANN GENGEL Cherylann Gengel has devoted her life to her family: Britney, Bernie, Richie, and now her sixty-six children at the Be Like Brit Foundation in Haiti. Cherylann travels the country sharing her heart and stories about Britney, her experiences with the children of Be Like Brit, and how she, along with the support of family, friends, and total strangers, has learned to turn tragedy into hope. She is the co-author of the book Heartache & Hope in Haiti;The Britney Gengel Story, of which 100 percent of the profits are dedicated to Be Like Brit’s Home. To learn more about the Be Like Brit Foundation, visit: belikebrit.org

Watch Mrs. Gengel deliver the commencement address.

COMPENDIUM 2021–2022 | EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 45


COMMENCEMENT 2022-End of Year Awards NBS Outstanding Faculty Award: Mr. Jason Przypek The Norma B. Shields Outstanding Faculty Award is named for one of the founding members of the Eagle Hill School community and is given each year to the faculty member who best exemplifies Mrs. Shields’ unyielding, heartfelt dedication to the students of Eagle Hill School. Kneeland Distinguished Service Award: Mr. Tim Shaughnessey The Thomas A. Kneeland Distinguished Service Award is awarded annually to a member of the faculty or staff who consistently goes above and beyond the call of duty and who continually strengthens the EHS community in a quiet, dignified, and unassuming way.

Our Core Values: Life at Eagle Hill is driven by the observance of our four key values: honesty, kindness, respect, and purpose. Whether it be in the classroom, on the athletic field, or socially among friends, our belief is that decisions and growth are best navigated with strong underlying ethics. These core values are the foundation on which our students build lives of decency, consequence, and pride. We are pleased to recognize these students for their embodiment of these values.

Student Council Faculty Appreciation Award: Mr. Mike Richards The Student Council Faculty Appreciation Award award is presented to a faculty member who has built a mutually respectful relationship with their students, challenges them as individuals, and has taken the time to stop and pick them up when they needed it.

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS Arts Department: Micaela Williams ’23 Athletes of the Year: Sophia Cranford ’22 and Rowan Bernier ’22 Classical Language and Literature Certificate: Howie Brown ’22 and Maxim Bunneman ’22 Classical Literature Certificate: Charlie LeStage ’22, Audrey Plumb ’22, and Sean Rabbitt ’22 Computer Applications Department: Sam Ruggles ’26 Computer Science Department: Liam Farhangi ’24 Diversity and Social Justice Department: Margot Sauter ’23 English Department: Micaela Williams ’23 History Department: Yoni Bernstein ’24 Makerspace: Margot Sauter ’23 Mathematics Department: Audrey Plumb ’22 Physical Education Department: Ryan Fleming ’22 Pragmatics Department: Jane Gerson ’22

KEEPERS OF CORE VALUES Honesty Schuyler Palmer ’23 Isabella Rucci ’23

Respect Andrew Beers ’23 Marisa Gracias ’23

Kindness Katherine Moody ’23 Harrison Soep ’23

Purpose Ned Mickey ’23 Caitlin Montague ’23

FACULTY MILESTONES OF SERVICE 5 Years

10 Years

20 Years

Susan Cranford Toby Haley Devon Jurczyk Alicia Quigley Dawn Raymond Peter Ryzewski Steven Stanley

David Haynes Matthew Kim Marshall Robinson Stephanie Whitaker

Ian Kelly

15 Years Robin Samuelson Deborah Shanks

Reading Department: Liam Farhangi ’24 Science Department: Audrey Plumb ’22 World Languages Department: Marisa Gracia ’23 46 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022

To view the Baccalaureate and Award Ceremony photos, scan the QR code.

25 Years Wendy McFaul Eric Stone Erin Wynne


ALUMNI/AE NEWS-Class Notes

1994

2010

Brian McGill

April Jones

Brian McGill writes in that his son Keiran is almost two years old. He and his wife Elitia are doing very well with their home business.

Originally from San Francisco, April Jones is currently living in Perth, Western Australia. She’s lived in OZ for three years and recently started a new job as a Functions Manager for Boston Brewing Co. She is engaged to an “amazing” Aussie man and is one step closer to getting her permanent residency.

’13

in sociology from SUNY Oneonta and earned an additional degree in Occupational Therapy today from Maria College in New York. She’s currenlty studying for the boards and living with the love of her life, Ibram.

’94

2002 Nick Sproul Nick Sproul, SDR leader at SecondNature, joins podcast hosts Crystal Nikosey and Dan Reynolds to talk about SDR Enablement, the upcoming NFL draft, and a fascinating real-time view of what it’s like to build out an SDR team from scratch in 2022.

Andrew Stanko

Scan this QR Code and listen to Nick’s podcast on Spotify.

2009

Melissa Lundquist Melissa Lundquist is excited to share that she was recently hired by Wagging Tails dog daycare and boarding facility right near new her home. She is a kennel and dog daycare attendant. Her favorite dog Smalls is featured here!

