DCD Bulletin 2020 Volume 2

Bulletin • 2020/

Health Wellness and

Inside:

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The Myth of Our Separateness: Reflections on the Pandemic Celebrating Kindness in Many Ways Across Our Community Taking the Classroom Outdoors

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Mission Statement

Dedham Country Day School

• Provides to each child a unique educational balance of challenging academics, arts, and athletics; • Embraces an inclusive, interdependent community of students, teachers, and parents that fosters trust and encourages children to take risks; • Creates independent, resilient, lifelong learners through engaging, developmentally-based teaching designed to meet varied learning styles; • Inspires students to become caring, ethical members of the larger world by emphasizing thoughtful citizenship and respect for self and others.

Diversity Statement At DCD, we define diversity as an umbrella term that includes race, gender, age, ethnicity, culture, nationality, sexual orientation, social and economic class, physical and learning differences, and religion, as well as other characteristics that contribute to each individual’s full identity.

We strive to provide a multicultural education, which celebrates the diversity of our community and the larger world. At DCD, respect permeates all aspects of school life. We want children to learn to understand and value multiple perspectives, identify and reject stereotypes and prejudices, and work for equity and justice.

Dedham Country Day is strongly committed to ensuring a sense of community in which every member is safe, valued, and treated with dignity.

We believe that a broad range of experiences and viewpoints enhances learning and enriches life.

Admissions Inquiries should be submitted to Emilie Liebhoff, Director of Admissions and Assistant Head of School Dedham Country Day School 90 Sandy Valley Road Dedham, MA 02026 Tel: 781.329.0850 Web: www.dedhamcountryday.org

Head of School Allison D. Webster Director of Admissions and Assistant Head of School Emilie Liebhoff Director of Advancement Charles S. Rudnick Director of Communications Leslie Bowen Contributing Writers Abby Ackerman Erin Albert Leslie Bowen Kate Reardon Hilary Rochelle Monique Tello ’86 Allison Webster Design Jason Fairchild, Truesdale Group Photography Abby Ackerman Leslie Bowen Ben Bocko Kristie Gillooly Dean ’02 Hilary Rochelle Sue Shirley Printing Recycled Paper Printing, Inc.

DCD’s yoga and mindfulness programs now span all grades.

In This Issue Head’s Report The Myth of Our Separateness: Reflections on the Pandemic

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This Winter, DCD Celebrated Kindness in Many Ways Across Our Community Adopting a Positive Outlook There’s A New Cook In The Kitchen Taking the Classroom Outdoors Our Community Coping with COVID DCD Student Starts Charitable Business to Help with COVID Andrew W. Kendall ‘74 Monique Tello ‘86 Mollie White ‘11

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Distance Learning

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DCD Staying Connected During the Pandemic Hawk Day DCD Reads What We’re Reading

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Sports Roundup

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Alumni Association

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2020 Alumni Award: Henry Singer ’70: Bringing to Light Some of the World’s Darkest Hours DCD Eighth-Graders Zoom with Filmmaker Henry Singer ’70

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Class Notes

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A New Challenge for Kathryn Cloonan ’17 DCD CFO Presents at National Conference Staying Connected

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Head’s Report The Myth of Our Separateness: Reflections on the Pandemic

by Allison D. Webster, Head of School

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hat elements are essential to provide a child with a meaningful, multi-dimensional, and robust education, one that creates a joyful daily life and lays a foundation for work and relationships in the future, an education that flexes and adapts as children grow? I’ve spent twenty-five years thinking about this question. Back in February, before the pandemic disrupted our lives, I would have felt fairly confident that my answers were complete; I see now, as the newly minted head of a virtual school, that my response needs adjusting.

My previous response to the question would have included explanations about a developmental understanding of students, a diverse cohort of peers, energized and autonomous teachers with a shared purpose, connected families as partners, facilities that support programs, a shared mission and pedagogy, anti-bias curriculum, explicit values, and key traditions. In many ways, my response hasn’t changed: all of the above still very much holds true.

Yet, the vantage point of a pandemic has added clarity to my vision and brought into an even sharper focus the key elements of an excellent education. It also helped me spot what features held inadequate emphasis on my previous understanding.

The process of moving school online forced all of us at DCD to consider, again and again, what is essential that we are trying to create and preserve. What matters most about the content we are teaching students? What aspects of our relationships with students do the most to help understand themselves, feel motivated, and see themselves reflected in the world? How do families support and amplify our work with students? And how do peers—perhaps the most important part of school from a student perspective—play a role in supporting learning?

Our task was not a matter of merely moving old content to new platforms. Our task was to re-envision and rearticulate why we are doing what we are doing, and find how to translate these goals to a new platform best.

So what is even more apparent now, held up in starker relief?

The intricacy and interconnectivity of our school as a whole system and the many elements that contribute to the whole. As much as it appears that we have individual students and individual teachers (and even individual heads of school), the truth is that we function as a collective. The myth of our separateness is made clear in this time of separation; we provide a great education to the individual child because these individual units exist only in the context of an 2

interconnected whole.

Understanding school as a system in this time makes me think of early forest researchers who discovered that the forests were far more complex than initially understood. The visible system of separate trees, soil, animals, and water had more nuance than they could have imagined. How so? Fungal networks under the soil serve as a type of internet for tree communication. Separate trees signal to each other from miles away, warning of danger or protecting each other by exchanging carbon and nutrients. All of this is invisible when looking at a forest. Trees that appear separate could be like a group of Aspens, all part of the same root system, and, in fact, one organism. Even logs on the forest floor play a vital role in making the system as a whole thrive—every piece of the system matters. Every element plays a role. The intricacy, interconnectivity, subtlety, and nuance of a forest system have a depth and beauty beyond what we once understood, and the same is true of our school.

So what does this new vantage point show us about each element of our DCD “forest,” and how can this new learning help us be a stronger school in the future? By keeping our focus on a few key areas, ones that have always distinguished DCD as a school and community, we can help our DCD grow and thrive. What is essential to remember?

We’re not just a collection of trees:

Just as a forest is not just a collection of trees, school is not just a collection of students. Much has been written in this time about the way the pandemic will shift us to a greater focus on the individual and more individualized forms of education. This analysis misses the point. Of course, we need to meet the needs of individual students, and some of the digital resources we are utilizing will help us better achieve this goal. This is good news for student learning and autonomy.

But the key takeaway from this moment is that each tree—or student—only thrives when it is part of an intricate system, and the focus on the system as a whole is vital to the strength of the individual. Schools like DCD that fuel a connection to the whole, help students look outward and appreciate that other people matter, and help students understand the way the pieces of our world and history fit together to explain the present, will be just like the most resilient forest systems. Our “trees” will grow individually because

Head’s Report

we work together and see the world around us as a collective.

The thousands of millisecond moments that are missing from our current school day—the nearly imperceptible shifts in movement, facial expression, and reaction from peers and teachers—is a force that typically helps students to move like one organism. Left on their own, students struggle to see themselves and their own learning as clearly without having it consistently reflected back to them in a larger system. We are social beings, and we need to be in a context to learn well. Whether we return to brick-and-mortar school in the fall or continue some weeks of distance learning, we must continue to find ways to keep learning social, to keep students connected to the energy, belonging, and feedback they experience when they are part of a whole.

We need soil and sunshine:

Soil and sunshine, the key sources for creating nutrients for the whole system, must be in place for the system to flourish. Our teachers are the soil and sunlight of our system, creating nutrients for students with all of their imagination, creativity, determination, and skill. Great teachers are the key to building a great education for kids, and the current crisis has brought this truth into even starker relief.

The shift to distance learning has fallen on the shoulders of DCD’s teachers, and they have borne this responsibility with fortitude and imagination (right along with our families who

have supported the endeavor at home). Continuing to develop our systems to attract, hire, and retain the best teachers—like our current cohort who demonstrate adaptability and creativity beyond measure—is the key to educating students well and consistent with our “whole child” philosophy of nourishing the social/emotional as well as academic growth of children. Nothing supports this type of growth more effectively than educators who themselves are curious, lifelong learners and who can model those traits as well as teach them.

We must tend to the invisible systems:

Just as the health of trees is being shaped by systems of fungal pathways under the soil—a system that is invisible when looking at the trees—there are invisible systems at work shaping the health of our students and our school. The culture of our school is an invisible force that influences whether or not we will thrive.

Cultivating the mindsets and behaviors that foster equity in our school, keep us aligned and connected, and make us resilient, is key to the health of every organism in our school ecosystem.

We’ve felt the absence of some of the ways we build culture, like moments over coffee, or a hello at carpool; finding ways to deliberately cultivate our culture as a school, even if we are not on campus, is critical to our success as an institution. We’ve taken some steps during our distance learning to reinforce our interconnectivity, such as parent association-hosted remote coffees, 3

Head’s Report

Zoom assemblies, our first-ever Hawk Day, and fun contests (who doesn’t like a good pie in the face?!), and will need to build on this foundation to continue nourishing our culture if we are faced with additional periods off-campus.

Nothing is extraneous in a connected system; every piece matters:

Every moment of the school day plays a role in a child’s education: the serendipitous walk down the hall with a student from another grade; the moment at recess that mixes new peers for a game; the bulletin board that sparks a new interest; the smell of a favorite food cooking that offers comfort; the physical feeling of being in a room with laughter and the reverberation in a room full of drummers. Nothing is superfluous, and it all adds up to a student’s experience.

