Polygon: January/February Issue

POLY PREP’S Student Newspaper VOL. CVIII ISSUE IV

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POLYGON

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 Issue

Poly’s Next Chapter: Dr. Noni Thomas López Selected as Next Head of School LUCAS BASHAM BREAKING NEWS EDITOR

Poly’s Performing Art Center Opens DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL LAYOUT EDITOR

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r. Noni Thomas López will be Poly’s next Head of School, Andrew Foote, Board of Trustees Chair, announced to the community in an email on January 24. Thomas López, who is currently the Head of School at the Gordon School in East Providence, Rhode Island, will not officially take the position until July 1, 2025, 18 months from now. Interim Head of School John Rankin will remain in the position through the 2024-2025 school year.

“A longtime New Yorker and a natural leader, Dr. Thomas López understands what it takes to elevate a school and uplift a community,” wrote Foote in his email. The Board voted unanimously for her appointment.

The announcement comes as a result of a months-long search for a new Head of School after Audrius Barzdukas stepped down from his position at the end of the 2022-2023 school year.

Thomas López, who has more than 30 years of experience in education and leadership within independent schools, prevailed. “I am thrilled to begin the next chapter of my professional journey at Poly Prep,” she said in a message within Foote’s email. “Not only because I am returning to a city that has played a central role in my personal story and my family history, but because I am joining

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a community that shares in my belief that schools should be sites of joy, intellectual engagement, belonging, and purpose.”

Thomas López had no intention of leaving her community as of the beginning of this school year, according to a message published on The Gordon School’s website the same day as Foote’s email. “This fall, however, it became clear that my extended family would be needing more attention in the coming years than I am able to provide from Rhode Island,” she wrote. “The opportunity at Poly came into my view this winter and offered me a chance to continue my work as a school leader at Poly, an exceptional institution whose mission aligns with my own, while allowing me to be in the ideal position to navigate some new familial realities.” She informed the Gordon Board of Directors of her departure two days before the announcement.

“There are moments when I wish I could start the job tomorrow and moments when I am grateful for the year and half to thoughtfully transition into my new role,” wrote Thomas López in an email to the Polygon. “There are days I am excited by the idea of being back in the city, back in Brooklyn, closer to my family and friends. And there are other days (Continued on page 3)

oly’s brand new Performing Arts Center officially opened on Saturday, January 20, over a year since its groundbreaking on October 3, 2022. The opening of the Performing Arts Center marked the first time that Poly has added a discipline-based classroom and space (other than athletics) since the Science Building was built in 2001.

The Arts Center offers students “10,000 additional square feet of state-of-the-art dance and music classrooms and gallery exhibition space,” according to an email from Michael Robinson, head of the arts department, and Matt Stelluto, head of campus operations, that was sent to the whole school. Robinson said in an interview with The Polygon that the exhibition space is promising for the future of Poly arts. “I think it has transformed what art exhibitions can be like on our campus.

Ms. Coppola and I have big plans for that.”

The 12 million dollar building opening was kicked off by Poly’s Afternoon of Student Choreography, a student-led dance show on Sunday, January 21. Classes were held for the first time in the building on Monday, January 22.

The Arts Building also connects the alumni building and the rest of the campus via a hallway from the Student Center into the communications space. The building also reopens the two main entrances into the Legacy Gym, which “unify several key aspects of Poly’s campus,” according to Robinson and Stelluto.

The first of the two new rooms added is the Instrumental Music Room, which nearly doubles the size of the pre-existing

band room. “Anyone who has taken music in our old band room knows, they were definitely due for a real upgrade—and talk about a glow-up. This [is] one of the best music spaces anywhere,” said Robinson, who was involved in the building’s plans.

The second room is the new dance studio, which was opened alongside the 25th anniversary of Poly’s dance program. “The old dance studio is not enough for Middle School and Upper School students,” Robinson said.

“The two student spaces alone are completely filled during the daytime at this point.”

These new studios will help broaden the music and dance options Poly can offer. “If you’re a piano player [at Poly], there was a limit to where you could go with your work, but now we’ve expanded those options,” added Robinson.

Additionally, the lobby of the building, which is double the size of the pre-existing theater lobby, will serve as a space to exhibit the artwork of Poly students. This lobby is “professionally designed with state-of-theart lighting, digital technology,...display cases, comfortable seating and embedded public address system for exhibitions, events, and receptions,” per the Poly website. Laura Coppola, chair of visual arts, is excited to use this space in her teaching. “In our Museum Studies classes, we can think about installation, sequencing, and storytelling more readily,” she said in an email to The Polygon. “I also hope that students just spend time there, in the presence of art.”

Along with the new rooms, new equipment is being brought to expand Poly arts further and Poly hopes to utilize the space to collaborate with local Brooklyn artists.

Robinson also mentioned that events that are normally held in the library, and therefore cause it to close early, can hopefully be moved to the new Performing Arts Center. “This will help provide another space where community gathering can take place,” he said. This shift would eliminate overcrowded areas within the main building.

Robinson said the purpose of the building is to provide new classroom spaces and the lobby area, but also to demonstrate Poly’s lasting commitment to the arts. “This is a commitment and a manifestation of how important arts pro

Countering Ideologies of Hate: Seeds of Peace Comes to Poly

JORDAN MILLAR EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

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his year, Poly began embarking on their intention to launch a new educational programming initiative: Countering Ideologies of Hate. Though the program was initially announced to parents and families in the Fall 2023 Academic Report, students were notified through an assembly in early February 2024. According to a recent email sent out to parents by Assistant Head of School, Academics Michal Hershkovitz on February 7, “Our ultimate goal is to empower our students to discern ideologies of hate in whatever guise they take and work to confront and, hopefully, combat them whenever they appear.”

As a teaching institution, Hershkovitz explained in an interview that through education, the school hopes to prepare students to “move and navigate in a world that is so complex and in order to do that, we have to prepare [them] to understand where all this [ hate] comes from – what are the causes and the consequences of ideologies of hate.”

Countering Ideologies of Hate will be at minimum a two year program. The first half of it is this year, beginning with the Seeds of Peace conversation in the Middle and Upper Schools to educate and facilitate age-appropriate dialogue. Seeds of Peace, a peacebuilding and leadership development non-profit organization, students across grades heard from organization representatives from both Israel and Palestine, working together to facilitate dialogue across differences. As written in Hershkovitz’s email, “Both sessions were a gratifying start to an educational program whose success will rest, in no small part, on our learning community’s adoption of norms for discourse and willingness to understand deeply rooted ideologies of hate as a scourge upon our fragile world.”

(Continued on page 4)

When explaining the decision to kick off this new initiative with Seeds of Peace, Hershkovitz said “in keeping with our objectives, they talked about how their adult lives have been focused on productive dialogue across difference [...] I can only imagine what it takes for an individual to meet across profound difference with people who do not share my experience, my background, my understanding.”

With the intent to move beyond the “Us vs. Them” binary, educational faculty at Poly found that the best way to do so was to examine the prevalent role of ideologies of hate. “Once you begin to think ‘how do I begin to educate about this moment?’ you realize that what we need to do is really dig deeply into the roots of this and other crisis moments. And those roots, unfortunately, are ideologies of hate,” Hershkovitz explained.

“They are pervasive, and when left unattended, they cause horrific human suffering.”

With planning still in progress, Hershkovitz, along with Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) Erika Freeman and the rest of the DEIB Department, and members of the administration, are continuing to identify expert speakers to bring to the school in addition to potential workshops. Work alongside Seeds of Peace will also be continued. In subsequent sessions throughout the semester, students are expected to engage in conversations surrounding the following topics: The Roots of Antisemitism & Islamophobia, White Nationalism, The Holocaust and Jewish Resistance to Genocide (with Laura Shaw Frank), and Information and Misinformation: The Risks and Rewards of Engaging on Social Media. Accord(Continued on page 2)

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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024

Poly Initiates Language Scholars Program LUCAS BASHAM BREAKING NEWS EDITOR

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our Poly seniors will travel abroad this May as part of the inaugural edition of the Global Studies Language Scholars program.

The program, which was announced in an email to Grade 12 families from World Languages Department Chair Liz Mansfield and History teacher Tim Shea in December, will send four seniors at the highest level of their language on a fully funded two-three week trip to France, Spain, Costa Rica, or Singapore. Students will live with a host family, take at least four hours of language classes daily, and complete Senior Capstone project research on a topic in the target language.

“It’s not like language in a silo,” said Mansifield. “It’s language for life for the purpose of learning about other cultures and problems, immigration, whatever it is.”

Currently, Poly runs curricular travel trips where students travel with faculty to Italy, Mexico, and France, among other places. In the past, Poly has had exchange programs, including an exchange program in Argentina that lasted from 1996 to 2013, which ended because it was too much extra work for a single teacher. (Poly didn’t use a travel company then; the teacher booked flights, organized documents, and communicated with the Argentines. As of this year, Shea is also Poly’s official travel coordinator, and gets compensated extra for that work. He works on budgeting and communication with travel companies.)

This time around, seniors will travel through Education First: Languages Abroad, a company with ‘language campuses’ all over the world with the infrastructure for the kind of experience Mansfield was looking for. “I wanted the ability to make everything easier [than in the past].

I called E.F. up and I told them what I wanted, and E.F. was like, ‘no problem’.”

Next year, the programs will identify themselves more separate from one another. The Global Studies program, headed by Shea, will be a portfolio based program. It aims to direct students’ studies in a specific direction throughout high school: if given the freedom by their teachers, a student’s projects, essays, and other assignments through 10th, 11th, and 12th grade will be centered around a specific topic within the

realm of global studies. Students will also select their courses based on their area of study.

Shea hopes that by the end of 9th grade, students begin to think about their portfolio of work. Then, “by the end of the 10th grade year, students will submit a preliminary portfolio in which they say, ‘okay, I did this research paper in an elective history class in the spring of my 10th grade year. I’ve also done a service learning team, and in my Spanish class, I’ve been exploring this issue,’ said Shea. “Let’s say they’re thinking about immigration, and they’re very interested in that. We will advise them at the end of the 10th grade year to start to configure their projects in their classes around, like projects that have to do with immigration.”

As a senior, the student will present their capstone project based on the portfolio they’ve developed over three years.

The Language Scholars program is the next and last step in the Global Studies program. “These are the kids who not only are involved in the Global Studies program, but who want to perfect their language skills, who are the top language scholars,” said Mansfield. “[The Language Scholars program] is like the pinnacle of our Global Studies program. Students are going to be the ones who go out in the world, do research, study language, and then come back and present,” said Shea.

“I don’t want it to be something where it’s like an extra class where you have to have to take this class, or you have to take this class. I want it to be more like you’re interested in something … and you’re thinking about how you can learn more about that particular topic in class,” added Shea.

The programs come at a time where New York City is receiving an influx of migrants, there are two major wars happening in the world, and international power dynamics are shifting. “It doesn’t feel right to keep ourselves limited in the city, in the United States,” said Shea. “If we’re looking at measures to mitigate climate change on the coastline here in New York, we could also be interested in solutions that are being created in other places around the world, in societies, in cultures, in histories of places around the world that may also be experiencing that same issue.”

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Seeds of Peace (Continued from page 1) ing to Hershkovitz’s email, programming for next year as of now, includes engaging in dialogue regarding Engaging across Divides, Contemporary Islamophobia & Antisemitism, Tropes and Deception, Embracing Complexity: The Curse of Binary Thinking, and In Search of Hope and Peace.

“I think that as humans, we always want to impose frameworks of analysis that help us understand the unfathomable. We have to question those frameworks of analysis, because sometimes they’re just plain wrong – they’re inappropriate [in terms of] the context on which we are superimposing them,” Hershkovitz explained.

Through engaging in these upcoming events and workshops, as noted in Hershkovitz’s email, “students will be introduced to challenging but necessary VIA IZ NISSEN learning so that they may become discerning disruptors of hatreds that have for too long been perpetrated, not least because resistance to them has seemed futile.”

Since this is a new initiative, Hershkovitz said that the work of developing the program further has been long and difficult. “I wish I could say that the roster of speakers is already set,” said Hershkovitz, who has been holding meetings with people online and by phone nearly every day since November to find potential guests. “The people [ speakers] who do this well are really busy.”

“We have been really fortunate because parents from all backgrounds have been sharing with us some suggestions – we explore every suggestion because as educators, that’s our job. To take all the leads and figure out, based on our professional experience, what will work best for our kids.”

The hectic schedules of the school community also make finding common times to have larger discussions difficult to come across. “If you’ve ever tried to get anything done in terms of finding a block of time to collect all students in one place, you know that we are a very busy school,” Hershkovitz

explained. In addition to a faculty workshop that Seeds of Peace will conduct on February 20 titled “Facilitating Youth Voices,” the school also will host a Zoom conversation on the 26th with Professor Richard Weissbourd.

According to Hershkovitz, some of the DEIB sessions going forward will be used for Countering Ideologies of Hate. However, she also recognized “We have incredible affinity groups whose work is incredibly important to all of us, and especially to the students who are in those groups. Every decision we make about scheduling is fraught.”

Despite scheduling constraints, assemblies in general can be difficult to maintain student engagement and attention.

“Assembly is hard,” Hershkovitz acknowledged. “We are 550 and people [are] sitting in wooden pews.

Sometimes the sound is good, sometimes the sound is not. Sometimes the speaker is compelling, sometimes the speaker is not, regardless of how important the message is.”

Noah Savietz ’24, expressed “I thought the assembly had a very good purpose and message while the execution was slightly off. I loved how the programming promoted peace and unification between a community and focused on a road forward that focused on respect and thoughtfulness of others.” “I do think however, that the zoom made it difficult to understand such an important message regarding such a complicated situation,” Savietz added.

“The combination of our schedule constraints, the speakers’ schedule constraints, [and] the appropriateness of speakers, is a huge challenge. But we’ve forged ahead, because the bigger the challenge, the more meaningful the outcome,” Hershkovitz said. While she recognizes that this is not a universally applicable truth, she explained that at least “in the educational space, if it’s hard, it means you are working in the way you were meant to work to reach a meaningful outcome.”

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Head of School (Continued from page 1) where I feel very sad to be leaving Gordon. This place and the people here mean a lot to me.”

Thomas López went to middle and high school at Greensboro Day School (GDS) in North Carolina, according to her 2019 profile on the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) website. There, she recalls not having any teachers of color. “As an African-American and Puerto Rican girl, I felt isolated and self-conscious quite often, but I still had no doubt that I belonged at GDS,” she said in the profile. “I have my teachers to thank for this, specifically for the way they engaged me on both a personal and intellectual level.”

After getting a BA in English from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, she found herself on the other side of the desk at GDS, despite not expecting to have a career in teaching. “I was immediately interested in the ways the school attended to the needs of culturally diverse students. I wanted to use my experience to create an environment where all students of color felt they belonged.” She also taught at the Ravenscroft School in North Carolina.

Thomas López went on to get an MA in Education Leadership from Columbia University, with a concentration in Private School Leadership, and an Ed.D in Educational and Organizational Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania, according to Foote’s email.

Next, Thomas López spent 20 years in teaching and leadership positions at independent schools in New York City, primarily involved with middle schoolers. She taught middle school humanities at Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School (LREI) for 8 years, served as the Middle School Director at the Calhoun School for 2 years, and was the Head of Middle School at the Nightingale-Bamford School for 5 years. From 2014 to 2018, she was the Assistant Head of School for Teaching and Learning at Ethical Culture Fieldston School. She also serves on the Board of the NAIS along with several other local, regional, and national boards, according to Gordon’s website. Thomas López has lived in several Brooklyn neighborhoods, and her husband was born and raised in The Bronx.

“As I got to know the school, I was struck by its diversity and how deeply people love Poly and want the best for this community,” said Thomas López in her email to The Polygon. “There is a sense that Poly has something important to contribute, not just to current and future students and families but something to contribute to Brooklyn and beyond.”

The Search Process After Barzdukas stepped down, a group of the Board of Directors formed an initial committee to interview and select an educational search firm—a consulting company that helps independent schools find and hire administrative leaders—according to Laurie Rosenblatt, Co-Chair of the Search Committee and Vice-Chair of the Board.

They landed on Carney Sandoe and Associates, “based on their reputation and 40 year history of placing successful heads of schools,” said Rosenblatt in an email to the Polygon, highlighting that they came highly recommended by peer schools. “Carney Sandoe also had the most experience working with and placing diverse candidates in the position of HOS (head of school),” she added.

Meanwhile, Foote appointed Rosenblatt and Robin Bramwell-Stewart as co-chairs of the Search Committee, who chose five faculty members and five trustees to form the group over the summer. Having faculty members on a search committee is not typical. Nonetheless, “it’s important when you are undertaking these kinds of efforts to make sure that everyone in the community has a chance to have their perspectives heard and to have their input into the process,” said Bramwell-Stewart, a Poly graduate, former Poly parent, and former trustee. Each member of the committee, whose job it is to present a recommendation of a candidate for the Head of School position to the Board of Directors, was part of the Poly community in multiple different ways.

This search process was intentionally distinct from the process that selected Barzdukas before his start in 2016. “I remember sensing that it wasn’t a very effective search process, [and] it was largely done behind closed doors,” recalled Harry Bernieri ’85, Poly History teacher and member of the Search Committee. “What I observed in that search process was fewer finalists, fewer sitting heads of school and, and less solicitation of actual written input from the community,” said Emily Gardiner, Chair of the Upper School Deans and member of the Search Committee. Bernieri added that in the end, it seemed like there was only one good choice, whereas this time around, the final candidates were all “extraordinary.”

Bramwell-Stewart, who was on the Barzdukas

Search Committee, said they also used a consultant and did have faculty on the committee. “I think that at the time we were in a point of a lot of transition. We didn’t have a lot of time to think about how we wanted to best move forward,” she said, adding that the recent experience led to a better process this time around.

The process aimed to follow NAIS’ Principles of Good Practice: Head Searches, which highlights the factors of a successful consultant-committee-school relationship.

The Board and the Search Committee individually participated in ‘diversity training’, where they discussed and addressed their own implicit biases in order to assure a standardized, fair process.

Over the summer, the Head of School Search page on Poly’s website went live, and in late August, the Search Committee met with Carney Sandoe for the first time.

In September, Carney Sandoe representatives spent two days on both campuses and held Zoom meetings for community members to share their input. In total, they met with more than 330 individuals, according to Rosenblatt. After their campus visit, Carney Sandoe conducted an anonymous follow-up survey within the Poly community, which yielded 875 responses. In the Search Committee’s first meeting and in all of Carney Sandoe’s meetings with community members, two primary questions were raised: What are the characteristics we are looking for in a new head of school? and, What do we see as the most pressing work for a new head of Poly?

The results of the survey, released in a graph on the website, showed that the community prioritized “leadership and management experience in independent schools” in a candidate’s professional attributes and “honest, trustworthy, and transparent” in a candidate’s personal attributes. “Academic program excellence” was valued as the community’s priority and what they wanted a head of school’s priority to be.

As for students’ hopes, “I think [they] are craving someone who communicates in a really genuine way and feels connected to the daily life of the school in a genuine way,” said Gardiner.

Carney Sandoe condensed the priorities and values they had gathered from the community into a position statement, the formal announcement/job description publicized on the search website. The position statement shared an overview of Poly, “opportunities and challenges” for the next Head of School, and desired “qualifications and personal attributes” in a candidate. The latter two were the result of Carney Sandoe’s interaction with the community.

The position statement stated that “the full-time equivalent salary range for this position is $700,000 to $900,000 … [which] is based upon, but not limited to, several factors that include years of experience, education level, and expertise.” Barzdukas received a salary of $950,828, plus $97,350 in bonuses in 2022, according to Poly’s 2022 fiscal year tax filings. Dalton’s Head of School made a total of $940,000 in 2022, Fieldston’s $1,310,000 and Horace Mann’s $2,100,000.