’10

Andrew Stanko is incredibly happy to announce that he recently started a new position as the Principal Technical Writer for Savvas Learning Company (formerly Pearson). After four years in software development and six years in retail prior to that, he finally is getting to pursue his lifelong dream of going into education to make learning materials more accessible to all. He’ll be leading his own team to write and edit any and all documentation that helps students and teachers interface with Savvas materials. Andrew sent his note: “I simply wouldn’t have this opportunity without my time at Eagle Hill. The school helped codify my desire to jump into education someday to try and make any difference at all to the students who need it most. Thank you all for everything, and I’ll continue to apply the EHS ethos that everyone should have the chance to learn and grow.”

Ryan O’Leary Ryan O’Leary graduated this spring (with a 3.96 GPA) from Brandeis University with a master’s degree in psychology and has been accepted into their doctoral program. He loves the research work in the cognition lab at Brandeis and is on a trajectory to do meaningful work in the world.

Amanda Langhaus Amanda Langhaus is on her way to Manteo, North Carolina for the summer to experience something new and exciting. She recently signed a contract to spend four months working as the Assistant Master Electrician and Light Board Operator for The Lost Colony. Celebrating its 85th season this year, The Lost Colony is America’s longest-running outdoor symphonic drama. If you’re traveling to the Outer Banks this summer, be sure to pick up some tickets to the show at the Waterside Theatre—www.thelostcolony.org. Sebastian Phillips ‘16 is performing at the same show!

2011

Jarrett Spector

Lindsey Gartner graduated from the Massachusetts Fire Academy. Lindsey has been working as a paramedic for the last six years and now joins their ranks as a fire fighter paramedic.

Andrew Best

Lindsey Gartner

’09

2014

2013 Lizzy McKeegan

Jarrett Spector graduated with a master’s degree this spring in special education from Saint Joseph’s University.

Andrew recently graduated with a master’s at Boston University Medical School and accepted a position at Boston University’s Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation. He is currently teaching two courses at BU and providing training for students and faculty. He is also giving family counseling for Wediko’s Summer Program.

Lizzy McKeegan went back to school after earning her BS COMPENDIUM 2021–2022 | EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 47


2016

Kendall Tally Kendal Tally graduated cum laude with a bachelor of arts in political science from the College of Charleston in May.

Alexia Ford In January, Alexia Ford completed her BA in forensic psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. She attended the May commencement ceremonies. In the coming months, Alexia is studying for the LSAT so that she can apply to the Psychology and Law Program at John Jay College.

Natasha Sickenius

In addition, Alexia is finishing up a collection of poetry, A Girl Made of Glass, which she hopes will be published in the near future.

Griffin McDonald graduated cum laude from Dean College with a BS in coaching and recreation. He was a four-year player on the Dean College lacrosse team. Griffin is currently working at Eagle Hill as the assistant director of the Baglio Sports and Fitness Center, and membership. He is pursuing a certification in strength and conditioning

Sebastian Phillips Sebastian Phillips is spending the summer performing in The Lost Colony, at the Waterside Theatre located at the Outer Banks, in Manteo North Carolina. Amanda Langhaus ‘14, is the Assistant Master Electrician and Light Board Operator at the same production. Two alums are working at the same show!

Natasha Sickenius graduated from High Point University and has accepted a job at Old Vineyard Behavioral Health Psychiatric Hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Griffin McDonald

’14 | ’16

Bo Moore

’18

Bo Moore, a recent Lasell University graduate, was honored with an Academic Book Award in Data Analytics during the university’s commencement activities. The Book Award is bestowed upon one undergraduate each year for their exceptional professional demeanor, academic achievement, maturity, perseverance, and collegiality. Bo graduated cum laude with a bachelor of science degree in cybersecurity and data analytics with a minor in business management.

Michael Olson Michael Olson recently graduated from Curry College located in Milton, Massachusetts. He also was awarded the Communication Department “Outstanding Actor” recognition at the 53rd Annual Awards Recognition Ceremony.

2017

Marissa Fontaine

Kyle Ebanks Kyle Ebanks graduated from the University of Virginia and will be moving to San Diego to start his career. Kyle plans to join the United States Air Force.

2018 Annie Schafer Annie Schafer graduated from Clark University magna cum laude this May. In the fall, she will move into Clark’s accelerated Master’s program in biochemistry and molecular biology.

’18 Alena Golden Alena Golden graduated from Curry College with her bachelor’s degree in communications with a concentration in film. She is stepping into an internship at Portsmouth Public Media where she will continue learning about film editing and working with a crew.

Marissa Fontaine shares in her story: Due to my dyslexia and dysgraphia, I never thought I would write stories and build up a fanbase. Due to how popular my stories have become, I have enough support to turn my stories into webtoons, also known as (Korean) webcomics. “I’m also thrilled to share my stories with the world. Regardless of learning differences, it is possible to make your dreams come true. It may take a little more effort than everyone else, but it’s worth it. Everyone is different, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make a difference!”