How do we create richness and serendipity using the platforms and systems that are available to us? Many schools have prioritized simplifying the experience of learning, reverting to math and reading skill-development in a way that suggests this alone will suffice. But a child’s education needs to be so much more than simple skill acquisition, and each piece of the school day they experience, in all of its variety and richness, contributes to this whole. While, of course, we need to continue a child’s skill development, we also need to hang on to these broader goals, so

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we don’t devolve education into the imparting of a few narrow skills. That’s why we’ve strived to create as many opportunities as possible to enrich our students’ distance learning experience— from including arts and athletics in our remote curriculum to hosting 8th grade-kindergarten online “buddy” visits, to holding the annual DCD Fair with a combination of at-home and online celebrations.

If you imagine an individual leaf, with all of its color, shape, and texture, I’m sure you are moved by the beauty of such a perfect singular creation. Now imagine an entire tree filled with such leaves, each one as beautiful and intricate as the one you envisioned. Go on to picture that one tree’s worth of leaves multiplied over a forest of trees. Finally, see that forest as a connected system, each piece critical to the success of the whole.

Such is the awe-inspiring beauty of our school. I can see each face of our DCD students, and know the unique background, experiences, thoughts, and passions that make each child special.

But when you imagine them, like you imagined the leaves and trees, each unit a small piece of a whole and connected system of children and adults, the awe-inspiring beauty of our school—and the power of it as a whole—comes into clearer focus. In this time of social distancing and separation, remembering the myth of our separateness and the power of our system as a collective will help us move forward to meet the needs of all of our children, together.

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This Winter, DCD Celebrated Kindness in Many Ways Across Our Community

By Kate Reardon

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n celebration of Friendship Day, DCD undertook its 2nd annual school-wide anonymous kindness project. Every student, faculty, and administrator wrote letters to an amigo invisible (invisible friend). This project is inspired by the custom of celebrating Friendship Day in Paraguay by having an amigo invisible and giving that friend letters, gifts, and reasons to smile. The brightly decorated letters carried messages of kindness, acknowledgement, and encouragement across divisions and grades. “Continue to beam with confidence, shine like a star, and always remain a creative thinker,” wrote one friend.

This year, students also added secret coded messages of their own invention to their letters to add to the suspense and excitement. Additionally, students made binary-code bracelets using their existing knowledge of programming skills. Each bracelet read “DCD” in binary code using colored beads. At the end of the project, every student had a binary bead bracelet to remind them of their letter and the kindness they exchanged in this project.

DCD’s fifth-grade students participated in the ThinkGive Challenge. This 10-week program is designed to help students engage with the world around them through kindness. Each

week, students are challenged to give a “gift” of kindness that focuses on a different “ring of responsibility”—self, friends and family, or the wider community. Through a combination of classroom discussion and reflection, students focused on small acts of kindness (“gifts”) and the ripple effect that comes from giving these gifts. Students are able to record and reflect on their gifts using their online profile at the ThinkGive website. This project encourages students to be mindful of the many ways they can be kind to both themselves and others. It also helps build digital citizenship skills through thoughtful commenting and peer-topeer collaboration.

Finally, the school community celebrated this year’s Doodle for Google competition. Google doodles are the images that change each day on the Google search page. This year’s prompt is “what does kindness look like?” Here at DCD, students had the opportunity to draw their own Google doodle about kindness to be displayed outside the Adams Lab and on the welcome screen in the Lobby.

To inspire their doodles, classes watched the Random Acts of Kindness video “The Science of Kindness,” learning that simple acts of kindness can have a powerful ripple effect. As individuals, our physical and mental health improves when we perform and receive acts of kindness. We tap into emotions of caring and trust, we experience less stress, and we are better able to concentrate. As a community that celebrates kindness, we develop a greater sense of belonging and gratitude. In fact, simply witnessing an act of kindness between the people around us makes us more likely to act with kindness in the future.

Leveraging such a strong multiplier of social strength is something we can all do, from pre-kindergarten through adulthood.

From sharing anonymous kind words to drawing our images of kindness, our community was brightened by the friendships and connections we made this winter.

Kate Reardon is Director of Academic Technology. Middle School Spanish teacher Autumn Andrade-de León contributed to the article.

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Health and Wellness

Adopting a Positive Outlook

By Erin Albert

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he past few months have required us to be flexible and become more comfortable with uncertainty. This can be a challenging feat since we have a natural tendency to focus on negative events, a phenomenon that psychologists call the negativity bias.

Fortunately, there are things we can do to improve the way we think, respond, and feel. By practicing gratitude and focusing on things that bring us joy, we can gradually change our mindset and shift our mood to the positive. Just like the development of any skill, this takes practice with purpose.

I recently attended AISNE’s Health and Wellness Week, where we spoke about how children feel the feelings that we feel. When we feel anxious, children are more likely to feel anxious. When we feel calm, children are more likely to feel calmer and in control.

A positive outlook will help manage stress and foster resilience in kids. Here are a few tips to support a positive mindset: Allow yourself to pause and breathe. We get uncomfortable to get stronger, so breathe through your discomfort and remind yourself that what you’re feeling right now is necessary for your growth.

Replace negative self-talk with positive affirmations. Be kind and talk to yourself the same way someone who loves you would talk to you.

Remember, you need to take care of yourself, so you have more to give to others.

Do what you love. Find opportunities to notice and experience joy, both in the things you do as well as the people with whom you connect.

We can train ourselves to notice positive messages around us more readily. During an episode of Doc McStuffins, Doc explained, “The good thing about bad days is you can always make them better.”

This message rings true for everyone. What messages are you choosing to hear?

Erin Albert is DCD’s School Psychologist.

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There’s A New Cook In The Kitchen

By Hilary Rochelle

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elcome, Chef Jeff! it simple, you let the real flavors Before we transitioned of the food come out,” he explains. to Distance Learning, “Fresh ingredients, a bit of infused DCD was fortunate to have several garlic oil, some simple herbs, salt, weeks of lunch prepared by Chef Jeff and pepper will give you wonderStevens of Flik Dining. Whether it’s ful flavor.” the homemade granola bars for a Chef Jeff is so excited to be snack, fruit-infused water, roasted here at DCD and to play a role root veggies, pasta with revved up in educating children about food, marinara, or yummy new craft sandnutrition, and expanding their wiches at the salad bar, everyone in palates along the way. “I love the community will agree that we the challenge of getting younger have all enjoyed the new offerings. kids to try different foods. That’s And, Chef Jeff loves his new kitchen my goal”. If you walk into the at DCD and the community he is Jeffrey Stevens, Chef Jeff or CJ, in his new kitchen; kids dig in to a healthy lunch. Lawrence room during lunchtime, feeding. you’ll notice so many different Chef Jeff ’s interest in cooking options available. There is the and working in food service began hot meal of the day, a vegetarian initially in 1984 and continued option, a homemade soup, several formally with his professional trainprepared salads, a full salad bar, ing in 1995 when he enrolled in craft sandwiches, and for the picky Johnson and Wales’ Culinary Arts eater, there’s still cereal and bread! program. Since then, he has worked The reason Chef Jeff offers so in every facet of the foodservice many options is because he wants industry, cooking for catering kids to feel comfortable taking a companies, hotels, bakeries, country little taste of everything, rather clubs, university dining, and now than piling their plates high with with the food service company, just a mound of mashed potatoes!

Flik Dining.

“Kids learn from each other, and when they see each other trying “In capacities ranging from an assistant cook to sous chef to something new, they’ll be encouraged to do the same,” says Jeff. executive chef, I’ve learned so much from each of these experiUnderstanding nutrition and allergens is crucial to his menu ences, and I like that I’ve developed my style of cooking along planning and the way he runs his kitchen. Flik Dining has the way,” notes Jeff. Mentors are essential in cooking, and Chef terrific resources in terms of recipes, staff nutritionists, and Jeff values the ones he’s had. He’s learned about spices, food sourcing. And Jeff has invested a great deal of time and energy presentation, nutrition, and local sourcing. Jeff comes to DCD learning about food allergies and establishing protocols to elimifrom the Rivers School in Weston, where he credits one of his nate cross-contamination in his kitchen for keeping our students favorite mentors, Mike, with Korean, Chinese, and Thai influsafe. In collaboration with DCD’s health office, Jeff knows which ences in his cooking. students have allergies and can meal plan accordingly. At the When asked what characterizes his style of cooking, Jeff feels beginning of every meal, Chef Jeff comes out of the kitchen to strongly about keeping things simple, fresh, and local. “There’s go over the menu identifying all the ingredients so students and no need to layer on too many complex flavors. When you keep teachers are aware of any potential allergens. And, of course, he 8

Health and Wellness

makes sure that there is something yummy for everyone to eat!

While the students are making use of the suggestion box Jeff put out, they seem receptive to the change in DCD’s food program.

While for obvious reasons, he can’t take their suggestions to serve pizza and dessert every day, he’s looking forward to getting to know the community’s likes and dislikes and expanding everyone’s food horizons along the way.

“My day starts in the DCD kitchen at 5 a.m., and I honestly can’t wait to get here every day,” Jeff says with a smile. “Being around younger kids is fun, especially when they call me Chef Jeff and give me a high five. I just love this”.

What Should I Eat?

By Hilary Rochelle

With all the new food options available to DCD students from our new dining service with Flik, we are taking the opportunity to work with students to give them some reminders about building healthy diets.

During a recent P.E. class, Flik’s dietitian and regional Wellness director, Lisa Jackson, in collaboration with DCD’s nursing staff, reviewed the five food groups, talked about important nutrients to growing bodies, and discussed how they should think about filling their plates.

Using a fun program called “My Plate,” students engaged in relay races requiring them to put the right types of food in the right groups on their plates. Points were awarded for speed to completion and for placing specific foods in the right groups in the nutritionally appropriate amounts! Points were deducted for putting the foods in the wrong groups earning the losing teams several rounds of planks! Students clearly had fun engaging both their minds and bodies.

