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'Educate the Educators' visits PEA
Four student panelists, including two students from the Academy and two from local high schools, spoke from the Assembly Hall stage on Wednesday night about their own activism and how educators in New Hampshire can help foster diversity, equity, inclusion and justice (DEIJ) inside and outside the classroom.
The event was the third iteration of “Educate the Educators” series hosted by the Black Lives Matter Seacoast Youth Division in collaboration with the Portsmouth High School Equity Council, and the first held in person at the Academy. Moderator Kevin Pajaro-Mariñez, the Academy’s assistant director for equity and inclusion, is also co-director for the Racial Equity Educator team at BLM Seacoast and interim director of the organization’s youth division.
“Oftentimes…the perception is that what happens at Phillips Exeter is reflective of what happens down the street,” Pajaro-Mariñez said in his introductory remarks. “From my knowledge and my experience in the community, that tends to not be the case, and part of bridging that gap is to bring people together in conversation over important topics.”
The discussion kicked off with reflections on what youth activism meant to all four of the student panelists. Janaya Springer, a senior at Portsmouth High School, and Saniyah Bolton, a junior at Exeter High School and co-director of the BLM Seacoast Youth Division, spoke of their experiences living in predominantly white communities in seacoast New Hampshire, and how each of them were inspired to join (and start) organizations dedicated to racial justice efforts.
“What youth activism means to me is having conversations and listening fully to everyone’s opinions on issues that are considered or were considered taboo,” said Springer, who co-founded Portsmouth school district’s Equity Council in 2021. “These are real issues and if you just push it under the rug…it becomes even more of a problem for the marginalized communities who have to deal with the sweeping under the rug.”
The panel moved on to discuss the issues related to diversity, equity, inclusion and justice they believed needed to be addressed in the classroom, especially in light of legislation like New Hampshire’s “divisive concepts” law, which effectively limits discussions of race and racism in public school classrooms.
“[Representation] is one of the foundational blocks to make ensuring that everyone in any community is feeling seen and that everyone…has the resources they need to create empathy,” said Rowan Flanagan ’24, who works closely with the Office of Multicultural Affairs through clubs and affinity spaces and as a proctor.
“While lack of representation and DEIJ in schools and our institutions clearly harms people of color and other people with marginalized identities…it also harms those with privileged identities,” said Yasmin Salerno ’23, who is also a co-director of the BLM Seacoast Youth Division. “Because those with privilege growing up in a society that continuously stereotypes them as superior in some way creates a distorted sense of self that becomes a breeding ground for microaggressions…harms the potential for social relationships with marginalized peoples and feeds into a lack of empathy.”
Bolton suggested that teachers worried about the “divisive concepts” law let their students take the lead in activities and conversations around more controversial subjects. “Creating a more inclusive environment…would open up communication in general between students and teachers,” she said. “Those connections will guide that ability…to have that personal standpoint of not only acknowledging ‘hey, maybe I’m not too educated on this, let’s talk about it,’ but also, ‘I’ve experienced this, let’s talk about it as well.’”
Click here to watch the “Educate the Educators” event.
Before answering questions from the audience, which included a number of teachers from local public schools, the panelists spoke about how they cared for themselves while doing the difficult work of activism.
“When I first started out…I had this ideology that I was indeed going to save the world and become president of the United States at the same time,” Springer said with a laugh. “Having that mentality is very draining because you put so much pressure on yourself to solve every single issue, every single problem that we as a society face. But I think taking a step back and looking at the little progress you’re making in communities and hosting panels like this — that’s what’s going to change the world, slowly but surely.”
A lifetime of service
Trailblazing journalist shares 'hope' with Exeter
Weeding and reading
Around 8:15 on a morning in late April, one of Exeter’s distinctive “Red Dragon” minibuses pulls up to Saltonstall Farm in Stratham, New Hampshire, owned and operated by Sophie Saltonstall ’07 and her husband, Kyle. Instructor in English Jason BreMiller hops out of the driver’s seat and 11 seniors, all members of BreMiller’s spring term English class Literature and the Land, file out of the passenger’s side door.
The students assemble in a Harkness-style circle in front of the large white barn. Kyle, clad in a black hoodie and a baseball cap printed with strawberries, asks them what they know about weeds. They’re quiet at first — it’s still early, after all — but the conversation soon picks up.
“[Weeds are] parasitic, in the sense that they steal resources from whatever’s already there,” offers Kate Nixon ’23.
Kyle nods. “Everybody thinks farmers grow plants, [but] we actually kill way more plants than we grow,” he says.
In addition to reading assignments, including Camille Dungy’s poetry and Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Kimmerer, the students taking Literature and the Land spend much of their class time outside, observing and interacting with nature. Today’s Saltonstall Farm visit is one of a series of weekly class field trips; earlier in the term, they left campus at 4 a.m. for a sunrise hike in Pawtuckaway State Park in nearby Nottingham. Lit and the Land students have also explored Hampton Beach in the early morning hours, visited local apple orchards and beekeeping operations and paddled along the Exeter and Squamscott Rivers.
Now, the students file across the road to the strawberry fields, led by Hazel, the farm dog. Because strawberry plants send out long stems, with new plants growing from the ends, it makes mechanical weeding at this stage very difficult, Kyle explains. He kneels in the dirt to point out the main weeds plaguing the crop, including quackgrass (“my nemesis”) and the rosette-shaped yellow rocket.