’18

Arianna Sharpe

’18 48 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022

Arianna Sharpe graduated from Howard University with a Bachelor of Arts in English and a minor in Afro-American Studies. Arianna will be pursuing her master’s in fine arts in creative writing and is currently on the waitlist at Columbia University and has applied to several other schools “back home” in New York.

’18


ALUMNI/AE NEWS-Class Notes Helene Yadgood

Lorenzo Suarez

Helene Yadgood is currently studying for her civil service exam and is hoping to join the Police Academy in 2023.

Lorenzo Suarez has enjoyed a gap year since graduating from EHS and spent the time working on wilderness response and survival courses in North Carolina. He’s heading to Lynn University in the fall to study business and psychology.

Julia Mahony Julia Mahoney graduated in December from Endicott College with a major in hospitality management, and completed a senior thesis on tourism trends among marathon runners. She is a sales associate and run club training coach at Fleet Feet in Westport, Connecticut.

Jacqui Krotman

2019 Katherine Lodge Katherine Lodge was named to the Lasell University Dean’s List for their academic performance in the spring 2022 semester.

Jacqui Krotman shares the exciting news that she finished her freshman year at Manhatanville College. She is busy studying art.

2021

’20

2020

Zoe Fish

Angus Lodge finished his sophomore year at Dean College this spring. He was excited to attend Eagle Hill’s 2022 commencement ceremonies this year and visit with friends, faculty, and former classmates..

Zoe Fish recently competed in the 2022 Reef Cup—one of the country’s premier sailfishing tournaments. The multi-day competition featured boats from all over the country. Zoe finished as the top female angler in the tournament and the second-place angler overall against a field of over 300.

Angus Lodge

’20 ’21

’21 | ’20 Griffin Veazey Griffin Veazey finished his sophomore year at Marist College this spring and is majoring in business finance with a minor in economics. He shared these words: “I would like to tell the current students of Eagle Hill to take advantage of everything the school has to offer because you will never have the same opportunities again. One of the most important things that Eagle Hill has brought to me is the people and connections that you can form. I never got to thank all the teachers and staff for everything they have taught me and did for me before we all left due to COVID. But I would like to say thank you now. Also, a special thank you to Mr. Harbert for always helping me and believing in me.”

Morgan Frost

’21

Morgan Frost just completed her freshman year at Mitchell College. She shared she’s made a ton of new friends and is in the select choir this year.

Whether you have a new job, big announcement, outstanding achievement, fun photos, or just want to say hi, let us know about it. Email alumni@eaglehill.school or scan the QR code to tell your story! COMPENDIUM 2021–2022 | EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 49


Headmaster’s Circle – Silver Leader ($15,000 - $24,999)

The

Annual Giving

Fund

Thank you for your 2021-2022 contribution.

Mr. and Mrs. Alan Bernier P ’22 Mr. Max Herrnstein and Ms. Danielle Curi P ’24 Mr. and Mrs. William Higgins P ’24 The Howard Bayne Fund Ray and Anne Hyer P ’23 Ms. Cindy Levit P ’24 Dr. and Mrs. Steven A. Madreperla Jr. P ’23 Ira M. Resnick Foundation, Inc. Mr. and Mrs. Paul Ryan P ’23

Headmaster’s Circle – Bronze Leader Eagle Hill School Loyalty Club The Loyalty Club recognizes our most dedicated donors. Membership is granted to donors who make gifts of any amount to support the annual giving campaigns in three or more consecutive years, including the current year.

Founder’s Circle ($50,000 and up)

Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Beinner P ’24 Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Burke P ’23 Dr. Tony Chou and Ms. Kristine E. Miller P ’25 Ms. Camila Pastor and Mr. Stephen E. Maharam P ’23 Mr. Par-Jorgen Parson and Ms. Annika B. Sten Parson P ’23 Thesseling Family Charitable Fund

Headmaster’s Circle – Gold Leader ($25,000 - $49,999)

Mr. and Mrs. Thomas A. Archipley II P ’19 Mr. and Mrs. Peter Charrington P ’23 Mr. and Mrs. David W. Donahower P ’24 Mr. and Mrs. David A. Hoyt P ’15 Ms. Tina Kim P ’23 Mr. and Mrs. Alessandro Lanaro P ’22 Mr. and Mrs. Peter R. Merriam P ’15 Mrs. Abigail F. Steller ’08 Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Zimmer P ’23

50 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022

($10,000 - $14,999)

Anonymous Ms. Sara Bolses and Family P ’15 Mr. and Mrs. Edward A. Carroll P ’18 Mr. and Mrs. Todd R. Carroll P ’24 Mr. and Mrs. Jason W. Dreisbach Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Gerson P ’22 Mr. and Mrs. Christopher P. Halpin P ’26 Mr. Christopher R. Larson P ’14 Ms. Ali Long P ’23, P ’26 Mark and Christa Lopez P’24 Mr. and Mrs. Mark Morein P ’20 Mr. and Mrs. Joe Nootbaar P ’24 Mr. and Mrs. Michael Roffler P ’22 Mr. and Mrs. Gideon J. Stein P ’22 Mr. and Mrs. Hamburg Tang Jr. P ’22 Mr. and Mrs. Craig Unterberg P ’21 Dr. Eugene Zappi and Dr. Laura Buccheri Zappi P ’22