New juice station offers all-natural fruit-infused water; the salad bar features an array of fresh vegetables, cheeses, and grains along with sandwiches.

Students engage in a fun game called “My Plate” to learn about balanced nutrition.

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Taking the Classroom Outdoors

By Leslie Bowen

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onnecting to the natural world fuels children’s curiosity as well as improves their physical and emotional health.

Making sure they get outside for fresh air and sunshine has always been viewed as an essential key to their overall well-being.

But, studies have shown that delivering curriculum-based lessons in school grounds or local areas can also benefit children by increasing student engagement in lessons, and teachers appreciate the time outdoors as well. Any subject—math, science, art—can be taught outside, making the experience both fun and educational. Exploring the natural world can feel more like an adventure than does learning in a classroom.

In addition to recess and sports, teachers at DCD take children outside for the many learning opportunities it offers. From pre-K Discovery Walks to sketching from life in art class to merely reading books together in the outdoors on a beautiful day, children relish the chance to be outdoors.

By getting outside beyond the four walls of the classroom, students can build their observational skills while taking part in active, hands-on learning. As part of their year-long study of ecology, for example, fifth-graders spent several classes searching for and sketching decomposers on the path to Hale House. The activity built on a recent lesson that every organism has one of three roles in its habitat; producer, consumer, or decomposer.

Budding artists can also be found scattered about the grounds, looking and learning as they sketch what they see when students in grades 3–5 in Mr. Coakley’s art classes draw from observation in the spring. Woodworking teacher Ms. Levi even had her fifthgraders working outside this year on their rustic benches.

Because opportunities for children to access the natural environment have been diminishing, these outdoor learning opportunities have become even more important to schools. In the fall, DCD will expand the outdoor classroom with its newly constructed outdoor pavilion, a gift of the parents of the Class of 2020.

This page, from top: A fifth-grader sketches during a science lesson; a pre-K student displays what he found on a discovery walk; facing page, left to right, top row: kindergartners take a nature walk through the campus; fifth-graders look for decomposers during science class; middle to bottom rows, starting from left: Pre-K students explore the stream on campus finding sticks along the way; woodshop teacher Becca Levi holds middle-school elective in rustic furniture-making outside; bottom: students build a house out of found materials.

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Our Community Coping with COVID

DCD Student Starts Charitable Business to Help with COVID

By Leslie Bowen

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ising DCD fifth-grader Max Caponigro and his friend Daniel Grant, who both live in Milton, have been making dog treats this summer to raise money for the Milton Food Pantry to help people who have lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As reported in the Patriot Ledger (6-30-2020, by Mary Whitfill; photographs by Gregg Derr), the boys started making dog treats as a way to stay busy while schools were closed. Eventually, they turned it into a thriving business, selling the homemade treats to dog owners in their neighborhood.

The boys sell three types of biscuits—bacon, almond butter, and chicken—made from homemade batter and baked using a Sunbeam dog treat maker. They’ve had to buy three of them to keep up with the demand.

After spending hours together in the kitchen mixing batter, baking the dog treats, and labeling bags, the boys deliver the orders by bike. Each bag contains four large or eight small treats and sells for $4 per bag.

“A lot of people have dogs in my neighborhood and almost everybody with a dog bought one,” said Max. Even people who

didn’t have any dogs bought treats and asked the boys to donate them to the local animal shelter.

Max and Daniel decided to donate their proceeds to the Milton Food Pantry after they noticed people lined up outside to receive food. “We wanted to pick a charity that would help with COVID, and the food pantry has been really busy,” said Max. The boys have made multiple donations to the food pantry, which receives 30 percent of the sales. The remaining 10 percent is for buying supplies.

As Max’s mother noted, “I think it’s made a real impact for them to walk next door, see the lines of people, and hand them a check.”

“It feels so good to help other people,” commented DCD fourth-grader, Caden Schnitman as he and his sister, Weslie, a third-grader, worked with their mom Laurel to assemble and fill special Spring/Easter treat bags for admitted children on Ellison 18 at MassGeneral Hospital for Children, where Laurel is a Child Life Specialist. During these times, there are many lessons happening beyond the classroom! #dcdstaysconnected #dedhamcountrydayschool 12

Health and Wellness

Andrew W. Kendall ‘74

A Commitment to Developing Local Food Sources in the Face of a Global Pandemic

By Leslie Bowen

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ourth- and fifth-graders at DCD had an unusual visitor to their classrooms last year. Andrew (Andy) Kendall ’74, executive director of the Henry P. Kendall Foundation and former president of The Trustees of Reservations, arrived on campus with bags of lettuce to conduct a food experiment, having students try each kind in a blind taste test and give their opinion of which tasted better.

Thankfully, our students are well versed in lettuce varieties from the rotating selections offered at the salad bar each day at lunch, so they participated enthusiastically in the test!

Remarkably, 100 percent of them chose the lettuce grown locally over the conventional bag lettuce from California.

“I hadn’t done it before, but it was a fun experience with them,” he said. “I asked them to describe it, touch it, taste it.”

Andy’s goal was to prove a point: lettuce grown locally tastes way better than lettuce grown three thousand miles away in California. In New England, where the growing season is short and the land expensive, most of the lettuce we consume comes from this source. “By the time you bring it home, you only have a few days to consume it, compared with greenhouse-grown hydroponic lettuce grown 25 miles away, which lasts three weeks instead of three days because it doesn’t have to travel three weeks across the country,” he explained.

He points out how the impact on the environment is lessened as well with this method of growing. “Lettuce grown inside uses a tenth of the water for irrigation, so there’s a much better use of water. Water comes off the roof from rain, so it’s a more sustainable product, and it tastes better. I can identify it anywhere in a restaurant. The conventional kind doesn’t stand up as well,” he said.

Food became the focus of the Kendall Foundation once Andy took over the leadership reigns from his uncle and father. Established in the 1950s by his father, John Kendall ’40, and his uncle, Dr. Henry Kendall, a physics professor at MIT and the Nobel Prize-winning founder of the Union of Concerned Scientists, the foundation always had an envi-

ronmental orientation, with his uncle’s work advocating for sound science around the risks of nuclear power. The foundation later took up climate and energy and landscape and wildlife conservation. When his uncle passed away in 1999, Andy took a role on the board, and, in 2008, he took over the position of chair from his father. With this change in leadership, the foundation began to focus on food.

Though not intentional, Andy’s life path shows an interesting progression over the years involving food.

“I look back on various experiences jobs I’ve had since high school there is, in fact, a common thread of exposure to the food system. For example, during my senior year of high school, I lived and worked on a shrimp farm in Central America, one of the first of less than five agricultural enterprises at the time trying to grow shrimp. I went on from there to work at a seed manufacturing company right after college.”

During his 12 years as president of The Trustees of Reservations, he led the development of a network of community farms and gardens across Massachusetts dedicated to the sustainable production of local food, now the largest private farm landowner in the state. “During my time there, I saw the essential and powerful connection between the farms and the 13

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Andrew W. Kendall ‘74

continued

communities and the people they serve, which made a big impression on me.”

When he left the trustees, his relationship and roles around food became more intentional as he delved into philanthropic and investment work of the Foundation. “Now it’s full immersion in learning about a large, complicated system that spans the entire planet and connects to every person on it. It can be overwhelming at times but carving out a niche and deciding that this is the part we want to focus on, with faith that others are working on other parts of it, and the knowledge that collectively we can move in a more positive direction.”

In his role at the Foundation, Andy gets to see the big picture, connecting the dots of the food system by convening various stakeholders that might not otherwise come together and finding meaningful ways to support a more localized food system. Inspired by the rallying cry 55/60, he and others believe that New England is in a position to produce and consume more than 50 percent of its food by the year 2060. Right now, he said that number is about 10 percent and, in some cases, closer to 5 percent.

To promote this vision, Andy spends his days meeting with farmers and food activists and others in the food system. A good part of the foundation’s work is with colleges and universities. “Foodservice directors are the unsung heroes of the food chain. They’ve been incredible partners, buying and supporting local food, getting it on menus on campus, engaging with students, and changing food preferences.”

Recently, he spent a morning on a two-hour Zoom class at Montana University on sustainable food systems, listening to students’ ideas about how best to invest and distribute funds to the food system in New England during the pandemic, achieving an essential goal of the foundation “to enable young, enthusiastic, creative, innovative leaders to make their way into the complicated morass of the food system. “ The pandemic, in many ways, underscores the importance of a shorter, more localized food system, he says. “The shorter the supply chain, the better it performs in times like this. As a country, we’ve been lulled into a sense of security, that we can have any kind of food whenever we want it, that we can just go into the grocery store. Food is something we all depend on every day, and now all the fragile aspects of it have been exposed. All the relationships and supply-chain linkages have been broken. Everywhere you look, there’s the sad outcome of destroying food, throwing away food in one place while others are standing in line to get food.”

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Responding to COVID-19 The Kendall Foundation had to adjust its strategy in March, suspending the remainder of its 2020 programs and refocusing its efforts and resources to minimize the negative impacts of the pandemic on the regional food system and respond where they can have the greatest impact. These include the following initial set of grants to stabilize the local food system and help food producers recover from the crisis: • A $350,000 grant to the Boston Public Market to provide working capital and some immediate relief during the COVID19 crisis. Since opening in 2015, the Boston Public Market has connected more than ten million visitors to food products grown, harvested, and hand-crafted in New England.

• A $250,000 grant to the John Merck Fund, which, together with the 1772 Foundation and others, has established the New England Food System Resilience Fund, designed to reinforce, restore, and promote the resilience of the regional food system in a time of unprecedented disruption.

