November 3 marked the first Breakfast My Way of the 2025-26 school year, gathering members of the Gaynor community in the North Cafeteria to celebrate Dominican traditions. The breakfast was hosted by Megan Hogan, parent of Jackson in the Blue Cluster and also Chair of Stephen Gaynor School’s Board of Trustees. Breakfast My Way is an event sponsored by the Parents’ Association DEI Committee that brings parents together to learn about the breakfast traditions, holidays, and cultures of their fellow Gaynor families.
Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Stella Mulatu opened the breakfast by welcoming attendees and thanking those who helped set up the space that morning. She praised the collaborative effort it takes to create community events like this one, and the entire room applauded the different teams that came together, including Advancement, Security, Cafeteria, and Facilities. Stella also spotlighted the Students of Color Affinity Group and Jackson’s classmates as special guests that morning.
Megan then stepped up to introduce attendees to the Dominican Republic with a helpful visual aid made by Jackson for the Blue Cluster Identity Fair the previous year. She spoke about her family’s history and how they came to America as early as the 1920s and continued to arrive through the 1930s-1950s, during a period of civil unrest under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. She explained the mix of rich cultures that make up the Dominican Republic, and highlighted well known people from the country, including “probably the world’s best baseball players!”
The menu featured at the breakfast included los tres golpes (“the three hits”) of fried cheese, fried Dominican salami, and fried eggs, mashed plantains known as mangú, and cheese pastelitos. Megan explained how men who worked in the fields and made a living with physical labor needed a hearty breakfast because they wouldn’t be able to eat until they came home for dinner in the evening. Though times have changed and work has been modernized, los tres golpes is still a traditional, hearty breakfast that many Dominicans eat. For those in attendance, it was a filling and satisfying meal helping prepare everyone for the day, much like it did the workers in the DR!
Megan closed by thanking Keech Combe-Shetty for creating Breakfast My Way, and Gaynor for giving students and their families the opportunity to experience each other’s cultures. She added, “I have been so incredibly blessed by the fact that the school in a lot of ways has supported diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Megan’s sentiment was echoed by another Gaynor parent, Xiomara Pimentel. Xiomara is also from the Dominican Republic, and she shared with the group how excited her daughter Lianna was when she learned their culture would be celebrated by the school. “This is the first time that her culture that she loves, Dominican culture, has been mentioned at school, and here she feels like she belongs,” said Xiomara. It truly was a morning of community and cultural celebration.
There will be more breakfasts to come over the course of the school year! You can read more about previous Breakfast My Ways here.