Oak Society

($7,500 - $9,999) Mr. and Ms. Christopher J. Boova P ’25 Mr. and Mrs. Michael W. Whitman P ’20

Pioneer Society ($5,000 - $7,499)

Mr. and Mrs. Josh Abrams P ’23 Mr. Thomas R. Banks and Ms. Candace Banks P ’24 Mr. and Mrs. Scott Bashaw P ’23

Designates member of the Eagle Hill Loyalty Club


Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Behenna P ’25 Mr. and Mrs. Michael S. Bernstein P ’21, P ’24 Mr. Alexander T. Dike and Ms. Siobhan S. Flynn P ’22 Ms. Donna L. Dubinsky and Dr. Leonard J. Shustek P ’10 Oscarlyn and Todd Elder P ’24 Mr. Erik Fleming and Ms. Torrance Watkins Mr. Mark Friedman P ’26 Mr. and Mrs. Matthew S. Gilsdorf P ’24 John & Weezie Gates Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Peter S. Joseph P ’13 Steve and Sharon Judge P’07, P’10 Mr. William Kennard and Ms. Deborah Kennedy P ’19 Dr. Elizabeth K. Krimendahl P ’25 Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Lalonde P ’26 Mr. Wayne Levy P ’24 Mr. George Liss and Mrs. Amy Walls P ’23 Mr. Mohamed S. Lotfi and Mrs. Wassila J. Guiga-Lotfi P ’20 Mr. Claude Maechling and Ms. Carrie McNally P ’22 Mr. James Richardson Mr. and Mrs. Mark Ridall P ’24 Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Schrauth P ’22 Dr. and Mrs. David Staffenberg P ’24 Mr. and Mrs. Kent Stryker P ’23 Ms. Marilyn A. Waller and Mr. Doron Weinberg P ’07, P ’10 Mrs. Deborah Weise GP ’23 Mr. Robert Woolf and Ms. Robyn Lavery P ’23

Benefactor’s Society ($2,500 - $4,999)

Ms. Candace Alsop P ’00 Mr. and Mrs. Richard Audette GP ’26 Mr. and Mrs. Joseph J. Bafaro Jr. Mr. Alden J. Bianchi and Ms. Mary Kett Dr. and Mrs. Thomas A. Blocher P ’20 Mr. Eric Blumencranz and Ms. Jessica Berner P ’21 Ms. Helane Z. Brachfeld-Colvin P ’24 Mr. and Mrs. Howard A. Brecher P ’13 Mr. Jonathan Deblinger and Ms. Alison Deblinger P ’24 Ms. Kimberly Dreier P ’21 Mr. and Mrs. Scott Fiore P ’26 Mr. and Mrs. Mark Fromm P ’25 Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Goose P ’24 Mr. Ying Hu and Mrs. Qin Wang P ’24 Mr. and Mrs. Eric Krauss P ’23

Mr. Jonathan Kravitz and Mr. Mark Kravitz Mr. and Mrs. Joshua Lipman P ’25 Mr. and Mrs. Joseph M. Malley P ’20 Mr. and Mrs. Michael J. Mazurczak P ’15 Mr. and Mrs. Mark McCartin P ’20 Dr. and Mrs. PJ McDonald P ’18 Mr. and Mrs. David Mintz P ’20 Mr. and Mrs. Steven D. Morlock P ’24 Mr. and Mrs. Leo N. Murray P ’25 Mr. and Mrs. Sung Pak P ’24 Mr. Lucius Palmer and Ms. Sloane Lederer P ’23 Dr. Michael P. Riendeau and Mrs. Mary Ann Riendeau Rollstone Bank and Trust Mr. and Mrs. Charles Roncaioli GP ’22 STAG Industrial, Inc. The Straetz Foundation, Inc. Ms. Susan Tom P ’26 Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Turner P ’24

Hardwick Society ($1,000 - $2,499)

Mr. and Mrs. David Adorney P ’24 Anonymous Mr. Bruce W. Baber P ’08 The Brumberger-Gruber Foundation, Inc. Mr. and Mrs. Marshall H. Carver V GP ’23 Mr. and Mrs. John M. Cobb P ’13 Dr. E. J. Cronin Rich and Erin Cummings P ’19 Davidowitz Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Robert Evans Mr. and Mrs. David Feinblatt P ’14, P ’21 Mr. and Mrs. Reed H. Fendler P ’23 Mrs. Stephanie Frost P ’21 Mr. and Mrs. Stephen George P ’22 Dr. Michael J. Golioto and Dr. Annmarie Golioto P ’21 Mr. Alexander M. Gregory and Ms. Jessica K. Scott P ’24 Mr. and Mrs. William G. Harley GP ’22 Dr. and Mrs. Edward L. Harris P ’13 Mr. and Mrs. Shannon P. Holgate P ’24 Erin and Stacey Janoff P ’25 Mr. and Mrs. Wade W. Judge P ’06 Mr. and Mrs. Lax Kabra P ’24 Mr. and Mrs. Alexandros Kedros P ’22 COMPENDIUM 2021–2022 | EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 51


