SpringRETROSPECTIVE Looking back, 2020-21 was a school year defined by reinvention. From our weekly schedule to our plans for performances and graduation, each defining component of the year seemed to go through multiple drafts. We brainstormed, discussed, presented, and (oftentimes) returned to the drawing board. Throughout it all, we relied on for our nimbleness and closeness. Given our relatively small size, we could make decisions that were highly specific to our community – and we could revisit and improve decisions that didn’t work out as expected. Today, the comfort of repetition and predictability seems much closer at hand. Burke took a multi-stage approach to our campus return: first, outdoor sports in September, followed by outdoor grade programs in November, and then our “pilot program,” which invited back students in our main entry grades (6th and 9th) after Thanksgiving. Following a post-Winter Break quarantine, we invited all grades back to campus in January, with 6th and 7th grade attending Tuesday-Friday and 8th-12th grade attending on alternating days in assigned teams (“Team Mooskin” and “Team Roth,” named for our founders). We also invited remote students to ‘opt-in’ every six weeks. Behind the masks and across the mandated six-foot distances (now reduced to three feet), energy and camaraderie began to build. To be candid, we can’t wait to ditch the “desks in rows” configurations – but even now, the warmth and joy that come from being proximate cannot be underestimated. Spring sports ramped up. Dozens of students rehearsed and filmed our spring musical. In-person Graduation and the Moving Up ceremony are around the corner. And in Spring Term 3, we were thrilled to invite students back for all their classes on Tuesday-Friday – no more alternating by teams, and full grades were reunited. It’s been a year of iterations, occasional frustrations, and innumerable losses. It’s been a year when we needed, and found, these chances to be close.
“A SCHOOL YEAR DEFINED BY 2 \\
REINVENTION”
1968 Edmund Burke School Magazine
STUDYING HISTORY AS IT HAPPENS. “What Name Do We Give To What We Have Seen?”
Just after 3 AM on January 7th, 2021, the US Congress certified the Electoral Colleges votes and confirmed that Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris would take office on January 20th. In other years, January 6th passed without ceremony or notice – its procedures considered rote, mundane. But now the date has become something strange, something symbolic – to be held up, scrutinized, and studied, perhaps for years to come. It was a day that our democracy revealed its fragility. It was a day that we witnessed history. Only in the aftermath did we realize it. Three months after the violent storming of the US Capitol, five history teachers discussed how they investigate chaos (and change) in their classrooms. with thanks to Ginger Attarian P’21 and P‘25, Maureen Minard P’28, Mitch Masucci, Mustafa Nusraty, and Sean Felix
In the 6th Grade
In the 8th Grade
Now in his eleventh year at Burke, Sean is the Middle School Dean of Community and teaches 6th grade “Core,” guiding Burke’s youngest students through English, history, and humanities. Amid the fear and uncertainty of January 6th, he remembered “to stop, know its impact, and show its impact.”
This spring, Ginger is teaching Topics in US History to the entire Class of 2025 – and she echoes Sean that analysis of contentious current events must be rooted in the relationships between students and teachers. While Middle Schoolers may not be ready to untangle each and every complexity, they do understand the emotional toll – so that is where Ginger often begins.
Sean stressed that, in the immediate aftermath, “we don’t know everything.” With an event that was “close to home and visceral,” he encouraged students to talk to their families first and highlighted the adults around them who are here to help. Students also went through a photo slideshow so they could unpack the iconography and find the vocabulary for what took place together – especially when that vocabulary can be so fraught.
To build a foundation, she begins her US History course with the Constitution and what it can tell us about the meaning of “citizenship.” She encourages students to ask, “what is my place in all this?” Needless to say, our founding documents are imperfect – but Ginger emphasizes that “you can’t change something if you don’t know something.” Only from learning, analyzing, and researching can we move to action. She also encourages students to take action beyond the school building, even by doing something as simple as talking to their family.
For the Class of 2027, they are beginning Middle School (and beginning at Burke) in markedly different circumstances than they had envisioned. As Sean points out, “kids have a sense of loss, what they don’t get to have.” Their current world may not be the one they expected, but adults shouldn’t assume that they can’t handle it. Often, they can.
When asked how the storming of the US Capitol might change the teaching of US History, she confirms: “it will change everything.” Among the greatest challenges are helping students scrutinize their own sources of information: how do they find those sources, what biases are inherent in them, and how do they tease out the complexities of a given issue? Now in her 25th year at Burke, Ginger emphasizes that adults can teach by example through their own engagement in democracy. In her case, she volunteered at the polls in Wisconsin, requiring her to Zoom into a Fall Semester class from the O’Hare Airport. Summer 2021
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