The Inside Press

Magazines serving the communities of Northern Westchester

school

Back to College Reflections ‘The Pause Button’ … and Accepting Change

by

Me, just chilling at home, like I’ve been
doing for MONTHS.

Growing up, I was always that kid who called their mom to pick them up from sleepovers. I don’t know if it was because I didn’t like being away from home or because I missed my parents too much. Maybe it was a combination of both.

It’s funny because I was the one who started researching sleepaway camps and eventually found the one that my sister and I went to. I think it’s because I felt like it was something that big kids do. And yet, every phone call would end with me gulping down my tears, every visitor’s day would end with a counselor needing to calm me down and one year, every night I would fall asleep listening to my parent’s wedding song. It’s okay, laugh at me. My parents do.

When it came time for me to go away to college, I was so nervous. Would I be okay on my own? Surprisingly, I was fine! I mean, I ended up transferring but that’s a story for another time.

Like people say when relationships fall through, I’ve come to the realization that it’s not “you,” it’s me. It wasn’t where I was sleeping over or the summer camp I went to. I am just a homebody. I like having my two feet on the ground where I am most comfortable.

So when COVID hit and the world came to a halt and all college students were sent home, I really wasn’t devastated by the move.

I was made for this!

While a lot of my friends cried and were really sad to leave college, I came to terms with it pretty fast. Yes, I was sad that I’d be missing my first spring in Boston. Yes, I was sad because I finally felt like I found my groove in a new city and was finally enjoying college and it was put on pause. But…

I get to hang out with my twin sister, my parents and my dog? Sleep in my own bed? Not have to shower with shower shoes? This was a deal that I could be okay with.

Being someone that loves a routine and hates change, I found a good system at home that I have stuck with since March that consists of exercising daily, making pancakes way too often and putting most of my energy into my blog (shameless plug for operationhappinessblog.com or @operationhappinessblog on Instagram). Oh yeah, I also had online classes I had to squeeze in. But those didn’t cause any stress, just a lot of snack breaks and a severe focusing problem toward the end.

Initially, I would talk with my friends from school 24/7. It was like we never left. But as the months went on, I noticed that every day it would basically be the same: Hey, miss you! What’s new? Nothing? Same.

It became harder to talk to my friends every single day when there was literally nothing else to say. How was texting supposed to be the main form of communication I’d have with them for the next six months? Long distance is hard, especially when both parties are stuck at home doing nothing.

While I cherish my friendships greatly, if you know me, you know how important my family is to me. In high school, there were plenty of Friday nights where I said no to plans with friends because I would rather sit on the couch with my parents, eat candy and watch a movie.

Well, as you can imagine, there’s been plenty of candy eaten and plenty of couch sitting since March as a family. My parents were no longer empty nesters for a span of six months and I suddenly became attached to being home more than ever.

I was content. I couldn’t relate to the feelings of my sister or peers who were saying they just HAD to leave home and go back to school. Of course I want to go back, see my friends, decorate my apartment and eat from my favorite takeout place. I also know that if we were sent home again, I would be totally fine.

I can’t help but worry that leaving for my junior year of college is going to be much harder than leaving for school my freshman year. Things have changed. The world has changed. I’ve changed.

School is inevitably going to be different because of the times we are in. But I have a feeling that my habits will remain the same, now more than ever…me, sitting on my nonexistent couch because my apartment is the size of a toddler’s shoebox, eating candy and watching a movie with my roommates. Sorry Mom and Dad, you’ve been replaced. But I’ll be home soon.

The JOY of School Theater

by

Photo by PhotoWorks of Pleasantville

As the recorded soundtrack kicked in and the curtain opened on the stage at Pocantico Hills School, my eyes welled up. What the hell? I hadn’t had a kid there for four years. Seated in the refurbished auditorium with a friend to watch the middle school production of A Lion King, I surreptitiously dabbed at my eyes. I tended to shed a tear or two whenever my own children took the stage, but I didn’t know 95 percent of the kids in the show. Why was I getting emotional? It took me a few minutes to figure out that I was in the throes of an almost-empty-nester moment, a multi-sensory reminder of where my kids had been, where their love of theater had started, and with one in college and one about to go, it brought up a lot for me.

