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Benjamin Qian

On Jan. 22, TEDxGunnHighSchool Club hosted its 14th annual conference in Spangenberg Theater. The student-run event featured 10 speakers, club performances, audience activities, and student- and TED-produced short films. 

This year’s theme, chosen by TEDx club members, was “A Closer Look.” Speakers — including staff, students and other community members — delved into the nuances of music, puzzles, culture and more.

TEDxGunnHighSchool was independently organized under license from the nonprofit organization TED, which organizes talks around the world devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading.” Throughout the school year, the TEDxGunnHighSchool Club’s five committees plan and rehearse the conference, developing the theme, recruiting and working with speakers, publicizing the event, fundraising, and communicating with outside contacts, such as the Gunn stage tech department. 

Co-Head of Speakers junior Tanush Aggarwal led the speakers committee in recruiting and auditioning potential orators. After selecting the final students and adults, he supported them as they crafted and edited their speeches. During this process, Aggarwal found that time constraints and shifting dynamics made communicating with non-student speakers difficult. 

“With adults, it’s not only harder to find them and get them to show interest and set up meetings with them, but we also have to deal with them in a different manner than we do with students,” he said. “It’s a bit more professional and the adult has more control over their speech than with student speakers.” 

This year, social studies teacher and first-time speaker Benjamin Beresford drew on his decadeslong research on jazz in the Soviet Union in his talk, “The Notes in Your Solo: Jazz, the USSR, and the Power of Choices.” While Beresford unraveled a complex topic in his speech, he hoped to provide a takeaway that anyone, regardless of their level of historical knowledge, could understand. 

“The takeaway is for people to think critically about the choices that they make, and not just about the impact of their choices but what their choices say about who they are,” he said. “It would be great for people to come away from this being a little bit more reflective about that and the power of their choices.” 

Beresford’s speech stood out to junior Lia O’Donovan, who enjoyed the unique combination of topics he discussed. 

“I found it super interesting how you could combine jazz with the USSR, and how the principles are very contradictory but somehow also complementary,” she said. 

Freshman Eli Levy attended the conference in hopes of learning something new and supporting his older brother, Associated Student Body president senior Nathan Levy, who gave a speech on music and leadership.  

“It was really fun to see him speak because it let me see a new side of him,” he said. “It’s not like just talking to a friend or your brother when you’re giving a speech, as it let me see more of his leadership side. It was very fun and playful, it was this whole experience, especially with the picture he included of us when I was 3.” 

Talks aside, Eli Levy particularly enjoyed the interactive session hosted by Joy Dance Club. 

“In the beginning it just seemed like two people dancing, but by the end it was everyone in the entire theater dancing along with each other, and when I had been sitting down for two hours it really got my energy going,” he said.  

Similarly, O’Donovan appreciated senior Pablo Schettino’s film “Dear Mexico,” shown in between The Oracle Editor-in-Chief senior Amann Mahajan’s and Nathan Levy’s speeches. In the film, Schettino reflected on his connection to his culture.

“It added a perspective to moving, family and culture that I didn’t really see before,” she said. 

Those unable to attend the conference on Monday will soon be able to access this year’s talk on the TEDxGunnHighSchool website.

The city’s abundant wealth and resources create a Palo Alto “bubble,” which often causes residents to be unaware of hardships that people from other areas experience: lack of resources, funding and a clean living environment.

Educational privileges

Palo Alto is known for its excellent public school system. According to Niche, all three Palo Alto Unified School District middle schools are among the 15 highest- ranked middle schools in California; Palo Alto High School is among the top 10 public high schools in California; and PAUSD is the best school district in America. Gunn itself is ranked first in California and 35th nationally among public schools, according to Niche. In addition, Gunn has high standardized-testing scores and a graduation rate of 94%, higher than the public school national average of 85%.

Gunn is able to provide its students with exceptional education largely through PAUSD funding. PAUSD is a basic-aid district, meaning that it receives funding from local property taxes in addition to basic-aid funding from the state of California. Partners in Education also works to raise money specifically for teacher salaries across the district. Altogether, PAUSD receives nearly $300 million each year to support students’ education, almost 90% of which come from local taxes.

Using these funds, Palo Alto provides educational resources such as Gizmos, Naviance and other applications, available in each student’s Rapid Identity portal. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, PAUSD spends approximately $25,000 to $26,000 per student every year, exceeding the national average of about $15,000 to $16,000.