• A $150,000 grant to CommonWealth Kitchen to provide working capital and some immediate relief during the COVID-19 crisis. Since opening in 2014, CommonWealth Kitchen has helped launch more than 200 food businesses, employing almost 600 people, and generating more than $50 million in annual revenue.

• A $100,000 grant to Coastal Enterprises, Inc. to provide immediate debt relief to its portfolio of more than 40 farm loans.

These funds will provide three months of debt relief to farms and help them address new market realities brought on by the pandemic.

Health and Wellness

Alumni Working at Mass General During the Worst of the Pandemic

Monique Tello ‘86 Monique describes her experience during the COVID-19 epidemic working on a surge ward at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Monique Tello ’86, recipient of the 2017 DCD Alumni Award, is a primary-care provider at Women’s Health Associates, a practice of women for women at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. She is also an author and medical blogger at generallymedicine.com.

I

’m just a primary-care doctor, and part-time at that. My focus has been on prevention of disease through healthy diet and lifestyle. But since the coronavirus pandemic hit us in mid-March, I haven’t been able to see my patients in clinic or manage my academic projects. Instead, I’ve been ‘redeployed’ to multiple different jobs on outpatient, urgent care, and even inpatient units of our hospital.

At the beginning of the pandemic, my outpatient clinic all but closed. We were asked to provide ongoing care for our usual patients via video and telephone visits, a completely new concept that involved learning new technology. Our IT department massively mobilized and within a matter of days, we were again scheduling patients, except we were ‘seeing’ them from our homes, often with our kids yelling in the background.

Then, the call for end-of-life discussions went out to us: Given that elderly and medically frail people are clearly more likely to die from this virus, we were asked to reach out to those most at risk and talk to them about it. People should know that they’re at risk, so that they can make the best decisions for themselves, get their affairs in order. We all completed hospital-mandated training sessions covering the medicolegal and psychological issues. Then we made the calls.

Some of my patients speak varied languages that I do not, and I utilized our phone interpreter service, adding another layer of complexity, and time. It’s hard enough to try to convey to someone that their chance of meaningful survival from respiratory failure due to COVID-19 is an abysmal single-digit number. Try doing it as a three-way phone conversation in Russian or Vietnamese dialect. Yes, there were many heavy, emotionally draining, logistically complicated but absolutely necessary conversations.

At the same time, I volunteered to work in our pop-up

respiratory illness clinics, where we saw people with fevers, coughs, and anything else that might be COVID-19. The first clinic was set up in the emergency department ambulance bay, right as the Biogen conference cases emerged. Testing was extremely limited, and we were still using a brand-new N95 mask for each and every patient encounter, throwing them away after just one use. We learned very early on how to don and doff our Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), what symptoms to ask about, what signs to look for, and most importantly, what to do for a brand-new disease that even infectious disease experts were just learning about.

As the wave of COVID-19 patients came crashing down, and our medical ICUs and floors ran out of space, our hospital opened up more ICUs and more floors. The neuro ICU and several oncology wards became COVID-19 ICUs. Postsurgical and trauma floors became COVID-19 floors. When our hospital put out the request for internal medicine attendings to work on these “surge” wards, I raised my hand. I was anxious, to be sure. It had been twelve years since I managed an inpatient service, and I was worried I wouldn’t know enough.

Despite my worry, working on the surge wards was a positive experience, mostly because of the warm support of my colleagues. Our hospital learned from colleagues in Seattle and New York City: They quickly created and curated a central repository of COVID-19 clinical and logistical resources for 15

Health Wellness and

Alumni Working at Mass General During the Worst of the Pandemic

Monique Tello ‘86

continued

us, scheduled recurring ZOOM training presentations, offered shadowing opportunities and established a deep backup system so that they could get docs trained up fast. I threw myself into the learning, but despite the studying, there were still many times that I didn’t know the answers.

This is what I had been afraid of, more than catching COVID19, more than dying. It’s every doctor’s fear: That we won’t know what to do, and we’ll do the wrong thing, and hurt someone. We have nightmares about this. But the motto of our hospital has been “Never worry alone”. Everyone has had a positive, helpful, can-do attitude. I have never ever at any point in my medical career witnessed such acceptance and forgiveness of inexperience, of not knowing what to do.

“I’ll show you where the PPE is stored/ how to order that test/ how to interpret these labs,” they say instead. “I had to learn too.” Or, almost as commonly, “I don’t know either, let’s go find out.” On the surge wards, I’ve seen OB/GYNs come to the medical floor to give in-person, warm hand-off of a sick postpartum woman; Spanish-speaking orthopedic surgeons rounding with medical teams as interpreters; seven different specialists from all over the hospital join a ZOOM meeting to discuss a mutual patient, on an hour’s notice, at the request of the resident; and many other doctors and nurses like me who haven’t been inpatient for years, even decades, enthusiastically crash-training so they can serve in this time of need.

There’s been sad moments, when we’ve realized that there’s nothing more we can do for a patient, other than alleviate their suffering. And even worse, when we learn that the patient has no friends or family to call. In one case, multiple staff members took turns visiting with the patient, talking to them, stroking their hand, so that they wouldn’t be alone.

One Friday night, I happened to be leaving the hospital around 7:15 pm, after a 12-hour inpatient shift. I walked outside and immediately into the midst of the good Citizens of Boston hanging out of their apartment windows clapping and banging on pots and pans and shaking things and yelling and cheering. I was shocked for a moment, then I realized: They’re doing this for us, recognizing us. I didn’t even know what to say.

“Thank you!” yelled one little boy from a balcony nearby.

“Well thank YOU!” I waved back, feeling a little silly. After all, I’m just a primary-care doc, and part-time at that.

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Mollie White ‘11 Mollie never imagined she’d be on the front lines of a global pandemic when she decided to go into nursing back in high school.

M

By Leslie Bowen

ollie, 23, was assigned to the Blake-12 ICU unit at Mass General, which in early March became dedicated exclusively to COVID-19 patients.

Dealing with the sickest patients is not something normally expected of a new nurse, but one month after she finished her orientation program at Mass General she found herself thrust into an unprecedented situation at one of the nation’s top hospitals.

“It’s scary,” she said. “I’ve been asked to take care of really sick patients as a new nurse. But I have all the support I need. The people I work with are so wonderful and helpful.

It’s still stressful but I’m less anxious knowing that I have all these people around me who are so smart and capable.”

New ICU nurses generally ease into the position with the sickest patients being given to more experienced nurses, she explained. But when Blake-12 switched from being a multidisciplinary unit to one dedicated to COVID-19 patients, she found herself taking care of critically ill patients, all of whom were on respirators, all on her own.

She was so concerned about exposing family to the virus, she moved across the street from them. “It’s a relief not having to worry about whether I’m asymptomatic, if I’m going to spread it to them. I can peek across the street and still see them,” she said.

“I always thought I would be a teacher, like my parents,” she said. Mollie’s mother Deb White is a coach and associate admissions director at DCD, and her father, Jon White, is director of admissions at Thayer. “Nursing just connected with my personality,” she said. “You get to know so many people and you’re able to help them when they are their most vulnerable.”

Having two brothers who attended DCD (Traylor “T” ’07 and Ben ’05) and her mother working there created a family

Health and Wellness

experience for Mollie. She left in third grade to attend the Carroll School, and although she didn’t officially graduate from DCD, she said “I did in my heart.”

“I loved my time at DCD. What I take away from DCD, besides my family experience, is that community is so important. That value has really spread out in to my whole life.”

Mollie’s interest in nursing started at Thayer Academy, where she was able to join groups of students and faculty on trips to Haiti, bringing medical supplies and expertise and eventually helping to build a community health center in Saint Rock, Haiti. Traveling to the clinic year after year, she found the work of doctors and nurses so compelling that she started shadowing them back home to find out more about their professions.

With her heart finally set on a career in nursing, she enrolled in Georgetown University’s School of Nursing and Health Sciences, graduating in May 2019 with the Leadership Award from the National Student Nurses’ Association.

“I never thought I would go into critical care,” she said, “but I really like the acuity of it, and helping people at their most vulnerable is the epitome of ICU nursing.”

Once back home, she was accepted to a six-month orienta-

tion program for new ICU nurses where she worked alongside experienced colleagues and took classes every week that included hands-on experiences and simulations. Finally, after six months she was able to take care of her own patients.

“The orientation taught me not to have expectations, that a patient’s situation can change in a minute,” she said. “I’ve learned to take it minute by minute, constantly reassessing the situation with each patient.”

To take care of herself, she does yoga, goes for walks, and spends time outdoors, does journaling, and colors in an adult-coloring book. “I don’t watch the news or follow social media,” she said, “it’s too stressful. It’s hard to watch what’s going on and also be a part of it.”

Staying away from the news explains why she was continually surprised to hear that a videotaped plea from her Blake12 team for the public to stay home, practice social distancing, and donate any extra masks to their local hospitals kept making the news, appearing on a number of major television news outlets, newspapers, and even the Ellen Degeneres Show.

“This situation we’re in is really difficult, but I’ve been so encouraged by how much people have reached out, offering to help and checking on me to see how I’m doing.”

Mollie White ’11, back, right, with fellow nurses on Blake-12 at Mass General after it was converted to a COVID-19 ward.

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Distance Learning DCD Staying Connected During the Pandemic

A

s the COVID-19 pandemic took us into the world of distance learning and virtual schooling, our connected community has taken on another dimension. Having reconfigured our learning community to function in this temporary state of physical separation, the power of connectedness continues to drive everything we do. Collectively and creatively, while prioritizing well-being, we have built a successful distancelearning program to meet the needs of our students and families from pre-kindergarten to grade 8.

Teachers have used a combination of synchronous and asynchronous learning models to keep our students engaged in every aspect of our curriculum, from academics to arts, to athletics and service-learning. During the spring, we continued to adjust our programming based on student and family feedback as well as our growing knowledge as teachers.

