The Marker

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Our lives are transformed by questions. Prompting us to examine, to reflect, perhaps to see in a new way, good questions help us to connect with ourselves, with others, and with the world around us. Sometimes we encounter questions that spark a new insight immediately, while others linger, resonating over time as we ourselves change and reconsider them. At Saint Mark’s, we make asking questions an intentional practice, recognizing their power to transform our work together. WHAT IF? As we launched our master planning process last fall, we began with variations on that theme—not, at first, about the physical campus, but rather about the teaching and learning that will define Saint Mark’s 30 years into the future. At our opening faculty and staff retreat, we considered together the interactions that shape great teaching and learning: interactions between students and students, students and teachers, teachers and teachers, school and parents, Saint Mark’s and our partner schools, and more. Further, what are the crucial elements of teaching, learning, and working at Saint Mark’s as we prepare our students for their lives as responsible global citizens? One that certainly stood out was a continued focus on hands-on, inquiry-based work that empha- sizes collaboration, connections across disciplines, and both critical and creative thinking. First grade’s worm project is a great example of this kind of work in action; I knew something good was happen- ing when first graders began showing up at my door excited to share books they had written about how worms compost! WHO MADE THIS MESSAGE—AND HOW CREDIBLE ARE THEY? WHO IS THE TARGET AUDIENCE? IS THIS FACT, OPINION, OR SOMETHING ELSE? These are a few of the essential questions students learn to apply in Saint Mark’s media and information literacy program. Building on foundational skills that stretch back to a student’s earliest days at Saint Mark’s, our graduates move on with some of the most important elements of a 21st-century education: the abil- ity to evaluate and filter information, to think critically and to understand, and to marshal media of various forms to shape one’s message effectively. Watch our students at work—researching primary sources, corroborating facts, creating projects as part of the eighth grade Media Literacy Week— and you see the sophistication of their questions, analysis, and creativity. The National Association of Independent Schools has recognized our program with a Leading Edge award. Yet our focus is on improving it. Director of Technology and Information Services Bonnie Nishihara is leading a review of media and information literacy this year, including a self-study and visit from outside edu- cators. Our visitors praised many strengths; one noted that our seventh graders’ source evaluation and fact corroboration outshine the skills of her college students. The executive director of Project Look Sharp is eager to partner with Saint Mark’s not only to help us improve our program, but also so that it might serve as a model for schools nationally and internationally. Such inquiry and self-evaluation is not new at Saint Mark’s; on the contrary, this theme of thought- ful innovation runs through the school’s history. Just as we ask our students to reinvent themselves from stage to stage, to create new capacity as they adjust and adapt to new challenges and oppor- tunities, so do we consistently strive to renew and reimagine our practices. Thoughtful innovation, building from strength to strength, asking questions that prompt us to reflect: These are hallmarks of the school, renewed each day. JOE HARVEY HEAD OF SCHOOL IN THIS ISSUE OUR NEW HEAD OF LOWER SCHOOL • STUDENT POETRY • SERVICE BECOMES PARTNERSHIP • DONOR PROFILE • ALUMNI NEWS THE POWER OF QUESTIONS WINTER 2013 M arker the THE NEWSLETTER OF SAINT MARK’S SCHOOL

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The newsletter of Saint Mark's School

Transcript of The Marker

Page 1: The Marker

Our lives are transformed by questions. Prompting us to examine, to reflect, perhaps to see in a new way, good questions help us to connect with ourselves, with others, and with the world around us. Sometimes we encounter questions that spark a new insight immediately, while others linger, resonating over time as we ourselves change and reconsider them. At Saint Mark’s, we make asking questions an intentional practice, recognizing their power to transform our work together.

WHAT IF? As we launched our master planning process last fall, we began with variations on that theme—not, at first, about the physical campus, but rather about the teaching and learning that will define Saint Mark’s 30 years into the future. At our opening faculty and staff retreat, we considered together the interactions that shape great teaching and learning: interactions between students and students, students and teachers, teachers and teachers, school and parents, Saint Mark’s and our partner schools, and more. Further, what are the crucial elements of teaching, learning, and working at Saint Mark’s as we prepare our students for their lives as responsible global citizens? One that certainly stood out was a continued focus on hands-on, inquiry-based work that empha-

sizes collaboration, connections across disciplines, and both critical and creative thinking. First grade’s worm project is a great example of this kind of work in action; I knew something good was happen-ing when first graders began showing up at my door excited to share books they had written about how worms compost!

