34 minute read
New Faculty and Staff
Art Beauregard A native of Guilderland, New York, Dr. Beauregard graduated from Guilderland High School where he was a championship wrestler and promising student, earning his way to a place at Lehigh University. There, he competed for the Division I team and earned a bachelor’s degree with Honors in molecular biology, minoring in economics. After graduation, Dr. Beauregard began a two-decade odyssey of scholarship, research, and teaching. He earned his master’s in biomedical sciences at the University of Albany, followed by his PhD with a molecular genetics concentration. He undertook several post-doc research assignments at various high-end genetics research centers in Albany and Salt Lake City. During that time, he returned to his high school as an assistant wrestling coach—an experience that taught him he should be a teacher and coach. Moving to Boston, he landed positions at Beaver Country Day (teaching calculus and geometry) and at Fessenden School where he taught IPS, biology, life science, and earth science, and also advised a gaggle of boys, served as Grade 8 Dean, and elevated the wrestling program to Boston-area renown. (There he also coached cross country and baseball.) At RL, he will teach sections of Honors Geometry, Math-Science Investigations, and Analysis with Trig. Dr. Beauregard will also assist with j.v. baseball and lead the wrestling program as head varsity coach. Bryan Dunn Dr. Bryan Dunn joins RL as the school’s new Dean of Faculty, Science Department Chair, and head Varsity Cross Country coach. Dr. Dunn has had an impressive career as a teacher and coach: Soon after college he began the first of two stints at Xaverian Brothers High School—a five-year run teaching biology, chemistry, and math, as well as coaching cross country and track, and founding the diversity committee. During his early teaching days, Dr. Dunn also was music director for Boston’s popular Improv Asylum. He left Xaverian and Boston to serve as music director for Chicago’s famous Second City troupe’s National Tour, for which he wrote and recorded original music for each show, directed the ensemble, and served as accompanist for all their touring shows over four years. While in Chicago, he also tutored middle school and high school students and developed curriculum for the tutoring company.
In 2010, he returned to Massachusetts as a physics and computer teacher at St. John’s School in Shrewsbury, at which he moderated an improv group. He then returned to Xaverian for a nine-year stint during which he did it all: teacher of AP Environmental Science, anatomy, forensics, AP Bio, physics, chemistry, and seventh grade science; director of the school musicals and the a cappella group; and coach of the highly successful cross country and indoor/ outdoor track programs. Dr. Dunn also served as chair of the
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science department and was responsible for several school-wide initiatives concerning STEM, assessment, wellness, and effective teaching. He was involved in diversity efforts throughout his time at Xaverian. In 2018, Dr. Dunn earned his Ed.D. in curriculum, teaching, learning and leadership from Northeastern; prior to that he earned his master’s in education, focusing on curriculum and instruction, from Boston College; and before that he concentrated in kinesiology and music at The College of William and Mary.
Justin Muchnick Justin Muchnick joins RL as one of two new Penn Fellows, teaching in the English Department. Born and raised in California, Mr. Muchnick came east to attend Phillips Academy Andover, where he impressed as a student, wrestler, dorm proctor, tour guide, and Writing Center maven, and where he won 12 academic prizes, including awards in Latin, history, biology, and physics. Mr. Muchnick returned to the West Coast to attend Stanford, where he earned a double major in Classics and American Studies; won prizes in Classics and overall academic achievement; and earned a 4.12 GPA (consisting of 13 A+ grades and 23 straight A’s!) Until concussions disqualified him, he also wrestled for Stanford; acted in dramatic performances there; and made the finals of the Rhodes Scholarship competition. He has continued to feed his Art History minor by working at the Cantor Arts Center, and he interned at various museums and for the YMCA and the Jewish Community Center. He designed and ran a Star Warsthemed summer camp and has written three guides on college and career planning, surviving in boarding school, and what he called “Straight A study skills.” In addition to his Penn Fellow responsibilities, and teaching Class V and Class III English, he will also coach soccer and wrestling, and help with admission.