From more than 100 educators formal inquiries (emails or phone calls) to Carney Sandoe, 33 were asked to submit a full application, which included a cover letter, résumé, two recent writing samples (speeches, letters to community, etc.), and five professional references. Throughout November, “the Search Committee meticulously reviewed these dossiers and debated each of the candidates as a group over several discussions,” said Rosenblatt. They selected the “most promising 11 candidates and invited them for hour-long interviews with the entire Search Committee.” After those interviews, the committee selected four finalists, who toured campus, met with the Search Committee again, and met with small “representative groups of Parents Association Officers, HUGS Officers, Faculty and Staff Council Members, selected additional faculty members, Board of Governors Officers and Trustees.”

Those groups spoke with committee members directly and participated in an anonymous survey. Rankin also participated in meetings with the four candidates.

“Just before winter break, the Search Committee met to deliberate and decide the best candidate for the job. The Search Committee voted unanimously in favor of recommending Dr. Thomas López to the board,” said Rosenblatt. The Board proceeded to vote unanimously in favor of her appointment.

Aiyana Parker, Grade Four Head Teacher and member of the Search Committee, said that Thomas López, “really seemed to have a deep understanding of equity.”

Poly’s Past, Present, and Future The appointment of Thomas López comes at a time where Poly is going through change. “This

might sound a little dramatic, but we’re in a bit of an identity crisis in terms of who we are,” said Head of Upper School Sarah Bates. “I call it a certain kind of identity question,” added Rankin. “What does Poly want to be? What is it going to be for itself?”

Bernieri said that a school needs a strong community in order to have a clear vision and identity. “I think the last administration really undermined the identity in some fundamental ways.” Poly is challenged with preserving its historic and traditional identity while moving forward. “The past isn’t always the model for how we should live in the future. But there are things that tie the community together … with a new vision that’s tied to the old vision in some way,” said Bernieri.

Members of the Search Committee, Rankin, and Bates tended to gravitate towards comparing Brooklyn’s diversity to that of Poly. “It’s a huge identity moment for us just to have a head of school who’s not male, just to have a head of school who doesn’t identify as white,” said Gardiner. Rosenblatt noted that they did not restrict the search to a person of color, but rather “the candidate that most embodied the characteristics our community identified were most important in a new HOS.” In May 2023, the proposed faculty and staff union canceled its vote just 4 days before it was set to occur. “I think that for many people in our community, seeing the Board of Trustees on campus meeting with us, asking questions, and taking notes led a lot of people to feel like they might enact some real substantive changes,” History Teacher and then-union organizer AJ Blandford told the Polygon last May of why the vote was canceled. The union was asking for “[job] security, transparency, accountability, [and] equity.”

Rankin said that the administration has begun to address those issues. He added some of the union’s concerns were met simply in the change in leadership. Further, the administration met with a consultancy group and have developed “a whole new compensation scheme for the faculty that we haven’t even gotten to send out the first contracts with it yet, but so far it’s being met with a fair amount of satisfaction.”

It would be difficult, Rankin explained, for Thomas López to come into the position while Poly is still trying to figure out who it wants to be, and the administration is “still going through this compensation benefits transition [and] while we’re still trying to get these job descriptions and work.” The Position Statement said the start would be in July 2024 or 2025. Thomas López will start in 2025.

“It’s almost a red flag if a sitting head of school is just ready to snap their fingers and jump ship in July,” said Gardiner.

“All of that to say, while change can be stressful or anxiety inducing because we don’t know what the future’s going to look like, I feel really good.”

-Sarah Bates The formal transition process between Rankin and Thomas López won’t start until the summer. At first, Rankin and Foote will meet with Thomas López, and later on a larger group will work to get her acclimated to Poly.

“She has a big school to run, and so do I,” said Rankin.

Thomas López has been at Gordon since 2018.

“I am grateful for the fact that this move leaves me eighteen more months with you. I’ve still got a long list of hopes for my time here, and I will need every one of these days to make those dreams for Gordon come true,” she wrote in her message to the Gordon community. “This place has changed me forever.”

But according to Bates, Foote, and Thomas López herself, she and Poly are a match. “Advancing Poly’s commitment to diversity and academic excellence is an endeavor that I do not take lightly, and it’s one that calls for the engagement of every member of the community,” she said in Foote’s email. Members of the Search Committee described her as a warm and kind person.

“Who we are now in 2024 is really different from when I arrived in 2011,” said Bates. “It’s different from when Mr. Barzdukas came in in 2016, and it’s going to be different in a few years with Dr. Thomas López coming in. All of that to say, while change can be stressful or anxiety inducing because we don’t know what the future’s going to look like, I feel really good.”

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DEIB Block No Longer Split into Halves

IZZY LEYTON DEIB REPORTER

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or the remainder of this school year, the DEIB block will look much different than it did in the fall semester. The block will no longer be split up into two halves which means that members of the Poly community will have the entire 65-minute block to attend their affinity or discussion group. This decision comes after a numerous amount of feedback about the discussion groups since the beginning of the fall semester from students, faculty members, and affinity group leaders.

Many affinity group leaders, including Co-leader of the Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) Lulu McDonald ‘24, Co-leader of Umoja Jordan James ‘25, and Co-leader of Masala Shriya Nanduru ‘24, were thrilled to hear about this change. According to all three affinity group leaders, with the previous model, they were unable to finish their discussions and get everything done in only the 30 minutes they were given. James said that all of the leaders of Lemonade and Umoja were “extremely concerned” when they heard that they were only getting half of the DEIB period.

In addition, he said these leaders created a survey and shared it with Erika Freeman, DEIB Director. The survey showed that there were many Poly students who were “really discontent[ed] with the DEIB discussion groups.” McDonald added that she participated in the student government polls about the DEIB discussion groups and messaged them a few times, asking them to help get rid of it. She was also frustrated that, alongside discussion groups, “assemblies have been taking up a lot of our time.” Both McDonald and Nanduru are a part of the DEIB Task Force, joined by all other affinity group leaders. When they all met in October, both of them expressed that they wanted the entire 65-minute block for their group.

English faculty member and DEIB Co-coordinator Carmelo Larose explained that some discussion groups were more productive than others, due to teachers’ varying experience with leading these difficult and heavy discussions. He said some faculty members “may not be used to holding discussions because they aren’t in the humanities [which tend to have discussion-based classes] or…are from another country for example, or didn’t have DEIB at their schools before.” According to Larose, those faculty members said “it was difficult for them to feel comfortable holding conversations. ” Nanduru stated that in her discussion group “everything felt very forced,” partly because she didn’t know many of the students. McDonald voiced that the only good discussion she had with her discussion group was after the October 7 attacks in Israel and Gaza. It wasn’t the programming for the day, but the faculty leaders asked if anyone wanted to talk about it. A lot of students didn’t feel comfortable in their discussion groups. Larose stated that “there are varying levels of comfort with having DEIB discussions” for both students and faculty. Director of Campus Library Services and DEIB Co-coordinator Iman Stultz admitted that they “were attempting

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NEWS

to try a new system this year and the answer was not necessarily the format that we came up with.”

Stultz also explained that one of the issues with the DEIB format this first semester was the students that remained in the discussion groups once the people who were a part of affinity groups left the classroom.

In many rooms, the students left were dismissed, since there were too few of them to have a productive or deep conversation. Sometimes the faculty advisor would also have to leave to go facilitate their affinity group for the second half of the block. Stultz said, “We don’t want discussion groups to be a free period or something that you are just required to do. We don’t want people to feel like they are forced into having meaningful discussions. We want that to happen organically.” Now, the remaining students who aren’t in affinity groups will be put in a discussion group based on their grade. Ninth and tenth grade students will be in groups, and eleventh and twelfth grade students will be in separate groups. Stultz hopes that this will lead to more comfortable and open discussions.

Stultz and Larose met with the rest of the DEIB team to make this change, which included Director of Forensics and Debate Eddie Fitzgerald, and Learning Support faculty member Fannie Santana. They are the ones who develop the content for the discussion groups.

After organizing the new format, they all had a meeting with Freeman who, according to Stultz, “helped us address some of the possible issues that might arise with the groupings and we worked it out together.”

Nanduru said that Stultz came by the Masala affinity group a few weeks before they officially implemented the change, asking the leaders their thoughts. Nanduru is especially excited about this change, due to her being a senior and this being her last year at Poly. “I get the rest of my senior year to spend more time with my group.”

The community built in all of these affinity groups often becomes strong and important to those who are a part of it. James stated that, “The affinity groups are safe spaces, not just for the black kids in Umoja, but for all kids of all identities.” Larose is “happy that everyone has been so patient. I think that it is such a positive thing that students are so passionate about DEIB that they wanted to have the full block to work with each other. I am so impressed with the Poly students.”

Both Stultz and Larose mentioned another change: there will now be an element of “community outreach” added to DEIB affinity groups and discussion groups. DEIB will now be more interactive and engaging. According to Larose and Stultz, students will be tasked to make a presentation on what they have been working on. For example, they could include an organization they would like to work with on a service project. Eventually, students might present at assemblies, showcasing their hard work.

“I am happy that everything worked out and am excited to hear feedback from the students,” said Larose.

Poly’s Performing Art Center Opens (continued from page 1)

gramming is on this campus for generations,” he said. “Students who are here today, who might eventually send their own children to Poly in years to come— these spaces will still be incredible all those many years later.”

However, the much-awaited unveiling of the building has left students with mixed reactions.

Zeke Wise ‘24, who has been involved in acting, dance, and choir throughout his four years at Poly, was excited for the building’s opening. Wise said that he is grateful for the building as it represents Poly’s investment in the arts, but he wishes they just had a little more. “[The band room] is pretty nice, it has good flooring and it has good sound proofing on the walls.

What they have built is built well.

We were just expecting more:…we were expecting a lounge space or some more spaces for rehearsals.”

When it opened, many students, especially those interested in the arts like Wise, could not be more excited to check it out. “They were saying that [the building] would be revolutionary for the arts — that this is gonna provide us with so many new rehearsal spaces,” Wise said.

However, the building left a bit to be desired for many. “We are all a little bit disappointed with the amount of time they spent building it, the amount of money they needed, to just build this building with a dance studio and two classrooms,” said Wise, who was speaking for a handful of dancers in the room who were present for the interview.

Others such as Tristan Kelley ‘24, who is a member of Blue Notes and choir, were disappointed that an extra room was not built for Poly’s choirs, as there is still no ideal space for singers. “I thought there would be more on the second floor. It’s just a wall.

There’s nothing there,” he said.

Another student, Noah Saivetz ‘24, who is a member of the band ensemble, has experienced mixed reactions to the new building. “My experience of the first few classes has not lived up to the hype, due to the extreme heat in the building,”

he said. Still, he remains excited for the possibilities of the new space.

“The physical band room is really nice and is quite the step up from the previous room. The Arts Building as a whole is a really exciting opportunity for everyone at Poly to continue to get involved in the arts.”

Others, though, have found the new space to be very exciting. Laila Baluk ‘24, who has been dancing at Poly since sixth grade, is excited for the remainder of the dance concerts at Poly, now that she has the new rehearsal space. She said she is also excited to see what these changes mean to the arts program going forward and how it will continue to grow.

According to Robinson, the building was supposed to have a third floor including music offices and private studio spaces, which was abandoned six years ago during the building process.

Robinson acknowledged that Poly is still lacking these facilities and hopes to build them somehow. Additionally, he said that, due to the idea for the building originating over ten years ago, some of the newer needs of Poly arts today— like photography and film—were unable to be addressed. “There are things that I’m disappointed about that were supposed to be part of this project,” he added. Coppola also said that if she could do a “part two” of the Performing Arts Center she would add studio spaces.

However, Robinson, who has been at Poly since the 1990s, added that it is easy for students to be blind to the changes the arts program has made. “I think sometimes we forget how much change there has been,” Robinson said.

Since he first came to Poly, he has watched a major shift take place in Poly arts: things like a photography program, a design program, the Head of Arts position, the school’s many connections to museums, and the Excellence in the Arts Program, did not always exist. “So now, the idea that the first stop on an admission tour is music and dance and a gallery space, I think will say something very clear about Poly,” said Robinson.

Seniors Continue to Navigate the College Process SEANNA SANKAR NEWS EDITOR

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or the class of 2024, the fall semester of senior year has been in and out of dean’s offices and filled with writing and rewriting college supplements. As the fall and winter college application season unfolds, Poly’s class of 2024 seniors have reaped the rewards of their hard work and strategic approach to the college process. Chair of the Upper School Deans Emily Gardiner attributes the seniors’ success to how well they have handled the pressure of the college season. According to Gardiner, the seniors have handled the college process “with so much maturity, careful thought, and good planning.”

A total of 80 percent of the class applied through Early Decision I (EDI) or Restricted Early Action (REA) in November, and 17 percent applied via EarlyAction (EA) only. From those EDI/ REA applicants, 54 percent received an offer of admission. Between December and January, 18 percent of the class then entered an Early Decision II (EDII) pool. Of the EDII applicants, 42 percent have already received a positive outcome, with more results arriving in mid-February. At this point in the process, though, about 88% of the 2024 seniors have at least one offer of admission. These statistics are still changing as seniors continue to receive decisions.

Reflecting on this year’s decisions, Gardiner said, “This year looks similar to recent years in terms of the advice we’re giving and the satisfying results we are getting.

Every year for the past five years, Poly has steadily increased our share of top-25 colleges and universities. I’m really looking forward to tallying our final data in May.” When it comes to applying ED, the dean team has worked to support students in making the best decisions based on their individual circumstances. Compared to recent years, Poly students seem to see more and more success. A Polygon article from 2018 described that the class of 2018 saw “a large increase compared to the 22.8 percent of students accepted ED in 2015.”

According to a 2017 Polygon article, “Over 70 percent of [2017-2018] year’s graduating class is applying early decision (ED) to a college, as opposed to the 20-30 percent that has applied ED in past years.” This year appears to reflect similar re-

sults. “There is always a push to apply early in this market,” however, as committing to a binding application is not for everyone, “there is almost no senior who did not turn in at least one or applications by early November,” said Gardiner.

In fact, senior Arthur Dieme who also applied early expressed regret in not applying to more early action schools.

Still, applying to college is a lot of work that revolves around crafting an application that represents both the time you’ve spent in high school as well as yourself on a personal level. This has been mainly achieved through a students’ personal statement and writing supplements for individual schools.

For senior Jasmine Donald who is attending Wesleyan University in the fall, when it came to applying to colleges, “I honestly felt so overwhelmed by all of the supplemental essays I had to write, especially because I wasn’t the greatest [at] mapping out when and how I would write each one.”

An important part of applying to college for Donald was making sure her personality and identity shone through in ways that weren’t highlighted in the rest of her application.

She said, “it was so helpful having trusted adults read and help edit my supplements because without them, I’m sure I would have panicked and done mediocre work out of sheer stress.”

Senior Alba Niccolai, who will be attending Colgate University, echoed this statement and said, “I feel that it is important that you have a dean that you can go to not only on an academic level but a personal level.”

Donald would advise the future class of seniors “to reach out to a teacher or a dean to have them read your work and offer advice. Having that kind of support definitely makes the process less scary.” She continued, “the best thing you can do is remember to breathe and calmly map out your supplements.”

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OPINIONS

The Harmful Effects of Celsius LILA DANIELS FEATURES EDITOR

VIA SOPHIA CHAMORRO

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oaming the Poly Prep halls during school, many of the people walking by will be holding an item from Poly’s vending machines, whether that be a mini-bag of PopCorners or a peach Snapple. A visit to the vending machine is an excellent way for students to power through the demanding eight-hour school day, which can even be 10 hours if students stay after school for an extracurricular. What better way to energize tired students than an energy drink?

That’s right, the newest addition to Poly Prep’s vending machines is Celsius.

From the delectable-sounding drink flavors to the fruits on the label of the Celsius can, this 12 oz beverage is sure to catch the eye of any Poly student, some as young as ten years old. Celsius also looks especially enticing to some student-athletes who are looking for additional energy for practices and games. Bo Casey ’26 says she drinks “Celsius before [my] soccer games. It gives me more energy to run faster and longer.” Although it carries a punch of energy to power you through the school day or during a game, Celsius is also controversial. Should middle schoolers be able to access it? Should athletes? And what secrets is Celsius hiding behind the glamorous label?

According to John McGee, Poly’s Operations Coordinator, the vending machines at Poly are stocked by an external vendor who makes supply selections following school-selected criteria. Poly’s operations department has given the vendor the liberty to use his best judgment to stock the vending machines with snacks and drinks that fall under these guidelines. The vendor bases his selections on sales data, stock availability, and how often the machines need replenishing, according to McGee. A student-athlete purchasing a sparkling-Orange flavored Celsius from the vending machines in the Novogratz is a daily sight. However, student-athletes who wish to continue their athletic career at a collegiate level should consider cutting back on their Celsius intake.

The NCAA decided to ban Celsius after conducting a study that revealed that one can of Celsius equates to 5 cups of coffee. In addition to the oversupply of caffeine, the NCAA found illegal stimulants in Celsius, such as ginseng, guarana, L-carnitine, and taurine, all of which have been banned by the NCAA and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). So, the student-athletes who consistently grab a Celsius pre-game for ample energy won’t be able to do so once they graduate and begin playing in college. Poly’s Athletic Trainer, Alyssa Alaimo, says, “You don’t

want to feel like you’re addicted or need it. If we have athletes who are going to colleges to play their sport, they should start learning now what they’re expected, body-wise, [to do in college].”

In addition to student-athletes, the energy drink marketing targets all students. Large retail stores like BJ’s and Costco specifically advertise their stock of Celsius to college students. These stores will have large displays labeled “back to school” or “stock up for your dorm rooms” with cases and cases of a variety of flavors of Celsius with banned ingredients and extreme levels of caffeine, hiding these facts behind glamorous labels. “Peach Vibe” and “Kiwi Guava” sound like child-friendly refreshing beverages, but in reality contain levels of caffeine that are problematic for athletes and children. According to an article by the American Medical Association, Dr. Kilgore stated that “even in moderate amounts [Celsius] can cause jitteriness and anxiety.

[Celsius] can also increase respiratory rate, heart rate, and blood pressure.”

It would be peculiar for Poly’s vending machines to hold Red Bull, 111g of caffeine, or Monster, 160mg of caffeine. Yet while these drinks contain significantly less caffeine than Celsius’ 200mg, Poly’s vendors opted for the alluring, higher caffeinated drink.

Celsius’ high caffeine content has significant effects on adolescents. Consuming caffeine in highly-concentrated doses, according to Alaimo, can cause a “growth stunt. [Caffeine] is kind of the main reason that it’s bad for younger kids. [Caffeine] can be a hindrance rather than a positive [for growth development].” In a study conducted by the National Library of Medicine, researchers found that “although [caffeine] produces an increase in brain activity, caffeine consumption hampers children’s growth and development.”

On a day-to-day basis, students may only see the benefits of caffeine with tunnel vision, like more energy and the activation of the central nervous system, but in reality, its side effects could be worse than that extra kick a can of Celsius gives you. In addition, Celsius’ list of ingredients contains foreign extracts and dyes that some kids wouldn’t know they are allergic to. Alaimo says, “I feel like nowadays there are so many things that kids are allergic to or intolerant of. We are seeing how many dyes and chemicals are in our food. Why do we need to add something to that?”

Poly’s newest edition to the vending machine may seem perfect for athletes and students trying to make it through the day awake. But think twice before purchasing a Celsius, and don’t fall for the glamorous marketing.

Predictions and Reactions to Superbowl LVIII ALEXANDRA GERLING CONTRIBUTING WRITER

February 8: Will the Chiefs Take Home A Fourth Trophy?

The annual Super Bowl excites families across the United States looking forward to seeing how their predictions will play out.

Whether it’s simply getting together for a fun Sunday or supporting your team, the Super Bowl is something everyone can enjoy.

Yearly traditions have become a common theme for Super Bowl Sunday.

Personally, my family hosts a day-long celebration with all our friends. Charlotte Kuchinad ’26 says, “I help my father make chili yearly and although I’m not usually a football fan, I look forward to watching the halftime show.” On the other hand, Diego Garcia-Phillips ’25 says, “I look forward to the Super Bowl all year long and always watch it. It has become a tradition within my family.”