It was also just weeks since I’d watched my son play Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at Briarcliff High School, the final three performances of his high school career. I was filled with pride, but also gratitude. The Briarcliff theater department had given my son, my daughter before him, and my family more than any of us could have predicted over the course of seven years. It was difficult to part.

Having enjoyed performing in the musicals at Pocantico under the direction of the wonderful Sheila DePaola, my children sought out theater in high school. And there they discovered much more than an after-school activity. They found their closest friends, their community. And they found passionate teachers and mentors.

Briarcliff’s program, which involves a fall drama, spring musical and a show of one-acts, is devoted as much to theater education as to the production itself. The outstanding director of the program, Ian Driver, loves the process of creation and development, and as a committed child-centered educator, he takes his students on the ride with him, always a great adventure that culminates in an incredibly enriching and collaborative theater experience.

Whether Shakespeare or musical comedy, theater depends on collaboration. A show is the epitome of team effort, and each member must pull his weight and honor her commitment to the whole for the show to come together successfully. With each production, the students gain a broader understanding of storytelling, the power of music, the tension of drama, the satisfaction of problem solving and the magic of performance. And they gain confidence. There is comfort in numbers. Teenagers who have never taken a dance lesson become tap dancers, in an ensemble. Students who have never swung a hammer become carpenters, part of a crew.

The theater welcomes budding divas and other talented young adults, some with beautiful voices, some with an innate gift for acting, some with excellent comic timing. But it also beckons the shy and the disenfranchised, the student who hasn’t enjoyed social acceptance in other spheres of school but finds belonging in building the set, singing in the chorus or playing in the pit. Theater can also bridge socio-economic and racial divides.

At Pocantico, almost every middle school student, regardless of their background, participates in the show, making those differences less apparent. The theater provides a home for those with artistic impulses but no other place to discover or exercise them. It’s a place to develop skills that may lead to a career or just wonderful memories. Ultimately, school theater programs offer students a unique, close-knit, artistic community that embraces differences, something not always found in the prevailing suburban sports culture.

We raise our kids here because of the excellent schools, the beautiful setting, an escape from the stresses of city living. But for some kids, the suburbs can become stifling and one-dimensional by the time they reach high school. Theater offers kids an escape from the mundane, an outlet that reaches beyond the confines of school. It also instills in them a love and reverence for the performing arts, something they can enjoy the rest of their lives.

The first time I teared up in the theater with one of my children was 14 years ago, when I took my daughter to see Beauty and the Beast; she was just seven or so. It was her first Broadway show, and it moved me to watch her react to the spectacle on stage, to remember the shows I saw as a child.

I have been moved by my own kids over the course of their childhoods as they performed in 25 productions and counting. I was moved by the realization that they worked so hard through the hours of repetition and waiting, the frustrations and obstacles, to reach that sweet moment when the orchestra plays the first notes of the overture, the curtain falls away, and they transform into characters inhabiting another time and place. That’s when I always feel a catch in my throat. The artistry and confidence they and their cast mates will exude over the next two or three hours never fails to blow me away. But mostly, I am grateful that they have known what it is to be part of something big and beautiful.

Photo By PhotoWorks of Pleasantville


 

Taking a Break to ‘Just Breathe’

by

As I write this column during winter break, my family is about to embark on our annual pilgrimage to South Florida. We can’t wait for the airplane to depart from Westchester County Airport. We need sunshine, long afternoons by the pool and the gentle breeze of the palm trees.

There is some predictability about these trips. We will use the hotel’s waffle maker for breakfast. One of us will inevitably get sunburnt. I can pretty much guarantee what restaurants we will eat at with the grandparents. My kids not true gourmands yet, relish a dinner at Cheesecake Factory in Delray Beach.

And I will delight in knowing that I don’t have to load and unload the dishwasher. I won’t have to nag my kids to put on their shoes so they can make the bus. I don’t have to concoct a dinner in 20 minutes because everyone is starving and I can abandon my after-school chauffeur duties. In short, I will breathe.

After reading Connie Whitehouse’s essay about high school students exploring gap year options, I completely get it and secretly wish that we were traveling to South Africa instead of South Florida. Although I never went on a gap year or studied abroad, I did live in the UK for two years in my young adulthood with my husband and we can both unequivocally say it was a formative experience. Pushing me out of my comfort zone truly broadened my horizons and changed my perspective on so many things.