Jack Parker RL’s second new Penn Fellow, Jack Parker, grew up in Burlington, North Carolina, where he had a memorable high school career, leading as a student and in a number of other areas including student government, choral music, and various other clubs. Mr. Parker attended Middlebury College where he earned his bachelor’s in mathematics, receiving the mathematics prize and graduating Phi Beta Kappa; he minored there in education studies. In a nod both to generalism and globalism, Mr. Parker became fluent in Spanish and Mandarin Chinese; he also ended up as the head instructor of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and sang tenor in the Ingoma a cappella group, dedicated to performing songs of Africa. During his undergraduate career, Mr. Parker had a good deal of teaching experience, student-teaching Grade 8 math at Middlebury Union Middle School, and teaching Geometry and Algebra to low-income students at Virginia’s Norfolk Academy for two summers. He was also a teaching assistant for Chinese courses at Middlebury and led orientation expeditions for incoming first-year students. At Roxbury Latin, Mr. Parker will teach two levels of math and help coach soccer and wrestling.
Mike Stanton Mr. Mike Stanton is Roxbury Latin’s first-ever Chief Financial Officer. Most recently, Mr. Stanton has served two colleges with distinction as their Vice Presidents for Administration and Finance. At Maryland’s Stevenson University he led various staffs concerned with the University’s financial management, facilities oversight, security, athletics, and food services. Prior to that, for nine years he performed similar functions at Dudley’s Nichols College, where he was intricately involved in land acquisition, building projects, debt negotiations, and the negotiation of countless contracts. Mr. Stanton earned both his bachelor’s in accounting and his MBA from Bryant College; he is also a certified public accountant (CPA). A native of Walpole and graduate of Walpole High—at which he played football and was active in other extracurriculars— Mr. Stanton is known for his affable, collaborative style, and sterling work ethic. We are grateful for his leadership in RL’s Business Office. //
The Concept of Community
The Concept of Community
My senior year in high school I elected a course called Sociology. I did not know much about the subject: I only knew that my brother had studied it in college, and that the teacher, Mr. Bydairk, was reported to be good. You may already know that people often confuse psychology and sociology. Psychology is about the thinking and emotional state of an individual, while sociology studies the way that people in groups behave. For example, a psychologist might be engaged in order to help a particular person solve a drinking problem; a sociologist might study why members of a certain ethnic group have a propensity for alcoholism. I liked sociology. It attempted to answer questions about people’s behavior that I was interested in, especially as those behaviors were affirmed, or even insisted upon, by groups to which the person belonged. I remember the logical explanation of how groups are formed and what holds them together. I also remember that the family was thought to be the smallest, most consistently impactful group when one measured a person’s values, rituals, and behaviors.
This class was the first time I thought about society. Obviously this construct had to do with a larger social network made up of people who shared certain characteristics—perhaps simply one’s nationality, but, more compellingly, a set of customs especially as they govern one’s world view, sense of purpose, and principles. In between family and society, however, is the entity about which I want to talk principally today. That is community. Often people use this term to describe a geographical and political concept—a city, a town, a neighborhood. I learned in that course, however, that a community is also a group of people who agree to certain concepts of what it means to live, to live well, to live peacefully and productively together. One person has a stake in another person’s life. Because a community often suggests a relatively intimate group of people, they tend to know each other. And even if literally they don’t know each other, they know each other based on presumptions that can be made within the community, about a basic standard of values, mutuality, and care. This—like so many terms of my youth—has, however, been appropriated to name something other than this general, multi-layered commonality. For example, you may have heard of the fossil fuels community, or the athlete’s foot community, or the ramen-loving community. Each of those interests may indeed attract positive reactions, or even commitments, from a large group of people,
but they lack the fellow feeling, the common experiences, the loyalty of a real community. Sometimes our communities are encouraged by where we are, or how we’re gathered, or what that even smaller unit of the family prescribes for us in terms of the communities that we will know about, be welcomed into, or join.
Barn Raising and Town Meeting I’m reminded of some classic evocations of community. You may know something about the Amish. This sect believes that to our eyes strict manners of dress, transportation (the horse and buggy is the preferred vehicle), unmodern households (without electricity, for example), and quite narrow rules about whom one may marry (strictly within the Amish community) are necessary in order to live a good life and earn God’s favor. One of the great community festivals of Amish life is a barn raising. In this case a family—maybe especially a newly married couple—needs to have a barn on their property. Because this is an agrarian sect, the barn is a staple of farm life. In our lives, we would likely hire someone to design and build a barn. Not the Amish. Tradition has it that on a given day, the whole community will gather, each member with a job to do, but in concert with others. After several iterations of this barn building ritual, it probably is well known who does what well, and he or she takes on that job. But it is miraculously a tribute to organization, fellowship, and hard work. Usually the barn is up in one day, after which there is a great feast to celebrate. My first year as principal of the elementary school at University School in Cleveland we built a playground. The spirit of that endeavor and the willingness that everyone showed to participate—the joy in the company and the accomplishment—I’ll bet were similar to what the Amish felt. Those of you who are part of the building crew of Habitat for Humanity know something of the exercise, even though your own crew is shy of what I would call a community. The Amish barn raising is a neighborhood coming together born of religious conviction and a habit of community.