Despite the highly esteemed quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, of the Kansas City Chiefs, the San Francisco 49ers are favored to win, according to CBS. In a poll posted on the Poly Student Government Instagram, 58 percent of respondents predict that the Chiefs will defeat the 49ers.

The Kansas City Chiefs defeated the Baltimore Ravens 17-10 to advance to the Super Bowl. The San Francisco 49ers beat the Detroit Lions 34-31 with a nail-biting comeback. These winning streaks set

the stage for the 2024 Super Bowl to be a great contest between two strong teams.

The Chiefs won the 2023 Super Bowl, leaving us to ask: will they become back-to-back Super Bowl champions and finally be considered a dynasty?

February 12: Post-Game Reaction What a game! The 2024 Super Bowl lived up to the hype. The San Francisco 49ers put up a great fight against the Kansas City Chiefs, but despite their best efforts, Mecole Hardman was able to seal the deal in overtime, prompting an unexpected victory.

Although the odds were in the 49ers’ favor, the Chiefs used their incredible offense to overcome their competitor. The Chiefs were already down 10-3 at halftime but managed to clean it up, sending the Super Bowl into overtime for the second time in NFL history. The back-and-forth game kept viewers on the edge of their seats. Proving rewards with the team’s dedication, post-win Patrick Mahomes tells CBS Sports, “We’re not done. We’ve got a young team, we’re going to keep this thing going.” Super Bowl 58 was Mahomes third Super Bowl win, leading people to wonder if, one day, he’ll be better than the undisputed GOAT: Tom Brady.

The Chiefs’ dedication left fans excited for the 2025 season. Who knows… maybe they will win 3 in a row?

Business Column: The Creation of Poly’s Business Club REESE ROAMAN SPORTS EDITOR

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t might be unconventional to seek business advice from a 17-year-old with no prior experience, but junior Petros Dulos is challenging that perception with Poly’s newest addition: the Business Club.

Convening during club blocks, this dynamic and engaging club provides its members with a comprehensive introduction to the core tenets of business.

Dulos was inspired to create the club after recognizing a void within the Poly community. “A number of students like myself were interested in entrepreneurship and had the drive to learn about business in a more hands-on way, with nowhere to do so,” said Dulos. Although business clubs have previously existed at Poly, Dulos aimed to elevate his club’s impact by enhancing its ability to educate students.

“My ultimate motivation for starting the club was to bring students in contact with small business in Brooklyn and their leaders in hopes of connecting the Poly community with the diverse and exciting Brooklyn business community.” (Dulos is the Business Manager for the Polygon.)

The club’s first meeting commenced on September 8th, focusing on basic business vocabulary alongside business theories. Dulos crafted an 18-page slide show explaining topics such as competition, profit, market values, and more. The club leader then posed engaging questions for the members and even assigned homework for the upcoming meeting. Members were asked to research a business, think about strategies, and then come prepared to share the business strategies that their subject used. “I wanted the first meeting to show that the club was the real deal,” said Dulos.

Junior and club member Karim Camara shared how Dulos navigated what felt like a “college-level course” on day one. “I went in thinking it would be pretty casual, but

I walked away truly feeling like I learned something—and it was only the first day.”

A study by the Hechinger Report demonstrates that the amount of students majoring in business has gone up 60% in the last twenty years. Dulos noticed this increase, especially amongst his peers and their aspirations for college. Although many students want to embark upon a business career, many don’t know what that exactly entails.“I feel like most of the time, when people say they want to do business, they don’t really know what that means. So this club is, in a way, a space to explore individuals’ passion within such a broad area of study.”

In the spirit of entrepreneurship, Dulos proactively promoted the club’s existence by establishing an online presence, including the launch of an Instagram account for outreach and engagement. Junior Mila Taendler runs the account and is excited about its future. “I am planning on starting to share what we cover during meetings on the page. I think it will engage a lot of students and intrigue them to join the club,” she said.

Dulos is pleased with the high level of success and engagement the club members have exhibited thus far. What’s next for the business club? To sustain student interest, Dulos is actively coordinating a Zoom call for the club with local small business owners in Brooklyn. Learning from these leaders will not only provide invaluable firsthand lessons to club members but also foster a connection between the Poly campus and the outside community.

“I believe this upcoming phase will elevate the club to new heights. It will introduce aspiring business leaders to potential mentors and provide us with lessons that you cannot learn from a textbook.”

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FEATURES Ari Memoli’s Service Trip To Puerto Rico EMMA ARDEN LAYOUT EDITOR

VIA ARI MEMOLI

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hrough her work with the non-profit New York Boricua Resistance (NYBR), Ari Memoli returned to her homeland and heritage and connected with her family and Puerto Rican culture through a service trip she organized for NYBR. Ari Memoli started working at Poly Prep in the 2023 school year. Before working at Poly as the Upper School Division Coordinator, Memoli built up an impressive resume. According to the Poly Prep Directory, Memoli previously worked for Brooklyn Law School and Albany Law School, and “outside of the professional sphere, she’s also an organizer in north Brooklyn amplifying the work and voices of the Puerto Rican Liberation movement.”

The main goal of the organization is to eliminate the division of mostly Puerto Ricans living in the U.S. to Puerto Rico. After receiving a generous donation, Memoli and other staff members organized a trip for NYBR members to reconnect with Puerto Rico.

On their 6-day trip, the members split up into two groups. In her group, Memoli worked with various organizations such as Utier, an electrical and irrigation workers union that essentially helps unionize electrical grid workers. Currently, Puerto Rico has a fiscal control board, originally instated by Barack Obama whose role is to approve and revise obligations and decisions made by the Puerto Rican government.

Shortly after, LUMA, the power company in charge of distributing and transmitting power in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, came into play. The problem is that many people outside Puerto Rico who are not aware of how the electrical grids work, are coming in which becomes an issue specifically during hurricane season and other natural sources. As a result, “A lot of folks ended up leaving the grid jobs with the electrical grid, primarily because LUMA would not protect their pensions,” said Memoli, meaning that when workers retired they would not be properly paid be-

fore and after retirement. Originally there were 4500 people within the union which has now decreased to around 200. Memoli brings attention to the fact that because of the issues with LUMA, most Puerto Rican citizens who do have running electricity have it because they are using emergency electrical resources which most people are unaware of. This means citizens are using backup electricity that is put in place in case of emergency.

Right now Utier is attempting to work with LUMA who have recently employed a syndicate union which creates a disconnect between the syndicate union and the actual union workers. As a result, “unfortunately, most of the proposals that the syndicate union come up with is in benefit of LUMA and not the workers,” said Memoli. Memoli gave the example of LUMA wanting to replace pensions with 401ks indicating that you only get what you invest instead of your company investing as you work towards retirement.

At a point, everyone on the service trip broke off into contingents.

Memoli and her group went to Campamento Erizo, a nature preserve, “essentially the issue that they’re facing over there is that there are many people who are obtaining illegal permits, and they are finding folks who are Puerto Rican who can skirt around local law enforcement.”

These permits allow Airbnbs to be built closer to the beach than what is legally allowed. The construction is dangerous when it comes time for hurricane season. The construction of the Airbnbs also affects ocean life because the drainage from construction goes into the water and kills the coral reef. The renters of the Airbnbs are directed into believing that the beach their house is built on is private, even though Puerto Rican law states that all beaches are public. Memoli experienced this firsthand. She said while she and her group were cleaning the beach, “one person came out [of their Airbnb] and was like ‘what are you doing this is my beach’ and we were just here cleaning up the beach.”

It’s also essential, Memoli said, “to visit non-tourist places and interact with locals to get the meaningful experience which also goes for any other country you visit.”

This trip was not only successful by the NYBR establishing themselves in Puerto Rico, according to Memoli, but it was also very sentimental for Memoli. Not only did she meet her family for the first time, but she “was able to actually take some of [her] grandmother’s ashes and bring them to the cemetery where [her] parents were buried.”

Devil’s Advocate ELEANOR BROWN AND WILLIAM LING-REGAN FEATURES AND OPINION EDITORS Dear Devil’s Advocate, While it may be a new semester, I still have lots of work I need to get done during the day. However, no matter what I do, I can just never seem to be productive at school, so I’m looking for a place to go on campus that will help me get stuff done. What are the best spots at Poly for studying (even though we know I’ll probably still end up getting distracted)?

Sincerely, Poly Procrastinator Dear Poly Procrastinator, Even in a school as big as Poly, it can be hard to find a place to get stuff done. The library, as we’re sure you haven’t noticed, has become the prime social spot on campus, and with the construction of the arts building, many of the best work locations around campus were closed. But, now that it’s completed and students once again have free rein over the entire Dyker campus, we’ve put together a list for you of Poly’s best spots to lock in, ordered from busiest to quietest.

Student Center Coming in first as our loudest location is the Student Center. Formerly the realm of juniors and seniors, this sunny spot has now been overtaken by underclassmen and is also home to the Blue Devil Deli. The Stu, as it’s often called, is a great place to grab a muffin and hang out (if you can get a seat), but the crush of people and clamor of conversation that usually fill it make it pretty difficult to get anything productive done there.

Trophy Room Far from just being the entrance to Commons and the Chapel, the Trophy Room has a rich history displayed on every wall and, depending on the time, can even be the ideal study spot. However, timing is key- if you’re there during the middle of a period, the space will be deserted, but during passing time or anywhere between 11:00 and 1:00, this is one of the busiest rooms on campus.

Art Tables Like the Student Center, the tables outside the art studios are now primarily the domain of underclassmen, and like the Trophy Room, their effectiveness as a study spot depends entirely on timing. At the beginning and end of the day, this area will be overwhelmed by people entering and exiting, hanging out with their friends, and scanning in (or forgetting to). However, if you catch it in the middle of the day, this is a great spot to finish that paragraph for History class, or even to eat lunch if you want an escape from Commons. The ceramics and artworks in the cases on the walls make this spot all the more interesting.

Quad The Quad is the heart of Poly and in nice weather, or even on a cold sunny day, it’s the best place to be. However, because it’s so central, people are always passing through, so the Quad might be better suited to talking with your friends and enjoying the fresh air than to serious studying. However, if you snag a table during a quieter hour, the Quad can be the ideal place to finish your English reading with the sun shining on you.

Novogratz In the lobby and on the second-floor landing of the Novogratz are tables, chairs, and comfortable couches. Grab a drink from the lobby’s vending machines, get hydrated, and then get to work in this space— the Novogratz can be a great place to lock in academically as well as athletically.

Arts Building The completion of Poly’s newest building not only provided us with a new band room, dance studio, and gallery space but also with a student space in the form of its open lobby. With big windows and student artwork on the walls, this is a great place to go but be warned that its benches might not make the best furniture for studying.

Admissions Lobby A favorite for some, the Admissions Lobby boasts arguably the most comfortable chairs on campus.

There are a limited number, so don’t expect a vibrant social scene, but if you’re looking for a quiet area to get comfortable, listen to music, and grind out a paper, we highly recommend this spot.

Terrace The tree-lined Malkin Terrace has lots of space for work or socializing and is the perfect springtime—or, if you can brave the cold, year-round—gathering spot. The benches are far apart enough that you can calmly crack open a book while your friends loudly play catch nearby and students rush past to their Science classes. Just watch out for the occasional falling seed pods.

Pool Deck It’s risky to put this spot in a publication as circulated as The Polygon, as it’s fairly under the radar, but the pool deck deserves notice. In addition to the bench in the corner that’s a great place to settle down for a quick math worksheet, this space also boasts the best acoustics on campus. Finally, with the watery shadows cast on the walls and a chlorinated scent, this space will give you the illusion of being far away from Dyker Heights, so you won’t even feel like you’re working.

Library Conference Room This spot requires booking in advance, and there’s frequently a class in here, but if you can reserve it, there’s no better spot for a group study session than the Conference Room. While you can see your friends milling around the Library through the windows, you’ll be far away from distractions up here as you spread your notes out on the big table and get to work.

Empty Classroom To make sure you definitely won’t be interrupted, walk through the halls while classes are in session and look for an empty classroom. As long as no one’s in there, you’re good to claim it for studying. An empty classroom is your best bet for when you require absolute silence, or when you need a room to yourself to record a biology Flipgrid or practice a language oral presentation.

Hill Benches Last but not least, our most remote spot: the benches atop the playground hill. There are benches scattered throughout the front of campus- by the tennis courts, around the pond, under the big tree- and all of them make great study spots, but nothing beats the absolute peace of the benches at the top of the hill. If you’re disturbed at all, it’ll only be by a squirrel or a wandering middle schooler, so pick a bench and cram for that Calc quiz or finish up your paper while enjoying the tranquility of nature.

While this guide doesn’t cover every inch of the school, it comes pretty close, so we hope it encourages you to take advantage of all that our campus has to offer and helps you achieve your productivity goals. Next time you have a free period, consult our guide, claim one of these spots, put on your headphones, and be prepared for your studying to go from hell to heaven.

Sincerely, The Devil’s Advocate

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024

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FEATURES

How the Polygon Is Returning to its Former Prestige DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL LAYOUT EDITOR

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t’s no secret that journalism is on the decline: The total estimated number of newspapers circulating has dropped by more than 35,000,000 since 2000, newsroom employment dropped 26 percent between 2008 and 2020, and more than 2,500 publications merged or shut down between 2004 and 2023. And yet, Poly Prep’s The Polygon trudges on. While professional journalism continues to suffer, student journalism at Poly thrives: Tucked away in Dyker Heights, in a building marked with years of history, The Polygon enters its 111th year with a staff that has been increasing in size since 2020, a brand new journalism department, and several new publications.

The First High School Newspaper in Brooklyn The Polygon, Poly Prep’s student newspaper, was founded in 1913 by former Poly English teacher Charles Stuart Mitchell. Mitchell, who had received numerous awards for his writing before he came to Poly, was committed to developing a stronger writing curriculum. He created The Polygon after a particular group of students responded enthusiastically to his rigorous teaching methods and wanted to continue working with him. The name was suggested by the first-ever columnist of the paper, Edward Hope Coffey, who thought the newspaper should cover the many sides of student life at Poly, just as a polygon has many sides.

The Polygon’s first issue was published in 1914 and cost each student five cents (The Polygon was not free for readers until the 1970s). This issue was cited in a Brooklyn Eagle article by Miles Kastendeick, who graduated from Poly in 1923 (and who would eventually leave the Eagle, return to Poly, and lead The Polygon from 1955 to 1982 in historic fashion) on March 31, 1939, as “the first attempt in Brooklyn to publish a newspaper in a secondary school.” For the first ten years, The Polygon struggled to manage its finances, but by 1928, it was making enough money to “make gifts to the school, furnish its own office with the most modern equipment, promote the Poly band, and inaugurate a drive for football bleachers and baseball stands,” according to the Eagle.

But as time passed, The Polygon became more than a trailblazer: It was a standout. The Eagle called The Polygon, which was a weekly paper at the time, “one of the best examples of high school journalism in the country.” Furthermore, between 1935 and 1952, The Polygon published the following headlines: “Polygon Editorial Wins First Place In [Columbia Scholastic Press Association], Contest 800 Papers Entered;” “Polygon Awarded First Class Rating Among School Papers;” “Polygon Takes Medalist Award In C.S.P Contest.”

Mitchell would go on to advise The Polygon until 1955, covering all the happenings across the Poly Prep campus.

The Polygon advisor position was taken over from Mitchell by Kastendieck, a former Poly student and member of The Polyglot, Poly’s yearbook, who returned to Poly to teach English. Kastendieck would continue The Polygon’s success and Mitchell’s legacy as a weekly paper for the next 27 years until 1982.

The “Legendary” Kastendieck During his tenure, Kastendieck elevated The Polygon to a new standard. Kastendieck ran the original Polygon’s office, which published print weekly. During his time, he continued to distinguish The Polygon as one of the school’s strongest programs. “If you talk[ed] to alum-

ni or teachers at the time, it was [regarded as] this legendary activity,” said Interim Head of School John Rankin, who advised The Polygon from 1986-1996. Kastendieck continued the success that Mitchell had found in his students’ writing. “He was on the board of the Columbia Scholastic Press, and they had won all of these awards all of the time,” Rankin said. Continuing his previous career, Kastendieck would spend his weekends writing music critiques for the Brooklyn Eagle while teaching at Poly.

Harold Bernieri ’85, who was at Poly for the Kastendieck era and returned to Poly as a history teacher, recalled the love students had for The Polygon. “When it came out, everybody wanted to know what was in the paper,” he said.

The Polygon, still a weekly paper at the time, required extreme dedication from all of its staff to get the issues out on time. “It was every bit as big of a commitment as a yearround sport is,” Bernieri said. For most staff members, The Polygon was the only extracurricular they were involved in.

According to Berneiri, there was even a dark room where The Polygon’s photographers could develop their photos.

Rankin remembers going down to the printer shop and hearing the tales of Kastendieck’s legacy from the shop owner, who had become familiar with Kastendieck from his weekly visits over his 27 years.

Additionally, Kastendieck’s impact on students, specifically those involved in The Polygon, was immense, even after he left Poly in 1982. Rankin remembered a former board member and Poly student, sharing a story about Kastendieck’s impact on him. “He was a student in the 1960s and he went into business consulting, but had a Ph.D. in History from Harvard, and he said this whole time through undergrad and graduate school, Miles was still the most memorable teacher he’d ever had,” Rankin said that among the alumni community, many people still talk about Kastendieck and his impact on the students and The Polygon.

Rankin, who has worked at Poly for almost 40 years, has yet to see Kastendieck’s greatness replicated. “To the people who were close to him on the paper, and those students of his, it was a pretty legendary life in this school.

I’ve never quite seen anything like it in my time. Maybe a couple of people that came close, but I’ve never seen anything leaving that kind of indelible impression on everyone.” His legacy can even be seen on Poly’s physical campus, in room 124, with a rusted copper plaquette that reads The Miles Merwin Kastendieck Room.

Changes In the Late 80s and 90s When Rankin took over The Polygon, he said he felt a need to rebuild and revitalize the work Kastendieck had done––but this proved to be more difficult than expected. “It was very much a learning curve. I had virtually no experience [with running a newspaper],” said Rankin. He struggled to keep up with Kastendieck’s demanding weekly schedule, and traditions like engraving planks for each year’s staff were lost in the transition period. “I think there was a big letdown from this giant production that Miles Kastendieck had run,” Rankin said. But after a few years of experience advising The Polygon, Rankin finally felt he was getting into a groove.

As for the actual coverage, Rankin said that during his time, The Polygon did a good job at balancing straight news and editorials. The students’ work covered rele-

vant and hard-hitting critical stories about the school.

Rankin remembers the school, particularly Headmaster Bill Williams, being especially sensitive to the stories The Polygon would publish. Rankin recalled a certain issue of The Polygon being pulled by the administration in which a student criticized the racism he had felt around the school. Ultimately, Rankin had to leave The Polygon in 1996 after becoming both Head of the English department and the Upper School Director of Studies.

After Rankin, John Rearick, a current English teach-

If you talk[ed] to alumni or teachers at the time, [The Polygon] was [regarded as] this legendary activity.

- John Rankin er, became faculty advisor. According to Rankin, people felt better with Rearick in charge, as he had a previous background in journalism. But by then, things had already begun changing. “Students were already doing so many different things. The editor could be editor of the newspaper and also in the school play and also playing two sports and taking lots of AP classes.” As the years passed, he found that “people’s time was really scarce, so getting people to sit down and do the stuff was difficult.”

However, not all was bad for The Polygon. David Gauvey Herbert ’03, a former Editor-In-Chief of The Polygon and current journalist, remembers The Polygon as an integral part of his experience at Poly. “For the core six or seven of us on the paper, this was the thing we did when we weren’t studying or practicing. It became this identity that I don’t think it is now, It wasn’t like we met for 40 minutes or after class. We really had a lot in common.” And still, Rearick recalls The Polygon as an important part of the community. “It was a tremendous honor to be on the newspaper,” he said. “Students were very serious about their writing.”