With the rigor of high school in a highly competitive yet award-winning school district, I fully understand one parent who commented “I just want my daughter to take a year to breathe and just be.”

As I was discussing the piece with the writer, I said to her “Wow, I wish they had gap year options when I was a high school student.” She said that she overheard many of the parents in attendance at the fair saying they wish they too had gone on a gap year.

So with spring approaching and warmer weather coming, I hope you will get a chance to step outside your comfort zone and

just breathe.

Here’s to a sweet and beautiful spring for all of you.

Enjoy,

 

 

 

P.S. I am so proud of our publisher Grace Bennett celebrating a 16th year of publishing Inside Armonk and Inside Chappaqua Magazines. I am also embracing our new slogan: Sharing the Heart of your Community. In more news, the Inside Press also launched its latest hyperlocal magazine this month, Inside Pleasantville. 

Byram Hills High School unveils Latest Interdisciplinary Art Mural with a Focus on Physics

by

PHOTOS COURTESY OF LISA FLAM

At Byram Hills High School, unwelcoming hallways full of cold, bare cinder block wall have become the oversized canvas for colorful, creative and incredibly detailed paintings celebrating subjects like literature, history and chemistry. These eye-catching, collaborative pieces of hallway art have sparked conversation, and maybe even some inspiration as well.

The murals of Byram Hills, created every other springtime, are the product of visual arts teacher John Anthony Lopez, who works with other educators to transform curriculum into carefully crafted artwork. In total, a mural will take 18-months to complete, with students involved in its production the whole way. From the beginning, the jobs of research and image input fall upon students who are taking courses in the mural’s subject area. Later, the mural is finished off with a four week period of painting by Mr. Lopez’s advanced drawing and painting class.

Creating Enduring Artwork

“The goal is, first of all, to create a lasting testament to the students and the curriculum, but also to give students an experience in creating public art,” Mr. Lopez said. “It’s something they can come back to in years, and even decades to come.”

Each mural features an abundance of historical figures, sites and works of art or literature that relate to the curriculum. The murals are painted in the proximity of the classrooms where the subject is taught, sometimes bringing several stretches of cinder block to life.

“They’re an expression of the importance that our faculty sees in their curriculum, and in different ways of expressing it,” Mr. Lopez said. “And it shows a love of the material.”

Music Mural Kicked Off Project

The first mural came about in 2008 when Aaron Lockwood and Marna Weiss of the Music Department worked with Mr. Lopez to make the band and orchestra space feel less industrial in a way that incorporated the curriculum. The result was the two-part band and orchestra mural that features famous artists from Duke Ellington to Mozart.

Mr. Lockwood, the only teacher whose mural is inside a classroom, still refers to it a decade after its creation.

“I find it especially inspiring when I can point to a face on the mural, and make a connection to the composer and/or the style of music being played in class,” he said. “Recently, to generate a conversation about the Mozart piece that we were learning in class, I pointed to the wall and said, ‘Mozart is watching. If he were to comment on your articulation, what would he say?’”

After this success, murals were produced for World Languages, Chemistry, World History, and Literature in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016 respectively.

Einstein Serves as Inspiration for Latest Mural

This spring, the sixth and most ambitious mural to date, was created. It’s called “The Evolution of Physics,” named after the title of Albert Einstein’s famous book.  The mural covers two 30-foot walls that face each other, and features over 30 noted physicists from across history.

For the first time, this mural features 3D elements such as a solar system and golden spheres traveling downhill to demonstrate acceleration. In an interactive twist, QR codes have been included throughout the work of art, which can be scanned for more information (this project is not yet completed; biographies of the physicists that can be viewed once the QR code is scanned are being worked on by current physics students).

Hidden in this mural are meanings and metaphors left for visitors to uncover. Why is Johannes Kepler dropping the apple onto Isaac Newton’s head? Why is Einstein looking toward Newton across the hall? In this mural, placement of the figures is all relative, stimulating realizations and reinforcing material learned in the classroom.

“It’s that surprise factor,” said physics teacher Paul Beeken, who spearheaded the mural with Mr. Lopez. “We’re hoping this will be the hook to keep students interested. By design, this wall involves dozens of different themes all running concurrently. That’s the whole point. We want them to come back to the wall four and five times, and each time see something different. It’s complicated on purpose.”

Dr. Beeken, whose excitement for this project is driven by his passion for physics, hopes the mural will generate student interest in the sciences.