Each spring in New England there is a civic version of that sacred rite. In your various history classes you doubtless have learned of a direct democracy as exemplified by the Athenians. In this system a citizen can indicate his own position on any number of matters directly. Therefore there would be a large group of people gathered in order to vote on a referendum. Unlike the representative democracy that our nation is built on, small towns in New England feel it important to provide an opportunity for all the citizens of the town to turn out for what is called a “town meeting,” what they would say is “real” democracy. In that setting, individuals can have their say— asking questions, and making suggestive comments about any number of issues from the town’s budget, projects, and taxes, to schools, town roads, and parks. After plenty of debate there is voting on the spot, which bounds the town’s government officials to act according to the will of the people. Each of the towns in which this brand of government takes place behaves like a community in which people can disagree about minor matters but agree wholeheartedly in the way in which decisions are made and the need to abide by whatever these decisions are.
On My Schenectady Block As you may have heard me confess before, I grew up in a working class, largely Catholic neighborhood in Schenectady, New York. Within a mile of my house there were seven Catholic churches, mostly defined by the ethnic groups they catered to. However inclined we are to believe that immigrants to this country were wholeheartedly eager to shed the ethnicities and customs of their former homes—largely in Europe—and to embrace an Americanism that was more generic and modern and free, they often understandably clung to the security of groups of friends and associates who were their “kind” from the “Old Country.” Italians in my neighborhood called these fellow Italians “goombahs” or “paesans.” My block was made up of a great mix of these ethnicities—what in those days we thought of as diversity: Italians, Irish, Danes, Slovaks, Germans, Poles, French, English, Hungarians. We mainly went to different churches, but most of us were Catholic, and all of us were Christian. During my childhood, the Pope mobilized Catholics to pray for the eradication of Communism throughout the world. Not only was the Communist system seen as antireligion, it was also seen as dehumanizing. The people on my street, therefore, organized what was called a block Rosary. The Rosary is a tactile, counting device for keeping track of one’s prayers; but, more important, it’s a sacramental, a formulaic way in which Catholics can invoke prayers they all know well (like the “Hail Mary” or “Ave Maria”) on behalf of, in this case, the Pope’s cause—defeating Communism—or, more likely, other causes closer to our hearts—the restoration of health for some relative of a neighbor, for example. All of us neighbors would go into a different house every Monday evening. It would all take about 30 minutes. It included the oldest to the youngest members of families. We would greet each other warmly, kneel, do the special readings of that week, recite the prayers we knew so well, and go home. No refreshments even, ever. Among people who had accents and very different beginnings, we would affirm what we had in common. And our respective parishes had nothing to do with this. It was Church as originally conceived. That tradition faded away when I was about 12. It came back in full force, however, organized by my mother, when my younger neighbor, Suzie Zanta, was missing for any number of days—kidnapped, we thought, from her camping trip to the Adirondacks. We met every night and prayed for Suzie’s safe return, and for strength for her parents and brother. Alas, it seemed as if our prayers over that week were not answered, because Suzie was found in the woods raped and murdered. It had already been a summer of unimaginable loss as my classmate and paper boy, Phil Domblewski, had also been murdered in the Adirondacks. Coming together to pray, to affirm our solidarity, to draw on each other’s strength was a potent and poignant expression of community.
Over the past six months we have been challenged to reimagine community. While I have already suggested that a society or nation is different from a community, the emergency of the pandemic has caused us to behave differently, and to appreciate community. So, too, has the murder of George Floyd incited a nationwide shout of outrage at the behavior of police who act sometimes with malice and impunity, a cry for eradicating social injustice generally, and an affirmation that Black Lives Matter sounded passionately by people of all ages, colors, and creeds. In both cases we have learned something about people generally, and, perhaps, people more specifically.