Caesar Fabella, a Poly history teacher, remembers the 2000’s Polygon as a major deal. “It was the heyday of The Polygon. It was a big deal.” Rearick added that during his tenure, The Polygon won awards in about 75% of the competitions they entered. Fabella added that Poly students were invested in the newspaper. “It [sold] like hotcakes. And it was a sought-after group.”

The Tower Times Fabella was an integral part of The Tower Times, Poly’s middle school newspaper, from 1995 to 2010.

Feeling the quality of The Polygon at the time, Gail Karph, a former middle school teacher, decided that the middle school needed a voice, according to Fabella. She collected a team of well-read middle schoolers to introduce to the world of journalism, aiming to spark new passions while providing coverage to the middle school. And it worked: Many students, including Herbert, joined The Polygon after writing for The Tower Times. Fabella joined The Tower Times just a few years after its founding. “We were toe-totoe with The Polygon,” said Fabella. At this point, Poly was taking strides towards a very solid journalism curriculum.

However, as the years went by, students became increasingly hard to retain. As Rearick had noted, students were taking on more extracurric-(continued on page 11)

STEM in the World: How Does Cabin Pressurization Work?

TJ IANNELLI MANAGING EDITOR

C

abin pressurization is quite a simple but often overlooked system within airliners that is used on the tens of thousands of commercial flights every single day. The only time cabin pressurization is really noticed is when these systems fail. Most recently, this failure was on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 on January 5th, 2024. But how does cabin pressurization work, and how did it fail on Flight 1282?

With Boeing first implementing a cabin pressurization system on their commercial airliner Model 307 Stratoliner back in the 1930s, such a system is far from novel. The need for a pressurized cabin arose from airliners wanting to fly at a higher altitude to fly faster and above any dangerous weather. This, in turn, means that the people within the cabin need oxygen to breathe at these higher altitudes. Even at 20,000 feet, the cruising altitude of the Model 307 from the 1930s, people would struggle to breathe in the cabin comfortably. Today, airliners fly as high as 40,000 feet, where the atmospheric PSI is only 2.72, miniscule compared to the standard 14.7 PSI at sea level and impossible for passengers to breathe at.

The pressurization system works by using excess air from the airplane’s engine compressors and pumping it into the airtight cabin through a device called the air cabin pressure controller. This process occurs gradually to

ensure the passengers barely notice the pressurization.

In order to maintain this higher internal pressure within the cabin, the aircraft’s fuselage must be made of strong, light, and airtight materials like aluminum and carbon fiber. The opposite of these materials would be something like a balloon, which expands quite easily when more air

VIA CREATIVE COMMONS

is pumped inside to balance the pressure difference between the inside of the balloon and the atmosphere. This concept of excess and outward pressure trying to expand an object is identical to airliners, but the aircraft holds its pressure and shape due to the more rigid materials used.

Even with more robust materials, commercials typically

simulate an air pressure equivalent to that of around 8,000 feet to prevent putting too much stress on the fuselage.

This pressurization system fails when either the compressor fails, or the fuselage fails. The latter was the case of Flight 1282, when a panel called a “door plug” was blown off the aircraft at 16,000 feet. These door plugs are panels that are inserted into what would be a required emergency exit if the airliner configured their aircraft to have more seats. While investigators are still unsure of the actual cause of this door failure, the most prominent belief is that the bolts securing the door in place were never in place when the plane left Boeing’s factory. The lack of securing bolts compromised a key part of a cabin’s pressurization system, a completely sealed cabin, and resulted in the pressure differences blowing the door off the plane.

According to NBC News, Boeing President and CEO Dave Calhoun said, “Whatever final conclusions are reached, Boeing is accountable for what happened… An event like this must not happen on an airplane that leaves our factory.”

Nonetheless, today, without cabin pressurization, the airline industry would be drastically different and most notably less comfortable. The main takeaways from such failures are not fears but rather more attention and safer construction to prevent these incidents in the future.

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The Great Departure: Examining the Complex Landscape of the Teaching Profession ELEANOR BROWN FEATURES EDITOR

T

he sun rose over Millennium Brooklyn High School on a gloomy day in 2016. Sophie Mode, a freshman at the time, trekked to third period, Quantitative Research.

As she took her seat, Ms. Nubelo passed out the class’ next assignment: uncover the cause of death of Ray Johnson, a businessman who had mysteriously passed away. Over the next week, Mode spent hours scanning the internet, requesting specific autopsy reports, compiling sets of data, and assessing the falsifiability of different sources.

“A teacher can’t be a teacher, a social worker, and a substitute parent.

We’re asking too much of teachers.”

-Liz Pitofsky “At the end of the week, I realized this wasn’t just a random thing because maybe I’ll become a scientist one day,” Mode, now a junior at Vassar College, said. “This was a thing to be a functioning adult in society that most adults don’t have, and I just learned it. That’s when I knew I wanted to be a teacher.”

In the past decade, this declaration has become increasingly rare for students of Mode’s age. In fact, a 2019 survey conducted by the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) states that less than 10 percent of Americans are pursuing teaching jobs, as opposed to the 22 percent pursuing them in 1975. And that trend carries into the teaching profession as well. More than 61 percent of school administrators report having difficulty hiring personnel, and job openings within schools have risen 66 percent since 2020, according to McKinsey & Company. Support staff and teachers in training are beginning to cover teaching jobs. So, why are so many teachers leaving their jobs, and why are so few students pursuing the profession?

Compensation An obvious issue: compensation. Riley Jones, a high

school senior looking to pursue a career as an elementary school teacher, recently visited P.S. 063 Old South in Ozone Park, Queens, to help a fifth-grade teacher prepare her for the following school year classroom at the end of the summer. “The school was in a run down area a few blocks away from a homeless shelter,” Jones reported.

“They had so few resources that they basically had to beg for materials.” Only 50 percent of districts reimburse teachers for classroom supplies, according to McKinsey & Company, so many teachers have to provide for themselves and their families as well as their dozens of students.

The National Education Association estimates that teachers in America get paid an average of $68,000 annually. According to Poly Prep’s administration and job postings, the average salary at Poly is $75,000 annually, about 10 percent higher than the national average. However, the average New Yorker must take home at least $100,000 annually to live comfortably in the city, according to a 2023 New York Times article.

Because many teachers feel they are not compensated fairly, they continue to leave their jobs.

Between 2021 and 2022, teacher attrition rates rose by 17 percent, and the trend continues.

“I think the low salary is a huge problem,” Mode said. “I have memories of my elementary school teachers being bartenders after work because their teaching job couldn’t pay their bills. There’s also such a lack of support in the classroom with underfunded programs.” The teacher Mode spoke of is David Jansen, a third-grade teacher at PS8 The Emily Warren Roebling School in Brooklyn Heights. Jansen shared that he has had to work nights as a bartender and waiter across the city in Rockaway for the past twenty years to make a living wage.

This lack of support teachers feel is not limited to compensation. Students are also driving teachers out of their jobs. “I think we don’t talk enough about how emotionally taxing it must be to be a teacher,” Mode

said. “If you’re an elementary school teacher, you’re responsible for the education of maybe thirty kids who are bringing their problems from home into the classroom. You have to adjust to each of their teaching styles, you have to make sure they’re eating enough and are healthy, happy, and safe while also meeting guidelines.”

Former Poly history teacher Cody Pietro, who left their job in 2020, touched on the burnout teachers experience daily. “The emotional drain didn’t leave room for any other hobbies I wanted to do or time for my friends. It was all kind of gone by the end of the day.” McKinsey & Company shared that 75 percent of teachers feel they give more than they receive in the workplace. They put in long hours and spend much of their free time planning lessons and grading papers.

Liz Pitofsky, founder of the Service Learning Project (SLP), a non-profit organization that works with hundreds of schools across the country to create service projects, has observed plenty of student-teacher relationships in different schools, seeing the different roles they take on in the classroom.“A teacher can’t be everything,” Pitofsky said. “A teacher can’t be a teacher, a social worker, and a substitute parent. We’re asking too much of teachers.”

Additionally, since the pandemic, there has been a decline in student attentiveness, making it more difficult for teachers to keep the classroom environment engaging. The New York Times reports that students lost about one-third of a school year’s worth of knowledge during the pandemic. “There was so much missed development during those years, and now there’s pressure to move on as if it didn’t even happen,” Pitofsky said. “I feel like teachers probably still want to be teachers, but it’s become so challenging to support students under these circumstances.”

Public vs. Private In public schools, teachers report compensation as their reason for staying in the profession more than in private schools. However, McKinsey & Company reports that teachers in private schools report their(continued on page 9)

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The Great Departure: Examining the Complex Landscape of the Teaching Profession (continued from page 8)

colleagues, leadership, and career development as reasons to stay more than in public schools. Public schools may pay teachers more, but private schools provide more resources and opportunities, making it a difficult choice for teachers.

“Private schools can hire more teachers or guidance counselors when needed, whereas public schools have such limited budgets that to bring in another person on the staff is almost impossible,” Pitofsky said. “Even if you know your students need more support, it’s not a possibility.”

Then comes the issue of teaching to the test. In 2002, President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law out of concern that the American education system was not competitive with those of other nations. It required states to test students in reading and math from elementary through high school. This act led to the concept of the colloquial term “teaching to the test,” as curricula began to gear towards preparing students for standardized tests rather than focusing on critical thinking and analysis in the classroom. In The Shame of the Nation, writer Jonathan Kozol argues that teaching to the test can drain students’ and teachers’ passion and sense of meaning because the curriculum becomes so bare-boned.

These standardized tests are often used in high school and college student applications. A recent National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) survey demonstrates the pressure these tests then exert over students, reporting that 75 percent of students fear that one small error in an application, such as a standardized test, could lessen their admission chances.

“I think in so many ways this work is thankless,” Poly Prep History Teacher Beth Eby said. “Kids view this as a thing they need to do, and they don’t see the value in what they’re getting to experience. When you do that work day in and day out and aren’t appreciated or compensated appropriately, that’s a recipe for becoming disillusioned.” Eby, who previously taught at the University of Texas at Austin, described the stark difference in her interactions with students on the college level versus the high school level. In a collegiate environment, her interactions with students were often an extension of the course material—continuing a discussion from class, discussing current events, or asking questions about assignments.

At the secondary school level, Eby finds that most interactions outside of class revolve around the students’ grades rather than their interest in the course material.

“I think if there was less of the garbage attached to teaching I would’ve been interested in remaining,” Pietro said, referring to all these issues. “But there is all of that garbage attached to it, and it’s not a particularly upwardly mobile profession. You’re kind of stuck. If you want to continue teaching, you’re just gonna be at the same level your whole career. The only way up is out.”

In fact, teachers often use the profession as a stepping stone for other opportunities, such as school leadership, curriculum design, or something else entirely. “I feel like you don’t see people who want to be a career teacher anymore,” Eby said. “I think that it’s partly because society continues to value our teachers less and less, so people leave for better opportunities outside of teaching.” In addition, many teachers use teaching to qualify for the United States Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. Their federal student loans are forgiven if they make 120 qualifying monthly payments while working in a non-profit or government agency. “I also know a lot of people teach until they’ve met those requirements and then they look elsewhere.”

Even Mode, who knew she wanted to be a teacher since that one Quantitative Research class, anticipates seeking a higher position. “In my dream world, I would run my own school,” Mode said. “So I’m planning to try to be a principal. You can technically be a principal without being a teacher, but it’s really not recommended.”

For Poly in particular, the administration states that approximately 10 percent of teachers left after the 202223 school year, based on numbers provided by Assistant Head of School Rebekah Sollitto. However, they are combatting this uptick in departures in several ways. New Dean of Faculty Andrea Del Valle mentors newly hired teachers. “Over the course of two-hour monthly lunch meetings, we want new teachers to connect with each other and prepare for things that come up during the school year,” Del Valle shared. She works with teachers to plan for assessments, form relationships, and prepare for events like family-teacher conferences and curriculum night.

Poly also hosts approximately five in-house professional development days each school year, where teachers discuss readings about specific topics in small

“I think in so many ways this work is thankless. Kids view this as a thing they need to do, and they don’t see the value in what they’re getting to experience. When you do that work day in and day out and aren’t appreciated or compensated appropriately, that’s a recipe for becoming disillusioned.”

- Beth Eby groups. “There are a lot of ways that Poly wants to make sure teachers are getting professional development,” Del Valle said. “That way they’re not just moving along in the same role for years without considering what has changed in the field or what are the best practices right now in teaching about current and historical events.”

This year, Poly has also revamped the faculty and staff council. The council has two faculty representatives from the Lower School, two from the Middle School, and three from the Upper School, as well as staff representatives.

Faculty and staff can go directly to these representatives with any questions or concerns. The council then reports them directly to the Head of School and also has an observational seat on the board of trustees. “This way there’s

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some understanding of communication about what’s actually happening with faculty,” Del Valle said. “It’s communicated up to the top and then back from the top down.”

Even if teacher attrition remains an issue, the Poly administration continues to hire the highest quality teachers.

They offer an application process by which, if a teacher is working on a degree, they can apply for funds to supplement their degree. “We invest so much time and effort and thought into the hiring process,” Assistant Head of School Michal Hershkovitz said. “Needless to say, we want to hire people who are going to want to be with us for the long term. And we want to hire people who will thrive here. Thriving teachers empower thriving students.

You can’t have one without the other.” However, sometimes departure is out of the school’s control. “There’s always going to be an ebb and flow of people leaving,” said Head of Upper School Sarah Bates. “A lot of people leave because they have professional growth opportunities, and I think that speaks to the strength of the people here.”

A Broader Scale On a broader scale, different schools nationwide are battling teacher attrition differently. In Missouri, 25 percent of districts have transitioned to four-day school weeks with longer hours. This transition has also become common in New Mexico, Colorado, Oregon, Idaho, South Dakota, and Texas. In other places, faculty find it helpful to receive as much transparency as possible regarding compensation.

A 2021 NAIS survey revealed that 80 percent of teachers said their schools should give more pay transparency so that teachers are able to understand how their salary compares to similar positions at their schools and other schools.

Even more broadly, the role of teachers across different countries varies immensely. “I read this amazing book several years ago called The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way,” said Sollitto. “It was about three different countries—Poland, South Korea, and the United States. And it was a comparison about the way those countries treat teachers and education and fund education.

Thinking about the way teachers in the U.S. are compen-

sated and treated compared to other countries, it’s staggering.” In countries like Taiwan and China, the respect for the teaching profession is on par with that of careers like doctors and social workers. In countries like Switzerland and Germany, average annual teacher salaries exceed $100,000. There has even proven to be a positive correlation between respect for teachers and student achievement.

Victoria Misrock-Stein, a current second-grade teacher at The Berkeley Carroll School, a private school in Brooklyn, has had her fair share of teaching positions worldwide.

In her twenties, she moved to France to teach Kindergarten at Rencontres et Echanges Bilingual School. She and the other teachers often take the train four hours to Switzerland for ski trips with their three-year-old students.

“France was so much more hands-off,” Misrock-Stein said.

“I can’t imagine an American family sending their threeyear-old on a school trip to another country to go skiing.”

Before Misrock-Stein settled down in Brooklyn with her now-17-year-old son Levi, she taught at an American school in Japan for children of ex-patriots. “In Japan, they were really clear about who they could accept,” she explained. “A lot of times we admit students who we don’t have the resources to serve. A child with dyslexia needs really hands-on instruction regularly, and a lot of schools can’t provide that. Instead of taking the family’s money and having both the teacher and child struggle, if a school couldn’t accommodate a student with learning differences, they were really upfront and they didn’t accept them.”

So, considering the many issues that come with teaching, why does anyone still want to be a teacher? During her Junior year of college, Emma Chun from Washington D.C. studied abroad in Rennes, France. “Within the first week of being in France, I experienced blatant instances of racism,” Chun said. She began to think back to a favorite teacher’s words during her school’s Asian Student Alliance Assembly the semester prior. “My math teacher offered her experience as an Asian American teacher who struggled to choose between teaching her two beloved subjects: French and Math. As I remembered her own negative experiences in Europe, and the stereotypes she felt forced to conform to as an Asian American teacher, I finally felt unalone.

Although my math teacher was 3,000 miles away her words stuck with me, providing the support and allyship I needed in order to conquer the rest of my time abroad.”

High School English Teacher Kori Lynn Rimay thinks back on her secondary school years, thinking more about the relationships she formed rather than the content she learned. “What I remember are the people—people like the fifth grade teacher who helped me during what I now realize was my first panic attack, the 10th grade English teacher who inspired me to pursue the subject in college, and the calculus teacher who encouraged me to become a teacher myself,” Lynn Rimay said. “Teachers have an enormous impact on the lives of students. We know this from our own experiences as students, whether those

“What I remember are the people— people like the fifth grade teacher who helped me during what I now realize was my first panic attack, the 10th grade English teacher who inspired me to pursue the subject in college, and the calculus teacher who encouraged me to become a teacher myself.”

-Lynn Rimay experiences were positive, negative, or something in between. When a teacher leaves, the community, and in particular, our students, are impacted in significant ways.”

After her lightbulb moment in ninth grade, Mode bounced between professions, considering urban planning and even political science. “I still think that the school is the place where you can make the most change,” Mode said. “I think about my own experience a lot and where it was good and where it was flawed, and I see what impacts my school had on me, whether they were good or bad. It just feels too important to not do. There are all these little moments that have such an impact on how students view the world, and they don’t even realize that it’s happening.”

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“Mom, There’s a British Prime Minister in the Library!”

MICHAEL GABRIEL CHIEF OF CARTOONS AND PUZZLES

VIA EMMANUEL KAMBOURIS

E

very day, as students file in and out of Poly Prep’s Joseph Dana Allen Library, they pass various art pieces of Poly’s past.

Of these pieces, one stands (literally) out above the rest: a statue of former Prime Minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill.

This bronze statue of old Churchill sits on an embedded shelf to the right of the library’s exit. He stands with his hands on his hips, staring intently out towards the rest of the library with the bulldog expression that he was known for as he led the British people and their allies through World War II. The top of his head, gold from years of students patting him there for good luck, shines under the light while the rest of his body is shrouded in darkness.

As stated on the plaque at the foot of Churchill, the statue was sculpted by Oscar Nemon. Nemon was a Croatian sculptor and close friend of Churchill’s, and according to an article published by the International Churchill Society, Nemon described their collaboration as “the unique opportunity I have had of studying the very complex character of one of the most remarkable personalities of all time.”

Over the remainder of his life, Nemon would create over fifty unique statues and busts of Churchill. At one point, Churchill himself even tried his hand at sculpting and created a bust of Nemon, which Nemon quickly cast in bronze.

That is how impressed Nemon was over Churchill’s skill.

According to Nemon’s posthumously created website, his “bronzes of Sir Winston Churchill are now to be found all over the world.” They stand in London, Brussels, Moscow, Paris, Toronto, Kansas City, Mexico City, and apparently here in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn as well. Well not exactly.

Poly’s Churchill statue is not one of those fifty-plus original pieces. Instead, “It is a special replica of the original work that is displayed outside the House of Parliament in London,” wrote the Polygon in an article from October 10, 1986. The original statue is much larger and was unveiled in 1970 in the House of Commons of the Palace of Westminster in London,

England. Like the top of Poly’s Churchill’s head, the original statue’s foot is gold from years of being touched for good luck by people roaming the halls of the House of Commons.

So how did a replica of a statue that stands in the British House of Commons end up in the library down the hall from our Commons Hall?

The statue was donated to Poly by alum Richard M. Edelman ‘48, a member of the International Churchill Society. According to the 1987 Polyglot, Edelman “donated the statue because of his deep admiration of Sir Winston Churchill.” Edelman was an eight-year man at Poly, entering the school as a 5th grader in 1940 and graduating as a Senior in 1948. He would witness all the years of American involvement in World War II from Poly.

