Encompassed is an ongoing oral history-style podcast series and interactive timeline exploring nearly eight decades of 77 years of Bronx Science alumni’s experiences. The interviews revolve around “encompassing moments"–experiences that both immersed the young student in discovery and, like a compass, provided direction for the next steps of his or her life. Listen to the first thirty conversations now, and keep an eye out for new episodes every month.

Encompassed: Bronx Science Alumni Stories

“It was a crazy time in the early ’60’s. I have a vivid recollection of getting yelled at for not standing straight during the pledge of allegiance, and I vowed never to go to assembly in the morning again, which I could avoid by going to Math Lab. That was really the focus of my life for a few years: not getting drafted, staying in engineering, finding a job that was related to the national defense effort, and stopping working when the draft lottery was over.”

Ken Flaxman '64

“It was very clear our teams would always get beaten by Clinton. Some things never change. I wonder if the chant we had is still used. It goes like: ‘Harass ‘em, harangue ‘em, make ‘em relinquish the ball.’ I guess you hadn’t heard that before.”

Judith Flaxman '65

“My sister was three years older than I am, so she had been in the country only a few minutes. We were going with someone from our housing project on a bus, and my sister asked her in yiddish, ‘What is that building? It looks different.’ And this woman said ‘that’s not for you. That’s a very special school, you can’t get in there because you’re an immigrant.’ My sister walked into that school with hardly any english and met Mr. Kopelman. He spoke yiddish to her and said, “you can come if in one month I can see that you can fit in here. If not, you have to go to another school.’ My sister, within one month, learned English, showed her ability in science. She’s the only student I know of who ever got into Bronx Science without taking the test. She was a brilliant student. But i think, when you ask me about Bronx Science, that school had a soul. It wasn’t just a technical entry exam–it had people there who had a kind of life experience, motivation, and a profundity about human beings, and that’s what made that school very special. It’s kind of the beauty and also the charisma of that school.”

Daniel Libeskind '65

“My creativity ended up in trying to solve problems. Principal Stanley Blumenthal used to have Lunch With the Principal once a month, where you could come to him with different things you wanted to fix. I would always come to as many of those as I could to suggest different things he could fix around the school and to this day I spend most of my time looking around the city for things I’d like to fix.”

Ben Kallos '94

“He let me adapt the books and, instead of writing a paper, make a short film. He was one of the few teachers who recognized that by focusing on film I wasn’t shying away from work–I was willing to do more work, but I just wanted to do the work that I wanted to do."

Eric Branco '02

“At Science I met other guys who were really into music. We ended up jamming close to every day. One of the bands I was in played at the Apollo Amateur Hour. I remember one of my English teachers came to watch me, which was amazing. We didn’t know what to call ourselves, and when we were auditioning one of the judges was like, “I got a name for you guys. You’re going to be called Chocolate Elvis.’ We were doing rockabilly music, and our lead singer was a Black guy who sounded like Elvis. We had called ourselves United Nations, but it wasn’t catchy enough, so we decided Chocolate Elvis had a nice ring to it. It was a melting pot of the city, and I remember just meeting people all the time. I was all over the place, just trying to experience new things. It was really fun.”

King Phojanakong '86

"I don’t know if this is okay, but I want to give a shout out to my best friend from high school Joshua Guitellman, who has now passed […] We had very different backgrounds but he was a great guy, always smiling and always happy, and we clicked […] Josh was the first person who passed away in my life that it took me a while to even get back to normal. My family was just like, “We don’t know what to do” […] It turned out to be his parents, who I had never met before he passed. Like I said, completely different backgrounds, but they opened their arms to everyone. Still to this day, around the time of his birthday, they’re always saying, ‘If you need to come over we are available.’ They always make time for us. They’re definitely the best remedy I’ve had since his passing and I’m so glad I got to know them [...] That's the great thing about a school like Bronx Science.  You take kids from all over the city, all different backgrounds, and you bring them into one place."

Mohammed Mahfuz '10

“My bag was already packed up before the end of the last period. You know, I spent a lot of time lamenting my commute, but in the end looking back on it, you learn a lot about yourself. You learn about your study habits, you make friendships on those commutes, and you form bonds. You form a bond with the city that I think no other New York City schoolkid does going to their zone schools […] I spent a lot of time writing on the train, and observing people. The most mundane things catch your eye, like a guy picking his nose or something, but then you notice the gnarled knuckles he has and you wonder how can such a thick finger enter such a small space […] I feel like to really encompass my Bronx Science experience, it was learning these efficiencies, where everyone else might take the longer route. I feel like these are the two forces that are grappling inside of me as a working writer–the inner Bronx Scienceite who craves efficiency, and then the writerly side."