Rights and Responsibilities I’ll speak first about the pandemic. Again, bear with me, another story of my schooling. In eighth grade at Steinmetz Junior High School, I had a great social studies teacher. She was an eccentric classroom veteran named Harriet Feigenheimer. She was fiercely committed to imparting knowledge about our system of government and the implicit responsibility each of us had as a citizen. I believe, for example, that when Mr. Thomsen and I began Civics for eighth graders at RL, I thought back to how inspired I had been about these issues at that age. Mrs. Feigenheimer taught us many important, tattooed things, but I remember especially the day she stood up on her spindly legs and shouted, “Joey, your rights end where the other guy’s nose begins.” “Gail, do you get it? Your rights end where the other guy’s nose begins.” She was teaching us simplistically a lesson both about rights and responsibilities, and the role of the law in ensuring civil, legal behavior.
I always think about the “nose” part of the maxim. We had quite an assortment of noses in that classroom. And after Mrs. Feigenheimer mentioned this, I looked around and studied each nose imagining that body part as the unassailable barrier between civic cooperation and lawlessness. It was a funny thought.
These days Mrs. Feigenheimer’s comment about the nose seems especially relevant. In fact, much of what makes me frustrated, angry, and fearful these days has to do with what people do with their noses. In particular, when they are out with me, do they cover them? And their mouths as well? We have heard continuously from medical authorities that maintaining social distancing, washing one’s hands regularly and well, and especially covering one’s face are essential if we are to emerge victorious over the pandemic. Your rights end where the other guy’s nose begins. We have learned from doctors and scientists that the virus is spread thanks to flying particles projected from the mouth and nose. What does this have to do with community? Everything. Literally if you do or don’t wear a mask is a matter of life or death.
When I first started to drive in 1971, one did not have to wear a seatbelt. Soon, however, it was a federal law that one had to wear a seatbelt. And also in my lifetime, though it is largely irrelevant to me, motorcycle riders were required to wear helmets. You might say that the car driver and the motorcycle rider should have the right to agree to the peril that would be associated with seatbelt-less or helmetless driving. In this instance, the law allowed that one did not have the right to put himself in peril in this way, because his possible subsequent vegetative state was not just a too bad for him; it affected those who would have to take care of him—family members or the state; and would unfairly require others’ resources to mitigate for what he had recklessly chosen to do. Yes, the helmetless motorcyclist would bear the brunt of his hubris, whatever its effects on those who would suffer due to his injury or death. But in the case of wearing or not wearing masks, there is no doubt people are principally putting others’ lives in danger. One wears a mask to protect others from your spittle, from your virus. When you refuse to wear a mask, you are saying loud and clear that you don’t give a damn about the other guy—friend or stranger. And you conveniently suggest—so implausibly—that you are making a political decision based on your rights to be free. Your rights end where the other guy’s nose begins.
Rousseau and Reprobates How do I behave in a community? We often are confronted with the idea that with freedom comes responsibility. During the Enlightenment, many philosophers opined about what each thought was in the best interest of both the individual and the polis or the community. Jean Jacques Rousseau is credited with authoring The Social Contract. Though others agreed with him for the most part, there were variations on the notion that humans can be free only to the extent that freedom does not inhibit the freedoms of anyone else; and the state has a responsibility to set up a system of expectations and laws that protects to the fullest extent possible the freedoms of each member. In effect, each has to give up a bit in order for all to get a lot.
I doubt very much that the maskless renegades I encountered in convenience stores in upstate New York this summer have read Rousseau. What they probably have heard somewhere along the way is more fundamental: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Or if their parents dragged them to church when they were kids, they might have heard what is insisted upon by every major religion, and that is “to love your neighbor.”
One Cupcake, Please In considering what it takes to be a valuable member of a community, we ought to imagine seizing opportunities for generosity, kindness, or defense of another. In our school—to my mind, if done well, the quintessence of community—we often treat each other as brothers and sisters, as lovable neighbors. And sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we intentionally are selfish or self-absorbed or vindictive. One year ago, on the opening day of our 375th year, I witnessed an incident that is emblematic of both sides of the issue. You may remember that we provided beautifully decorated, delicious cupcakes for everyone in order to celebrate the start of our 375th year. The cupcakes were collected in big boxes and placed on the tables in the back of the Refectory. Each person was to help himself. A sign said “Please take one.” At the end of the lunch period, as I wandered to the back of the Refectory, I came upon a student who was sputtering. The cupcakes were gone. He had not gotten one. What had happened? Chef Jason knew to get at least enough for the whole of the student body, faculty and staff, and several more, just in case. They were all gone. Someone had taken more than one. He had taken two or more. When he did that he denied a fellow member of his community his fair share. Was that community-minded? Was he really part of a band of brothers? Was that unselfish? Was that loving? No, of course it wasn’t. Just as I was about to console the boy and investigate whether there might be an extra cupcake in the kitchen (after all I hadn’t had mine either!), another boy
from a different class appeared out of the blue with a cupcake in hand and said to the disappointed boy, “Here you go. I’m happy for you to have mine. I don’t like cupcakes very much anyway.”
