Butler Avenue Bulletin

Accolades

After prevailing in the 16th round of the R.I. Senior Mock Trial Tournament in January, Lincoln’s Mock Trial players faced the quarter finals in February–their biggest match in a decade! They garnered high praise from the judges for their season. The Debate Team again proved that students find their voices at Lincoln: one team came in 5th out of 25, while a Lincoln-Smithfield pair came in 6th in the varsity competition.

Innovation

An abstract self-portrait based on the prompt “memory” by Sophie McCarthy ’24 has won a place in the highly competitive Emerging Young Artists 2023 Juried Exhibition, hosted annually by the College of Visual and Performing Arts at UMass Dartmouth. Her piece is one of 120 selected from almost 600 submissions.

This winter, girls in grades 5-8 have had their curiosity sparked by the STEAM department’s fun and innovative STEAMx Spark series of hands-on workshops, each of which focuses on a different element of STEAM. In the engineering workshop, students explored a range of topics, including the role data plays in their favorite apps and the intersection of math and nature. And their hands were as busy as their brains: they built a robotic arm, a rubber-band-powered helicopter, a cardboard catapult, and even a light bulb.

Talent

The sounds of music filled the Ebner, Elson, Hart Music Center during January’s All-school Winter Concert. Students of all ages showcased their talent and creativity in a range of musical modes, from the Lower School chorus, to the Middle School ukulele and handchime players, to the Upper School handbell players, chamber ensemble, and Lambrequins. And did we mention the event included not one but four rock bands? It was an evening of “note!”

The varsity swim team swam with one goal in mind this season, winning a championship and raising a banner in the Boss Gym. The team clinched the DII Championship by edging out rivals including Narragansett, Classical High School, and Moses Brown. Many swimmers beat their top times and 9 swimmers qualified for States.

Social Justice

In January, Lincoln held Morgan Stone Week , an annual commemoration of Morgan Stone ’00, who passed away in her freshman year at college. A founding member of 2B1 , a club focused on combating racial injustice , Morgan was dedicated to racial equity. The student-organized, event-filled week is an annual renewal of Lincoln’s commitment to creating a community of learners who celebrate diversity, inspire service, and foster peace . This year’s keynote speaker was Dr. Silas Otniel Rodrigues Pinto , inaugural director of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging for the City of Providence.

Leading

Ana Sofia De Brito ’08

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When you grow up as an immigrant who’s trying to make it in this country, you’ve got three options: be a business person, a lawyer, or a doctor,” said Cape Verde native Ana Sofia De Brito ’08. “From a young age, to be successful, I thought I had to be a doctor.”

That was the plan when De Brito, who immigrated to the United States at the age of 6, came to Lincoln as a sophomore. And it was still the plan when she attended Dartmouth College, where she took mostly premed courses.

But then she began to delve into what she calls “the dark side” of the history of medicine in this country (a history that includes grave mistreatment of people of color). Her research, coupled with a strong sense of social justice and the belief in a holistic approach to health care, caused De Brito to change course.

“Seeing the patient as a whole person as opposed to an illness really made me rethink going into medicine,” she said.

Rather than apply to medical school, De Brito interned in a maternity ward in Cape Verde, where she worked with a doctor but spent time with midwives. The experience, she said, introduced her to a model of “how to be with birth” that resonated with her. It’s a model that “treats birth as something that happens, not necessarily something you have to fix. That was revolutionary,” she said.

De Brito decided to attend Yale School of Nursing, the oldest graduate-entry program in the country training people as nurse practitioners and nurse midwives. When she graduated, as a certified nurse midwife (CNM), she joined a long tradition of Black and Indigenous women who had for centuries been “thinking about a birthing person as a whole human being.”

She was entering a family tradition as well as a professional one: both of De Brito’s grandparents were traveling nurses in Cape Verde, and her grandmother was one of the island nation’s few medically trained midwives. That tradition came full circle during De Brito’s work as a CNM at the Brockton Neighborhood Health Center, where she began to fulfill her goal of working in and for a community.

De Brito, who speaks Portuguese, Portuguese Creole, and Spanish in addition to English, was amazed to discover she was taking care of people whom her grandparents had “laid their hands on first” back in Cape Verde. “Your grandmother helped me have my baby,” several women told her.

Though De Brito loved the work, in 2021

Elisabeth Howard, PhD, recruited her to Women & Infants’ Hospital in Providence, where she directs the Academic Midwifery Service. The program is one of few in the country that integrates nurse midwives into resident education; De Brito and her colleagues provide educational support to residents in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

“You could say our ‘patients’ are the residents,” De Brito said. “We mentor them from year one through graduation and show them the midwifery model of care. We teach the basics of ob-gyn, from catching babies to shoulder dystocias to suturing. And we help them understand that although they’re doing this every day, the person having the baby has probably never done this before.”

Although she was there for only three years, De Brito considers Lincoln “the best educational experience of my life.” She intends to pursue her education with a doctorate in public health. Her main academic interests are trauma-informed care and anti-racism work in ob-gyn—an interest that was sparked at Lincoln, where she was very involved in 2B1, the student group started by Morgan Stone ’00.

Meet a multimedia artist and deep thinker