“Dashing Dick [Edelman’s nickname] never surrenders his suave, self-assurance, regardless of overwhelming tasks. He finds time and energy to excel in studies and athletics and to deliver many eloquent orations in Chapel.” read the description under Edelman’s senior portrait in the 1948 Polyglot, which he was the Editor-in-chief of. Almost forty years later, Edelman would return to his alma mater to gift the statue of Churchill at the Winston Churchill Assembly in the Legacy Gym, but he was not alone.

“It was just another ordinary Autumn morning, that of October 8, 1986, but as Lady Mary Soames walked through the gym doors, students rose to their feet, entranced by her grace and beauty.” wrote the 1987 Polyglot. Lady Soames was the youngest daughter of Churchill, and she was to personally present the statue of her late father to the school on behalf of Edelman.

She gave a speech to the crowd, filled with students, teachers, alumni, members of the press, and other guests, where she spoke to the characteristics of her father, such as “courage” and “strength” that she believed “made him a wonderful person.” According to a Polygon article published the Friday after her visit, in a smaller discussion with select members of the crowd, “she spoke of Churchill’s resilience which she ascribed to his American heritage.”

Though Churchill himself and his father were both born in Great Britain, his mother, Jennie Jerome, was a Brooklyn native.

She was born in Brooklyn Heights, and as the article points out, after the Churchill Assembly’s conclusion, Lady Soames was to visit the birthplace of her grandmother at 197 Amity Street.

There is another address, 426 Henry Street, which was also considered to be the birthplace of Jerome. Churchill visited this address when he toured New York in 1953, but according to a New York Times article published in 2011, “Recent historians, however, give the honors to 197 Amity Street, as do the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission and the A.I.A. Guide to New York City.” Either way, Churchill is a Brooklynite by blood.

In the years following the presentation of the statue, the library would begin to acquire and curate books for the Churchill Collection. Edelman had made a donation to the school that provided a yearly budget for the purchase of literary works for the Churchill Collection. As former librarian Mary Cole, who worked at Poly from 1988 to 2004, recalled, “The generous benefactor [would] give me around $200 a year to get the collection”.

On multiple occasions throughout her time at Poly, Cole would make the trek up to Midtown Manhattan’s Chart-

well Booksellers, which is, according to their website, “the only standing bookshop in the world dedicated to the writings of Sir Winston Churchill.” She would use the funds provided by Edelman to purchase books for the collection.

“It was an absolutely beautiful bookstore. It was in an English tradition… The bookstore clerks were very knowledgeable, and they would suggest certain books at the time.” said Cole.

The website continues stating, “Chartwell offers the finest selection anywhere of rare Churchill first editions, books about Winston Churchill, newly-published works, and autographed Churchilliana, including signed books, letters, documents and all manner of paper ephemera.” The collection at Poly reflects Chartwells’ selection. All the books purchased from this store using the funds provided by Edelman have a sticker on the inside cover that reads, “The Winston S. Churchill Collection / presented to / The Polytechnic Preparatory Country Day School / Gift of / Richard M. Edelman, ‘48.”

Today, a majority of the Churchill Collection is located in the back room of the reference room on the shelves on the op-

Former Headmaster William M. Williams, the Churchill statue, and Lady Mary Soames at the Winston Churchill Assembly in 1986. VIA POLY PREP ARCHIVES

posite side of the wall where the portrait of Headmaster Allen hangs. The collection is made up of 157 books, 41 of which are written or co-authored by Churchill himself. “We have so many Churchill books that we may never need to get anymore!” said Lisa Puleo, the Coordinator of Library Services.

Amongst the collection, there are also four books written by Lady Soames. In one book, Winston Churchill, His Life as a Painter, by Lady Soames, Soames even left a message. On the title page, she wrote, “Inscribed for the Library of Poly-Prep by the author Mary Soames 1992.” This book is one of the many literary treasures in the collection.

In the 2022-2023 school year, library assistant Ilona Chudner went through and curated the collection. She found that there were multiple books in the collection that were first-edition productions and or in very good shape for their age, and thus were extremely valuable. These books are locked in the glass cabinets in the writing center and can be accessed by asking a librarian. As for the rest of the collection, any interested students can simply choose from the wide variety of Churchill books on the shelf in the back reference room and enjoy.

The statue of Winston Churchill and the greater Churchill Collection are just two of the many treasures that the Joseph Dana Allen Library has in its collection. It’s up to you to discover the rest.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024

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Polygon History (Continued from page 7) ulars. Karph told The Polygon in April 2022 that “there came a time when there were so many after-school activities that students had to make some difficult decisions.

There were play rehearsals, sports events, etc, and the newspaper began to lose some of its members.” Additionally, money proved to be an issue for the advisors: “Ms. Karph and I, we didn’t get any stipends or money or salary. So when we heard that The Polygon advisors were getting stipends, we were like ‘What about us?’” said Fabella. Around 2010, The Tower Times shut down for good, leaving the middle schoolers without a voice once again.

The rise and fall of The Tower Times can be seen as an example for the trajectory of The Polygon.

The Downfall There are several potential factors that led to the downfall of The Polygon.

Varying amounts of attention from the administration: Rankin explained that during Bill William’s tenure, The Polygon was a hot topic amongst administration: “[The administration] thought about The Polygon a lot.

We went through a period where they weren’t paying very much attention to it. So I think the period of decline might be somewhat associated with the idea that The Polygon has varying degrees of influence on the larger community—some years it feels like it has a lot and other years not so much.” Additionally, Rankin reasoned that when less thought was put into it, less money was put into it.

Declining interest in journalism: Since 1991, weekday newspapers have been gradually decreasing in circulation, and Sunday newspapers since 1994. This suggests that interest in journalism has been decreasing since the 90s, which may have also extended to students. Andrew Giurleo, CoEditor-in-Chief of The Polygon in 2015, noticed this trend by his time. “We sometimes had a hard time finding people to write articles. Especially finding people who would pitch their own articles,” Giurleo said. “It seemed like it either wasn’t a big interest or priority.” Isabel Tessier, Co-Editorin-Chief along with Giurleo, acknowledged that even she was not fully interested in print journalism. “Even myself, I was not frequently picking up The Polygon and reading it all the way through.” Tessier added that the fact that The Polygon was a physical newspaper additionally hurt student interest, as print journalism, in particular, was suffering.

Increased rigor of college admissions: More value was placed on taking on a rigorous course load and robust extracurricular activity list than focusing on school involvement. For students at a college preparatory school like Poly, putting 100% of their time and effort into The Polygon as they did in the 1980s was nearly impossible if they wanted to get into a top school.

Lack of a consistent faculty advisor: For the first 83 years of The Polygon’s existence, there were only four different advisors. Between 2007 and 2015, The Polygon had five different advisors. The advisors, who were repeatedly starting from scratch on The Polygon and had to endure the learning curve Rankin talked about, likely had an impact on The Polygon’s success. Giurleo and Tessier noted that when the advisors switch so often, you lose institutional memory repeatedly.

Lack of attention from faculty advisors: Barring a few select advisors, like Kastendieck, faculty advisors often struggled with putting their full energy into the newspaper while teaching other classes and not receiving much pay for their work on The Polygon. After all, many advisors carried four or five classes on top of The Polygon. Rankin commented that his involvement wavered once the school promoted him to a higher position. Giurleo and Tessier remembered only having one meeting with their faculty advisor, Ben Kettering, for the first half of their terms as Editors-in-Chief, leaving them to run The Polygon almost entirely on their own (his involvement was so minute they were hard-pressed to remember his name). Furthermore, Kettering, who advised The Polygon only from 2014 to 2015, was also a brand new history teacher and coach, making his ability to connect with The Polygon extremely limited. “He had literally just come to Poly and had quite a few roles already. It didn’t seem to me like he had volunteered for this faculty advisor position at all,” Tessier said.

Whatever the reason, when Dillon took over as the faculty advisor of The Polygon in the middle of the 2014-2015 school year, it was a shell of what it used to be, driven mainly

by Gieruleo and Tessier: “It was a small group of committed students, not a lot of us…It had fallen on hard times,” she said. Though Tessier and Giurleo did a lot to try to revive The Polygon (namely, returning it to a more regular production schedule), Dillon said they were still struggling to get issues out on time. Moreover, the pieces themselves had lost quality. “I feel like we were trying to report on a lot of opinion pieces, like what people were thinking,” Dillon said.

Additionally, without The Tower Times, middle schoolers could not participate in any journalism in Poly. Current Editor-in-Chief of The Polygon and aspiring journalist Jor-

dan Millar ’24 recalls her interest in journalism budding at the young age of nine, writing for Time for Kids Magazine, but being unable to pursue the same passion at Poly. “In middle school, there weren’t many opportunities for journalism at Poly. Middle schoolers weren’t really on The Polygon.

So I didn’t do much journalism inside of Poly,” Millar said.

Over her years as advisor, Dillon, along with Carmelo Larose, slowly built The Polygon back up. They made deadlines for articles, added a managing editor and layout editor, and created The Polygon’s website.

However, even Dillon faced a struggle she could never fully overcome—like Fabella faced with The Tower Times—finding the time that The Polygon needed.

The production schedule was upset once the pandemic began, despite a dedicated staff, and The Polygon’s print issue temporarily stopped.

The Hiring of Ms. Allen and Building it Back Up Coming out of COVID with a rise in fake news and misinformation, Assistant Head of School, Academics Michal Hershkovitz felt she needed to make a change: “[With] the age of social media, the age, unfortunately, of fake news, [the need for a strong journalism education became] more salient, more pronounced for us.” So she decided to create a brand new department—a journalism department consisting of one teacher in charge of both The Polygon and The Polyglot. This teacher would teach only two classes as opposed to the previous advisors teaching four or more, allowing them to give more attention to The Polygon and The Polyglot. So the search for someone to fill the role began.

In Spring of 2021, Rachael Allen, a young Bowdoin graduate at the time who had previously worked at The Atlantic and Slate Magazine, began looking for a teaching position. Allen had always contemplated being a teacher, and after looking at multiple job listings from other schools in the New York City area, one stuck out among the slew of standard English teacher positions: a journalism teaching position. “This one was perfect because few high schools have a straight journalism teacher,” she told The Polygon in 2021. Allen, whose expertise was in journalism, excitedly decided to apply.

When she officially came to Poly in September of 2021, her goal was simple: hold The Polygon to a new and higher standard. Executing this meant a few things to her: getting The Polygon back to a consistent production schedule, creating a larger staff, establishing a fact-checking process, and pushing the staff to do more hard-hitting and real journalism. Allen started by building out the staff—since she joined Poly, some of the positions added include a layout team, a copy editing team, DEIB editor, business columnist, art critic, breaking news editor, and even cartoonist—-to make The Polygon as student-run as possible. “The goal is that I just advise and ask questions versus making the paper actually happen,” she said. Allen also expanded a Middle School section of The Polygon (there are over ten middle schoolers involved in The Polygon currently, the highest of all time), giving the middle schoolers a real voice for the first time since The Tower Times shut down.

According to Millar, this year, Allen has been working with The Polygon to improve structural and organizational problems. One of these changes was introducing a beat system, where there are different sections of The Polygon that students are assigned to as opposed to each student just claiming the article they want. “It’s things like that that make the process easier,” Millar said.

Allen has also strengthened Poly journalism in her Journalism and Advanced Journalism classes. “I really started learning the technical skills of how to write a proper journalism article and more of the grammatical or stylistic things [in class]. I think Ms. Allen helped me through The Polygon, but also through class to learn how to properly conduct an interview and craft effective questions,” said Millar. In Allen’s class, Millar also enjoyed exploring different types of journalism, including broadcast and podcast. It was Allen’s classes that helped Millar feel prepared and excited to take on her position of Editor-in-Chief.

Allen has also added new journalism opportunities beyond The Polygon, such as The Morning Devil, Poly’s TV broadcast show; The Blue Devil Briefing, Poly’s Monday morning announcements; and The Poly Record, Poly’s literary art magazine.

Although The Polygon has not returned to the weekly schedule it was on in the early days, the publications are often as long as 16 pages, four times what they were when it was on a weekly schedule.

To overcome students’ busy schedules, Allen plans to use the journalism class time to incorporate more Polygon writing into her class so students have a proper place and time to write for the newspaper. This year,over 20 stories from the Advanced Journalism and Journalism class (including this piece) have been published.

Allen has also been working to restore her students’ faith and interest in journalism. “Students are very cyn-

ical of the media. I’m almost surprised at how cynical they are about journalism in general and I would love to show them some examples of solid journalism that still exist versus just writing off the entire industry,” she said.

This year, Allen said, has been The Polygon’s strongest year since she’s been at Poly. “There are at least a handful, six seniors maybe, who are true Polygon writers—who I can say ‘will you write a story?’ And I know the student will deliver and write a really strong story.”

Hershkovitz said she is beyond pleased with the impact Allen has had. “It began to improve with Dr. Dillon, and it’s really grown to new heights with Ms. Allen. No doubt, because this was Ms. Allen’s main job,” Hershkovitz said.

Dillon feels the hiring of Allen gave The Polygon necessary validity and strength. “When I was doing it, it was my extra thing. When we hired Ms. Allen, it gave it real integrity. It became not like a history teacher’s extra thing, it became part of someone’s job.” Dillon also believes that under Allen, The Polygon has been able to write stronger pieces. “I’ve been impressed with The Polygon under Ms. Allen. [She’s] really good at asking the hard questions.”

Even Rankin, who witnessed the tail end of Kastendieck’s greatness, said The Polygon now is “at least as strong as it’s ever been.”

Allen’s goal is to eventually get The Polygon on its own feet and offer her support from afar. “I want to be the person in students’corners when they have an idea for some kind of story or project that they want to do and be someone who can hold them accountable, but also give them advice along the way.”

But neither Allen nor Hershkovitz have any plans to stop here. They both aim to expand the journalism department, which currently just includes Allen, by adding new faculty who can offer different areas of expertise, like broadcast and podcast. Allen also hopes that by expanding, the journalism department will become an integral part of Poly as opposed to one that could just dissolve if she leaves.

The Evergreen Importance of Student Journalism Though Allen recognizes the ongoing downfall of professional journalism, she believes it does not affect the value of student journalism. “I think it builds up your ability to ask questions, be curious, and be productively cynical, is how I think about it. It builds up basic writing and research skills. You have to make things clear and concise to an average reader, and that’s going to help in whatever academic or professional work you do,” Allen said. “I also think confidence—having to go up and interview people and ask them hard questions is really hard.

And it’s even harder when you’re a student and there are weird power dynamics. So I think it’s great practice.”

Millar added that student journalism will always be important for the students themselves. “I think in a school environment, the people that can best understand the student body are typically the students themselves. They’re members of that community and they understand what voices need to be heard, what perspectives are missing from conversations.”

Hershkovitz too, who was herself the Editor-in-Chief of her high school newspaper, does not see the importance of student journalism wavering anytime soon.

“We really want to prepare you, even as everyone bemoans this dying career path. Journalism may take different forms, your voices may be heard in different formats and forums, but the art of storytelling, the art of seeking facts and evidence to tell stories that often go untold— that seems to me as eternal as any human endeavor.”

But perhaps of all the teachers, students, and faculty I spoke to, Mitchell put it best back in 1916: “In writing for The Polygon a boy has a very real interest in his subject; a very vital motive—the desire to see his work in print; and he faces the absolute necessity of gathering his own facts, of selecting from the facts gathered those worth using, of arranging the facts in a logical and coherent order, and of phrasing sentences which are entirely his own—in short, of performing 100% of the work of composition for himself.”

Faculty Advisors of the Polygon Over the Years Charles Stuart Mitchell 1913-1955 Miles Kastendieck 1955-1982 Lucy del Mastro 1982-1986 John Rankin 1986-1996 Hugo Mahabir 1993-1996 John Rearick 1996-2007 Michael Bass 2007-2013 Jennifer Ann Cohen 2013-2014 Ben Kettering 2014-2015 Carmelo Larose 2015-2019 Virginia Dillon 2015-2019 Elaine Levia 2020-2020 Linda Busetti 2020-2021 Rachael Allen 2021-Present

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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024

PEOPLE

Oryan Brown and the Importance of Finding Your People ELIANA FRIEDMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

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taring at the vibrant colors past the lengths of the window screen, Oryan Brown is lost in thought, reminiscing on the laughter and joy he once felt playing among his siblings, cousins and friends in Jamaica. With sun baking their shoulders and sweat running down their faces, Brown and his friends played among the leafy branches and sweet smelling flowers. Jamaica — Brown’s childhood home — held fond memories of freedom and community alongside the people he loved.

Now, sitting among stacks of students’ math projects and tests, Brown taps his black-booted foot and thinks about the past. When recalling the circumstances that led him to becoming a math teacher at Poly, Brown said, “I’ve stayed with math and continue to develop a love for it because, within all those changes at a young age, math was the thing that was consistent.” Consistency was harder to find among peers and other students at school.

Math filled the gaps in his community.

Although Brown left Jamaica and came to America for the purpose of gaining an opportunity for a fulfilled future, he still left behind his family and the only home he had ever known. Brown traveled to the United States with his father in the middle of his sixth-grade school year and, when attending his new school in New York, he felt as if he “was playing catch up because everybody else knew each other since elementary school,” he said. Brown’s middle school experience was described as the period of time with the greatest amount of isolation, specifically among social interactions.

Along with school experiences, Brown soon found that his home in Brooklyn was as different as it could possibly be, compared to his childhood home in Jamaica. The city streets were new and full of strangers, not the safest for a preteen to be out running around.

The unfamiliarity of Brown’s new home yielded a lot of alone time, as opposed to the carefree, playful life of the small town in Jamaica. “Once I came here, my Dad wasn’t necessarily the biggest fan of just letting me go out and wander the streets of Brooklyn as a child. There was a level of isolation here I had to get used to that I didn’t grow up in.” Adjusting to this new environment would be something that followed Brown all throughout high school, and even into college.

With less freedom to explore his surroundings, Brown devoted himself to life at school. He had always excelled in math, and his appreciation for the subject kept him joyful, carrying him through the more difficult parts of his transition into living in New York. Brown shared, “All throughout middle school and high school I would always stay after school and work with [my teachers] on little extracurricular stuff. Through working with those teachers, I think I was able to also learn more about the world I’d now stepped into … [they] could watch out for me.” Brown’s teachers would be his primary source of support until later

in high school, and now he hopes to do the same for his students. “A math teacher facilitating that [safe environment] has always been super important. That’s where I grew and expanded a lot. Every day when I’m here doing my thing, I’m always somehow trying to aspire to that,

Lawrence offered a wide range of opportunities that Brown hadn’t had access to while previously living in Brooklyn. “Spending a lot of formative years in New York and then going to Appleton, Wisconsin, was a trip. It was a wild time. But Lawrence Univer-

VIA ORYAN BROWN

which just starts with trying to build relationships with the kids in my classroom.”

Brown’s choice of college would ultimately reflect this desire to branch out and build community around him. In his senior year, Brown decided to attend Lawrence University, a small liberal arts college in Appleton, Wisconsin. According to World Population Review, Appleton has a population size of 73,532 people, as of 2024. The rural area would be very different from his Brooklyn home, but would ultimately hold Brown’s best memories. He said, “I think one of the best choices I made was going to a small liberal arts college.” College was another place where Brown had a close relationship with his teachers, especially because the math department was so small. Brown shared, “In the largest year that I was there — there would have been maybe 15 math majors, just across all four years.” Brown voiced the attitude of the department as, “We like math majors. We’re going to do everything we can to support you through this and make sure you get through this.”

He added, “By the time I graduated, it fully felt like the math department was like a little home for me on campus.”

sity as an institution came at the perfect time for me,” said Brown. His eyes glowed as he recalled the excitement of being introduced to so many new classes and clubs, finally entering a new world that wasn’t solely math related.

One of the most important experiences for Brown was joining the environmental club, SLUG (Sustainable Lawrence University Gardens). According to Lawrence University’s website, “SLUG grows fresh produce for the Lawrence community using sustainable agricultural methods in the garden, orchard, and apiary. Members of the SLUG house value local, sustainable organic food and cook meals together.” Brown expressed a love for this club all throughout college and said, “Through the garden I met some of the people who are the most important to me today. It was a space and a community where I felt safe to explore any and everything.”