Ms. Stacey A. Kinnamon P ’16 Mr. and Mrs. Scott I. Kolsky P ’20 Mr. and Mrs. John LaMagna P ’24 Charles and Aline LeMaitre Dr. and Mrs. Samuel Louie P ’00 Rick and Jessica Macdonald Mr. and Mrs. Daniel F. Mahoney III P ’20 Mr. and Mrs. James A. Marvin P ’22 Mr. William McCartney and Ms. Patricia Bachmann P ’16 Mead Flaster Family Fund Ms. Abby Mintz P’04, P ’05 Mr. and Mrs. James W. Moody P ’23 Dr. RoseAnn Murray P ’23 Mr. and Mrs. Frank O’Brien III P ’21 Mr. and Mrs. Terrence W. Olson P ’18 Mr. and Mrs. David F. Oury P ’14 Mr. and Mrs. Joseph H. Plumb P ’19, P ’22 Mr. Gerardo Rodriguez and Mrs. Montserrat Prado P ’22 Dr. and Mrs. Mitchell Rubinstein P ’24 Mr. and Mrs. Mark Rust P ’16 Mr. and Mrs. Charles Sanford P ’22 Mr. Sidney Schupak and Ms. Catherine A. Nostrame Mr. Harold Schwartz and Ms. Elisa Pollack P ’24 Shawe Family Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Soep P ’23 Soep Painting Corp Mr. and Mrs. David Spath P ’99 Mr. Mark Tally and Ms. Teresa Andre P ’18 Mr. and Mrs. Domenic P. Triola Mr. Marc Van Der Hout and Ms. Jody LeWitter Zacharie and Louis Vinios P ’07 Dr. Douglas C. Waite and Dr. Martha B. Waite P ’17 The Wynne Baglio Family Mr. and Mrs. Jason M. Zorfas P ’12

Green and White Club ($500 - $999)

Mr. John P. Amershadian and Ms. Denise Hanlon P ’06 Ms. Jennifer Anderson P ’25 Mr. and Mrs. Edward Barker P ’25 Dr. Harlan F. Bittner and Dr. Rebecca B. Bittner P ’07 Mr. and Mrs. Mark Brophy Mr. and Mrs. Marshall H. Carver VI P ’23 Mr. and Mrs. David Cranford P ’22 Ross and Lisa Dik 52 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022

Mr. Gerald Fogarty and Ms. Elizabeth Tuohey P ’26 Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence J. Gage P ’23 Mr. Jed Geary and Mrs. Jessica Geary Mr. and Mrs. Robert L. Goldman P ’06 Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan P. Gottsegen P ’25 Ms. Karen Goudey and Mr. Kurt Staven Mr. Laurence Green and Ms. Karen Hershey P ’19 Dr. and Mrs. Lonnie Hanauer Mr. Dana Harbert Mr. and Mrs. Samuel H. Howell P ’23 Mr. Robert Isabella Dr. and Mrs. Daniel Katz P ’19 Mr. and Mrs. Ian M. Kelly Mr. and Mrs. Richard V. Kendrick P ’23 Mr. and Mrs. Scott H. Kenig Dr. Matthew A. Kim ’97 Mr. and Mrs. Howard Krotman P ’20 Lamoureux Ford, Inc. Dr. Nikolajs Lapins and Mrs. Denise Lapins Mr. and Mrs. Francis F. Leaf P’26, in memory of Nathan Leaf Mr. and Mrs. Richard B. Lorion Mr. and Mrs. David Lucas Mr. and Mrs. Paul F. Mickey Jr. P ’23 Melissa and Alex Milne-Pott P ’25 Mrs. Deb Odom Stern P’20 Mr. and Mrs. Dennis M. O’Leary P ’14 Mr. Michael J. Orend and Ms. Toni Michelle Peluso P ’22 Dr. and Mrs. Daniel J. Parrish P ’17 Mr. David A. Passafaro P ’14 Mr. Harold Quinn and Ms. Laurie Izzo-Quinn P ’16 R. J. McDonald, Inc. Mr. and Mrs. Timothy Rassias Mr. Jason L. Richardson ’83 Mr. and Mrs. Alan S. Roseberry P ’13 Mr. Richmond Rosen and Ms. Mildred Zwier P ’18 Mr. and Mrs. Thomas A. Schneider P ’01 Ms. Kathleen St. John-Richard Dr. and Mrs. Eric Stone Mr. and Mrs. John N. Tannebring P ’10 Mr. and Mrs. David R. Tridle P ’09 Mr. and Mrs. Timothy J. Wallace P ’24 Mr. and Mrs. Andrew D. Ward Mr. and Mrs. Didier Weizman P ’24 Mr. Andrew Wingate and Dr. Tanya Bilchik P ’16 Designates member of the Eagle Hill Loyalty Club


Friendship Club ($1 - $499)