The excellence we’ve come to associate with a DCD education still defines our program. With these new methods and approaches, we have continued to deliver an education that is challenging, inclusive, and engaging and reflects our mission and priorities. Our community is resilient, flexible, and creative and remains committed to the power of connected learning, whether in person or remotely via computer.

A Sampling of Projects by Grade PRE-K

Insect Study

Pre-K ended the year with a study of insects. They made insects from clay, paper shapes, watercolors, and even from junk. One of the highlights was when Mrs. Jackson and Mrs. Swan delivered two caterpillar containers and a butterfly box to each Pre- K student’s home on May 6.

The students made daily observations of their caterpillars, named them, drew pictures of them, and studied the butterfly life cycle. They watched as they changed to chrysalids and then finally to butterflies. The butterflies stayed in their butterfly boxes for several days before being released into the wild.

KINDERGARTEN

Eric Carle Author Study

In Mrs. Price’s Kindergarten class, students studied the author Eric Carle, using art, science, and making food in the kitchen to enhance their enjoyment of the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

The Invisible String

Mrs. Maloney delivered a “Snuggle Bag” of goodies to her students, containing their artwork and items from the classroom. The bag included two gifts from her: an art set and a book The Invisible String. She explained how even though we have been apart, we will always be connected by a string of love.

FIRST GRADE

US Symbols and Landmarks

Spring sports took place remotely, as did the year-end celebration with coaches and players.

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First graders in Mrs. Senese’s class studied United States Symbols and Landmarks in Social Studies, their final project of the year. Because it had such a strong independent project component, it worked

Distance Learning

out even better for distance learning than in the classroom. Students had a week to learn about a symbol or landmark of their choosing.

The assignment was to describe what the symbol represented, share one or two interesting facts about it, and tell why they chose it. Their project was to make a poster, model, or drawing to teach others about it. They shared their work through their morning Zoom call, and the wealth of information they learned from each other was incredible!

GRADE 2

Flat Stanley

Mrs. Holden’s second-graders delved into the Flat Stanley books with their project “The Adventures of Flat Mrs. Holden.”

Students received a Flat Mrs. Holden and a book from the series, each receiving a different one. Students took pictures with Flat Mrs. Holden on adventures with them. Students enjoyed the adventure in the book with Flat Stanley and then sent the book to a peer.

GRADE 3

Colonial Trade Shops

As part of their study of Colonial times, children built their trade shops at home as usual, but instead of putting them on display at school, where they would give “tours” in person on Grandparents’ Day, they gave “virtual tours” using video.

Pioneer Laundry

Third-graders read a book about Clara Brown, Aunt Clara Brown Official Pioneer. She made her living by doing laundry for pioneers on the Oregon Trail and eventually made a business of it when she landed in Colorado. Teachers gave students the assignment to try and do laundry the “pioneer way” and the modern way and to keep notes on the differences, including how long it takes to complete it each way.

GRADE 4

Inside Out and Back Again

Fourth-graders found new ways to enhance their reading assignments.

Students created a Google Earth tour to show the places where the main character from Inside Out and Back Again lived during the course of the novel.

GRADE 5

The Odyssey

The fifth grade adjusted its annual Odyssey Storytelling Project to fit the distance-learning model. After hearing a professional oral retelling of The Odyssey in its entirety, fifthgraders chose their favorite sections of the story, read various versions of these parts, and created their oral presentations of their sections of the epic tale. Students practiced together live in Zoom breakout rooms, but they also practiced at home and uploaded video performances via Google Classroom.

Classmates and teachers provided both synchronous and asynchronous feedback on these videos, which students addressed in subsequent practice sessions.

They uploaded their final polished toga-clad performances before the end of school, which were combined into an iMovie showing the complete story from “The Belly of the Horse” to Odysseus’ “Battle in the Hall.” Current Ithaca College film student, Charlie Bemis ’13, produced and edited the movie!

Instead of a live performance followed by a Greek Feast at DCD, fifth-grade families enjoyed Greek takeout and a special family movie night at home this year.

THE ARTS

Woodworking

The school-wide Airplane Challenge resulted in some fantastic work. The project was for students in any grade to build an airplane out of materials they could find around the house (recycled materials encouraged!). Each grade had different prompts, for example, to decorate it, or add a stabilizer, cockpit, or propeller.

The overarching goal was to see how long students could get their planes to stay in the air. Kits were not allowed, and students were encouraged to make multiple versions of their planes, refining their designs along the way.

The Whirlygig project is modeled after a Colonial-era toy that has been used for hundreds of years by children around the world. Also called a buzz saw, these spinning toys can be made of paper, cardboard, or wood. Student design skills were challenged by creating options around material choice, shape, size, and decoration. Some questions asked were: how fast can yours spin? Can you get it to make a sound or change colors when it spins? What aspects of your design make it go faster or slower or be louder or quieter?

Plays

This spring, Ms. Sidoli directed the first-graders in their class play, “The Little Acorn.” Their wonderful expression and acting skills shone even on Zoom. The students enjoyed getting ready for their play, and even had enthusiastic audience members cheering them on in the wings!

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Distance Learning Hawk Day Kids dove right into Hawk Day activities on Friday, May 22. Ella Cocchi and Harris Felix, DCD Heads of School for the day, provided students with a host of fun challenges.

Students from pre-K to Grade 8 used their creativity with food art, got moving outside, sang songs, and dressed up as book characters, to name a few of the options offered on their virtual “bingo board.� The activities were a fun kickoff to the Memorial Day weekend.

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Distance Learning

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Distance Learning DCD Reads In lieu of the annual Book Fair, students spent time reading during the week of May 18 and shared photos of themselves in their reading nests.

We posted them on Instagram for a virtual, weeklong celebration of reading! #dcdreads

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What We’re Reading

By Abby Ackerman

Health and Wellness

Summer Readings: Shaping Our Thinking and Taking an Active Stance Against Racism Head of School Allison Webster recently asked parents to join their children in some summer learning and reading, sharing with them two options that are on DCD’s faculty reading list which are sure to be engaging and thought-provoking in light of recent events. Below is an excerpt from her letter to the community.

The killing of George Floyd and others has sparked a national moment of reckoning about the racism that exists in our country.

Not since the Civil Rights Movement have we seen such a dramatic call to action. This summer, our faculty and staff will be completing several group reads including New Kid, a Newbery-award winner by Jerry Craft, and So You Want To Talk About Race

by Ijeoma Oluo. These particular books have been selected to further shape our thinking and help us maintain an active stance against racism. We hope you will join us in reading them and look forward to finding ways to gather with you to engage in conversations about these resources. We share these resources to unite us as a learning community working together to build an equitable school and society for all of our children.

Student Reads

(Good for perspective in light of pandemic)

New Kid

by Jerry Craft New Kid is a timely, honest graphic novel about starting over at a new school where diversity is low and the struggle to fit in is real, from award-winning author-illustrator Jerry Craft.

Seventh grader Jordan Banks loves nothing more than drawing cartoons about his life. But instead of sending him to the art school of his dreams, his parents enroll him in a prestigious private school known for its academics, where Jordan is one of the few kids of color in his entire grade.

As he makes the daily trip from his Washington Heights apartment to the upscale Riverdale Academy Day School, Jordan soon finds himself torn between two worlds—and not really fitting into either one. Can Jordan learn to navigate his new school culture while keeping his neighborhood friends and staying true to himself?

This middle grade graphic novel is an excellent choice for tween readers, including for summer reading.

—Amazon Books

Harry and the Wrinklies

by Alan Temperley When Harry is orphaned and sent to live with his elderly aunts in remote Lagg Hall, he has low expectations.

But life there is anything but boring, as he pursues the two eccentric old ladies on an exciting adventure filled with fast cars, cat burglars and plenty of cake.

As well as being a fun caper, this exciting story helps kids realize that maybe their own grandparents and elderly relatives have a story to tell.

Faculty & Parent Reads So You Want To Talk About Race?

by Ijeoma Oluo In So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo guides readers of all races through subjects ranging from intersectionality and affirmative action to “model minorities” in an attempt to make the seemingly impossible possible: honest conversations about race and racism, and how they infect almost every aspect of American life. —Amazon Books

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What We’re Reading Health andWellness Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive

by Marc Brackett, Ph.D Marc Brackett is a professor in Yale University’s Child Study Center and founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. In his 25 years as an emotion scientist, he has developed a remarkably effective plan to improve the lives of children and adults—a blueprint for understanding our emotions and using them wisely so that they help, rather than hinder, our success and well-being.

Marc has led large research teams and raised tens of millions of dollars to investigate the roots of emotional well-being. His prescription for healthy children (and their parents, teachers, and schools) is a system called RULER, a high-impact and fast-effect approach to understanding and mastering emotions that has already transformed the thousands of schools that have adopted it. RULER has been proven to reduce stress and burnout, improve school climate, and enhance academic achievement.

This book combines rigor, science, passion and inspiration in equal parts. Too many children and adults are suffering; they are ashamed of their feelings and emotionally unskilled, but they don’t have to be. Marc Brackett’s life mission is to reverse this course, and this book can show you how.

Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

by Matthew Walker, Ph.D The first sleep book by a leading scientific expert—Professor Matthew Walker, director of UC Berkeley’s Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab—reveals his groundbreaking exploration of sleep, explaining how we can harness its transformative power to change our lives for the better.