Sophie hands out trowels and hand shovels as the couple’s nine-month-old son, Willie Nelson, peers out from a carrier on her chest. Kyle proposes a competition: Whoever pulls the most weeds will win a jar of farm-made strawberry jam.
Thus inspired, the students and BreMiller break into teams of two and get down to the work of weeding. As they work, some of the students stay close to Kyle, asking him questions — “How long does it take strawberries to grow?” “Do you guys use fertilizer?” — and chatting. Sheala Iacobucci ’23 mentions she’s taking a biology course in regenerative agriculture. “I think we’re coming here in a week or two on one of our field trips, so I’ll be back,” she says.
“I feel like I’m getting more dirt than plants,” Vibha Udayakumar ’23 says.
Kyle is reassuring. “Sometimes [the weed] doesn’t come out, and if it doesn’t come totally out, we’ll still get it in a death by a thousand cuts because we’re stealing a lot of its resources during its prime growing season,” he says. “So, there might be little bits that will come back, but it won’t be as bad.”
The sun has come out, lending warmth to the air. “You guys are doing great,” Sophie says. “Just another 100 hours or so and you’ll get to the end of the row and we’ll be done!”
A few ambitious students venture farther down the rows, separating themselves from the group. “Mr. Bre!” Jonathan Jeun ’23 cries. He holds up a large clump of weeds, their hair-like roots dangling, for his teacher to admire.
A few minutes later, the students begin wrapping up their work. They lug their buckets over for inspection, before heading back to the barn to wash up and board the Red Dragon back to campus. Kyle smiles as he assesses their haul. “I did not know a competition would work this well.”
Robotics team racks up wins at Worlds
Exeter’s Robotics Club took the Worlds by storm, compiling a list of accolades during the competition in Houston in late April.
Team VERTEX, the club’s top team, allied with teams from Longmont, Colorado, and Beijing China, to capture the FIRST Tech Challenge’s Jemison Division crown.
VERTEX was also recognized by the judges for:
- Second place, Promote Award, given to the team that is most successful in creating a compelling video message for the public designed to celebrate science, technology, engineering and math.
- Third place, Inspire Award, given to the team that best embodies the “challenge” of the FIRST Tech Challenge program. The team is a strong ambassador for FIRST programs and a role model FIRST Team.
- Deborah Ang ’24, Dean’s List winner, awarded to 10 10th or 11th-graders who have led their teams and communities to increased awareness for FIRST and its mission while achieving personal technical expertise and accomplishment.
Inventor Dean Kamen founded FIRST — For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology — in 1992 and hosted the inaugural robotics competition in a Manchester high school gymnasium. Today, Exeter is among more than 3,700 high school teams and 46,000 students participating in STEM-related competitions sponsored by FIRST.
PEA joined FIRST in 2018 and promptly found success, qualifying for worlds in the team’s first season. This year, the club featured three teams — VERTEX, Surface and Edge — in the state championships, where VERTEX took prizes for best robot and the Innovate Award for “the ingenuity, creativity, and inventiveness to make their designs come to life.”
FIRST Tech Challenge students learn to think like engineers. Teams design, build and code robots to compete in an alliance format against other teams. Robots are built from a reusable platform, powered by Android technology, and can be coded using a variety of levels of Java-based programming.
Exeter was one of 192 teams worldwide to qualify for the FIRST Tech Challenge finals in Houston. The team was assigned to the Jemison Division, where they competed against 47 other teams in a series of head-to-head matches. Matches are made up of several periods totaling two minutes and 30 seconds.
VERTEX compiled a 9-2 record in its Houston qualifying matches allied with various teams from the division. They were then chosen along with Beijing’s SUPERNOVA, by Up-A-Creek Robotics, the team from Longmont, to compete in the semifinals and finals. The three-team alliance swept all four playoff matches to win the division.
The triumphant Worlds appearance capped a busy season for the Robotics Club that included the addition of the Surface and Edge teams and the creation of a club podcast, “The Sum of Our Parts.”
“I’d estimate 6,000 total manhours across all team members,” said team captain Isabella Vesely ’23, and that only accounted for the time on the robot itself. “A significant additional number of hours go into community outreach, ranging from local to international levels, which both supports our goal of being non sibi, helps train our own members in technical areas and is an aspect considered at competition.”
Vesely, who is spending the spring term in Washington, D.C., as part of Exeter’s internship program on Capitol Hill, was only able to attend the competition in Houston for the last day and a half. But she said the environment was one of “adrenaline, excitement, and passion.”
“Houston’s one of the few places you can strike up conversation with almost anyone next to you about niche robotics details. Nowhere else can you find such a concentrated group of curious, talented, and fascinatingly engineering-addicted kids. The robotics community is consistently welcoming and nowhere else will you find hundreds of kids holding their breath watching robots zoom across fields, sometimes dramatically tipping or colliding, while scoring the critical points as the seconds tick down.”
Team VERTEX’s roster:
Isabella Vesely,’23;
Deborah Ang, ’24;
Tanish Tyagi, ’23;
Charles Potjer, ’24;
Celine Tan, ’23;
Avaninder Bhaghayath, ’26;
Teddy Duncker, ’25;
Chaney Hollis, ’23;
Byran Huang, ’25;
Eric Li, ’25;
Eli Pratt, ’25;
Alinne Romero-Torres, ’24;
Brenda Romero-Torres, ’24;
Riya Tyagi, ’24;
Annie Vo, ’26.
Built to scale
Exeter Deconstructed: The Davis Library