Brown met most of his close friends through SLUG, including Maggie McGlenn, who would come to be his closest friend. McGlenn shared, “I don’t think we ever took the same class, but because there was this other common thing outside of what we were studying, we could

talk about what we were learning and explore different ideas with each other – it didn’t have to be that we were both math majors.” SLUG was the basis of McGlenn and Brown’s friendship, but it wouldn’t fully bloom until COVID reached their campus. Brown would soon be a part of a tight-knit circle with himself, McGlenn, and two shared friends, who created many traditions together. “When we came back [from the summer before senior year of college], I was very intentional about, okay, these are my people, and I’m going to make sure that they stay my people.”

Senior year held many traditions for Brown and his friends, with many of these rituals being shaped by COVID restrictions. Through the obstacles they encountered, they made the most out of the pandemic. Brown shared with me about a coffee shop he and his friends would go to every Monday after everyone received their mandatory COVID tests on campus.

“It started off, as we called it, Tests and Seth’s,” Brown said, pulling out his laptop with a sticker of the coffee shop placed right on the center. He added, “To make us feel a little bit better after the COVID tests, we would go to Seth’s Coffee… I think that was exactly what I needed to happen in those moments.”

Brown and his friends also built a tradition around the card game “Hearts.” “We would play the card game ‘Hearts’ every night for ten weeks straight. And by the end of it, we all [got] matching tattoos of a little card,” Brown explained, lifting his right pant leg, proudly exposing the image of a small card on his inner right ankle.

After Brown left college and spent a few years teaching at various schools, he soon found his place among the math department at Poly. “This department, specifically, feels like a community that I wanted to be a part of, and I am enjoying being a part of. Just the fact that we all share an office and we can talk to each other all the time – look at the wall over there,” he said, pointing to a bulletin board decorated with family photos and personal achievements from those in the math department. “We go out and invest in each other’s lives beyond just the day-to-day teaching here.” Brown’s colleagues feel the passion he brings to his subject and their shared space. Meg Foye, an Upper School math teacher who works alongside Brown, said, “He loves math and he loves what he does. And being around people who love what they do inspires you; it gets you excited.” Brown strives to have a positive impact on the people he works alongside and his students; supporting them through the subject he loves.

“I’m also thinking about the long term…How can I establish myself in the community and also gain the reputation of being a teacher that students know will care about them and can come to class with their full selves? My goal is that, eventually, over the years, that will become more and more clear.

But we’re just starting out right now.”

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024

PEOPLE

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Balancing Equations and Real Estate: Mrs. Vir’s Journey ALEX SMETANA CONTRIBUTING WRITER

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eeta Vir and her husband found themselves standing at the doorstep of a small, one-bedroom apartment in East Haven, Connecticut. Vir was overwhelmed by a surge of intense excitement and anxiety. This moment marked not only her initial physical encounter with the property but also her first faceto-face meeting with her realtor, due to post-COVID restrictions. Despite the virtual communication and countless online viewings, there she stood, immersed by the presence of the actual house, faceto-face with her realtor – despite staring at her completely masked appearance.

As her mind raced, Vir couldn’t help but think, “Oh my gosh, what am I doing trusting people I don’t really know?!”

The final walk-through began, and with cautious steps, Vir meticulously analyzed the stove, noting that the burners weren’t fully functional. It wasn’t a fear of losing all the money – her math background ensured everything was calculated with precision. Instead, it was the fear of the many little things that could go awry, a fear that kept her heart pounding.

However, in the end, “We felt almost giddy taking a picture of the small one-bedroom apartment. Our agent gave us a ‘homeowner’ sign to hold, and it was a very memorable photo in an empty, carpeted apartment,” said Vir. Since her senior year of college, Vir acknowledged that her passion for math might not secure the financial stability she sought; together with her husband, they realized the need for additional income to achieve their envisioned family lifestyle. So, Vir and her husband started a real estate business, acquiring and leasing properties. However, as Vir continues to progress into the realm of aquiring multi-family homes and even commercial properties, she finds herself at a loss of time. Between managing calls with tenants in need of new appliances while also grading geometry tests, Vir has been forced to adapt: something she has become accustomed to throughout her unconventional journey in the world of real estate.

Growing up on Long Island, New York, Vir developed a passion for math when she was five years old, thanks to her mother’s influence as a math teacher. According to

“Whatever your passions are, you have the time to try it, even if you think it’s too late… It’s really important that you give yourself a shot because no one else is going to unless you do first,” - Geeta Vir

the Poly Prep Employee Directory, Vir’s mother played a pivotal role in inspiring her love for the subject by making math come alive. The directory states, “Geeta didn’t realize she was doing math games while counting on the swings or eating breakfast.” From these early experiences, a lifelong fascination with math began.

“I always loved math. I always loved teaching other people something new whenever I could,” said Vir passionately. From a young age, Vir, the oldest among her siblings, began instruct-

ing her cousins in reading and math at just ten years old, laying the foundation for her future teaching career.

After graduating high school, Vir attended St. Joseph’s College in Long Island, New York. She met Dr. Maria DiCarlo, now Poly’s math department chair, as a professor. Additionally, she met one of her best friends, Dr. Stephen Bates, now a

legacy.” They finally settled on purchasing real estate. With Vir’s husband already having the educational background in real estate and all the certifications required, they were well-equipped for the road ahead.

Three years later, at the age of 27, she and her husband purchased their first home in New Haven, Connecticut. According to Realty Hop, a website

VIA GEETA VIR

colleague of hers as a math teacher at Poly.

Bates mentioned how Vir was able to successfully balance her academic pursuits, a social life, and the challenges of an extremely busy family life. Bates said, “I know it wasn’t always easy because everyone’s family is very demanding. I think that being able to keep your identity in your family, but also have an identity of your own…might have been a struggle. However, I think that she did a really good job at building herself as an individual.” The ability to manage various aspects of her life was a skill that would later be invaluable for Vir as she entered the realm of real estate.

After completing her undergraduate major in Secondary Education Mathematics and a minor in Speech Communication in 2015, Vir pursued a master’s degree in Mathematics Education. Immediately after college, Vir landed her first job as a math teacher.

When she was 24 years old, Vir met her husband. Early on, Vir and her husband had collectively decided that they wanted to find an avenue to earn passive income. Initially, they attempted to invest their money in the stock market and cryptocurrency but found it to be less passive than expected. They were constantly checking in on the value of each stock and coin purchased. Vir said, “we also realized that we weren’t going to gain enough value without taking significant risks, which we didn’t feel very comfortable with.”

After dabbling in those markets, Vir said, “We then decided that we wanted to build something that we could eventually pass along and leave as some sort of family

that tracks real estate records, Vir purchased another apartment in Connecticut just two weeks later, in August of 2021.

Vir and her husband initially purchased apartments, due their relatively lower prices compared to multi-family homes. This allowed for less risk and minimized constant phone calls, as Vir pointed out that Homeowners Association (HOA) fees shouldered much of the burden by taking care of maintenance. Vir strategically avoids purchasing property in New York due to the highly competitive and expensive market. “The rate of return I’ve found in other states is so much more worth it.

So I actually don’t at all invest in properties in New York. All my properties right now are in other states,” said Vir. However, Vir would gradually assume more significant responsibilities as increasingly complex issues arose. For one

“It boils down to this simple idea that it is so beneficial for students to be exposed to from a young age just so that they can start thinking that way and so that you don’t have as many what I call ‘financial fears’ as a lot of people in my generation do.”

- Geeta Vir

particular property, Vir and her husband were forced to take a tenant to court as the tenant had failed to pay her rent on time for six consecutive months. “Emotionally, I understood how she felt but, from a business perspective, it was important that I set a boundary for myself and said this is unacceptable,” said Vir. She also expressed that, in addition to a financial burden, this situation was extremely time-restricting, as she had another responsibility as an educator which she needed to focus on as well.

Vir and her husband would continue to purchase increasingly expensive properties in larger amounts. With more properties, came an increase of tenants and lawyers making frequent calls concerning rent, electrical issues, appliance issues, and more. Due to Vir’s full-time job as an educator, she’s unable to take calls throughout the day. Her time is consumed by teaching or grading assessments, as well as by preparing for her next lesson.

“If I’m teaching three classes in a row, that’s three plus hours that I haven’t been able to get back to somebody who’s literally waiting on me to make their next move.

So, sometimes it’s really tough to manage my time and communicate effectively with everyone on the real estate side,” said Vir. Now, Vir has found effective ways to manage her time between multiple commitments, helping her alleviate anxiety and create a balance between real estate and teaching. In doing so, she’s established boundaries for herself, helping her limit how much work she takes home.

This has enabled her to focus on real estate when she isn’t in a school setting.

A shift in her daily routine, for example, has helped her manage both worlds. This involves driving to school instead of taking the subway, affording her the flexibility to handle calls while she’s commuting. Additionally, Vir and her husband have hired an assistant to handle some of the “dayto-day” aspects that they simply don’t have the time to complete on their own.

Using her knowledge and experience in the real estate world, Vir has begun sharing her knowledge by teaching a middle school Financial Literacy class. In this class, Vir primarily focuses on topics such as credit cards and banking, with the goal of helping students understand how to manage their finances as they mature.

“I decided to do the middle school level because there are so many topics that feel inherently basic as an adult now, knowing what I know. But students in eighth grade have no concept of them because they haven’t really been exposed to them,” said Vir. Vir continued, saying, “It boils down to this simple idea that it is so beneficial for students to be exposed to from a young age, just so that they can start thinking that way and so that you don’t have as many what I call ‘financial fears,’ as a lot of people in my generation do.” She attributes these “financial fears” to her generation’s lack of exposure to financial education opportunities and emphasized the importance of early exposure to instill a proactive mindset.

Vir encourages anyone to follow their passions and see where it takes them, just as she did with math and later real estate.

“Whatever your passions are, you have the time to try it, even if you think it’s too late… It’s really important that you give yourself a shot because no one else is going to unless you do first,” Vir said.

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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024

A Year In Review, Through Music MEENA KODALI CONTRIBUTING WRITER

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i! My name is Meena Kodali, and I am a passionate lover of music. I listen to around 1,000 minutes of music a week and can often be found walking around the hallways with headphones in, ignoring everything else going on around me to focus on the music. That said, I will be sharing my top three albums of 2023. These albums are both old and new, all ones I have fallen in love with over this past year. Obviously, music is subjective, and what I love may not fit your preferences. Regardless, I encourage anyone to try new music and expand beyond the mainstream; you might discover something you really unexpectedly adore.

The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We”by Mitski This album is included first in this article and first in my heart. I can’t even begin to articulate how impressed I was with the album.

I was not always the biggest fan of Mitski, but after listening, my opinions were instantly changed. Leading off the album with my favorite song, Bug Like An Angel, sets the tone for this heartbreakingly beautiful project. It must be mentioned that the production quality of this album is truly outstanding and in combination with Mitski’s lyrical skill, a gorgeous collection of songs is formed. This album is Mitski’s seventh studio album, and she continues to take risks with her music. In this album, she features a full orchestra conducted by Drew Erikson, along with a choir and band that she arranged. It is clear that she is not trying to appeal to the common public and write something that will reach number one on music charts. Instead, she is writing music that is authentic to her identity as an artist. Mitski’s The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We integrates quality sound with stunning poetry that will forever hold a special place in my heart. Mitski’s album is rainy October weekends, walking around aimlessly, her newest, and in my opinion best, project blasting through my headphones. Every listen of this album, no matter how many times I’ve heard it, evokes strong emotion and a sense of comfort moving through my body. This album is not quite happy, not quite sad, but somewhere in between. Exploring themes of love, loss, and self-discovery, this album is truly fantastic.

Because the Internet by Childish Gambino Released in 2013, this project by Donald Glover is over ten years old, yet remains relevant. When I sat down to listen to this album earlier this year, I enjoyed it much more than I was expecting. What I love about Donald’s music is that he does not attach himself to a genre, and is a niche of his own. His sound in this album is not comparable to anything else. Every song has its own unique essence, yet they all manage to work together, forming a cohesion that is satisfying and avoids redundancy

throughout the album. This project takes risks. Some people may find it strange, the word-play throughout could be seen as crude, but that is totally ignorant of Donald’s identity as a creator. He is JANUARY/FEBRUARY not writing to please, but rather to provoke and tell a story, simiPLAYLIST lar to what popular artist Tyler The Creator does with his music.

History Department: Overall, this album is entertaining to listen to, with bold choices, like when he begins I. Flight Of The Navigator with a mono- Enséñame a Bailar – Bad Bunny (Mr. logue describing his dream, along with ingenious lyrical choicShea) es. I would definitely consider this my feel-good album of 2023.

Creep - Radiohead (Dr. Eby) Souvlaki by Slowdive Science Department: You might be familiar with this album, as one of its tracks As You May Be Right – Billy Joel (Mr. The Sun Hits had a flash of popularity on TikTok. Admittedly, this Moroney) song’s five seconds of fame on TikTok was how I came to know Jump Van Halen (Mr. Fallica) and love Slowdive. Upon listening to As The Sun Hits, I listened English Department: to its accompanying tracks on the album. I was truly blown away.

To begin, I love this band because of the female voice and influ- Simulation Swarm – Big Thief (Dr. Delaney) ence in their music. Bands that fall under the “indie rock” genre are dominantly male ensembles. Though seven out of their eight Little Songs - Colter Wall members are male, female vocals are ever present on many songs Language Department: in this album. This album flows together seamlessly. The mood and Agitations Tropicales – L’Impératrice tone of each song so stunningly leads into the next. Another thing (Mr. Black) I love about this band is the musicality in each and every song.

Nada Me Pertenece – La Doña (Ms. The talent of Slowdive’s guitarists and drummers is immense, Hepner) and showcased throughout the album. In some of their songs, the Arts Department: lyrics are faint and can be barely understood over the noises of various impressive guitar, drum, and bass solos. Everyone I’ve Bad Days Are Over – deM atlaS [Feat.

Atmosphere] (Mr. Herwitt) spoken about in this article are artists, but the members of Slowdive are true musicians, and that shines through in every song on Ripple – The Grateful Dead (Ms. Scherthis album. This album is something out of a dream; listening to er) it is something of a transcendent experience. Listening to it as I Math Department : do work, or sit on the train, I find myself lost in its instrumental Never Enough – Loren Allerd (Ms. lure. This album is short but sweet, and definitely worth a listen Liao) (or five) to anyone, especially those with a preference for musical22 – Taylor Swift (Ms. Laricchia) ity over lyrical strength. This album has an air of melancholy and Computer Science Department: nostalgia that seems to linger after every listen; and is definitely one of my favorite albums to cry to if that’s something you’re into. Octavarium - Dream Theater (Mr. Farrar) Overall, my opinions don’t really mean anything. Music, like all art, is deeply personal. You may listen to my recommenda- That Thing – Lauren Hill (Ms. Guynn) tions and have a completely different experience listening to them Compiled by Dov Weinstein Elul than I did. This doesn’t upset me at all, I’d love for you to disagree with me, confront me with a completely different take or perspective. Listen, or don’t. Love it, or hate it. Cry, or laugh.

Smile, or frown. Feel, relate, analyze. This is the beauty of music.

Dancers’ Perspectives on Their Performances of Afternoon of Student Choreography ELIANA FRIEDMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

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he Afternoon of Student Choreography (ASC) is an annually recurring Poly event, this year with 17 different performances. This dance production stands out from other performances throughout the year, with ASC being uniquely student-run. Some performers start preparing for show days as early as September, and work with great endeavor to create a successful production.

The forms in which a performance can be composed range from large groups and dance classes, to several duets and solos. “Skyfall” was the name of a duet dance piece performed by Isabelle Gerling ’25 and Jasper Whiteley ’25.

Sadie Schoenberger ’25 primarily participated as Assistant Film Documentarian in this year’s ASC production, but was also assistant choreographer of the duet production, “Skyfall.” (Schoenberger is also one of the Arts Editors for the Polygon.)

Schoenberger explained, “In November — every student in dance at Poly has an assignment to create a minute of choreography to any song they want; it is usually a vague assignment made to create a starting point and get dancers thinking. From that, you perform it for Mr. Turner, and Mr. Turner starts to get a sense of who is interested in choreographing.” As a result, one — or sometimes two — choreographers are picked to choreograph a class piece for each dance block.

In last year’s performance of ASC, Schoenberger herself was a choreographer for her class piece. “You would find me hunched over any surface drawing little stick figures and trying to figure out dancers’ placements,” she explained. “Every student who is choreographing gets really into it, and it becomes their passion project in a way.”

Sophia Chamorro ’24 worked alongside Nina Harris ’24 as Co-Artistic Director and valued her crucial role in ASC and this year’s successful performance. (Chamorro is also one of the Photography Editors for the Polygon.)

Chamorro’s appreciation for her position came from a desire to “get some more oversight of the dance world in general, because it’s not just choreographing and it’s not

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just dancing; it’s also production and how that actually comes together,” she explained. Chamorro also decided it would be beneficial to create a theme that each dancer could relate to. “I had the idea of creating a theme, just to make sure the dances could appear more cohesive,”

she described. “The idea of the theme was “inspiration.” Just drawing back to why do people even dance?

Because sometimes it can be perceived as just a dance on stage,but there is a reason why we all do it whether we realize it in the moment or not.” Once introduced to dancers, these inspirations stemmed from “Friendships… family… specific famous choreographers; whatever drew their passion for the piece that they performed.” The inspiration of each individual dancer was printed on the blurbs of the playbills distributed to audience members.

The student initiative this dance event brings introduces a sense of pride and achievement to the people involved. These expressions are reflected through an article published by the Poly Prep website, the article titled, “Dancers are Stars at the New Poly Arts Center Debut.” In the article it explained, “Audience members were delighted as students lit up the stage, from energetic group dances, to stirring solo and duet performances.”

The immense effort each dancer put into the performance is significant. Although this year consisted of a lot more attendees — especially due to the opening of the new arts building — Chamorro emphasized the importance of a large and supportive audience.

“When it comes to show day and there aren’t that many people there, then for a lot of dancers it’s like ‘Why do I even go out there and put so much energy into it if no one is really going to see it?’

I do wish that people would come to ASC more… it should warrant more engagement,” Chamorro said.

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Mathematics on the Mic: A Brooklyn Educator’s Lyrical Lesson LEVI JACOBSON CONTRIBUTING WRITER

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rantz Carty is an inspiring high school math teacher, a devotee of rhythm and rhyme who describes himself as an educator impacting lives through mathematics.

Within the walls of his Brooklyn high school, he teaches a seemingly traditional curriculum. However, Fridays are different. This is when he transforms from an everyday high school math teacher into an MC – employing lyrical rhymes to walk students through complex problems. Freestyle Friday has proven to be an effective way to engage his students after a long week of school, using something they’re interested in to make math fun. Unbeknownst to Carty, aside from his students, there was a whole other audience for his work. He discovered this wider audience when he started uploading content to TikTok. You can find Carty on TikTok under the username @NeverQuitmath, where his most popular video has amassed a total of 1.1 million views and 194,000 likes. The mission is evident in his username – his passion is to inspire kids who may seem uninterested in academics to keep going, and never quit math.

Carty’s interest in artistic expression began at a young age. Carty describes, “I grew up in what I consider the heyday of rap music...I loved it.” He shares, “I used to literally record mixtapes, like actual mixtapes with the tapes from the radio. You know, I would sit there and wait until my song comes on, then I’ll press record and stop it at the end. And then I would wait and then I would listen to that all the time.” This passion for HipHop extended to the poetry of lyrical Hip-Hop, with penmanship being an integral part of his life. “It has always been a part of me,” he explained. “I remember writing my first rhyme. I must have been in the third grade.”