Patricia Park '99

“You can’t yearn for something you don’t even know exists. It wasn’t exactly like you’re in a brand new land, but you kind of were. You’re in a land of rarefied intelligence. That doesn’t mean every kid there is a genius, by no means, but even if you have no interest in physics you still had a good physics teacher. Being a teacher’s a little like being a god. There were very few bad teachers, who were just punching a timecard there. I think they appreciated having smarter students. I mean, who doesn’t want to step up their game? [...] There was a consistency of civility at Science."

Richard Price '67

“In a period of awakening, your standard issue Bronx Science student is prime material, and that was true throughout the ’60’s.”

Todd Gitlin '59

"Intellectual surroundings always felt comfortable for me because I knew I could do it. When I was a kid, I was nobody in particular, but when I started first grade in Antwerp, I surprised everybody, because all of a sudden, that little pipsqueak is the head of the class […]I was used to being among the best, and then I’m thrown in with a whole bunch of the bests […] But I’m very tenacious, and if it weren’t so then I wouldn’t be a woman in physics because in those days getting into the field was very tough. But I’m very tenacious, and hardworking. The seed may have been sown [at Science]."

Myriam Sarachik '50

"There wasn’t a single female science teacher […] I remember my first plane geometry class, with a very attractive young teacher named Ms. Heinrich. She really had a lot of trouble controlling that class. But plane geometry I recall being totally mystified by for two or three or four weeks. And then suddenly it all made sense, and I loved it."

Philip Sarachik '49

“I experienced Bronx Science as an oasis of great conversation and imaginative inquiry. I don't remember ever feeling inhibited about asking basic questions. I also don’t remember actually doing any homework. I think we did it on the subway in the morning.”

Lydia Lazar '77

“Dr. Maskin was a history teacher, who had a very unconventional approach which stuck with me, and sometimes I still think about it, because he had a way of weaving pop culture into the lesson plan. I forget exactly what we were learning, but it was about the Roman Empire. He played Tears for Fears’ ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World,’ and then was like, ‘write an essay about how this applies to the Romans,’ which I thought was great. I think that kind of approach to writing I still have, because I write about pop culture.”

Dodai Stewart '90

“There was the joy of the insight of solving something. It came quite a bit in Math team […] There was usually some sort of very ugly, brute force way you could try to solve a problem, and then there was a really elegant way. I didn’t always find the elegant way but when I did, it brought me that same satisfaction […] My brain was already switching so much between topics, which every student does, but I think a good part is that I became very comfortable using both sides of the brain.”

Carl Bialik '97

"The lens through which I remember my Bronx Science experience is not necessarily through the lens of being denied any opportunities, institutionally speaking […]  I don’t think a high school has the job of molding a complete and separate society, that breaks away from issues that are grounded in the real world. I think the best a high school can hope for is at least educate people so they can see across those lines.”

Abraham Moussako '11

“I’m now the Associate Producer at the Public Theater in New York City […] and when I think about my mother growing up in the Dominican Republic with no medicine, the youngest of nine, or my dad growing up in rural Spain, tending cows, and then them coming over here and meeting at a church dance in Jackson Heights and then trying to make a new life for themselves, I feel so lucky to be pursuing what I want to be pursuing, and I feel like I totally owe that to the education I got and the people I was surrounded by.”

Maria Goyanes '97

“I’ve always really loved music […] A lot of the arts funding got cut when I was a junior so the band and orchestra and a bunch of groups were significantly reduced. I got cut from orchestra, and stopped playing […] That was always in the back of my mind […] We created this program called Building Beats, where we fund and provide music education for underserved students in New York City, from elementary to high school, teaching them to build beats and life skills.”

Sophie Solomon '06

“One thing about being in pageants is that people think you might not be the brightest. And once I mentioned I went to Bronx Science, they’d be like ‘Wow, that’s amazing.’ And I think that went a long way to show people you can be pretty and smart at the same time […] My platform during my reign was empowering youth through education. Because I had such a great experience at Bronx Science, I wanted to make sure that other youth had the same opportunities.”

Elizabeth Tam '06

“Being at Bronx Science, we were afforded privileges that most other high school kids don’t have. We’re not being body scanned all the time, we’re not being suspended, we don’t have a school to prison pipeline. Simultaneously, though, how does it reflect our school if a kid is struggling and instead of being taught remedial classes or having extra help, they’re just kicked out?”