Walker answers important questions about sleep: How do caffeine and alcohol affect sleep? What really happens during REM sleep? Why do our sleep patterns change across a lifetime? How do common sleep aids affect us, and can they do long-term damage? Walker gives us a new understanding of the vital importance of sleep and dreaming Charting cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs and synthesizing decades of research and clinical practice, Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, 24

mood, and energy levels; regulate hormones; prevent cancer, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes; slow the effects of aging; increase longevity; enhance the education and lifespan of our children, and boost the efficiency, success, and productivity of our businesses. Clear-eyed, fascinating, and immensely accessible, Why We Sleep is the crucial account on sleep that will forever change listeners’ minds on the subject. —[excerpts from Amazon]

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking |

by Susan Cain In Quiet, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture. She also introduces us to successful introverts—from a witty, highoctane public speaker who recharges in solitude after his talks, to a record-breaking salesman who quietly taps into the power of questions. Passionately argued, superbly researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet has the power to permanently change how we see introverts and, equally important, how they see themselves.

—[excerpt from Amazon]

The Choice: Embrace the Impossible

by Dr. Edith Eva Eger When you find yourself in a difficult situation that was not caused by you (whether as a prisoner of war, living during a pandemic, or dealing with loss in your life), you do have the choice to decide how to respond and react to the situation. Dr. Eger recounts her journey of survival and how the conscious choices she made along the way helped shape her life and lead her to success in healing others.

“This book is partly a memoir and partly a guide to processing trauma. Eger was only sixteen years old when she and her family got sent to Auschwitz. After surviving unbelievable horrors, she moved to the United States and became a therapist. Her unique background gives her amazing insight, and I think many people will find comfort right now from her suggestions on how to handle difficult situations.”

—Bill Gates Summer Reading List 2020

SportsRoundup Fall 2019 Highlights Varsity Field Hockey Varsity field hockey had a fantastic undefeated season this fall with 9 wins and 2 ties. The team consisted of six eighth-graders and eight seventhgraders. We also fielded a tournament team that won the Lincoln School Tournament in October, shutting out all five teams, a highlight of the season for many of the girls. What made this team so successful was their high energy, focus, competitive spirit, talented play and most importantly teamwork as they strived together to be their collective best. A great example of their eagerness to compete came when right after our second game on the Nobles turf where the girls battled to a 0–0 tie and couldn’t wait to play them again. It was a joy to guide and support and feel their enthusiasm throughout the season. During the course of 11 games, the team scored 42 goals compared with the opposition who only scored two against them, phenomenal statistic. A highlight for me was the third to last game against Fay in which every player communicated well, passed with intention, and used the field well to set up the offense. We won 3–0!—Deb White

Varsity Flag Football

The varsity flag football team had an incredible season finishing with a record of 12–0. The team spent the early part of the season developing

goals and productive habits, and figuring out which players would be best for which positions.

Led by eighth-grade captains, Quinn Kelly, Jason Dadasis, and Will Curran, the team was madeup of 12 eighth-graders and two seventh-graders, and each player contributed to the team’s success. The final record speaks to how talented and smart this group was, but also to the great progress that was made over the course of the season. With three great quarterbacks (Riggs, Jason, and Alex) directing the play on offense, the team was tough in tight situations and won five of its games by nine points or less. Having Coach Fernandes join the team as a half-time coach (split with JV) also added a great boost as he contributed positive leadership and some awesome offensive plays. It was our pleasure to work with such a nice, competitive, and talented group!—Dan Balk

JV Flag Football

The fifteen-member DCD boys’ JV flag football team enjoyed a wonderful and exciting season.

Every member of the team brought an excellent amount of skill, energy, and passion to practice and game play. Each player developed and improved on their flag football skills as the season progressed. Our success on the field was due to everyone having a positive mindset and attitude.

SportsRoundup

In practice, the team worked extremely hard on flag pulling, keeping offensive players in front of them, and containing the outside run. The team finished with a record of 7–5. Highlights of the season included a close battle with Milton Academy ending in a 7–6 victory. A total team effort was used to defeat Belmont Day in which five different players scored touchdowns. Coach Fernandes and I greatly enjoyed working with the team and look forward to coaching many of the boys again.—Kyle Sminkey

Girls’ Soccer

The girls’ soccer team grew in size this season, going from just ten girls and one coach last fall to eighteen players and two coaches this year!

The team posted a record of 4 wins, 4 losses, and 1 tie. The girls scored a total of twenty goals this year with over half of the team earning a goal or an assist. A highlight of the season was the win against Derby. The score was tied with about five minutes left in the game. A penalty was called on one of the Derby players right outside the penalty box. DCD had a direct kick and it went into the upper right corner of the goal, putting the team ahead 3–2. The team held onto the lead for the last few minutes and won. The improvement of all the players, made this season very rewarding. —Elaine Gage

Team Records

Varsity Field Hockey 9–0–2 Coach: Deb White Captains: Amanda Hiatt, Emma McNealy, Summer Perry JV Field Hockey 5–2 Coach: Wendy Soutsos No Captains Varsity Flag Football 12–0 Coaches: Dan Balk, Greg Fernandes Captains: Will Curran, Jason Dadasis, Quinn Kelly JV Flag Football 7–5 Coaches: Kyle Sminkey, Greg Fernandes Captains: by games Photographs by Kristie Gillooly Dean ’02

Boys’ Soccer 5–4 Coach: Kevin Coakley Captains: Jay Caponigro, Johnny Hoffman, Charlie Overman Girls’ Soccer 4–4–1 Coaches: Elaine Gage, Caiti Pina Captains: Irini Kolovos, Marin Reeds Cross Country 8 races Coaches: Bo Harrington, Mark Jackson, Emilie Liebhoff No Captains

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SportsRoundup Spring 2020

Coach’s Award Varsity Field Hockey Amanda Hiatt Emma McNealy JV Field Hockey Dakota Adams

Awards

Most Improved Player Award Summer Perry

Keira Welch, Ella Erickson, Maisie Gronemeyer, Maddie Jaeger, Andrea Maalouf, Guiliana Oh Varsity Flag Football Brynn Bryant Jason Dadasis JV Flag Football Gabe Salfity Nathaniel Cazeau Boys’ Soccer Sammy Gallegos Willy Connors Charlie Overman Girls’ Soccer Olivia Charity Marin Reeds Cross Country Rose Quinn Abby Rochelle 26

SportsRoundup Winter 2020 Highlights Boys’ Varsity Basketball

Girls’ Varsity Basketball

The boys’ varsity basketball team had an awesome winter! After two tough losses to start the season, the team came together and improved. Led by team captains Riggs Catlin and Jason Dadasis, the team went on an eight-game winning streak.

Winning three games to take—and defend last year’s championship in—the DCD/CRS tournament was a huge highlight of the season! Though the team lost its last game, looking back at the season, it was clearly a huge success filled with learning, good competition, and fun. The team ended up with an impressive overall record of 8–3. I am very eager to coach the four seventhgraders who played on the team next season and excited to follow many of the eighth-graders who plan on continuing to play competitive basketball in high school. —Dan Balk

The girls’ varsity basketball team had a successful season this winter. They earned six wins and two losses and outscored their opponents 200 to 164.

As a team, we worked on everything—not just basketball skills and strategies but also on being a team and working with each other. Our great last week of the season (where we had two fantastic and exciting games) demonstrated how hard work toward achieving a goal can really pay off.

One highlight of the season was that everyone on the team was able to score a basket. The other highlight was the exciting win against Belmont Day. The score was 5–4 in our favor at the half and was tied at 23 at the end of regulation play.

After a three-minute overtime, the girls’ great defensive play, and some good offense, we won 27–25! The girls should be proud of their season.

—Elaine Gage

Boys’ JV Maroon Basketball

Hockey

The boys’ JV maroon basketball team was hardworking, skilled, and progressed significantly this winter. The team finished the season with a record of 4–4. The nine-member team played excellent defense and showed keen skill development on the offensive side of the court. Our most memorable game was a one-point victory over Brimmer. We successfully used a zone defense that trapped the opposing team and forced difficult shots. On offense, we had terrific movement and utilized picks to get open shots for a 22–21 victory. This team competed in every game and never quit. We learned a lot from our losses, and we used them as an opportunity for growth and development. I want to thank all the members of the team for their hard work and commitment this season. I look forward to coaching them in the upcoming athletic seasons! —Kyle Sminkey

Awards

Boys’ Varsity Basketball Boys’ JV Basketball Boys’ JV Maroon Basketball Boys’ JV White Basketball Girls’ Varsity Basketball Girls’ JV Basketball Hockey Squash

SportsRoundup

The 2019–2020 DCD hockey team was a hardworking and cohesive group this winter. The twenty-two-member team participated in twelve games finishing with a record of 6–4–2. Highlights of the season included wins over Shady Hill, Park, Derby, Fessenden, Carroll, and Fay. Practices were designed to encourage individual improvement and teamwork through a mixture of skills and scrimmages. Eighth-grade captains Vincent Jaeger and Emma McNealy provided strong leadership with their daily attention to detail, focus, and effort. Goalie Abby Buckley backstopped the team with excellent play in net all year. Coaches Jackson, Santry, and Soutsos enjoyed the season tremendously, and with several experienced students returning, the future looks bright out on the rink in 2020–2021!