These readily available funds give Gunn students access to a variety of resources and extracurricular activities. Junior Solyana Biadglegne, a transfer student from Leipzig, Germany, who moved to Palo Alto in November 2022, explained the disparity in resources between Gunn and her old school. “This place is just incredible — I think it’s obvious because it’s Palo Alto and Palo Alto is a rich city, but also there’s so many resources and opportunities for you,” she said. “At my old school, we had great teachers and a few clubs, but that was basically it.”

Gunn alumna Shauntel Lim, a freshman at Northwestern University, explained that the educational preparation and support that Gunn provided her made her college experience easier. “Within Palo Alto, we have access to good teachers, classes and extracurriculars, whereas I come here and I hear about (other) people’s high school experiences, and it definitely sounds harder where they’re living, where their schools are underfunded,” she said. “They definitely have to work harder on their own to reach the same amount of achievement (at Northwestern).”

Most of the resources PAUSD provides, such as Individualized Education Programs that ensure specialized instruction for students with disabilities, are state-mandated. However, history teacher Benjamin Beresford finds that Palo Alto often offers more than the minimum required by state mandates, such as co-teaching and the Academic Center, which has student tutors available to aid their peers. “At my previous school, which was very small, we didn’t really have all of these resources,” he said. “I had students who would have really benefited from the resources you could get at a public school like Gunn.”

Gunn students are instructed by a supportive and qualified teaching staff: Many teachers have pursued higher education, such as masters and doctorate degrees, further improving the quality of education in Palo Alto. PAUSD guidelines also require teachers to meet certain standards of accommodation and attention to students.

Environmental factors

Palo Alto, as a major center of technological innovation, is home to many of today’s most prominent, industry-leading corporations. Hundreds of startups have begun in Palo Alto, many started by alumni from nearby Stanford University, including Google and HP. According to data from Pitchbook, a venture-capital database, Stanford graduates have founded more startups and raised more venture-capital funding than graduates of any other university in the country over the past decade.

Many have moved to the city because of its reputation for technological excellence: Biadglegne’s parents relocated her family to Palo Alto for those very reasons. “Palo Alto and Silicon Valley are known for innovation and good schools, so education and jobs are the main reasons we came here,” she said. “We found everything we needed and wanted.”

Palo Alto also has shopping centers, restaurants and recreational spaces both in and around it. However, rising property values create high prices for foods and goods compared to other areas — one of the pitfalls of shopping in the city.

Since 2021, Palo Alto has been designated as a Gold-Level Bicycle Friendly Community by the League of American Bicycles, and has plentiful communal amenities such as parks, playgrounds, libraries, and walking and biking trails. In 2021, only 15% of cities and towns in the U.S. received a Gold or Platinum designation. Although many take these facilities for granted, they greatly improve residents’ daily lives. For example, research from the Journal of Transport and Health found that people in more walkable environments had lower rates of obesity and chronic diseases. According to KRON4, Palo Alto residents have a 22% obesity rate, 11% lower than the national average of 33%.

Furthermore, Palo Alto’s natural environment is well maintained and healthy thanks to environmental services provided by the city. These services include Zero Waste, a waste-management system that seeks to decrease landfill waste and encourage composting; Watershed Protection, which reduces the amount of waste entering local waterways; and the Sustainability and Climate Action Plan, an extensive strategy to reduce citywide carbon emissions in coming years. To receive funding for these services, Palo Alto has several community partners that provide financial support to the city, including Stanford University, Friends of the Junior Museum and Zoo, Palo Alto Arts Foundation and Neighbors Abroad.

Expectations

Living in a wealthy city replete with resources, Palo Alto residents, including students, can be isolated from the challenges that less wealthy communities face. However, mental burdens still exist. While — or perhaps because — Palo Alto is a center of technological innovation and excellence, students often feel pressure to succeed and surpass their peers academically. Biadglegne said the environment at Gunn is more competitive than that of her previous school. “At my old school, it was competitive, but it was also a small school,” she said. “Even if one had an accomplishment or internship, they would tell their friends to apply, and if someone has a big accomplishment, everyone celebrates it. But here, they (often) say, ‘Don’t tell that person I got an internship at this place.’”

This competition and pressure manifests itself most conspicuously during the college admissions process. Beresford noted that Gunn students often have high expectations to attend prestigious universities after high school. “There’s a culture that you’re expected to apply and go to some kind of elite (university) like the Ivy Leagues, or at least Berkeley, Stanford, University of Chicago,” he said.

As a result of this culture, students often become hyper-focused on their grades and test scores. “A student’s motivation to complete work is around getting a certain grade, not necessarily around completing an activity or understanding,” Beresford said. “As a teacher, it can feel like my intent for why I’m teaching you something feels different from (a student’s) reason for wanting to learn something.”