Mr. Alessandro H. Abys ’12 Ms. Elizabeth W. Alsop ’00 Mrs. Jane Alwis Ms. Megan Alwis Mr. and Mrs. Donald Amidon Ms. Elizabeth Anderson GP ’25 Anonymous Dottie Bachtold Mr. Jonathan G. Baker Mr. James Barkus Mr. Patrick A. Beers P ’23 Mr. Michael Begin Mr. and Mrs. Robert Begin Ms. Marcia Bobka Ms. Pat Bock Mrs. Kimberlee Bonica Mrs. Maureen Borski GP ’24 Mr. and Mrs. Michael J. Borski P ’24 Mrs. Kacie L. Breeds Ms. Cira L. Brown ’04 Mrs. Jamie L. Caban Mr. Cole Callahan and Mrs. Sara Callahan ’02 Mr. and Mrs. Peter A. Callahan P ’16 Mr. and Mrs. Greg D. Calvert P ’23 Mr. Kevin M. Caplan ’08 Mr. Robert A. Caplan ’04 Ms. Olivia C. Carey ’12 Ms. Susan A. Casey P ’08 Ms. Noreen Cassidy Mr. and Mrs. David S. Christie P ’07 Ms. Carolyn I. Ciccotelli ’08 Mr. and Mrs. Peter J. Condakes P ’14 Dr. and Mrs. R. Timothy Connors Mr. and Mrs. Martin F. Connors Jr. Ms. JoAnne Cuddeback Mr. Chanceller C. Curd ’20 Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Curry GP ’24 Mrs. Jeanne M. Cutrona P ’11 Ms. Michelle K. Czuber ’17 Ms. Amanda Damon Mr. Peter W. Deininger Ms. Taryn D. Del Valle ’20 Ms. Mary Deshaies GP ’23 Mr. Frank Diliddo

Mr. and Mrs. Brad Doherty Mr. and Mrs. John M. Doherty P ’26 Ms. Erin Dohn GP ’24 Ms. Emily Doiron Mr. and Mrs. Thomas C. Dube Mr. and Mrs. Walter J. Dubzinski Jr. GP ’18 Ms. Linda C. Eason P ’14 Mr. Jonathan M. Eisenberg and Ms. Denise M. Faneuff P ’24 Mr. Daniel J. Feinblatt ’14 Mr. and Mrs. George M. Fenton P ’15 Mr. Greg Fontana and Mrs. Julie McMahon P ’21 Shane and Becca Francoeur Ms. Morgan M. Frost ’21 Mrs. Elaine P. Gauthier Mr. and Mrs. John S. Gee P ’11 Mr. Bernard S. Gengel ’10 Mrs. Jean F. Geraghty P ’11 Mr. Jay Goggin Ms. Jeanne Goldberg and Ms. Deborah N. Gottesman P ’18 Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Goldberg P ’22 Ms. Molly Gray Ms. Ashley Green Mr. and Mrs. Dennis R. Grimes P ’12 Mr. and Mrs. Robert C. Groman P ’04, P ’07, P ’09 Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Halpin GP ’26 Mr. and Mrs. Michael P. Haseltine P ’14 Mr. and Mrs. David A. Haynes II P ’11 Mr. Brian Hetzel Mr. and Mrs. Jason Holden P ’21 Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Hopper Mrs. Jenna Hubacz Dr. Chiu Hwang Mr. and Mrs. Paul R. Jackson Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Richard M. Jacobsmeyer P ’12 Mr. and Mrs. Josh W. Jones P ’23 Mr. and Mrs. Alan Joubert Ms. Taylor A. Judge ’07 Ms. Devon Jurczyk Mr. and Mrs. Joshua Kanozek Mr. and Mrs. Joe Keller GP ’25 Mr. Scott Kelley Dr. and Mrs. Christopher M. Kenney P ’22 Rich Kmiec and Mary Elizabeth Messier Mr. and Mrs. Douglas R. Koczur P ’16 Ms. Chris Komenda COMPENDIUM 2021–2022 | EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 53