Within 30 seconds I was confronted by the deeds of a sinner and a saint. What a dramatic depiction of human nature. I was reassured that human instincts could indeed be admirable. I wondered if I would be as generous given the opportunity. I was struck not just by the kind boy’s gesture. I was also impressed that he was paying attention, that he seized an opportunity to be kind, that he was a wide-awake bystander who, through his thoughtful instinct, did something about his concern. He acted. He intervened. Bystanders In the horrible video footage that we saw over and over again, capturing the eight minutes 46 seconds of George Floyd’s merciless, murderous agony, we paid attention to the evil cop who murdered him. We could not help but notice, however, the other cops standing around complicit in the murder. And we noticed there were several other civilians standing by— bystanders—who failed to act. They failed to intervene. They failed to make a move. They failed to call out a criminal act and save the life of a helpless man.
When I was younger, we learned of the murder of a young woman named Kitty Genovese who lived in the Bronx. She was murdered in an apartment building on a Saturday night, and it turned out that scores of people in the building had heard her cries for help, the anguished pleas for mercy, and the gruesome sounds of murder and dying. They didn’t bother to do anything. As they said in the words of that time, they didn’t “want to get involved.” A few years ago, hoping to make the same point, I recounted the signs that had sprung up all over New York City and were especially prominent in the subway. The signs said See something. Say something. In other words, if you witness harm or criminal activity, even if you’re unwilling to put your own life in jeopardy by physically or verbally intervening, summon the police so that they can do their jobs and save the person or persons in question.
See, Say, Do In late July, Congressman John Lewis died. He had done amazing things in his life. He was kind, gentle, persevering, and principled. He was someone whom everyone loved and admired. It was not just, however, because he was kind that he was looked up to. It was because he acted. He lived his beliefs. And in the late ’50s and early ’60s, during the Civil Rights campaign, he joined the crusade of Martin Luther King. John Lewis, like some of you, was only 18 years old. But he experienced injustice in his own family. His parents were sharecroppers. They might as well have been the slaves that their grandparents were. Because for whatever rights Black people achieved thanks to the freeing of the slaves after the Civil War, we know that even until our own time Black people have routinely been prevented from exercising their democratic right to vote. Congressman Lewis knew that in his own family his relatives were denied the vote. So he decided to do something about something that he found reprehensible
and contrary to his vision of what the United States of America ought to be like. And so he joined the cause. He marched. He sang. He chanted. He was imprisoned more than 40 times. He was beaten and his skull fractured while marching defiantly across the now famous Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama. In the brand of non-violent protest that King and Gandhi advocated, Lewis was able to summon up his deep-seated Christian faith and act on behalf of that which was true and good and just.
But not only did Lewis march and protest and get arrested. He witnessed during the Lyndon Johnson administration the signing of a Voters’ Rights bill, by a Southern president, that intended to make things better, that intended to give all citizens— regardless of their color—the right to vote. But Lewis did not retire to his home satisfied that his goal had been achieved. Indeed, he believed, and often professed, that we should act slightly differently from what the NYC subway signs say. Lewis admonished, “See something. Say something. Do something.”
Today I want to dwell a moment on that last part. One could not help but be moved by the spirit of solidarity that swept across this nation in response to George Floyd’s killing and the similarly reprehensible murders of other Black people within a few months of Floyd’s death. These deaths, atrocious of themselves, became the sparks that illuminated what had been problems for a long time. These problems did not just have to do with voters’ rights (though the securing of these is a foremost priority). The outrage acknowledged patterns of police brutality and the consistent ways in which the society had denied Black people their rights as citizens. What was being called out was institutional, systemic racism that even in our own time, even in our own city, often treated Black people like second class citizens. We have been inspired not just to not be racist, but to be vigorously and single-mindedly anti-racist. In the last days of his life, Congressman Lewis visited the Black Lives Matter memorial in Washington, D.C. He was pleased that a vast, diverse group of people—young and old, Black and white—had taken up the cause, a latter-day evocation of what he had helped lead 60 years before. But there is one thing based on what he always professed that I’m sure Congressman Lewis would have reminded us.
