Tim Paydos’s interest in using the latest technology to solve problems can be traced back to the early 1980’s, when the first computer arrived at Renbrook. He remembers sharing the excitement as Marg Ayres, Head of the Math Department, set up the big, clunky Apple computer in the library and called it “the Computer Lab.” Hooked, Tim continued to explore the possibilities of the new technologies as they evolved through his time at St. Paul’s and then at Harvard, where he majored in Foreign Relations with a specialty in Nuclear Wargaming. Tim’s studies included government and history, sociology and psychology, and statistics and probability. How would he use his varied interests and aptitudes? Would he follow many of his talented peers into investment banking? No, Tim was excited to deliver value to society through innovative, geeky technology.

“Like many who pursue a career in healthcare, it was my personal experiences as a patient that led me to seek a meaningful way to contribute to the practice of medicine,” explains Emma Kagel ’97. Forging her path in the rapidly evolving field of bioethics, she has drawn on her struggles and triumphs as a profoundly deaf child and an early adopter of cutting-edge medical technology. Now she is making a difference at Beth Israel Lahey Health as a compliance officer, addressing ethical issues in medical research. She is also the founder of Bioethics Alliance, whose goal is “to foster evidence-based insights and best practices to advance bioethical dialogue, therapeutic partnerships, and ethical action for a just society.”

Renbrook alum, Morgan Caswell, Zoomed in to give seventh and eighth graders a window into how science and technology are at work to solve a complex environmental problem in Southern California. The students were riveted by her clear explanation of how she is coordinating the efforts of industry, government, science, and citizens to clean up some of the dirtiest air in the country. What was Morgan’s path to this critical job?

Last year’s seventh-grade Life Science class discovered three American chestnut trees in the Renbrook Forest (Renbrook Magazine Winter 2022). This exciting find enabled students to dive into the historical, cultural, and economic significance of this once-dominant hardwood and the introduced blight which swiftly killed over four billion trees in the early decades of the 20th century. It also provided them with a unique opportunity to join the American Chestnut Foundation (TACF) in its bold mission: “to develop a blight resistant American chestnut tree through breeding, biotechnology, and biocontrol, and restore the tree to its native forests in the eastern United States.” By sending twig and leaf samples and other data to TACF’s regional scientist, Renbrook students helped expand TACF's database of all the known wild chestnut trees in the United States. But this was just the beginning.

While rigor is a term used often in education, its meaning varies greatly depending on who is using it. For those of us within the college preparatory, independent school world, one frequently reads or hears about programs, teachers, and/or curricula that are either rigorous or lacking thereof. 

Katie Jackson is in her second year of teaching at Renbrook. We interviewed her to learn more about her passion for learning and teaching. 

“SCIENCE: Because figuring things out is better than making stuff up.” This quotation from Neil Degrasse Tyson, is emblazoned on one of Howard Wright’s favorite T-shirts, and it sums up the core of scientific thinking. Evidence, tested and tried, is the basis of knowledge, not assumptions, hunches, or opinions. Skepticism, readiness to reconsider, and openness to new evidence are essential to scientific thinking, and our Upper School students live it every day.

Olivia Goodrich, Upper School STEAM teacher, is all about inquiry-based learning. The process goes like this: start with a question; observe; gather data; generate more questions to guide further observation; continually revisit the same phenomenon to dig deeper; test your previous conclusions.

Athletic Director Peter Reynolds beamed as his familiar, raspy voice rang out at the dedication of the Gengras Family Field. What a difference our beautiful new turf field will make to our students! A reliable playing surface for our teams to practice and compete on, regardless of the weather. A dry outdoor classroom for physical education classes. “Our athletes will have a new, stronger sense of pride as they wear the blue and walk onto this field,” he boasted.

We asked Jessica Wawzyniecki, Lower School STEAM teacher, “How does scientific thinking develop over the course of Grades One through Four?”

In the Beginning School, children are naturalists. Our 75-acre campus beckons them to explore the outdoors and the creatures, plants, and rocks they find there. They are taught to stop, pause, and look more closely. Our youngest students are not bound by a curriculum; they follow their own discoveries and observations. Their teachers build on the children’s own curiosity to lead them into the process of formal inquiry.

For the next several weeks, follow us as we explore the notion of scientific thinking. What do we really mean by scientific thinking, and how does it inform our teaching and learning at Renbrook School?

As adults, we tend to overlook the complexity of the ability to make meaning from something we read because we have been doing it for a long time and because it happens automatically and instantaneously for so many of us. For children, though, especially during the elementary school years, there is so much involved in processing print.