As Carty grew up, he found himself gravitating towards math, appreciating its reliability. He explained, “When I did math, I knew that if I did this, this and that and I followed these rules, I [could] guarantee the results. Whereas I felt with English or humanities, to some extent, there was a level of taste that was involved.” He fondly recalled his middle school math teacher, Mr. Gutzmore, whose style of teaching profoundly influenced his own: “I appreciated the fact that he got so many of us to pass algebra Regents, including myself with a 96 or 98.” Reflecting on his experiences later as an educator, Carty realized that “with proper preparation many students are capable of doing more than traditionally expected.” As he advanced through high school and college, and the math became more complex, Carty discovered a novel method for memorization: “I started realizing that when I had to memorize a long equation, it would have been easier to take that equation and put it to the melody of a song that I already knew.” Initially, he kept this method to himself but upon enrolling in college,

he shared these innovative tricks. “When I first started in college and I started tutoring, I started using some of those skills for my students as well. I was like, ‘Okay, you like that song? Okay. What’s the melody? Okay, so if we have that, let’s use that melody to memorize these steps.’”

This method proved very successful for Carty’s tutees.

As his career as an educator progressed, he decided to elevate his method by recording the math-related rhymes he created. Carty’s curriculum included songs recorded to teach certain concepts. He recalled that the first math rap he recorded and published on YouTube in 2021 was a remix of “You Be Killin Em” by Fabolous. Although he didn’t see immediate success online he continued with this process.

Carty’s artistic expression doesn’t stop with math, he is very involved in the step world. He taught step at a charter school and is the President of H.A.V.I.C. SQUARED ENT LLC, a step-dancing company he created with longtime friend Anthony Kennedy. Although dancing in a percussive rhythm isn’t the same as curating math raps, Carty cites Kennedy’s advice as integral to his success.

Carty “grew up in an era where you didn’t put anything out until it was arguably perfect,” and this limited his output as he was striving for an impossible goal: perfection. It wasn’t until Kennedy encouraged him to break out of his comfort zone that their company started seeing real success, “[Anthony Kennedy] was always telling me we need to just put it out. Let’s put out a [step] freestyle... And lo and behold, he was right,” Carty explained.

Carty’s prolific work in the stepping world earned him an audition for the off-Broadway show and its subsequent tour, STOMP. As described on stomponline.com, the show is an “inventive and invigorating stage show that’s dance, music, and theatrical performance blended together in one electrifying rhythm.” He successfully auditioned and was signed to a rehearsal contract. Things were looking up until, a week later, he dislocated his shoulder. This injury meant that Carty couldn’t prepare for rehearsals as he had planned; “I rehabilitated the best that I could because I wanted to get in shape. I did a rehearsal contract, but I got cut.”

When the 2020s arrived and the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Carty realized that had he not dislocated his shoulder and joined STOMP, he would have likely been out of a job during that tumultuous time. With a nationwide quarantine, Carty’s teaching job shifted to Zoom, allowing him to stay home and focus on improving his craft. He explained his ambition: “My goal was that I wanted to make good music that happens to be teaching. Quite often when people think of any kind of educational rap, they think of something cheesy. I wanted to make quality. I wanted someone to listen and be like

‘This is good’ then be like ‘Oh, wait, they’re teaching’.”

Once Carty and his students returned to in-person schooling, he noticed many were struggling to connect with the work. To address this, he adapted his math rapping skills into a tool to engage his students more effectively. He would ask them to choose a beat, and then he would use his freestyle skills to teach a problem that the class found challenging. This approach was not only engaging for his students but also provided an opportunity for Carty to challenge himself. And just like that, Freestyle Fridays were born.

In 2022, Carty began posting his raps on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. Initially achieving modest success with views in the low hundreds. The short videos captured the classroom’s excitement, showing how students’ skepticism often turned to awe. Carty, with his signature cool, deftly crafted the perfect rhymes to match the beats and solve the problems. A breakthrough came through on September 22, 2023, when he posted a Freestyle Friday lesson on multiplying polynomials, set to the instrumental to Kanye West’s All Falls Down on his @NeverQuitmath TikTok account. This post went viral amassing 1.1 million views and roughly 194,300 likes.

Carty was blown away by the response and acknowledged his mixed feelings towards the sudden success.

Initially, excitement was his dominant emotion, leading him to wonder, “What’s going to happen next? Am I going to be on Ellen?” However, he also understands the deeper implications of this fame, reflecting, “It’s really not a destination or an accomplishment. It’s more of an opportunity.” Carty believes that going viral and thereby drawing more attention to his work, provides him with a chance to showcase his abilities. “That’s when the work really starts. This is when you really have to find ways to be more consistent. This is when you really have to find ways to invest time in your craft,” he explained.

Carty doesn’t let his viral fame get to his head. Determined to maintain the momentum of his art, Carty is ready to embrace the challenge of continuing to motivate and inspire young learners. His advice for those creating content without an audience is to “Be true to yourself,” because as he puts it, “There’s going to be a high premium on authenticity,” and “If you don’t sacrifice for what you love, then what you love will become the sacrifice.” Carty’s journey is a testament to triumph in adversity. After losing the opportunity for his dream job as a dancer in STOMP, he created new opportunities for himself that benefit others. Reflecting on his journey with a smile, Carty remarked, “Thank you, [STOMP] staff, for cutting me. And maybe one day millions of people who will benefit from NeverQuitmath will also say thank you.”

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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024

“Lackluster Performance”: Mean Girls Musical Review LIZZIE PERRY PEOPLE EDITOR

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had the misfortune of subjecting myself to the abomination that is the new Mean Girls movie musical, and it was an utter waste of time and brain cells. From the moment the opening credits rolled to the final curtain call, I found myself cringing at every turn. When I wasn’t experiencing secondhand embarrassment, I was simply bored.

The original Mean Girls sprang from Tina Fey’s screenplay adaptation of Rosalind Wiseman’s parenting guidebook, Queen Bees & Wannabes: Helping Your DaughSurvive Cliques, “The movie lacked ter Gossip, Boyfriends, the biting satire and the New Realities and sharp wit that of Girl World. Fey’s made the original screenplay evolved into the iconic 2004 film, Mean Girls a cultur-Mean Girls, which al phenomenon.” garnered tremendous success. Despite this, the attempt at a sequel, Mean Girls 2, fell flat.

In 2016, there was a renewed effort to bring Mean Girls to life, this time as a Broadway musical. In January of 2024, a movie adaptation of the musical hit the screens.

One of the biggest issues was the horrible casting. Angourie Rice as Cady Heron was a complete miscast. Not only could she not sing, but her lackluster performance drained the songs of any emotion or authenticity. Take, for instance, the pivotal moment in “Stupid with Love” where instead of acting out the lyrics, she simply recited them like a robot. The chemistry between Rice and Chris

Briney as Aaron Samuels was sorely lacking, diminishing the impact of their relationship. It was painful to watch.

Perhaps the most glaring flaw in the movie was the characterization of Regina George. To put it simply — Regina George isn’t mean enough. The movie

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relies on Regina being unlikeable: she’s manipulative, doesn’t feel sorry, and uses power to hurt others. In the original movie, she’d compliment someone’s clothes and then insult them right after. In the 2024 version, the worst thing Regina actually did was make fun of

Cady in high heels behind her back. Rachel McAdams played the two-faced, backstabbing character perfectly, something that Reneé Rapp just didn’t accomplish.

Another disappointment was the constant breaking of the fourth wall. Characters constantly addressing the audience felt like a desperate attempt to be “edgy” and “modern,” but instead, it came across as forced “One of the biggest and gimmicky. The issues was the horricharm of the origible casting. Angourie nal Mean Girls was its witty and inci- Rice as Cady Heron sive dialogue, not was a complete misawkward asides that cast.” fell flat every time.

The blatant product placement throughout the movie was also an egregious misstep – it felt like I was being bombarded with ads for E.L.F. cosmetics. Every scene seemed to feature characters gushing over their latest E.L.F. products as if we were supposed to believe that high schoolers spend their days obsessing over makeup brands instead of actual high school drama.

The 2024 Mean Girls movie musical failed to capture the essence of the original film. Too soft to be truly offensive and too dull to be genuinely funny, it fell short of expectations. Tina Fey played it safe, avoiding any risks that might have made the adaptation more compelling. As a result, the movie lacked the biting satire and sharp wit that made the original Mean Girls a cultural phenomenon.

“Recreating the Essence of the Original”: Mean Girls Musical Review LUCY GOLDBERG ARTS CRITIC

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any film classics follow the life of high school girls, some of the most popular being Clueless, Easy A, The Edge of Seventeen, Lady Bird, and 10 Things I Hate

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About You. But there is one movie that is usually the leader of that list: Mean Girls. Released in 2004, the hit movie follows a naive girl, Cady, who navigates friendships in real high school after she had been homeschooled in Africa prior; now discovering “mean girls” and learning how

to be a good friend. After 20 years of the film’s success, able to adjust the characters to match the modern times. solidifying its place in movie history, the musical version While some characters could present this subtly with of this movie premiered on January 12, 2024. This new their social media literacy, there were certain moments rendition in the movie where you could of Mean “The film did a great tell it was written by someG i r l s job of recreating the one who wasn’t the same age s t a r s essence of the original as the characters. For examReneé ple, there were many times Rapp as while changing a few when there were unnecessary R e g i n a details.”

TikToks shown that came George, off as cringey and awkward who previously to watch. But even though these moments didn’t add to played the charac- the movie on a technical level, they allowed for laughter in the Broad- ter in the theater through a more unintended humor. This way musical adap- film’s unintentional humor continued through most of tation, explaining the scenes, but this time with excessive product placeher excellent vo- ment. If the characters were using any makeup, you cals throughout the could make a safe bet that it was from the brand “e.l.f.” film. Sometimes Aside from the aspects that made it hard to during scenes, they take seriwere so accurate to ously, the “Even when these moments the original mov- film did a didn’t add to the movie on a ie that you would great job of technical level, they allowed think it’s not even a recreating musical, and then, the essence for laughter in the theater out of nowhere, of the orig- through a more unintended the camera zooms inal while humor.” close to the actor, changing a and they break out few details. Iconic scenes like the Halloween party and in song. Although the Christmas dance were not altered significantly, howthis was a bit abrupt ever Cady’s reference to teenagers acting like animals during specific mo- was almost entirely changed. For younger audiences, the only pitfall of the original mov“As a whole, this film was ie is that the 2004 high school fun, interesting, and new, culture may feel out of date. But this contemporary take on the but I don’t know that I classic felt more in touch with would want something today’s younger demographic. like this for other teenage As a whole, this film was fun, interesting, and new, but I don’t classics.” ments, like when Cady’s class is interknow that I would want somerupted by a musical-esque spotlight on her as she sings, thing like this for other teenage classics. it kept the movie fun and enjoyable in other moments.

Another component that separates both films is the modernization of this version. Many of the actors were

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MIDDLE SCHOOL CORNER

The Upcoming MS Play ‘Oliver’ JENNIFER CHEN AND ELLA ROSARIO CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

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e all are so excited about the middle school musical “Oliver.” Performing Arts Teacher Andrew Cooper-Leary will be directing the play. The musical is based on the book “Oliver Twist” by Charles Dickens.

“It has fun music and all genders can play the characters.”

- Andrew Cooper-Leary Cooper-Leary says that in some parts, Oliver is funny and in others, it’s

A Brief History of Rosa Parks

CAMILLE CHINA CONTRIBUTING WRITER

sad. He also saw that it was more of a deeper story. The thing that stands out about this musical is that it has both comedy and tragedy. Oliver is an orphan and he escapes the workhouse which is a place where Orphans work and he goes to Londen. In the end, he finds a true loving family.

Andrew Cooper-Leary said “It has fun music and all genders can play the characters. In these times it was very separated like lower class and others.

The auditions started on February 5th.”

This means that the cast list will be out soon! We hope you can see it.

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osa Louise McCully Parks was born on February 4th, 1913, and died on October 24th, 2005. Parks, an American activist and an important figure in the civil rights movement was also known for her role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

“In 1996 Rosa was known as ‘the First Lady of Civil Rights’ and received many awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”

Parks is nationally recognized for her protest in 1955 on the Montgomery Bus, violating a city law against racial segregation on a local bus, which eventually sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Parks worked with the NAACP in Montgomery, participating in initiatives against racial injustice, for example: voter registration drives, legal challenges, and segregation laws. When she was arrested for refusing to give up her bus

seat, the NAACP provided legal assistance.

In 1957, Parks went on trial for her arrest and the black community was against the bus boycott. That night Rosa met Martin Luther King Jr. who joined the boycott. In 1957, fleeing the South to find safety and work, Parks and Raymond continued to fight for civil rights, peace, and equality.

In 1996 Parks was known as “the First Lady of Civil Rights” and received many awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1931, Parks met Raymond Parks. He was the first activist she had ever met. She volunteered to help people free a group of black children who were sent to prison for a crime they did not commit.

In 2003, the bus that Parks stood up on was put on display in the Henry Ford Museum near Detroit.

Parks had one sibling Sylvester Mccauley who died at 62. His cause of death was cancer in 1977. Parks died in 2005 and left an everlasting legacy as a freedom fighter. She is remembered as a pioneer of the modern-day Civil Rights Movement.

Opinions Towards the Language Sampler Requirement SLOANE MILLAR CONTRIBUTING WRITER

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iguring out a language to choose from takes time and effort. However, Poly’s language sampler – where students can test four languages in grade five and later decide on one study – has been beneficial. The Polygon interviewed the World Languages Department Chair, four language teachers, and two students to gain insight into the purpose of the language sampler, the ways in which teachers approach the language sampler, and the community’s opinions on the language sampler.

According to World Languages Department Chair Elisabeth Mansfield, “The purpose of the language sampler is to give exposure to each fifth-grader of all the different languages we have so that they can make an informed decision about what language they want to study in sixth grade. The language sampler is where you can try out four different languages to find out which one you would like to pick. They last over two months.” Mansfield also explains that students are expected to sign up for the language they’re taking in sixth grade in March/April.

“I think the language sampler class is great because students basically can have the freedom to choose a language instead of being pushed to learn one,” said Mandarin teacher Chenyi Zhou. “Students can have the chance to learn a language and to see whether they like it or not because this choice is related to the future of the three-year learning in the future so this is vital to make a decision.”

Zhou added that the sampler plays an integral role in exposing students to different cultures, which is an important aspect of learning a new language, but, generally, great knowledge to have. “The Language teachers also teach a lot of culture and cultural relative stuff.

So you can kind of know China and Chinese culture from my class even though you don’t take the language.

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“The purpose of the Language Sampler is to give exposure to each fifth-grader of all the different languages we have so that they can make an informed decision about what language they want to study in sixth grade.”

- Elisabeth Mansfield But it’s just fun to know cultures from other cultures.”

The language teachers are also trying to take an in-

teractive approach to learning. Zhou also stated that, in her class, “students can listen and talk to each other to see if they can use the language.” She also stated “My class is game-based so I use a lot of games and group competitions and Kahoot or Blooket, we play, and I also introduce a lot of animals about culture. For example, Chinese food or Chinese cities. So these are good and very interesting aspects to learn in language class.”

French teacher Christopher Tutolo said, “I think that it’s nice for fifth graders to be able to explore four different languages and then try to see what they’re like and then make a decision at the end of the year.” When teaching, Tutolo uses music as well as hands-on games to introduce concepts and new vocabulary to students. “Aside from that, I think one of the more exciting things about fifth grade is I can always count on the fifth graders to want to do short scenarios and act out short scenes. So whatever the scene is that I ask fifth graders to do they always seem to really respond well to that,” he added.

Fifth grader Jaden Pelson said “I like the language sampler because it tells why you like it or not. I definitely want to study French because I just love the language and it’s just so fun.”

Fifth grader Mila Smith said, “I think that having samples is good because we get to experience all of these languages instead of just guessing what to pick in 6th grade. I think that I’m going to choose Spanish because I really love it and because of my background.”

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MIDDLE SCHOOL CORNER

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Simple Yet Delicious: A Picture Perfect Marble Walnut Cake Recipe GISU RAFAAT CONTRIBUTING WRITER

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anilla or chocolate? Tired of having to choose?? I know I am! Well, with this recipe, you can have both, or either! This recipe is for both vanilla and chocolate lovers! Baking can be complicated, but this recipe is perfect when you have a short time frame to make an easy and tasty baked good , or for entertainment when you’re bored on a rainy day! This is a recipe for a marble walnut cake and it is very easy to make, yet it is tasty at the same time. Another thing I love about this recipe is that you can easily modify it. I know many people don’t like chocolate. However, with this recipe, the addition of chocolate ganache is an option based on preference or ingredient availability. You definitely do not have to be a professional baker to make this cake, but it will taste as if it was made by a professional!

This recipe is one of my family favorites! The cake is reflective of the different flavors my grandmother, my mother, and I enjoy. Sometimes, I bake the cake with my family, which has created long lasting memories and helped me bond with my family members. My grandma originally taught me how to make this cake, and now we make it together sometimes. After all, Julia Child said that “a party without cake is just a meeting.” Now, let’s start baking!

Ingredients: For the cake: 3 cups of flour. (Some extra for the cake pan and the walnuts) 1 cup granulated sugar.

6 eggs 1 cup oil 1 cup milk 1 tablespoon baking powder.

1 teaspoon vanilla extract. ½ a teaspoon of salt.

About 1 cup of chopped walnuts, but you can modify the amount.

For the chocolate “ganache”: (It sounds more complicated than it is.)

3 tablespoons of cocoa powder. ½ cup of milk 3 tablespoons of granulated sugar. ¼ cup of butter

Before we start making the cake batter we need to make the chocolate “ganache” First, get a pan. Then, put the stove on medium heat and add the milk. Let the milk sit on the stove until it becomes warm. Then, prepare three tablespoons of cocoa powder.

“This is a recipe for a marble walnut cake and it is very easy to make, yet it is tasty at the same time. Another thing I love about this recipe is that you can easily modify it. I know many people don’t like chocolate. However, with this recipe, the addition of chocolate ganache is an option based on preference or ingredient availability.”

Add each teaspoon individually, letting the cocoa powder dissolve until adding the next. Repeat until all three tablespoons are done. Now, add the sugar. After, add the butter.

Then, keep mixing the ganache. Once it comes to a boil, lower the heat and keep mixing until it solidifies. Then turn the heat off completely and let it cool until it’s cold.

Now, heat up your oven to 350 degrees. After, get a cake pan. Any one you want. Preferably a loaf cake pan. You can use cooking spray, but I usually coat the cake pan in butter. Then, sprinkle it with some flour. So now, chop the walnuts, and coat them in a little bit of flour. (The addition of walnuts is completely optional, based on preference) Now, time for the fun part: making the cake batter!

Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt 1 time. Then set the flour mixture aside. In a hand mixer, electric mixer, or even a whisk, beat the eggs, vanilla extract on medium speed for 3 minutes. After the 3 minutes have passed, add in the granulated sugar. Again, let it mix for 3 minutes. If all the sugar granules are not mixed completely till 3 minutes let it mix for a little more time till the sugar is combined. Then pour the oil and milk at the same time. Also let that mix for 3 minutes!

Then stop mixing the batter, and use a spatula. With a spatula combine the flour mixture slowly into the batter. IMPORTANT: When mixing the batter, make sure to mix it in one direction. If you start mixing to the right, keep mixing to the right. If you start mixing to the left keep mixing it to the left. If you keep mixing in different directions this will cause the cake batter not to rise in the oven. Also, don’t overmix your batter-that can also cause your cake not to rise in the oven.

Now, here comes the tricky part: First, pour some of the cake batter into the cake pan. Then pour some of the chocolate ganache onto the batter, and marble it with a toothpick. Then sprinkle some walnuts, put some of the cake batter, then the ganache, sprinkle the walnuts. and keep doing that until the last thing you end with on the cake is chocolate ganache. Keep in mind that usually there is some cake batter left over, you can prepare another cake pan to bake the rest of the batter so nothing is wasted!