Additionally, with the abundance of engineering, computer science and science-based companies and opportunities present, students often face pressure to pursue and succeed in STEM-related fields. Gunn alumnus Michael Wang, a freshman at Brown University, said that if somebody mentioned that they were from Silicon Valley or the Bay Area at Brown, people would automatically assume that they planned to work in technology or computer science.

Palo Alto has established Wellness Centers and mental health resources to support students. Gunn has mental health professionals working on-site, as well as an established SELF program to aid students in social-emotional learning. The ability to create such resources is, in a way, yet another example of Palo Alto privilege: According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, during the 2021-22 school year, around half of public schools in the U.S. received funding for mental health services, and less than 41% of schools hired staff to focus on students’ mental health.

Ultimately, Lim believes many Gunn students are unaware of, or do not acknowledge, the privileges they possess. “It’s important to acknowledge problems (outside of our bubble),” she said. “(This includes) socioeconomic and racial problems. Living within the Palo Alto bubble, we don’t see a lot of that firsthand.”

On Feb. 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. The two nations have a history of conflict, which can most recently be dated back to the Russian annexation of Crimea—an ethnically Russian peninsula bordering both Russia and Ukraine—in 2014. Now, eight years later, the conflict has escalated to a full-scale war, and its effects have rippled worldwide. At Gunn, it has fostered discussions about both its short-and long-term impacts, inspiring students to create change.

Classroom Discourse

The war’s effect is most dominant in social studies classrooms, where discussion of current events is consumed by the ongoing war and lessons have shifted focus to draw parallels with the present. Rather than proceeding with her curriculum, U.S. Foreign Policy teacher Tara Firenzi has put the current war at the forefront of her class discussions. “We talk about it every day,” she said. “Some days, we’ve actually devoted the entire class period to it. But most days, we have 10 minutes to check in about any new developments.”

Similarly, Social Studies teacher Dr. Benjamin Beresford—who has a Ph.D in history with a focus on Soviet and Russian history— has been informing students about the ongoing war and its developments. “I have colleagues and friends who have family in Ukraine and Russia who are directly impacted by this,” he said. “It’s something that I felt really strongly about—to make sure that people knew what was going on.”

Placing the war in a broader historical context and discussing its long-term effects is crucial to Dr. Beresford’s class discussions. In his Contemporary World History classes, Dr. Beresford began the year by covering the Cold War and the emergence of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Students were then able to contextualize one cause of the conflict: Ukraine wants to become a part of NATO—a military and political alliance founded in 1949 in response to aggressive actions of the Soviet Union during the Cold War—and Russia is opposed to it. In his classes, Dr. Beresford also discusses the “war of information,” which refers to the Russian government’s heavy control of the Russian media and ban of the term “war” when referring to what the Russian government calls a “special military operation.” He uses the opportunity to talk about detecting reliable sources and censorship.

In the Contemporary World History SJP class, the discussion revolves around race relations and inequalities. The class recently watched a video clip of a group of students of color who were trying to cross the Polish border but were denied entry. Sophomore Annabel Honigstein found the clip particularly compelling. “It hits harder to see things happening in front of you rather than just reading about it,” she said.

In almost every class discussion, Honigstein has observed a strong emotional reaction. “I think discussions are difficult, to be honest,” she said. “For most people, it’s very emotional. They know people in Ukraine, and I know people in Ukraine, so it’s been rough.”

Teachers such as Firenzi feel that the emotional reaction is an essential component to discussions. “Everybody is pretty appalled,” Firenzi said. “The moral and the human implications are always a part of the conversation [in addition] to just the technicalities of what’s happening.”

Student input has also been at the forefront of both the discussion about the conflict. In U.S. Foreign Policy Honors, students like senior Andrew Schoenen have been able to reflect on the war. “After we cover some news article or hear some interview, Ms. Firenzi has been super helpful in giving us question time about logistics of the war we don’t understand, as well as providing a floor for people to give their takes about what they think will happen or how well the U.S. and other countries are handling the war,” he said.

Community Response

In the SJP, many students have been spurred to action, primarily through the protest. According to Miller, students took initiative in organizing the Mar. 25 event. “Students came up with different ways that they wanted to show their support and bring attention to some of the social justice issues that are happening during the invasion of Ukraine,” he
said. “[The protest] wasn’t just about supporting Ukraine; it was also about supporting Russian middle-class workers that are out of jobs, children harmed by the invasion and the refugees of color who are having a difficult time getting out of [Ukraine].”