Ms. Jacqueline X. Krotman ’20 Mr. and Mrs. Marc R. Lagrant Dr. and Mrs. Richard Lavoie Dr. David M. Leahy Mr. and Mrs. Andrew D. Leighton P ’16 Mr. Neil A. Leonard-Campos ’12 Ms. Danielle M. Leppert-Simenauer ’15 Mr. and Mrs. Van D. Lessig P ’03 Mr. Scott M. Lincoln and Mrs. Amy A. Auman-Lincoln P ’15 Ms. Donna Linnehan and Mrs. Joyce Ward Mr. and Mrs. Steven D. Little Ms. Donna J. LoConte and Dr. Lisa M. Hassler P ’20 Ms. Katherine M. Lodge ’19 Mr. Angus K. Lodge ’20 Mr. Jeffrey Y. Louie ’00 Mrs. Diana T. Mackiewicz Mr. Daniel H. Mackinson ’08 Mr. and Mrs. Richard A. Mahony P ’18 Ms. Tatyana Malyk Mr. and Mrs. Steven R. Markoff P ’04 Mr. James F. Marrs Mr. and Mrs. Denos P. Marvin Ms. Natalie H. Mays Dr. and Mrs. Anthony McCaffrey Mr. Matthew McCann Todd C. and Julie L. McDonald Ms. Wendy L. McFaul Ms. Carolyn H. McGrory GP ’13 Mr. Bryant McInnis and Ms. Rochelle Jordan-McInnis P ’22 Ms. Catharine S. Mehl P ’16 Ms. Alexandra J. Merjan ’16 Ms. Judith Meunier P ’24 Mr. and Mrs. Stanley J. Michalak P ’24 Ms. Michelle Montague P ’23 Mr. and Mrs. George P. Munsey IV P ’10 Mr. Jeffrey E. Myra Mr. and Mrs. Michael D. Myra Mr. Brett Nardini Mr. and Mrs. Robert Nash P ’14 Dr. and Mrs. John P. Nicholson Jr. P ’18 Mr. and Mrs. Joseph A. O’Koren P ’04 Ms. Olivia M. Passafaro ’14 Mrs. Juliana Perge GP ’11 Mr. and Mrs. James R. Phaneuf Ms. Esran P. Phillips ’16 54 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022

Mr. Jonathan A. Phinney ’06 Mr. Simon M. Polakoff ’10 Mr. Jason Przypek P ’18 Mrs. Alicia J. Quigley and Mr. Ryan Merrill Dr. and Mrs. Richard Raymond Mr. and Mrs. Michael K. Reif P ’08 Ms. Caryl Rice Mr. Michael J. Richard Mr. Wesley A. Richardson Ms. Finleigh R. Riendeau Mr. Stephen Riendeau Mr. and Mrs. Hunter Rieseberg P ’23 Ms. Hannah N. Roseberry ’13 Mr. Richard A. Rosenlev and Ms. Larni S. Rosenlev P ’21 Mr. Griffin H. Rouse ’04 Mr. and Mrs. Alan G. Rubenstein P ’12 Mr. and Mrs. John Rucci P ’23 Ms. Johanna M. Ruggiero P ’19 Mr. Peter Ryzewski Mr. and Mrs. David Sabini P ’03 Mrs. Robin L. Samuelson Dr. and Mrs. Joel E. Schneider P ’11 Mrs. and Mr. Deborah A. Shanks Ms. Kim R. N. Simmons P ’16 Ms. Nancy J. Skamarycz Mr. and Mrs. D. Van Smith Jr. P’13 Mrs. Cheryl A. Southwick Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Staiti Mr. Harrison Stern ’20 Mr. Carl W. Stockwell ’00 Ms. Katherine Thompson Mr. and Mrs. Richard M. Tocci P ’06 Mr. Zachary M. van Luling ’04 Mr. and Mrs. James H. Wagner P ’11 Ms. Nan Waller GP ’07, GP ’10 Mrs. Marie Ward Mr. and Mrs. Barrett Weiss P ’99 Mr. and Mrs. Jochen Welsch Ms. Stephanie Whitaker Mr. E. J. White and Rev. Kathryn White Mr. and Mrs. Robert Witt Mr. Brendan N. Wood ’13 Ms. Liberty Yancey P ’25 Ms. Sheri A. Young P ’19 Mr. Benjamin E. Zorfas ’12 Designates member of the Eagle Hill Loyalty Club


Matching Gift Companies Ameriprise Eversource Energy Foundation, Inc. Raytheon Charity Custodial Account Rockefeller Foundation Starr Companies Matching Gifts Program Truist YourCause

The 1967 Society The 1967 Society harkens back to the year of Eagle Hill School’s founding and recognizes those generous and farsighted friends who have made the school’s future a part of their personal legacy. Whether made by will, annuity, trust, or another fashion, planned gifts are often a school’s most significant means of support and can have a profound impact. Ms. Candace Alsop P ’00 Mr. and Mrs. Thomas A. Archipley II P ’19 Ms. Mary Ruth Beaumont P ’11 Mr. Alden J. Bianchi and Ms. Mary Kett Mr. and Mrs. James Bustamante P ’18 Ms. Suzanne Chapman P ’09 Mr. and Mrs. John M. Cobb P ’13 Mr. Ricardo Escobar ’81 and Mrs. Ingrid Escobar P ’19 Mr. and Mrs. Kevin B. Fish P ’21 Ms. Maura FitzGerald and Mr. Allen Carney P ’08 Mr. Erik Fleming and Ms. Torrance Watkins Mr. and Mrs. Thomas M. Fortin P ’16 Mr. and Mrs. John S. Gee P ’11 Mr. Michael Haskett P ’22 The David and Janyce Hoyt Family Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Peter S. Joseph P ’13 Mr. and Mrs. J. S. Judge P ’07, P ’10 Mr. Arthur N. Langhaus and Mrs. Kathy Marlin-Langhaus P ’14 Dr. and Mrs. PJ McDonald P ’18 Mr. and Mrs. David Merjan P ’16 Mr. and Mrs. Mark Morein P ’20 Mr. and Mrs. Rodney Reynolds P ’01 Mr. James B. Richardson Mr. Michael P. Riendeau and Mrs. Mary Ann Riendeau Mr. and Mrs. Robert B. Rogers GP ’04 Mr. and Mrs. Michael Schumacher P ’20 Mr. and Mrs. Robert L. Smith P ’05 The Estate of Thomas G. Stemberg

Legacy, Gratitude, and Permanence A gift from the newest members of the 1967 Society.

