Bantam Check-In with Daniel Zauderer ’10

Daniel Zauderer ’10 is an alum living in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, NY. He shared some reflections about his experience living in the city and working as a 6th grade teacher at The American Dream Charter School in the South Bronx.

When the pandemic forced our school to shutter its doors, reports came quickly of unemployment, food insecurity, and lack of stable internet access among our South Bronx families. While these realities have been a source of upset and heartbreak, I am touched and inspired by our response as a school community. In the face of extraordinary circumstances, we have worked hard to ensure that all students — especially the most vulnerable — receive a quality online instruction.

Covid-19 may be an inescapable reality of life, but it won’t stop our students from learning. In addition to distributing Chromebooks to all students, we launched a fundraiser on GoFundMe to provide relief for our most vulnerable students, including internet hotspots, food essentials, and shipments of educational products directly to students’ doorsteps. Less than a month later, we are close to reaching our $15,000 goal.

Unlike many urban schools serving low-income minority students, our school delivers daily live instruction through Zoom. Not only have we retained extremely high attendance, but we have also focused on ways to leverage online platforms to make our lessons highly engaging. One example is an online collaborative poetry experience resulting in our students’ work being featured in the media.

My life as a teacher has changed in many ways since my school had to shutter its doors in mid-March, but my favorite part of the job remains the same: connecting with my amazing students on a daily basis.

While this pandemic is horrible and terrifying in so many ways, I also think that it’s provided all of us with a rare chance to step back and think about what’s important to us. If we can emerge from this pandemic recalibrated and truly focused on what lights us up as human beings, then that will be a bright light at the end of a long and dark tunnel.

On staying connected to his Trinity network: I pledged the fraternity CROW—Alpha Chi Rho—my Sophomore year at Trinity. My Crow brothers and I stay in touch to this day; five of the people in attendance at my virtual 32nd birthday party were Crow brothers I met at Trinity. Another Trinity friend of mine and I studied abroad together in Amsterdam in our Junior year and we’ve been close friends ever since.