Catherine Jung '08

“Most of us were looking for a theoretical and political rationale for dealing with the world. Many of us came out conservative because as we argued our way through lots of facts and ideologies, […] it became clearer and clearer that The Great Society wasn’t working” […] By the time Reagan showed up, half the team had become Reaganite conservatives before the fact.”

Lisa Schiffren '77

“There was a sense of freedom, like you could do what you want. You don’t realize it’s a freedom until you see other places that are not as free and don’t have that opportunity to step outside of your comfort zone and the opportunity to meet people from across your borough, beyond your borough, and really learn people and how to be around different kinds of people. Diversity is a wonderful thing–diversity of mentality, diversity of skill set, diversity of family upbringing, diversity of rebellion, whatever! It’s a wonderful thing.” 

Stacy-Ann Ellis '08

“I think there was a clear sense of entitlement and an arrogance that went along with myself and my peers in high school–there was a shrewdness and a hustle and I think that hopefully transformed into more leadership and responsibility–but I think overlooking the sense of entitlement and arrogance might be shortsighted.”

Bryan Weisgal '10

“Bronx Science shaped my life. It taught me that I could think critically, it taught me that I could hold my own with really smart people, it taught me that it’s ok to be different from everyone else […] I always kind of felt like an outsider, but I found my group, and we were all outsiders [...] I stole a doorknob from one of the classrooms, which I still have, because I wanted to have a physical memory of the school. So I’m on the lam.”


Valerie Smaldone '75

"I had many students who didn’t come every day. I would call their mothers, only to find out they had a brother who was older and they had to share shoes or something like that. I grew up in not a wealthy family but this was beyond. And often I noticed these women were despondent, some of them had black eyes, and […] I discovered that [domestic abuse] was not an uncommon problem. It bothered me for many many years: What could I have done to help them? What kept coming up was, ‘had you been a lawyer, you could’ve done something for them.’ As my 50th birthday was approaching, and my kids were grown, I said to myself, ‘If I don’t try to go to law school I’m going to die hating myself […]’ At least I will have tried.”

Judith Amkraut Flamenbaum '59

“Reading and rereading and rereading a poem causes it to change. That became my model in general–you know, you take the object and you try to study it. Because the kind of focus required to learn a poem was useful trying to understand my Halladay and Resnick Physics textbook, was useful for calculus, was useful for a lot of things.”

Fred Camper '64

“The class that saved me was Science Survey, which was the school paper, and Leonard Mannheim, who was the teacher of that class, was just superb […] He helped unlock my love of literature, which is something that has followed me for the rest of my life.”

Buddy Stein '59

"You can go to Bronx Science and for a moment all other things are suspended. Afterward we'll split up and go where our footholds in society take us […] but there is that feeling of this amazing squad of students […] There are those kids coming out of Fieldston who have read Dostoyevsky and analyzed and I didn’t. But I got these experiences and these friends that transformed my understanding of the city, which changes your life."

Zohran Mamdani '10

"Every year 6,000 people see the benefit of public education. Over 10 years, that's 60,000 people [...] You build a whole constituency of people who feel committed to public education. It would diminish our commitment if you closed the specialized schools. That question for me has long since been settled. We absolutely have to preserve them."

Daniel Marks Cohen '88

"Very few of my students end up becoming humanistic academics. But what I am hoping is that the kids I have in freshman humanities, who have to take it whether they like it or not, on some rainy day 25 or 30 years later when they're successful lawyers, whatever, and they're a little bored, take down one of those books that they for some reason saved."

Richard Streier '62

"Probably 90% of the graduates from '71, by the time we graduated college, were committed to some kind of social change. We walked out of those colleges into a world we felt we had to make a change in some kind of way. The last thing on our mind was salaries, or income. It was all about what are we doing for the collective good."

David Calvert '71

"There was a healthy sense of competition, but at the same time I think there was a great sense of helping one another. That's the experience that I had."

Karen Bhatia '94

Encompassed is an oral history-style podcast series and interactive timeline exploring nearly eight decades of 77 years of Bronx Science alumni’s experiences. The interviews revolve around “encompassing moments"–experiences that both immersed the young student in discovery and, like a compass, provided direction for the next steps of his or her life. Listen to the first thirty conversations now, and keep an eye out for new episodes every month.

Encompassed – Bronx Science Stories

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