WHO MADE THIS MESSAGE—AND HOW CREDIBLE ARE THEY? WHO IS THE TARGET AUDIENCE? IS THIS FACT, OPINION, OR SOMETHING ELSE? These are a few of the essential questions students learn to apply in Saint Mark’s media and information literacy program. Building on foundational skills that stretch back to a student’s earliest days at Saint Mark’s, our graduates move on with some of the most important elements of a 21st-century education: the abil-

ity to evaluate and filter information, to think critically and to understand, and to marshal media of various forms to shape one’s message effectively. Watch our students at work—researching primary sources, corroborating facts, creating projects as part of the eighth grade Media Literacy Week—and you see the sophistication of their questions, analysis, and creativity. The National Association of Independent Schools has recognized our program with a Leading Edge award. Yet our focus is on improving it. Director of Technology and Information Services Bonnie Nishihara is leading a review of media and information literacy this year, including a self-study and visit from outside edu-cators. Our visitors praised many strengths; one noted that our seventh graders’ source evaluation and fact corroboration outshine the skills of her college students. The executive director of Project Look Sharp is eager to partner with Saint Mark’s not only to help us improve our program, but also so that it might serve as a model for schools nationally and internationally.

Such inquiry and self-evaluation is not new at Saint Mark’s; on the contrary, this theme of thought-ful innovation runs through the school’s history. Just as we ask our students to reinvent themselves from stage to stage, to create new capacity as they adjust and adapt to new challenges and oppor-tunities, so do we consistently strive to renew and reimagine our practices. Thoughtful innovation, building from strength to strength, asking questions that prompt us to reflect: These are hallmarks of the school, renewed each day.

JOE HARVEY HEAD OF SCHOOL

IN THIS ISSUE

OUR NEW HEAD OF LOWER SCHOOL • STUDENT POETRY • SERVICE BECOMES PARTNERSHIP • DONOR PROFILE • ALUMNI NEWS

THE POWER OF QUESTIONS

WINTER 2013

Markerthe

THE NEWSLETTER OF SAINT MARK’S SCHOOL

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RUNNING HOMEThad Reichley joined Saint Mark’s as the new head of Lower School this year. He grew up on the Puget Sound, the oldest of five children, and he’s been teaching in one way or another since the arrival of his first sibling. Most recently he served as the head of middle school at Crossroads School for the Arts and Sciences in Santa Monica, following teaching positions in the Bay Area and Aspen, Colorado. His wife is a native San Franciscan. Here he talks purposeful meandering, modern education, and the unexpected benefits of slowing down. INTERVIEW BY JENNIFER WOLFE

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Q: Which came first, this job or the desire to return to the Bay Area? TR: The desire to return to the Bay Area was the driv-ing force, but when I started the process last year, we thought it was going to take a couple of years to find the right position. We have a lot of family here in Marin, and we wanted to move while our daughters were young so they could grow up surrounded by their cousins, aunts and uncles, Grandma and Grandpa. And now we are surrounded! It’s been great.

Q: After college, you traveled, you did the ski thing...TR: Yes, right out of college, I lived on a 40-foot sailboat with three other guys and we sailed through the Caribbean. One of my roommates in college bought the boat after gradua-tion and he needed people to crew. I was learning as we went, so I just didn’t know enough to be nervous. But when we left, we had an eight-day passage from New York to Bermuda, and we hit a huge storm—30-foot waves, all that. Looking back on it now, it’s pretty frightening. Once we got to the Caribbean, it was mostly easy, but there are some big trips in there. We went down as far as the north-ern coast of South America and came back up to the Bahamas through the Intercoastal Waterway.

After that, I went back to Washington, to the San Juan Islands and worked in a camp through the sum-mer and fall, as a ropes-course instructor and then as the camp baker. Then I moved to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and my excuse for doing that was that I was applying to graduate school. But I deferred because in the meantime I had met two guys who were jugglers and—this was in the early days of the Internet—we got this idea for something called Nature’s Web, which would connect schools along the Lewis and Clark Trail. We twice went from Colorado to the ocean and

back, visiting schools and doing juggling performances to get the kids excited, and then we would go into the fourth and fifth grade classrooms and do presenta-tions about Lewis and Clark. Being in the classroom with teachers made me realize I really did want to go to graduate school and get my teaching degree.

After I graduated from Brown, I got a job at a char-ter school in Marin City that folded after a year, which led to me teaching third and fourth grade at Live Oak in San Francisco, then the same grades a few years later at a school in Aspen, Colorado.

