A Visitor from Oaxaca shares his talents with young student artists. Folk artist Fernando Félix Peguero García estimates that about 3,000 people live in his hometown in the pueblo of Santa María Atzompa in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, and that 90% of them work in clay. Fernando, at the request of Visual Arts teacher Ellen […]
Two years ago Middle School parents Kathryn Scott and Wenda Gu made a philanthropic gift to BFS, and asked that it be earmarked for the school’s nascent Mandarin language program. The request might seem unusual given that the couple were new to the school and that their daughter, now a 7th grader, isn’t yet old enough to […]
Brooklyn Friends School Celebrates Ribbon-Cutting for New High School Facility at One MetroTech Student-Led Ceremony at 116 Lawrence Street, September 8, 2015 at 4:15pm Brooklyn Friends School celebrates its third century in downtown Brooklyn with the opening of a distinctly 21st-century school building. A ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new, 40,000 square foot facility for the 9th […]
“I’m trapped,” he said. “The school has always gone with my interests.” Upper School Art and History teacher Mark Buenzle’s false lament was his explanation for why he has been teaching at BFS for over 20 years. “We’re a good match creatively,” he concluded. Mark started out at BFS as a kindergarten teacher, a job he […]
Middle-Upper School Dance teacher Jesse Phillips-Fein ’97 traveled as part of an impromptu relief effort to Haiti in April, 2010. She was already planning the trip to the beleaguered country with her Haitian dance teacher Peniel Guerrier, and when the earthquake struck in January BFS dance teacher Jesse Phillips-Fein ’97 and her colleagues decided not to cancel […]
Outspoken science teacher Janet Villas has a mission to make sure BFS students grow into environmentally active adults. Through her leadership in the IB Environmental Systems class and the schoolwide recycling program, she’s become our “go-to” person on all things green. Middle and Upper School Science teacher Janet Villas has taught Environmental Systems in the Upper […]
Adam Distenfeld ’81, an acclaimed sculptor, is as direct and outspoken as much of his stone work, including his newest piece commissioned by The American University. “I was born in the Bronx and then I was adopted,” said Adam Distenfeld ’81 of his home life. “My parents’ first apartment was in Jamaica, Queens. The rest […]
Ellen Chaitin’s childhood “argument skills,” combined with a social conscience groomed in part at BFS, set her on the path to becoming a judge in the California Superior Court. “My parents didn’t want a school with social pretensions and they liked Quaker education,” recalls Hon. Ellen Chaitin ’66, a judge in the Superior Court of […]
Kings County Civil Court judge and former Federal prosecutor Dena Douglas received this year’s George Fox Distinguished Alumna Award for exemplary service to the community and to the school. “I was born and raised in Brooklyn. I lived in Crown Heights. I started Brooklyn Friends in kindergarten, so I’m a lifer. We moved to Lefferts Gardens when […]
Dr. Jonathan Pincus ’52 is Chief of Neurology at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Washington, D.C., and a professor of neurology at Georgetown University. He has also written two books, Base Instincts—What Makes Killers Kill, and the textbook Behavioral Neurology. “Brooklyn Friends provided an advanced curriculum and presented it with love,” says Dr. Pincus. “The […]
Martha Bridge Denckla ’54 is an MD and the director of the Developmental Cognitive Neurology (DCN) Department at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, a part of the John Hopkins Hospital institutions in Baltimore, Maryland. Of her department, Denckla says that “most of it is a research group. It’s a very academic place. I am a professor […]
Author of the critically acclaimed The Book of Calamities, Peter Trachtenberg began writing seriously at BFS and never stopped. Peter Trachtenberg ’70, an accomplished writer whose latest book debuted in August, entered BFS as a junior. “I was one of the subway contingent,” he said, referring to the fact that he lived on Manhattan’s Upper West […]