F

rom the day of my son’s graduation, giving back to Eagle Hill School was something I always wanted to do. While updating my will with my estate attorney I conveyed my desire to give back to Eagle Hill School for all that they had given to my son, Zachary. My attorney could tell (from my tearful explanation) how important it was to me. She suggested a Charitable Remainder Trust. I did a little research and knew immediately this was a “no-brainer” and it was absolutely what I needed to do. EHS was life changing for Zachary in so many ways. He played multiple sports, he had new friends, he liked school…but most importantly he was happy. EHS became a family. All of the teachers and staff were so loving and supportive. I remember on one of his birthdays, I had a conflict and could not be there to celebrate with him. He said, “Mom, it’s really okay. I have my EHS family here”. What wonderful words to hear from our son and such a comfort to our family. They wrapped their arms around Zachary and provided everything he needed. Our trust will provide a scholarship in Zachary’s name to a child whose family needs financial assistance. When I read the trust for the first time, I wept tears of joy knowing this will aid future students to be able to attend Eagle Hill and benefit from all that the school has to offer. We are so very grateful, and I am so glad to be able to give back. —Mrs. Mary Ruth Beaumont, Parent of Zachary ’11

We are grateful to the Beaumont family for their gift and to all the generous donors listed on these pages. There are many ways to support Eagle Hill School. To learn more about legacy gift opportunities, please contact: Rick Macdonald rmacdonald@eaglehill.school (413) 477- 6000 x1211

COMPENDIUM 2021–2022 | EAGLE HILL SCHOOL 55


Mr. and Mrs. Ryan Van Pelt P ’17 Ms. Marilyn A. Waller and Mr. Doron Weinberg P ’07, P ’10 Mr. James C. Wiley and Ms. Erica Stumvoll-Wiley P ’18

Community, In-Kind, and Special Contributions Support for Eagle Hill comes in many forms. Whether it is hosting a reception for EHS families at their home (or virtually), welcoming Eagle Hill School staff and friends to their country club, volunteering on or away from campus, or any number of things in between, the Eagle Hill family is generous beyond measure. For the year 2021–2022, a special thanks to: Mr. and Mrs. Matt Andresen P ’19 Brown Electric Co. Dr. Tony Chou and Ms. Kristine E. Miller P ’25 David G. Roach & Sons, Inc. E&R Cleaners Mr. and Mrs. Michael Altman Mr. and Mrs. Michael S. Bernstein P ’21, P ’24 Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Brown P ’20 Ms. Linda Carpenter Mr. Frank Diliddo Mr. and Mrs. Kevin B. Fish P ’21 Mr. Erik Fleming Ray and Anne Hyer P ’23 Mr. and Mrs. John Jelke P ’23 Mr. and Mrs. Alan Joubert The KVB Eyes on You Fund Mr. and Mrs. Alessandro Lanaro P ’22 Mr. and Mrs. Charles Lemaitre Ms. Camila Pastor and Mr. Stephen E. Maharam P ’23 Mr. Gerald M. Lodge P ’19 Mr. and Mrs. James A. Marvin P ’22 Mr. and Mrs. Glenn E. Mitchell P ’08 Mr. and Mrs. Kevin B. Rabbitt P ’22 Mr. and Mrs. Ira Resnick P ’22 Mr. and Mrs. Michael Roffler P ’22 Mr. Steve Rotman Mr. Owen Ruud Mr. and Mrs. Gideon Stein P ’20 Buzz and Sherry Stryker P ’23 Mr. and Mrs. Hamburg Tang Jr. P ’22 Dr. Douglas C. Waite and Dr. Martha B. Waite P ’17 56 EAGLE HILL SCHOOL | COMPENDIUM 2021–2022

Endowments Endowments are the financial bedrock of an institution. Permanent funds, they speak to the donors’ unwavering belief in Eagle Hill School. With income providing leading support for scholarship, student life, faculty development, and more, these funds and the families and foundations behind them are forever a part of our school’s journey and growth. The Moriah Fund Endowed Scholarship The Larson Endowed Fund The 1434 Endowed Scholarship Fund The Hadley Family Endowed Scholarship The Rod and Janice Reynolds Endowed Scholarship Fund The Rod and Janice Reynolds Endowed Fund for Faculty The Beinner Family Scholarship Fund The Lynyak Family Fund The PJM Endowed Scholarship Fund The Michael Riendeau Endowed Fund for Excellence The Joseph Family Endowed Fund for Student Experience The Otto-Bernstein Endowed Scholarship

Designates member of the Eagle Hill Loyalty Club


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2021-2022 | The Compendium by Eagle Hill School - Issuu