Do something. Lewis was not content simply to be remembered among the martyred heroes of the Civil Rights movement. Instead, realizing that there was still more work to be done, he ran for Congress. He ran and ran and ran. And for thirty years he was in a place where he could do something, where he could sponsor and vote for legislation that helped to change the way people lived, the way they were treated, the way the government helped to insure their dignity and worth. He spoke always on the side of justice and was hell bent that his Congressional colleagues would not forget the opportunity and the responsibility they had to act on behalf of an America that was increasingly a land of opportunity, a society of equality, a broad community of care. His example begs the question, “What will you do?”
Our Political Duty This is a national election year. You know I care deeply about politics, but especially about honoring our responsibility as citizens. I wondered, as I was stunned and surprised by the numbers of people marching on behalf of social justice, how many of them had voted in the 2018 midterm Congressional elections. I wondered how many voted in the 2016 national election when only 63 percent of eligible women and 59 percent of eligible men voted. You might remember that Hilary Clinton received three million more votes than Donald Trump who prevailed in the Electoral College. What would have happened in those toss-up states if more people had voted? A much higher percentage of whites voted nationally than did eligible voters of color. What happened? Were these voters suppressed, discouraged from voting? Did they think their votes didn’t matter? A key way to affirm all citizens is to teach them to and admonish them to vote—to learn about and support candidates who, like John Lewis, will sponsor legislation that will change the way things are, uphold rights being protected and expanded, and support programs that uplift those who have been downtrodden. If you protest yet fail to exercise your right to vote, you are whistling in the wind, engaging in a ritualistic pageant that can only begin to inspire us to do the right thing. Voting, campaigning, and running for office signal both care and understanding about how to get justice done. John Lewis taught us that. Let’s all pledge at the least to vote this year and every single year of our lives. And if you are not yet eligible, make sure everyone you know votes. It’s our right. It’s our duty. Of course, I’m wondering what all those who so impressively marched and all of us are doing about this year’s election. If you’re 18, are you registered? If you’re not 18, are you paying attention? Are you
taking for granted the result one way or the other? Are you doing anything by volunteering or contributing to a candidate who moves you, who reflects your views? If the national election is not your cup of tea, and especially because racism is not only a national problem, but also a problem of our cities and towns, are you working for, and will you vote for, local candidates who represent your commitments to social justice, fairness, and change? This is your duty. You are smart. You are well educated. You have something unique to offer. You can make a difference. You can do something. And in time, I hope that you will run yourselves.
Our Finest Hour Finally, today, I return to the observations I made earlier about community. When I believed that the selfish, presumptuous actions of countless Americans, the premature opening up of certain states before it was safe or responsible to do so, the failure to believe and speak the truth put us all at harm, I imagined that too many people in our country never learned what it meant to be a vital part of a community. If they had, they would have been more concerned for others, more willing to sacrifice, more eager to exercise patience, to give the other guy the benefit of the doubt. This is what you all did. This is what marked our spring together if apart. This is what the vast majority of our fellow citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts did. In this Little Nursery it has been not just our pattern but our creed that we care fiercely for each other. As we wrap our heads around the challenge of treating people fairly, we must do even harder work in order to become a yet more welcoming, more just community ourselves. We can do that. And in this time of uncertainty and fear concerning the pandemic, we must again take special care.
We have tried, to the extent we know how, to provide an opportunity for boys to return to school, understanding that some of you, and some of your teachers, may not feel comfortable doing that. That decision is difficult. But to stay home and learn and teach remotely is fine. For those who are willing to come on campus, each of us has a different and special responsibility. We all need to adhere to the guidelines, to focus, to care, to sacrifice, to do something. In your actions and your words, help all of us to create anew a community that is not only brimming with friendship and love, but that acknowledges that what we do and how we do it can indeed be a matter of life and death. Please do your best. Today I have talked about community. I’ve chronicled events of our spring and summer that called on us to pay attention, to act, to care about and for each other. Think about people who have become their best selves on behalf of community-mindedness, empathy, action, kindness, outrage, and love. Let’s do more. Let’s be better. When all is said and done, when we look back on this era, when we remember the 375th and 376th years of the school’s storied history, let’s make sure that others will say that because of all of us, because of this glistening community, because of who we are and what we will do, that this was one of RL’s finest hours. //
How do you prepare a campus for a pandemic?