—Mark Jackson

Coach’s Award Riggs Catlin Dininar Alpers Drew Michaeli Nathaniel Cazeau CeCe Upton Summer Perry Dakota Adams Vincent Jaeger Abby Buckley Charlie Overman Elena Ferrara

Most Improved Player Award Will Roberts Alex Mankivsky Gabe Salfity Willy Connors Keira Acevedo Giuliana Oh Jason Sima 27

SportsRoundup SportsRoundup Spring 2020

Team Records

Boys’ Varsity Basketball 5–3 Coach: Dan Balk Captains: Riggs Catlin, Jason Dadasis Boys’ JV Maroon Basketball 4–4 Coach: Kyle Sminkey Captains: no captains Boys’ JV White Basketball 3–5 Coach: Ali Fernandes Captains: Nathaniel Cazeau, Jack Hauck Girls’ Varsity Basketball 6–2 Coach: Elaine Gage Captains: Brynn Bryant, Amanda Hiatt Girls’ JV Basketball 5–3 Coach: Caiti Pina Captains: by game Hockey 6–4–2 Coaches: Mark Jackson, Bob Santry, Wendy Soutsos Captains: Vincent Jaeger, Emma McNealy Squash 1–8 Coaches: Rick Edie, Bo Harrington Captain: Elena Ferrara, Charlie Overman

Photographs by Kristie Gillooly Dean ’02

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Alumni Association 2020 Alumni Award Henry Singer ’70: Bringing to Light Some of the World’s Darkest Hours

By Leslie Bowen

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fter graduating from DCD, Nobles, and Harvard, Henry Singer ’70 headed to the business school at Yale University, a traditional trajectory for a man of his background and education. As he tells the story, he left after an hour, and at 27 years old, started over, in a new profession to which he has passionately dedicated himself over the years since that fateful decision—public service.

Henry, now one of the most critically acclaimed filmmakers in Britain, is the founder of Sandpaper Films, a company that makes films and series for the UK and international broadcasters that are known for their powerful storytelling. He has won or been nominated for every major British documentary award, including the BAFTA, Royal Television Society, and Grierson, as well as an international Emmy.

“One of the reasons I went into filmmaking was public service. It was part of the ethos of DCD and Nobles and it was certainly how my mother brought me up,” he said.

His curiosity about people is another key reason he cites for going into filmmaking. “It’s a wonderful way to go through life,” he said “You get to meet a succession of people and spend hours just asking them questions on first meeting.”

“I take on dark subjects,” he says, as he lists some the more notable ones, “The Falling Man,” about the “jumpers,” in particular, one man falling from the

World Trade Center on 9/11, another film about the seven days following the death of Diana in the film “Seven Days,” “Betrayed Girls” about a childhood-abuse scandal, and “Baby P,” about an 18-month-old toddler who was beaten to death.

This spring before everything closed up in Boston due to Covid-19, Henry gave a talk at the Boston College Center for Human Rights on his latest film

“These feel like darker times. It’s more important to shine the light at times like these.”

“The Trial of Ratko Mladic.” Mladic was one of the most infamous figures of the Bosnian war of the 1990s, known for the merciless siege of Sarajevo, in which 15,000 people were killed or wounded, and the murder of over 7,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995— widely considered the worst crimes in Europe since World War II. Filmed over five years, the documentary covers all

aspects of the trial, going behind the scenes with prosecution and defense lawyers and witnesses from both sides.

“This is an incredibly important film,” Henry said, “especially given the current climate, with leaders like Assad in Syria, and so many others around the world acting with impunity. The trial was a moment in history when the world got together to bring to account a terrible monster.” Mladic was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia on November 22, 2017.

“His trial was a huge world event that was not getting any attention. My partner and co-director Rob decided to direct a film on it and worked on it for years, largely for free, while individually making other films to pay rent. It was a labor of love, but I’m glad we made it,” he said.

“In the midst of having tiny children and being an incredibly old father, making two films at that time was complete lunacy, but I lived to tell the tale,” he joked. At 62, married, with two 29

Alumni Association 2020 Alumni Award young children, Mila, 7, and Max 3, Henry calls himself the “quintessential Peter Pan.” “My advice to anybody is to have children when you’re a good deal younger.”

Luckily for his family, he doesn’t take his work home with him. “I have a quite a sunny personality,” he explained. “I try to stuff as much fun as possible into my life. I can go into the darkness and come out of it and be largely untroubled by it, not that I don’t have empathy. I have enormous empathy. And, I wouldn’t do it if I couldn’t handle it.”

I’m not unfeeling,” he explained, “it’s just that you have a job to do, and you want to do really good work around important subjects and keep your eyes on the prize. It’s probably what war photographers have to do in documenting the horrors of war. It’s their mission. People like that have enormous empathy, but while they’re doing it, they’re really doing it; they’ve got to deliver the goods.”

“If you’re trying to make films that are a service, they tend to be about social injustice and most of them are about death. We as a species do awful things to each other. These are the kinds of stories that need to be brought in to light. What’s driving me is to do work that is of public service.”

“What keeps you going is that you’re doing useful important work. These feel like darker times. It’s more important to shine the light at times like these. People need to know that there are alternative ways of being and alternative value systems. That does keep you going.”

Having received so many accolades over the years, Henry said the award that means the most is the one he received for the Mladic film, the Grierson, considered the highest nonfiction documentary film award. “What felt really good was that we were up against some excellent films, including “Knock Down the House,” the story of four women of color, including AOC, following their campaign in 2016, which won at Sundance and sold for enormous money to Netflix. It was the caliber of competition that made the award gratifying, not because it took five years to make.”

The public service genre of filmmaking has moved from being non-commercial public service to becoming more entertainment, he explained. Mladic was an “old-fashioned, classic, public service film,” he said. “Netflix would never commission a film like that. You’re not likely to come home on a Friday night and watch a war trial, a film about genocide, it’s not light

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entertainment viewing. It was gratifying that a film like ours was recognized.”

Henry had to raise 900,000 pounds and spend a lot of time fundraising, adding to the stress of making two films at a time, and asked himself many times, “How did I get into this?”

As to what’s next for him, he said, “I’m hoping to win one gold-medal position. I’m developing plans to grow my little company and working to put together a slate of films to sell to BBC, Amazon, Netflix, and I’m raising money for a climatecrisis film, that will cover what I believe is the biggest existential threat we’re facing right now.”

Alumni Association

DCD Eighth-Graders Zoom with Filmmaker Henry Singer ’70

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y early June, the typical spring fever of DCD eighth-graders was not only in full gear but amplified by the months of quarantining indoors. As the final days of their final school year at DCD drew to a virtual close, the students hopped on Zoom for one of their last Facing History and Ourselves classes. But this time, in addition to their regular teachers (Mr. Thacher, Mr. Buffum, and Mr. Rudnick), they were joined by DCD alumnus Henry Singer ’70.

Mr. Singer had agreed to join the class from his home in London to discuss his latest documentary film, The Trial of Ratko Mladic. An accomplished documentary filmmaker, Mr. Singer has won or been nominated for every major British documentary award, as well as an international Emmy, and his films have been screened at festivals around the world.

His film tied directly to the themes explored in the class, which uses the events leading up to and including the Holocaust as a springboard for examining identity, inclusion, scapegoating, and discrimination. The class encourages the students to consider the choices made by historical figures and draw comparisons to their own experiences and the choices made by themselves and others in today’s world.

Meeting virtually since classes resumed after March break, the Facing History participants had tackled most of the course content, including reading the memoir Night by Holocaust survivor

Elie Wiesel. They were able to use Mr. Singer’s film and the Bosnian War in the 1990s as the context for the final topic, “Judgment, Justice, and Accountability,” about the complex decisions faced by societies and victors in bringing justice to those responsible for heinous crimes.

In preparation for the session with Mr. Singer, the students watched excerpts from his film, which examines the International Criminal Tribunal trial of Ratko Mladic, commander of the Bosnian Serb army and one of the principal perpetrators of violence in the Bosnian War. Mladic was charged with a number of war crimes, including genocide, for his actions during the war.

Additional historical context was shared

by Mr. Rudnick, who lived and worked in Bosnia on democracy-building immediately after the war.

During his Zoom session, Mr. Singer described his career as a filmmaker, provided details about the making of

The Trial of Ratko Mladic, and answered a number of questions from the students.

During the hour-long session, Mr. Singer addressed not only issues of justice and accountability from the Bosnian War, but also discussed current events and the public conversation around what justice means for people of color in the U.S. in light of recent cases of police misconduct.

He concluded by sharing recollections of his time at DCD in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when he lived at what is now known as Herrick House, and reflected on the formative role DCD had on his development. Before the pandemic struck, Mr. Singer was scheduled to receive DCD’s Alumni Award in person; while those plans had to be scrapped, our eighth-graders were able to benefit from this extraordinary opportunity to meet Mr. Singer virtually—a memorable closing to their Facing History class!

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Class Notes

Alumni Highlight:

A New Challenge for Kathryn Cloonan ’17

by Leslie Bowen

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athryn Cloonan ’17, a junior at Nobles, is passionate about movies and theater. At DCD, she acted in every play and loved the option offered by DCD Drama Director Elisa Sidoli to write a sequel to each one.

Last year, she wrote and directed her own original play, the first student at Nobles to do so. The Impossible Case, performed last October, came to life as part of an independent study project on playwriting that she began in spring 2019.

At DCD, she sang, danced, acted, taking lots of arts electives in drama, and singing in the chorus as well as performing in every play. The classes Let’s Dance, Let’s Act, and Director’s Cut, taught by Elisa Sidoli, were some of her favorites.

DCD middle-school English teacher Rob Thacher, who attended one of the performances of The Impossible Case, was also a significant influence on her.

“Mr. Thacher had a huge impact on my writing, encouraging me to find my own creative voice and to write what I was passionate about,” she said.

“It was awesome to see him there in the audience.”

Kathryn started and now runs the Creative Writing Club at Nobles and also runs the Play Reading Committee that is part of the Nobles Theater Collective.

With The Impossible Case, she’s

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Kathryn, third from the right, with actors from The Impossible Case, a play she wrote and directed at Nobles. added writing and directing to her repertoire. As to which art she’d like to pursue in the future, she answered, “I love all aspects. I’d like to be like Lin Manuel Miranda, who wrote, directed, and acted in his own play.”