Let the cake bake for 45 minutes-1 hour. Then take the cake out and let it cool completely. Use the extra

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The History of Step Dancing AMANDA MARCANO-JAMES CONTRIBUTING WRITER

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hat is stepping? About four years ago, I watched a movie on Netflix called Step Sisters. The movie was about a young black college female who leaves her sorority to help a white sorority win the stepping championships. I became curious about stepping and learned some intriguing facts about its origins. Stepping is not just a dance, but a cultural expression that has deep roots in African heritage and has evolved over centuries into the popular art form we know today.

Did you know that stepping originated in West Africa? Hand clapping and foot

VIA AMANDA MARCANO-JAMES

stomping

were

“Over the centuries, nine organi- the main elements of Afrizations have played a significant can folk dances from the 15th century. During the Atlantic role in Black American history slave trade, this dance was and culture, collectively known as brought to the United States the Divine Nine. Examples of these and was influenced by Euroculture. One of the most organizations include Alpha Kap- pean significant influences on the pa Alpha, Alpha Phi Alpha, Delta development of stepping was the African gumboot dance, a Sigma Theta, and others.” form

of

communication

used by South African miners. The miners used specific patterns of stomping and clapping to communicate with other workers throughout the flooded mines.

In addition to this, the dance also incorporated elements from many other popular artistic forms, including military drills, cheerleading, martial arts, acrobatics, hip-hop, tap dancing, break dancing, gymnastics, and Afro-Caribbean dance. Isn’t it amazing how the past is so influential in the present? While dancing, steppers listen to soul, jazz, old-school, and R&B music to keep in sync with their movements.

Over the centuries, nine fraternities and sororities, collectively known as the Divine Nine, have played a significant role in Black American history and culture, including Step. Examples of these organizations include Alpha Kappa Alpha, Alpha Phi Alpha, Delta Sigma Theta, and others. The Divine Nine aimed to educate and uplift the Black community from racial inequities.

I inter- “Stepping is not just a dance but viewed a family friend who a cultural expression that has is a proud Alpha Kappa Alpha deep roots in African heritage Sorority member.

When asked why she decided to join the so- and has evolved over centuries rority, she shared some mem- into the popular art form we orable moments with me from know today. ” her college experience and the significance of the step when she was in college.

“I decided to join the sorority because I wanted a sisterhood. Then the opportunity to do service projects and positive work in the community with a group of like-minded college-educated women was attractive. I knew that service was necessary and that I only had opportunities because of the work of others,” she said.

She also revealed themes that were commonly explored in the step show.“Our chapter had been inactive for a couple of years so it was a return and reemergence of Alpha Kappa Alpha. In this case, the theme did not relate to African culture but the performance itself was one example of how we showcased unity and coordination, symbolic of African dance. There was rhythmic clapping, stomping, and chanting that is reminiscent of African rhythmic traditions.”

Fast forwarding to today, we will celebrate stepping during an assembly at Poly for Black History Month. After learning this beautiful legacy of stepping, what impact will it have on Poly’s performance? What music do you think they will step to?

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SPORTS

Richard Corso: The Leadership of Athletics ROSE FILIPPAZZO CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Poly Prep’s Head of Athletics, Richard Corso, has led an enticing career before coming to Poly. Corso continues to improve the Poly Prep athletic program which he believes should be credited to the dedication of his student-athletes and coaches.

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ichard Corso was soaking up the blazing warmth of the California sun as he excitedly awaited the start of the 2023 NCAA Water Polo Championship. Suddenly, three grown men with vaguely familiar faces approached him. Although Corso was dismayed by their mature and manly demeanor, he could recognize the young men he once coached at Harvard-Westlake School for water polo.

After exchanging warm hugs, the men recalled fond memories as they rehashed stories from their time training together. They caught up on their lives as each man told Corso about their happy relationships and the families they had built. One former athlete introduced Corso to his son, clinging tightly to his father’s hand. Simultaneously, each man held their hand out to reveal a ring so large it covered the bottom half of their fingers. The ring was engulfed with stones gleaming so bright as if they tried to compete with the California sun. The NCAA rings were a constant reminder of the success that started with the guidance, support, and training of Corso.

Corso has played a prominent role at Poly Prep as Head of Athletics since 2018. He is a highly regarded member of Poly athletics and takes immense pride in his athletes and their success. Corso’s vast previous job experiences coaching for Olympic teams, prominent colleges, and a prestigious independent school have equipped him with invaluable experience that he shares with the Poly community to advance the athletic program.

From a young age, Corso loved all sports however in high school, he decided to focus mainly on swimming.

“I have always wanted to coach, but I always thought I was going to be a swimming coach,” said Corso. He was eighteen when he was first exposed to water polo. “I saw these guys playing water polo and I go, I can swim. I can throw a ball. I can catch the ball. I got to play. That’s when I got hooked,” said Corso, as a water polo game in Puerto Rico played on the large television screen behind him.

One of the main differences between water polo and swimming that Corso appreciates is being a part of a team. He said, “I liked water polo more at that point in time because of the team atmosphere.” Corso followed his passion for water polo at South Connecticut State University, where he played for all four of his college years.

Corso’s dedication to the sport he loved could not overpower the harsh reality that “when I was in the zone, as athletes say, I was mediocre at best.” This realization led to his first job as a volunteer coaching assistant at Stanford University. However, when the offer to become the head coach at Yale University presented itself, he seized this opportunity. According to the Hall of Fame on the USA Water Polo website, Corso remained at Yale for about a year and then, became coach of men’s water polo and swimming at

UCLA. He spent the next decade there until his aspiration to be an Olympic coach drove him to become a physical education teacher at Harvard-Westlake School in California.

Poly Prep’s Athletic page states that during his twenty years at Harvard-Westlake, he simultaneously was the assistant coach of the 1984 Men’s Olympic Water Polo team, winning a silver medal. He head coached the 1996 USA Olympic team, Canadian Men’s National Team, and the 2004 United States Men’s Olympic team. In the interview, Corso discusses his accomplishments while proudly wearing his white US Olympic hat, while two US Olympic banners prominently hang on the adjacent walls behind him.

In 1992, Corso went to the Barcelona Olympics.

There he was introduced to Audrius Barzdukas, former Head of School at Poly Prep, who at the time was working as a sports scientist for the United States Olympic Training Center. Shortly after, Corso was offered a position as the head coach of the United States Men’s Water Polo team and worked alongside Barzdukas for the next four years. During that time, their relationship blossomed and continued even after Corso’s tenure as an Olympic coach. In 2005, Corso became coach of the women’s water polo team at the University of California, Berkeley for twelve years, until his desire to try something new caused him to move back to Los Angeles.

While searching for a change, Corso’s career took a turn when he was invited to get coffee with Barzdukas, who had recently become Head of School at Poly Prep. “They had a search and I was lucky enough to get the job,” said Corso.

Corso’s past job experiences have had a large influence on how he approaches his position as Head of Athletics. It has allowed him to recognize similarities and differences between other schools and the Poly community. “When I first came to campus, it reminded me of the University of California, Berkeley because of the diversity,” he said.

In the interview, Corso talked in generalities and stated both schools are trying to “figure out who they are.” Corso said, “What Harvard-Westlake does that’s significantly different is that they are consistent,” Corso believes his knowledge will allow him to guide Poly’s student-athletes and coaches to success.“I’m trying to bring some of those experiences from being at independent day schools, all those college experiences, national championships, Olympics, and trying to get the kids here better,” said Corso.

Another way Corso does this is through applying his vigorous education such as his bachelor’s degree in physical education, a master’s degree in kinesiology, and a second master’s degree in coaching science. Corso has brought this knowledge to his past collegiate job experiences, thus leading USA Water Polo to consider him an “innovator in the integration of sports science and sports psychology

Coaches VS Cancer ANNA BRANDMEYER AND OSCAR KOLZ CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

with the game of water polo.” Corso brought this expertise to Poly to improve strength and conditioning. “When I got here, we did not have a strength and conditioning coach.

Now we have two and a half. When I got here, we only had one athletic trainer. Now we have two and a half athletic trainers.” Corso believes a robust health and wellness division is important to the foundation of an athletic program.

Part of the reason why Corso and Barzdukas got along so well is their aspirations and motivation to help students reach their full potential, both academically and athletically. “That’s all I care about is performance in the classroom and out on the wrestling mats, volleyball court, or whatever we have,” said Corso. Lisa Beltramello, former head coach of girls’ lacrosse at Poly Prep and a mentee of Corso said, “One of the most valuable takeaways I learned from him was don’t be afraid to go for it. There are going to be moments in your career when you try something and it doesn’t work but he was always encouraging us to try new things and to get better.”

A profile done on Corso located on the University of California, Berkley’s website states, “he possesses a competitive attitude that is sure to get the most out of his student-athletes…His energy, preparation, commitment, and professionalism will have a lasting influence on American water polo for years to come.”

“He has a unique ability of bringing people together and finding the right fit for the job,” said Beltramello. She also noted that Corso’s honesty is constructive which, motivates his players and helps them grow. “I work with our coaches for planning, not just their twelve-week practices, but what are you doing all year?” Corso believes the future is uncertain which therefore employs longterm coaching plans, which is just one way his coaching technique differs from others. “Corso was always really accessible. He always wanted to talk about sports and check in with all of our coaching staff to see how we were doing and adjusting to things,” said Beltramello.

Corso still intends to utilize his role to build upon contributions to Poly’s athletic program, such as redoing the bubble for multi-sport use and providing coaches with better offices in the weight room.

His love for water polo and swimming has also made him inclined to install a more substantial pool.

As Corso strives to elevate Poly Prep’s athletic department to new standards he relies on the skill of players and coaches who are passionate and dedicated to their sport, which he believes is key to being one of the best athletic programs in New York. “I want to find players who want to do well in the classroom and want to play on great teams. We’re very good but there is a big difference between good and great. I want to be consistently great.”

Jill Wojick and Her Australian Football Journey

SYDNEY MCFARLANE he annual Coaches vs. Cancer High through coaches’ influence. High school CONTRIBUTING WRITER

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School Basketball Showcase took center stage on Saturday, January 27 at Fieldston High School in the Bronx. The National Program, which began in 1993, is a collaboration between the American Cancer Society and the National Association of Basketball Coaches. Since its establishment, the organization has raised over $155 million for the American Cancer Society. The visionary for this event was Norm Stewart, a renowned college basketball coach, and cancer survivor. Stewart was an outstanding coach, but an even better person. His goal in creating the program was to spread awareness about the diseases and strive for a cure. In a 2014 informational sheet from CoachesVsCancer.org/youth, Stewart said, “When cancer is defeated this will be the biggest win that we will all share.”

This year’s event that Poly participated in was a riveting display of sportsmanship and solidarity aimed at raising cancer awareness and promoting healthy living

teams all around New York participated to help raise money for the American Cancer Society. The Coaches for Cancer website states, “We’ve helped increase federal funding for cancer research to $6.9 billion.”

Poly Girls’ Varsity Basketball faced off against Columbia Prep and secured a 66-54 victory. Junior player Mila Taendler noted, “The event was definitely a memorable experience. My whole team felt very united, and it was nice to not only have a successful game but also support a strong cause behind it.”

Boys’ Varsity Basketball, unfortunately, came up short in a tough game against Xavier High School. Senior captain Jack Kolz mentioned, “This was the third year I played in this event with Poly, and I felt that even though it wasn’t the outcome we wanted, it was a great experience to play for something more than basketball.” Beyond the scores, Coaches vs. Cancer is an ongoing successful effort to unite the basketball community in the battle against cancer.

T

he wrath of Head Conditioning Coach Richard James’s voice echoed throughout the hallway.

There’s a seventh-grade PE class taking up the main portion of the weight room, with high schoolers secluded to their benches. The clanking of metal dumbbells and the patter of feet stomping against the floor is drowned out by country music. The three adjacent glass rooms are filled with students laughing and enjoying each other’s company. I went to Australian football player and strength and conditioning coach Jill Wojick’s office and patiently waited for her to arrive.

Wojick’s desk was covered in printouts of meal plans, workout routines, and class schedules. Beneath the scattered papers laid a framed rustic-looking black and white photograph of Melbourne Cricket Ground, the largest football stadium in Australia.

During a semester abroad in Australia, Wojick was introduced to Australian football. Since that moment, she has been entranced by the sport. At that time, there were no teams or leagues available for women. It wasn’t until 2020 that Wojick started playing in the United States Australian Football League (USAFL)

for the New York Magpies. The New York Magpies website states that this team is “New York’s first and only women’s Australian Rules Football team.”

Wojick has been exposed to many different sports throughout her lifetime, but none touched her like “footy” did. Spending most of her adolescent years as a competitive dancer, Wojick found her career path, taking a turn in college when weight training and kinesiology sparked her interest. Australian football brought out a confidence in Wojick that she hopes to help inspire young fe(Continued on Page 20)

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COACH JILL AND HER AUSTRALIAN FOOTBALL JOURNEY (continued from page 19 )

male athletes. “When I was dancing, there was no strength training for dancers. It was all about being as skinny as possible,” she said.

Although dance ended up not being Wojick’s calling, her unique connection and understanding of music proved useful in her daily life. She applies principles she learned as a dancer to coaching and in her training. “Sports is a rhythm. When you run, you hear

VIA JILL WOJICK

certain rhythms, like when you hear the ball caught a certain way, it sounds like a music note,” she said Footy has helped Wojick focus on her improvements, taking on a healthier lifestyle as she gets older. “It’s definitely a hard sport that you really have to be in good shape for,” and “it’s a good stress reliever,” said Wojick.

Australian football, or footy, is a hybrid game of soccer, rugby, basketball, and volleyball. Players score by kicking the football through a goalpost. Footy is played on a large oval field with 18 players and is the most popular sport in Australia. It’s a “Game of chaos. You never know what’s going to happen,” said Wojick.

Similar to soccer on defense, there’s typically one goalie and two people in the back half of the field.

Wojick plays left defense. She’s in charge of tackling, returning the ball to offense, and blocking shots.

Being a relatively new sport for women, it was fairly hard to recruit adults to compete. For Wojick, it all started when her neighbor who was on the team invited her to a pick-up game. She had some prior experience from her time in Australia, but she had never played with an organized team. From there, she attended weekly practices and was invited to play and

travel with The New York Magpies.

Her first game in Washington, D.C., became a defining moment of her career. She finally felt like a part of the team on and off the field. “Connecting with all the players and getting to know them, finally feeling comfortable, that they’ll trust me on the field and I trust them,” said Wojick.

Entering Bundy Field in D.C., her body was full of nerves, and her stomach was unsettled.

The field was humongous and crowded with teams from all across North America. The air was refreshing as she soaked in the hot spring sun.

From the field, she could see the Washington Monument and helicopters flying above them. “It was a great vibe and experience being on that field,” said Wojick.

During that game in D.C., she was paired with a woman who was notorious for her footy skills. She was the founder of the women’s team and very experienced. In the first play of the game, this woman tackled Wojick, which was especially nerve-racking because her spine is fused and prone to injury. “It felt like I broke every bone in my body.

I was like, oh, I’m done for. But then I got up and kept going,” she said.

Since then, Wojick has had the pleasure of watching the sport expand. She’s traveled to D.C., Florida, Wisconsin, Colorado, California, and other East Coast cities. “It used to be just New York and D.C. that had like the biggest women’s teams and, now there’s almost 13 women’s teams in all the different states that we play. So I see way more competition,” said Wojick.

She is hopeful for what the future holds regarding enhancing women’s sports. She was in charge of social media for her club in 2020 and always seeks opportunities to raise awareness for women. Winning big tournaments brings in publicity and funding that supports her team. “When I got asked to go to the playoffs, I thought, wow, I can be part of building the women’s side [of footy],” said Wojick.

Until college, Wojick had always been very outgoing and loud.

Once she started getting first-hand experience in weight rooms and schools, she lost some of this previous confidence and became very shy. Wojick said she was always afraid to mess up because she was scared to fail as one of the only women in a “male-dominated field.”

According to a 2017 publication by The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Approximately 70 percent of people weight training on any given day are male.” Due to females being a minority in gyms, Wojick feels it’s important to ensure that women feel welcome in athletic centers and weight rooms so that they are comfortable taking healthy risks. At Poly, Wojick has blocked off clubs block and other last periods for solely female athletes, hoping to encourage them to come to the weight room.

Carlyle Muldrow is a sophomore who plays volleyball at Poly and is on a travel team that Wojick conditions. “The environment she maintains in the weight room makes it possible for me to work to reach my full potential,” said Muldrow during a quick water break at her workout with Wojick.

One of Wojick’s favorite parts about working at Poly is seeing the personal growth within students as they come out of their shells, especially females. “It makes me happy that you guys aren’t afraid to use the space and aren’t afraid of the boys in here anymore, and you can make it your home as well,” said Wojick.

As a coach, her goal is to do her best to connect and get through to students in the most productive way possible. Being on a high-level team adds to her list of strengths.

“I’m trying to practice what I preach with you guys. So I’m staying committed and focused,” said Wojick.

As much as Wojick loves footy, she has taken a less active role in the management side of her team because coaching is her true passion. She’s devoted to her work and knows its impact on the athletes she works with.

“I love the confidence it brings to you guys when you’re in a sport that you love, and bringing that out of you is a big deal,” Wojick said with a smile on her face, looking out her window at all the athletes training in her weight room.

Athletics With Eli: NBA Trade Breakdown ELI FLOYD STAFF WRITER

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he 2024 NBA trade deadline is set for Thursday, February 8, 2024, at 3 p.m.

ET. This key date in the NBA calendar marks the final opportunity for teams to make trades during the season. As teams position themselves for the playoffs or look toward future development, the trade deadline can significantly alter the league’s landscape.

Players to watch: 1. Zach LaVine: Due to his huge salary and struggles with fit, the Chicago Bulls may decide to trade LaVine. One possible destination that has been mentioned is the Los Angeles Lakers.

2. Dejounte Murray: The Los Angeles Lakers and San Antonio Spurs have expressed interest in Murray, who may be on the move following the Atlanta Hawks’ recent poor play.

3. Lauri Markkanen: A standout player for the Utah Jazz, Markkanen may draw interest from organizations hoping to solidify their climb with a top player, such as the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Teams making moves: 4. The Golden State Warriors may need to make adjustments to their roster to better fit the roles and goals of individual players.

5. Despite a slow start, the Detroit Pistons want to add players, suggesting that they would prefer to improve right away rather than rebuild.

6. The Orlando Magic, who have been outstanding defensively, could look to trade for players to replace Wendell Carter Jr. and Markelle Fultz, who are both prone to injury.

7. The Los Angeles Lakers, who are constantly looking to improve their lineup with LeBron James at the heart of it, maybe significant contenders at the deadline.

Major trade rumors: 1. Interest in Andrew Wiggins: It has been rumored that the Golden State Warriors’ Andrew Wiggins is of interest to the Dallas Mavericks and Indiana Pacers. The possible trade for Wiggins is perceived as an attempt by Dallas to bolster the wing position in addition to Kyrie Irving and Luka Doncic.

2. Tyus Jones is attracting attention: Tyus Jones is attracting interest from the Los Angeles Lakers, Minnesota Timberwolves, Orlando Magic, San Antonio Spurs, and Brooklyn Nets. The reported trade could see Dallas send Grant Williams and Richaun Holmes to Golden State. The Wizards are apparently looking to trade Jones, a competent rotation point guard, for a first-round selection, though a deal could more likely include multiple second-round picks. Jones has become recognized as a desirable asset.

3. Milwaukee Bucks Seeking Upgrades: The Bucks, particularly on defense, actively search for roster enhancements under new coach Doc Rivers. Even with players like Giannis Antetokoumpo and Brook Lopez, the club is looking at ways to improve their defense even more. Pat Connaughton, Cam Payne, and the No. 35 selection are potential trade components.

4. Dejounte Murray’s Future with the Hawks: The Atlanta Hawks may approach Dejounte Murray in a manner similar to how they handled John Collins, who they held onto for longer than anticipated. The Lakers, who will have more future selections available for trade, may be able to negotiate a better deal than the Hawks, who are willing to part with a high draft pick for Murray.