The Logistics of Teaching, Learning, and Maintaining Safety this Fall
A New Role, at a Consequential Time
Nick Poles ’09 Leads RL’s Technology Team | by Erin E. Berg
member of the Roxbury Latin faculty—and a member of the school’s technology team— since 2014, Nick Poles ’09 began his new role as Director of Information Services this summer, at a moment when the reliance on technology in teaching couldn’t be greater.
For a few years now, Nick has been trying to decide whether to remain on the teaching/coaching track he’d carved at RL, or whether he was ready for a full-time focus on technology, perhaps working for a company in the city. After all, it’s a field in which the evolution is swift, and stepping away from it for any long stretch can make returning to it difficult. In his new role, Nick has the best of both worlds: He remains at a school that he loves—and that loves him!—teaching Computer Science to eager and invested students, but he is able to focus on the technology with a depth he couldn’t before.
“The most challenging parts of my new role,” says Nick, “are 1) having to now manage a team of colleagues, whom I’ve always considered good friends, and 2) having to gather information about every system at a really high level—our Rave security system, Meraki wireless system, Google’s G Suite for Education, for example. Rather than just tending to my colleagues’ needs and the day-to-day challenges, I’m having to also maintain a very complete understanding of the bigger picture, technologically and institutionally. I have to keep tabs on what projects are happening: How are they evolving? What can I do to help? What do people need from me, or what can I get for them?
When the decision was made by RL’s Reopening Task Force early this summer that students would return in a cohort/ concurrent learning format, Nick and his team—which includes Nate Piper, Ken Hiatt ’93, and Myron McLaren— focused quickly on the work ahead.
“We proved to ourselves this spring that the systems we had in place would mostly work for remote learning,” Nick says. “We felt good about how quickly we made the pivot in March, which reinforced that—if we nailed down the professional development element for our faculty—we could always go remote. And we obviously know how to teach boys who are with us on campus. The question was: How do we account for
whatever is in the middle of that? And what does that look like?” Nick and Nate put their heads together, and the learning cart model began to take shape. “We began with the notion of a camera and a microphone in each classroom, but where we arrived was: How do we build the most flexible thing we can to allow for the most interaction between teacher and students, and students and students—at home and in the classroom.”
Focusing on developing a tool that was both flexible and cost efficient, Nate characteristically got creative and did his homework, realizing that the team could build a learning cart for one tenth the cost of a comparable pre-packaged model. The final learning cart design—which is being used in 40 spaces on campus this fall—is composed of a rolling, metal frame with a flat-screen TV mounted on it, and driven primarily by a Microsoft Surface Go 2 tablet connected to a wireless keyboard and Bluetooth speakerphone and a USB-C dock to make the system extensible, if desired.
Once they realized they could make the technology work, Nick with Nate quickly moved to: How do we make teachers feel comfortable using this cart, “that, quite frankly, looks like an alien,” says Nick, and helps them keep class going effectively in every type of format? “How you teach science is different from how you teach math,” says Nick, “which is different from how you teach Latin or English. We had to make sure this would work for everyone.” Faculty meetings began on August 26, and the entire tech team returned to campus full-time on August 3 to make sure everything would be up and running in time for school to begin. Nick says the most nerve-wracking factor was whether the hardware would arrive in time, given the global disruption to supply chains and the number of organizations placing orders for similar technology.
Nick points to three key factors that enabled this work to succeed: 1) The school’s Reopening Task Force, led by Headmaster Kerry Brennan, decided at the beginning of June—days after graduation—that the school would plan for a concurrent learning format; 2) The school is thankfully in a financial position to support the plan from start to finish; and 3) As Nick says, “Many hands make light work.” As a committed, effective team, Nick, Nate, Ken, and Myron fell quickly into distinct roles that helped get the job done. “The success of a process like this comes down to trusting your team,” says Nick. “We said, ‘This is the process, and we’re going to stick to it, and document it, and if one cart works, and we do the same thing over and over, we can get this done.’”
Thankfully, they were right. The technology—though, as all would agree, is still a distant-second to having every student in the classroom every day—does exactly what it was intended to. It is allowing the faculty to teach, and the students to learn, in a setting that prioritizes not only RL’s mission, but also the health and safety of our entire community. //