Along with bringing signs and shouting chants during the protest, SJP students compiled a brochure with information about the war and how others can support it. They encourage donating clothes, food and money to organizations such as Voice of Children, International Rescue Committee and Razom for Ukraine, which then deliver directly to Ukraine. Another way to help the cause is to email California senators Diane Feinstein and Alex Padilla about how they can help support Ukraine.

Clubs are also taking action. Most recently, the Red Cross and Amnesty Clubs partnered to hold a feminine hygiene product drive for Ukraine. The clubs are accepting pad and tampon donations in bins outside rooms E-02 and H-01,  which they will send to Meest America, a U.S.-based distribution center accepting humanitarian aid packages for Ukraine. The products—which the clubs say are often overlooked when donating—will be delivered to the Ukrainian city Lviv and dispersed to relief organizations located in the country.

Support for Ukraine is not exclusive to Gunn; it reflects the response throughout the greater Palo Alto and Bay Area communities. In Palo Alto, lawn signs sporting the slogans “We stand with Ukraine” and “Support Ukraine” have populated residential home lawns. The city hall is also lit in blue and yellow every night. Community members have put Ukrainian flags in front of their homes as well as posters with QR codes to donate to Nova Ukraine, a nonprofit created in 2013 by a group of Ukrainian Bay Area residents to provide humanitarian aid and raise awareness for Ukraine. The organization regularly hosts events—fundraisers, meetings with Ukrainian celebrities and roundtable discussions about Ukraine—which have helped them raise $8 million since 2014.

Since the outbreak of the war, however, the Nova Ukraine group has focused on their Emergency Response project. They post regular updates to their website about how to help Ukrainians; most recently, they have partnered with United Nations Children’s Fund USA, delivered aid to Ukrainian refugees and organized rallies.

To contribute, consider visiting the donation resources page compiled by the SJP (https://linktr.ee/helpukrainegunn) or donating feminine hygiene products to the Red Cross and Amnesty Clubs.

Social studies teacher Dr. Benjamin Beresford recalled that he did not expect the relaxation of the mask mandate. “I’m not sure I agree with the decision, but when I first heard about the mandate, I felt fortunate to work in a district with a high vaccination rate,” he said. “It’s also hard to say that it is too early to be unmasking because we don’t know what a post-pandemic world will look like.”

Junior Evan Huynh had concerns that the mask mandate was lifted too early. “I was surprised when I first heard about it because I thought it was a bit too early with all of the variants,” he said. “However, I think it’ll be nice to see some familiar faces and go back to how it was before COVID-19.”

On the other hand, some students like freshman Evangeline Albrecht anticipated the mandate relaxation and believe it is a step in the right direction. “We have reached a point where we can ease out of wearing masks, especially since we live in Palo Alto, which is pretty conservative and safe,” she said. “I think it’s been a long-time coming, and I am honestly excited for the steps.”

However, the mandate raised several concerns. Beresford, for one, remains worried about the new COVID-19 variants. “There is the new BA.2 variant, and there is a lot of speculation that it will show up in the U.S.,” he said. “With this new mask mandate, we might see ourselves back in masks by the end of the school year. The pandemic isn’t over yet.”

Not all concerns are safety-related, though. Albrecht noted that unmasking may lead to insecurities about appearance. “I think that the mandate will cause some newfound insecurities that will make it hard to start unmasking,” she said. “Masks can be annoying, but they can provide anonymity and cover up your face. You don’t really need to care about your looks with a mask, and without it, you become more self-conscious.”

Huynh believes the new mandate will benefit student education. “I’ll be able to connect with peers and teachers on a more personal level [with maskless instruction],” he said. Dr. Beresford seconds Huynh’s views that maskless lessons will improve the teaching experience. “Especially for world languages, the ability to see the phonics will be a big advantage, particularly for the younger and beginner students,” he said.

Still, Dr. Beresford plans to keep his mask on. “It’s an easy precaution that I can take that has almost no effect on my life and ability to do my job,” he said. “It protects other people. There may be students who are hesitant to remove their masks, but if they want to take them off, I’m okay with them keeping them off or on.”

Albrecht believes that it will take some time for people to begin taking off their masks. “[On the first day,] everyone was wearing their masks,” she said. “For the first week, I don’t think the new mandate will make much of a difference. But I think that after a couple people begin taking off their masks, it will become more comfortable and people will gradually begin to follow and start unmasking.”

Huynh plans to unmask after observing and waiting for some time. “Personally, I might wait just a little bit to see if everything is all right and whether everyone else is wearing or not wearing a mask,” he said.