Q: What strike you as the interesting issues or challenges in education today? TR: First is the growing list of what schools are ex-pected to deliver these days. It’s tough to strike the balance of providing an education while also deciding what that means and determining how much we need to be the ones who educate around certain aspects of emotional stability, dealing with friends, how to navi-

gate social networking sites. Emotional intelligence is impor-tant to keep at the forefront, though. And there are other things at play—like how much technology is appropriate in the Lower School—but I think it is a bit egotistical to try to predict the body of knowledge that students will need when they leave an institution, and it’s bet-ter instead to focus on the skills and characteristics they’ll need. Saint Mark’s does a good job of focusing and evaluating.

Q: Which areas of Saint Mark’s curriculum interest you? Are there any you would like to examine?TR: Project-based learning is an area in which our teachers have already begun to experiment, but I would like to help them pursue it more deeply. To have a four-to-six-week project that allows kids to be engulfed in an interest, that has them living

and breathing and deeply understanding something is powerful. Project-based learning allows teachers to follow their passions as well, which is another way to get even more out of them. I am also talking with [school counselor] Theresa Hall to examine recess, and how we can support kids in exploring and grow-ing during unstructured time; this might involve look-ing at scheduling again or other aspects of the day.

Professional development is also something I will continue to push for and even increase. We have a healthy budget for it now, but the research shows that one of the big factors in the success of a school is the amount of professional development that

Thad Reichley and his wife, Leigh, with their daughters Gabriella, 5, and Hannah, 3 and a half.

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teachers engage in. Our teachers take advantage of it and no one has to push and prod them, so keeping that momentum up is going to be an important part of my job in the future.

Q: So, Head of Lower School: Cursive, yes or no?TR: That’s a good question, and one I can’t answer at this time. But, again, you have to weigh all the factors of what the school needs to deliver, what you add, and what you take away. Stay tuned.

Q: This issue has a loose theme of reinvention. Can you think of a time when you reinvented yourself?TR: I guess I would say becoming a dad has been my reinvention. I haven’t even mentioned that there was a period of time when I was competing as a profes-sional triathlete, but as I transitioned into admin-istration and then into being a dad—well, the term “weekend warrior” means a lot more to me now. I still try to be competitive in a couple of big races each year. It’s interesting, when I was younger and work-ing with coaches, they would always fight to get me to take rest days, and I never would. Now, I’m forced to rest more often, and I’ve seen that my endurance has actually increased to a certain extent and I’m able to maintain fitness because I’m not going out and destroying myself every day.

Q: What stands out for you so far this year?TR: One is the absolute dedication of the faculty. Another is the optimism of the community, not in a cheesy way, but in a pragmatic way. That goes for parents and faculty, and I think it spills over to the students. Also, I’ve really enjoyed working with young kids again and being around their energy…they’re just so unencumbered by the experiences of life. Other-wise, I’m still in information-gathering mode, wide-eyed and experiencing.

POEM AFTER THE STYLE OF SHERMAN ALEXIE’S “JUNIOR” BY TATUM KOROLWalk the sidewalk and listen to the children play.Come see the kid without a place to stay.Come see the boy who is ready to leave home.Come see the girl who is all alone.

IN THE DEEPEighth grade English teacher Jennifer Wood set her students loose with their own blogs this year. Below are a few examples of their work.

POEM AFTER DIANE BURNS’S “SURE, YOU CAN ASK ME A PERSONAL QUESTION”BY SOPHIA LESWINGHow are you?Yes, I am half Chinese.Yes, I am both Chinese, and GermanYes, I am sure that I am half and half.

No, not from Beijing.No, not from Shanghai.No, not from Taiwan.No, not from Hong Kong.Yes, the United States of America.No, I am not kidding.

Wow?So that’s where you get that “mysterious” look.Your great grandmother, right?A Chinese Empress, right?Bound feet, right?Let me guess. Taiwanese?

Oh, so you’ve had “amazing” dim-sum?That delicious?

Oh, so you’ve bought a toy made in China?That rare?

Oh, so you’ve met the nicest Chinese merchant?That cheap?

Yes, the stereotypes you say are offensive.Thanks for noticing that I don’t eat rice for every meal of the day.No, I don’t know how to say that in “Chinese.”No, I can’t make fried rice for you.Yes, this is made in China. I bought it at Nordstroms.

Thank you. I like your eyes too.I don’t know if anyone knows whether or not Bérénice Marloheis really half-Chinese.No, I didn’t star in that Kung-fu movie.

Yeah. Uh-huh. Genius.Uh-huh. Yeah. Genius. Uh-huh. Princetonand Harvard. Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Genius.

