Issue 16

Page 1

Volume 118 Issue 16

The Record

Horace Mann’s Weekly Newspaper Since 1903

record.horacemann.org January 15th, 2021

In-person schooling to resume on Tuesday Claire Goldberg Staff Writer On January 19, all students and faculty will return for in-person schooling, Head of School Dr. Tom Kelly said to 446 members of the community in a town hall. Kelly conducted the town hall on Wednesday to provide an update on the health of the community and the conditions for the return. During the town hall, Kelly announced that the school has applied to be a verified vaccination center for the Bronx community. If the school is approved, it would designate a single facility to vaccinate people in the local community. This center would be constantly cleaned in order to prevent additional risks to the school community. “If we can step up and help out our community in the Bronx, you bet we will,” Kelly said. All students and faculty members have to supply proof of a negative test before returning to school. As of Tuesday and since the first day of school in September, the entire school community had 63 positive tests, Kelly said. To facilitate easy and safe access testing at no cost, for the return to school the school opened a testing facility on campus that administered tests to 800 students. In addition, 8% of the student body will be online when school reopens. On Wednesday, the school ordered 200 doses of the vaccine for faculty and staff members. While the school is not requiring employees to be vaccinated, most are opting to do so, Kelly said. “We’re looking like we’re going to have herd immunity among the faculty by the end of the school year, assuming the vaccine works as intended.” The school will reopen on Tuesday and test 40% of the community this upcoming Friday, Kelly said. If there are a minimal number of cases and the source of these cases can be identified, the school will

continue on a regular schedule, he said. The school might adopt a new testing schedule to increase safety and provide a sense of normalcy, Kelly said. In this case, every member of the community would be tested every other week according to an odd/even schedule so that 100% of the community would be tested every two weeks. Jennifer Rosenberg P’22 P’24 said she favors the new testing protocol because it helps keep both the school and home environments safe. “I’m thrilled to hear that my kids get testing because it keeps us all safe,” she said. “‘Test as often as possible’ has become my motto.” The school expects to see exponential increases in cases due to the more vigorous variant and the increasing case numbers in the tristate area. The school expects to see moments where students and employees are asked to quarantine, and quarantine numbers may go up in light of regional increases in cases. Daniel Steinman P’20 P’26 said hearing about the exponential growth rate of cases was reassuring. “It was paradoxically comforting, because it was so obviously realistic,” he said. “I felt that we were being spoken to very directly and given the full picture of what lies ahead without any censorship.” During the first 11 weeks on campus, the use of buses, the pick up and drop off routines, and lunch were not found to be venues for the spread of the virus, Kelly said. As such, the school will continue to offer bus services. “We’re never going to be a school of have and have nots; if we can’t have the buses we will not hold in-person school,” he said Extracurricular activities and athletics contributed to the school’s need to quarantine larger numbers of students; however, the school will see IN PERSON on p. 5 Emily Shi/Features Editor

RAPID TESTING COVID testing occurs in the Prettyman gym.

Wexlers visit “Literature of the Levant” Hanna Hornfeld and Sean Lee Staff and Contributing Writer Award-winning Ethiopian-Israeli filmmaker Esti Wexler and Israeli producer Elad Wexler, her husband, visited English teacher Dr. Deborah Kassel’s Literature of the Levant class yesterday. The Wexlers co-founded Abaynesh Productions with the goal of telling intersectional stories, inspired by Esti’s immigrant, Jewish, EthiopianIsraeli, and female identity, according to their website. As a friend of the Wexlers, Kassel invited them to the school to conduct a Unity Week workshop last year. This year, she invited them back because they could add a unique layer to her class, which celebrates the diversity of Middle Eastern ethnicities, religions, and cultures through the lens of film and literature, she said. After Kassel introduced the Wexlers, and the couple showed a clip from the first major film they created together, “Lady Tity Sings the Blues,” Kassel invited students to ask questions. Members of her class had spent the previous day independently researching the Wexlers and preparing questions, Kareena Gupta