“Directing was cool. I made my actors do some funny stuff. One did a forward roll, and another did a Mission Impossible act,” she said The Impossible Case takes a lot from the police sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

It features a lot of physical comedy and slapstick, inspired, she said, by her life at home with three younger siblings as well as female comedians Tina Fey and Kate McKinnon.

The cast features two female roles, two male roles, and one gender-neutral role. “I loved that both leads in my play were women,” she said. “It’s rare to see comic relief come from a female character who is doing slapstick and also

being really witty.”

Before COVID-19 closed schools, she was getting ready to perform in the spring play, John Proctor is the Villain, about feminism and the me-too movement in high schools. Her character, Beth, she said, is a teacher’s pet who is running a new feminist club and wants to go to a good college but has issues around self-esteem. “She apologizes all the time. I think it’s good for young girls to see that it’s really common for women to do this.”

“I always thought women should be in power, maybe that comes from being in a family of three girls and one boy.

Women can drive the plot, but they’re not always funny. I always wanted to be a funny character, to make people laugh.” And, in The Impossible Case, it seems she’s done just that.

Class Notes

Faculty News: DCD CFO Presents at National Conference

by Leslie Bowen

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CD Chief Financial Officer, Bob Santry, presented at the 2020 NBOA (National Business Officers Association) Annual Meeting, Envisioning the Future, February 23–26, in Orlando, Florida.

The conference is designed to help CFOs and other business and operational leaders in PreK–12 education share best practices for independent schools, and it attracts professionals from across the country.

Bob presented “Comprehensive Financial Strategy for Independent Schools,” a 90-minute session derived in part from the financial strategy that he and the school’s Finance Committee have developed and presented to the DCD Board.

Bob was joined by former NAIS President and revered educational leader, Pat Bassett, who shared his views on the independent school financial landscape and value proposition.

The session was the closing session of the conference, and it was very well attended. It was designed to help participants recognize and scrutinize each interrelated element of their school’s financial structure and develop a comprehensive and integrated financial plan to support their school’s enduring mission.

Bob commented, “It was an honor and a pleasure to close the 2020 NBOA Annual Meeting alongside Pat Bassett.

It also felt good to represent DCD on

DCD CFO Bob Santry, right, presenting at the NBOA Conference a big stage and share thinking that has been developed here over the last couple of years (thanks to the Finance Committee for its support in shaping our strategic direction). We think about our operating budget often, but our school’s financial well-being really hinges on so many things that do not show up on a spreadsheet, i.e. elevating brand, understanding price elasticity, building revenue diversification, lengthening governance perspective, etc. The room was crowded, and ours has been the most downloaded deep dive presentation of the conference.”

Bob is in his fifth year as CFO at DCD, where he develops and oversees financial strategy, operational and capital budgeting, risk management,

and compliance in addition to serving on six board committees and coaching ice hockey and lacrosse. A graduate of Williams College, he taught math at Westminster School and DCD before earning his MBA and working in investment management at Goldman Sachs. He and his wife, Molly, live in Newton with their three children, Julia (DCD grade 8), Jack (age 11), and Rose (age 7). They are all very active in youth sports and coaching.

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Class Notes

Staying Connected

1940s

Joany Marsh Lawrence ’48 writes, “I cannot resist writing. I have been receiving your wonderful bulletin for years. Now I find myself in a retirement community Newbury Court in Concord, Massachusetts, and have found many here connected to DCD. To name a few, Gordon Pettengill ’36, Sally Willaver Nash, and Barbara and Jake Brown. I have kept in touch all these years with Sandra Forbes Walker ’48, and last, but not least, I see my wonderful brother Francis “Nim” Marsh ’50 as much as possible. Fond memories of the old school—carpool with Mrs. Cole, Gilbert and Sullivan, and the boys pulling my hair!”

2000s

1980s

Erin Keith Epker ’86, above, responded to the call to alumni to volunteer as a “mystery reader” in Mrs. Maloney’s kindergarten classroom. She read to the children during a live Zoom on April 27.

Paige Durham ’09 just returned home from Japan, where she had been living for the past two years in a remote area working at five different schools until their closure due to COVID-19. Reflecting on turning 25, she wrote on her Instagram page, “Between this birthday and the current world situation, I’ve done a lot of reflecting recently. Thinking about how I managed to manifest this dream life among the mountains and mikan trees, surrounded by amazing company, in the country of my dreams, still amazes me almost two years later.” You can follow Paige on Instagram at @ultipaige. She has also started a live stream at twitch.tv/ ultipaige.

Alumni gathered on Wednesday, February 26, at Analogue in New York City, left to right, back row: Head of School Allison Webster, Dominique Saint-Louis ’80, Odile Weissenborn Gordon ’84, Greta O’Marah ’10, Lily Grant ’08, Laura Naparstek ’05, Katie Adams ’06, Henry Howard ’07, Director of Athletics Mark Jackson, Whitney HunterThomson ’98, Ryland Kenyon ’06, and Ned Beckwith ’07; front row: Andrew Beaudoin ’07, Associate Director of Admissions Deb White, Cassie Goode ’07, Liza Howard ’10, and Josie Linell ’10.

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Class Notes

Lilly Arrends ’17, Charlie Cao ’19, and Hugh Geraghty ’19 performed in the Thayer Academy Upper School Winter Musical Chicago February 28 and 29, 2020.

2010s

Alexandra Naddaff ’12 was named to

the dean’s list for academic achievement during the fall 2019 semester at St. Lawrence University in New York, where she majored in history and Spanish.

Alyssa Landry ’15 was named to the dean’s list for academic achievement during the fall 2019 semester at St. Lawrence University in New York.

Olivia Sinnott ’15 writes, “Now I go

to the University of Michigan where I am an acting major and English minor. I am so happy to be at my dream school doing what I love! However, this year has been tough for my family as we recently lost my father, David Sinnott, who was one of my biggest supporters. Sending love to DCD!”

Molly King ’16 was named the 2019

Most Valuable Player in field hockey at Thayer Academy. She also received ISL All-League honors for the season. Molly will be playing field hockey for Trinity College.

DCD alumni at Winter Escape field hockey tourney in Florida, left to right, Lilly Arends ’17, Molly King ’16, Charlotte Epker ’16, Mia D’Angelo ’16, Kenzie Kelly ’17, and Callie Joyce ’18. Missing from photo: Nina Falkson ’18

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Class Notes

Paige Durham ’09 with her parents Jim and Karen, who visited her during her two-year stay in Japan.

Staying Connected

DCD Reading Specialist Diane Duggan, left, reconnected recently with former faculty member Elaine Murphy.

Former DCD Board President Neal Litvack, father of Peter ’04 and Alex ’02, has taken over as president and CEO of the MSPCA and its Angell Medical Center. Neal was a trustee from 1998 to 2002 and from 2004 to 2009 and served as president of the board from 2006 to 2009.

As reported in the Boston Business Journal, Neal had worked for the American Red Cross since 2009. He previously worked as chief operating and financial officer of Milton Academy between 2003 and 2009.

He said in a statement, “I’m honored by this once-in-a-career opportunity to combine my leadership experience in for-profit and nonprofit organizations with my passion for animals.” Neal is a member of the PetSmart Charities board, and previously served on the boards of the Animal Rescue League of Boston and Buddy Dog Humane Society.

In Memoriam Kenneth Burt, father of Daphne Burt ’68, passed away on January 11, 2020.

January 12, 2020.

Morris (Mo) Gray ’58 died on

Nancy (Fox) Mayo-Smith, wife of

Douglas (Scott) King, father of

16, 2020.

April 18, 2020, at age 73 after a ten-year battle with brain cancer.

Molly ’16, Abby ’13, and Emily ’12, and husband of Becky King,

Meaghan Daniels, an assistant

teacher in grades 1 and 2, had a baby girl, Mirabelle Frances Daniels, born on March 17, 2020.

former PA president, VP Community Affairs, Community Outreach Chair, and Fair Co-Chair in 2009 and 2014, died suddenly on March 4, 2020, at the age of 52.

Nancy Levy, mother of Shannon (Goode) Teles ’94, passed away on

Richmond (Dick) Mayo-Smith ’34 and mother of Katrina MayoSmith ’69, passed away on March

David Sinnott, father of Olivia ’15 and Charlie ’17, passed away on December 12, 2019, at age 58, of complications following a heart attack.

We extend our deepest condolences to all those who have lost loved ones during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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DEDHAM COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL ANNUAL FUND 2019–20

The 2019–2020 Annual Fund raised more than $656,000, surpassing our goal!

Together, we achieved 100% participation from faculty, staff, and trustees and 96% participation from current parents!

The past few months have impacted us all in different ways, and we are deeply appreciative of the outpouring of support for our school by the DCD community. We are humbled by your collective display of generosity.

The culture of giving back at DCD is strong because of YOU. Please accept our heartfelt thanks.

Best wishes for a wonderful, relaxing summer!

Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Brockton, MA Permit No. 402

Dedham Country Day School 90 Sandy Valley Road Dedham, MA 02026-5898 Change Service Requested

DCD Community Celebrates the Return to Health of a Special Little Boy DCD student Gavin Brennan, a rising second-grader, beat COVID-19 and lymphoma, and came home to a communitywide celebration of his recovery on his seventh birthday. His mom, April, told Boston 25 News, “If we could survive this, we can survive everything.� Gavin was diagnosed in January and started to receive chemo treatments. In March he tested positive for coronavirus. Mostly asymptomatic, he came home after a few weeks, then came down with pneumonia, and a second test came back positive again. Finally, he had his last chemo treatment and tested negative for COVID-19. DCD families, students, and faculty members joined the parade by his home in Dedham to celebrate his recovery.

Photograph by Hilary Rochelle