No, I didn’t major in math.Yes, a lot of us are really good at Trigonometry.Some of us can’t even spell Trigonometry.

No, I’m not squinting.These are my eyes.

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a resource, thanks to the online publication of materi-als from its oral history archive.

The students embraced the project with excite-ment and some trepidation. They wrote extensively in anticipation of their meetings as well as afterward about their feelings and what they learned. Students conducted practice research, interviews, and movie-making with partners in class to prepare for working effectively with seniors, and many of them had mov-ing encounters when they met their senior partners. The final visit, in which students shared their completed videos and taught technology skills to their senior partners, was truly something special.

The students’ writings about the project reveal its emotional power and show a project that is destined to become a memorable part of the seventh grade year. Student Marielle Lyons did not know that her partner had suffered a stroke until the interview be-

gan and she realized that she couldn’t un-derstand the answers to her questions. She listened very closely and then attempted to repeat back what her partner, Amy, was trying to express. She would get a “Right” in return when she repeated Amy’s ideas back correctly. Marielle wrote afterward, “It did take a lot of concen-tration to understand what she was saying, but I didn’t mind.... that was our connection. The connection of me repeating what she

said so that she and I could understand each other.... I realized that ‘service’ doesn’t necessarily mean when one is helping another. It can mean just being there to respect another person in your community.”

For their part, many of the seniors wanted to learn how to Skype so they could be in better touch with their families. Sometimes, though, they were not interested in learning a technological tool and instead preferred to have a student read to them or look at pictures of their families. But perhaps the most im-portant result was the value the seniors felt in being heard and the understanding and empathy the stu-dents gained from reaching out to those of an older generation and listening to their stories.

Trudie Scott teaches seventh grade English at Saint Mark’s. Dave Hickman teaches seventh grade history and serves as the high school placement counselor.

CONNECTIONSTransforming an established service program into more of a partnership turned out to be a perfect opportunity to build many bridges. BY DAVE HICKMAN AND TRUDIE SCOTT

The seventh grade’s Bizjack Service Week has, for 33 years, marked the culmination of our community engagement program. Each student would seek out an agency, such as those for animal welfare or environ-mental care, and spend a week working there at the end of the spring semester. In early 2012, Jenny Getz, Saint Mark’s director of global and special programs, proposed enhancing this program by connecting it more deeply with the curriculum and creating a partnership-style exchange in which the students both teach and learn, and she suggested finding ways to build relation-ships between the students and local seniors. Eager to strengthen links to the curriculum, the Upper Division faculty began brainstorming, and ongo-ing collaboration became the underpinning of this project’s evolution and success.

Because the seventh grade English and history final exams are combined into a humanities project, connecting this final to the service week for the spring of 2012 became the focus. We proposed an idea we’d had in mind, in which each student would interview a senior on camera to learn about the impact of a histori-cal event on that person’s life. English teacher Jennifer Wood proposed that in return the students help their senior partner learn a new technology skill. Technol-ogy and Information Services Director Bonnie Nishihara quickly augmented the school’s supply of camcorders, tripods, and microphones, and support teacher Lisa Gordon assembled 23 kits for filming. Parent coordina-tors Rona Ashe and Sarah Noah sought connections in local senior communities, finding enough participants to ensure every student would have a partner and ar-ranging transportation to all sites.

Trevor Getz, son of Jenny Getz and associate pro-fessor of history at San Francisco State, contributed materials about teaching oral history interview tech-niques, and retired Saint Mark’s history teacher Mike Fargo shared resources from his experience working with Saint Mark’s alums who completed oral histories after a visit to our partner school in South Africa. The Urban School of San Francisco also served as

Saint Mark’s seventh graders Marielle (center) and Elaine (right) film an interview with a senior project partner.

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Q: You went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. What was your major, and how did it prepare you for your career?EC: I majored in computer science and engineering at MIT, which gave me a solid foundation for my career in software engineering. Also, MIT has a program called UROP [Undergraduate Research Opportunities Pro-gram], which allows undergraduate students to work with faculty on research. I think my UROP positions were perhaps more important than my coursework in giving me practical engineering experience.

Q: What is your current position and what do you like most about it? EC: I’ve been working at Google for many years as a software engineer. Google is a great place for engi-

neers because our founders and management come from engineer-ing backgrounds, so they under-stand our challenges and do their best to give us the support we need to do our jobs well. I love that I work with amazingly smart yet humble people who are passionate about building great products, and

I love that those products have millions of users all over the world.