(12) said. The little Ethiopian representation in Israeli film and television tells a story of sadness, pain, and poverty, Elad said. The Wexlers wanted to change this narrative with their films. “Lady Tity Sings the Blues” is a comedic drama about an Ethiopian man. The film’s use of Ethiopian culture, music, and humor allowed the Wexlers to portray Ethiopian-Israelis as unique and happy individuals, Esti said. Taking control of the way Ethiopians are represented has always been important to Esti — even in art school, she did not allow her white peers to interview Ethiopian people. As a child, when journalists interviewed Esti about her emigration from Ethiopia, she felt uncomfortable. “I asked myself, ‘Why are they controlling my story? I want to tell my story,’” she said. “I noticed when you are not telling your [own] story, you can say whatever you want and you can hurt the people you are talking about.” The concepts of representation and taking control of one’s narrative resonated with Ericka Familia (12). “Especially as a Hispanic American living in the U.S., I don’t see my culture often expressed or depicted in mainstream media,” Familia said. She found the Wexler’s goal of reaching the wider Israeli audience with

their films to be meaningful. The Wexlers try to represent marginalized voices beyond EthiopianIsraelis in their films, such as members of the LGBT community in “Lady Titi Sings the Blues.” “In our community, there is no discussion about [LGBT people],” Este said. “If you ask my parents, they will say to you there are no gays, there is no transgender. It’s not thought of as something positive or acceptable. I have a lot of things to say about racism, but we also have to check ourselves and see people that need to be heard.” Kassel hopes to challenge students to continue to educate themselves about the complex reality of many cultures of the Middle East. “I wanted to present a vision of a world strong enough to withstand the false, misinformed perceptions of others religions, ethnicities, and complexions,” she said. “I value my role as a teacher as an opportunity to deconstruct biased scripts by sharing a multiplicity of voices and truths in the spirit of peaceful and mutually respectful coexistence.” Gupta found the intersection of Ethiopian and Israeli culture in Esti’s story to be inspiring. “We haven’t really focused on Ethiopian-Israeli culture, and it’s interesting to see these two worlds come together,” she said.

LEARNING ABOUT RACISM Feris teaches parents.

Parent Institute

Nonprofit founder Sachi Feris discusses racial equality Alex Lautin Staff Writer Sachi Feris, the founder of Border Crossers, a nonprofit organization focused on racial equality, held a workshop with the school’s Nursery and Lower Division parents on Tuesday to spur proactive and concrete conversations about race. Feris emphasized rejecting older teachings that focused on color blindness and instead encouraged parents to discuss race forthrightly with their children. Parent Institute Director Wendy Reiter said Feris’s workshop fit the institute’s current mission of antiracism, diversity, equity, and inclusion perfectly. “The goal of the Parent Institute this year is to mirror the conversations that students and faculty members are having regarding issues of race in our country,” Reiter said. “I’m really quite proud of the roster of speakers we have put together for this year’s Parent Institute events, including Ms. Feris.” Feris’ workshop was predominantly focused on how parents should navigate discussions about race with young children, Reiter said. “As you grow, your ideas of race are often greatly influenced by the conversations and values you have at home and how they become inculcated in your own development,” she said. “This was really to offer parents of young children an opportunity to learn how to confidently answer their children’s questions of race if they didn’t quite know how to respond.” Feris provided parents with images and picture books to provide them with tools to foster beneficial conversations of race with their children. “It was not a presentation,” Reiter said. “And that was the goal. It was a hands-on workshop for parents to navigate different ways to approach difficult conversations with their children.” Feris was introduced to the school community by Parent Institute consultant Martha Haakmat, Reiter said. Haakmat, an educator who works with schools on diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism, was familiar with Feris’ work and thought she would be perfect to jumpstart the institute’s antiracism discussion. “Tuesday’s event was designed to answer parent, grandparent, and caregiver requests for more conversation and more practical information about the how of raising anti-racist children,” Haakmat said. Reiter held a planning meeting with Feris prior to the workshop where she introduced Feris to the school’s values and truly learned of Feris’ expertise. “We provide them with context of what Horace Mann School is, what are our values, what is our mission, what the mission of the Parent Institute really is, and what we provide our HM community,” she said. Reiter said Feris’ devotion to working with young children was also clear during the meeting. To recognize race and identity from the beginning of the workshop, Feris split parents into breakout rooms in which they all said their names, affiliations, and racial identities. In the frequent series of breakout rooms that followed, parents were also able to interpret various images and reading materials together. “I think speaking to other parents is always awakening and helpful,” Meghann McDonell P ‘28 P’ 30 P ‘33 said. Feris included polls as a part of her workshop. Each poll was focused on gauging how comfortable parents are with discussing race with their children. The results showed that parents were indeed hesitant to teach their children topics of racism. The more parents discuss race, the more comfortable they’ll feel doing so, Feris said during the workshop. From the workshop, McDonell learned racism and self identity

see PARENT INSTITUTE on p. 5


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