“I’m not trying to turn them into scientists per se, but I do want them to appreciate its importance in their lives,” he said. “I’m shameless in trying to get kids hooked on the idea of learning how science serves them and the framework for understanding our world.”

How successful the mural will be at generating interest in the sciences has yet to be seen, but one thing is for certain, it draws plenty of attention.   

“The walls were really bland before,” said Danielle Cronin, a rising senior at Byram Hills High School who assisted with the painting of the physics mural. “I think the mural really makes people come to the physics hallway to figure out what the mural is about.”

A Music-Ability Minded Program: Rock On Music School

by

(L-R) David Meyers and Sophia Tuohy, a music student from Armonk
PHOTO COURTESY OF DAVID MEYERS

David Meyers found his passion for teaching music to children with disabilities quite accidentally. Having spent most of his career in real estate, music was relegated to a side pursuit that he relished when afforded the time. In 2008, however, that all changed when he began teaching a youth music program at New York’s Patterson Recreation Center. Playing and writing music moved to the forefront of his focus as his career took an unanticipated turn.

A New Beat

As Meyers became acquainted with the learning style of today’s children, he saw that to resonate with his audience, he would need to devise his own curriculum. He explains, “I quickly found that kids no longer absorb music in the same way as when I was a student. Modern music is heavily electronic and lyrics are oftentimes not age appropriate.” As a result, Meyer’s unique “RockOnMusicSchool” technique was born. He created original music and developed a learning method that began with simple lyrics, accompanied by the most basic guitar string work that gradually advanced to intricate songs with chords requiring increasingly complex finger work.

Serving the Underserved

In teaching, Meyers found a renewed sense of gratification, saying, “It’s the first job I’ve had that isn’t just about the dollar and that is so personally fulfilling.” The role soon became even more meaningful when a friend approached him to give lessons to his son who has autism. Meyers adapted his mainstream curriculum and within a few months saw his new student develop confidence through music. That experience shaped Meyers’ music school. He says, “I made a personal commitment to cater to this audience. These children have a tremendous need for recreational opportunities and are such an underserved community. Music provides them with a creative and social outlet, while building self-esteem, fine motor and language skills.”

Meyers now teaches music lessons through organizations such as SPARC (Special Programs and Resources Connections) of Westchester County as well as through his RockOnMusicSchool, providing one-on-one sessions at students’ homes. “Conducting lessons in a child’s home is so beneficial to those with physical disabilities that may make it challenging to get out or those who thrive within the comforts of their own environment,” Meyers says. Lessons are fine-tuned based on each child’s unique abilities. As Meyers points out, “Depending on the child’s circumstances, we might select strings, drums or keyboard.”  He also modifies lessons by focusing on specific skills such as developing eye contact, sounds or social cues. To engage the kids, he often writes “silly, personalized songs” to get them excited and motivated for playing music.

Marilyn Tuohy of Armonk has become accustomed to hearing Meyers’ fun lyrics throughout the hallways of her home. “My daughter Sophia has Down Syndrome and loves music, which led a friend to recommend David to us. He really knows how to interact with her and gets her engaged no matter what her mood. He brings all instruments including drums, shakes, the keyboard and guitar and always comes up with new songs that are so alive and appealing to kids. They learn the lyrics right away. After David leaves, Sophia as well as my two sons and even my husband are still singing! I’ve seen my daughter’s speech and fine motor skills develop as a result. She speaks slower and clearer and is always singing in the house.”

Music is known to have therapeutic qualities and Meyers agrees, explaining, “Music has a natural timing and rhythm that serves to encourage children to use their voice in response to appropriate cues. Songs have a built-in conversational script that is valuable for children who have social challenges. Students learn to manage frustration, gaining the understanding that it’s okay to mess up and that they will eventually advance. It’s all in their control. These are skills they will take with them into adulthood.”

A Satisfying Crescendo

Today, that first client that inspired RockOnMusicSchool’s mission is now proficient in keyboards, bass, drums and guitar and has developed a love of The Beatles. Meyers proudly reports that this student has also integrated into a mainstream music class. “Each child already feels the music inside of them–some just need guidance to get it out,” he adds as we wrap up our conversation. And, it seems that Meyers has mapped the path as he continues to encourage all children to find a love of music in their own unique way.