Q: Your profession is still male-dominated. What, if any, challenges or triumphs have you faced in your career?EC: When I was a freshman, I signed up for the intro-ductory computer science class because I was unde-cided about my major and wanted to give everything a try. I enjoyed the logical nature of programming, but it was daunting that most of the other people in the class were male and had more programming experience than I did. Luckily, my roommate was also female and also interested in CS, and as we worked our problem sets together, we became more confident in our abilities, so we could participate in larger study groups without feeling out of our element.

It’s important to remember that in our society boys are encouraged to play with and program computers from a young age, so they may appear to be more talented at computer science, but often it’s simply because they’ve had more experience. I firmly believe that many girls have just as much aptitude, and they merely need support and encouragement in high school, college, and the early stages of their careers.

Q: What are your fondest memories of your time at Saint Mark’s? EC: Despite being an engineer, I’ve always loved reading, and I have a lot of fond memories of reading or being read to by Mrs. Forrester in the library. The outdoor ed trips were always a lot of fun too, espe-cially the sixth grade Marin Headlands trip and the seventh grade Yosemite trip. In eighth grade Ms. Bredt taught a geometry class. Since it hadn’t been taught

Twenty: For Frank and Lois Noonan, that nice round number represents how many years they will have

attended the annual Grand-parents and Special Friends Day this spring at Saint Mark’s. They first got to know the school in 1992 when their old-

est grandchild, Sean, started kindergarten. Now, six of their grandchildren are Saint Mark’s alumni and two are current students. “[Saint Mark’s students] are so well-rounded,” says Frank. “They are very comfortable with who they are.” Lois appreciates how well spoken the eighth graders are and “how well the students handle themselves at graduation.”

Largely raised in San Francisco, Frank and Lois met while she attended St. Mary’s Nursing School and he attended the University of San Francisco. Frank was the first person in his family to graduate from college and recalls his family instilling in him the importance of education. He could not have attended college on his own, and he remains grateful for the financial assistance he received, so he directs his charitable giving to education, financial aid in particular. He also serves on the board of trustees at USF. “You’re out there, having been helped like I have been helped…. The way to pay back is by helping [others.]”

The Noonans are grandparents to Sean Moylan ’01, Chelsea Moylan ’02, Jenny Noonan ’04, Stephanie Noonan ’06, Danny Noonan ’09, Liam Noonan ’10, Ben Noonan in seventh grade, and Sadie Noonan in third grade.

SHE GOOGLES ITEmily Chang, Class of 1992, talks about life in Silicon Valley and why she has stayed in touch with Saint Mark’s since her graduation. INTERVIEW BY CHRISTINE MAGUIRE

WHY WE GIVEFrank and Lois Noonan will celebrate their 20th Grandparents and Special Friends Day at Saint Mark’s this spring. BY WENDY LEVINE

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before, she let us take the lead in learning the mate-rial out of the textbook and mostly helped when we got stuck, which was awesome. I am not a born athlete, and I always struggled with Mr. Orwig’s PE classes. Still, I learned to try my best. These days I enjoy exercise; I play basketball recreationally in a league, and last summer my husband and I completed my post-baby goal of running the SF First half marathon, which we finished in 2 hours and 21 minutes. Mr. Pincus’s English classes were also a challenge, but he helped me to be a better writer, which still comes in handy when I have to write design documents for work.

Q: You’ve been a longtime philanthropic supporter of Saint Mark’s. What inspires you to give back?EC: I had many talented and caring teachers at Saint Mark’s, and it was overall a positive experience for me. I want other kids to have that opportunity.

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It is with great sadness that we report the passing of Saint Mark’s alum and chess team member Kevin Vote. Those who have looked at the list of our all-time top-rated players will see him as one of many strong players we have had at Saint Mark’s. In his eighth grade year, he was the best player on the team and had the highest rating in the school. He was also our team leader in what has become known as the Dream Team, the team that won the National Junior High Championships in 1990. He also played on our first team to ever play in the National Championships in 1989, in Peoria, Illinois.

A fierce competitor, he played in an era when most rated tournaments were run by and for adults—adults who were none too keen

on having “kids” playing in their events. They soon learned to be very careful when playing this kid in the gold shirt. His love of chess followed him long after he left Saint Mark’s. On his Facebook page he listed it as one of the things he loves, especially the Caro Kann Defense. Kevin will be greatly missed.

A TRUE KNIGHTKevin Vote, Class of 1990, passed away peacefully at home on September 11, 2012. He is survived by his daughter, Audrey Carolyn Vote; wife, Haley Lynn Vote; sister, Kassia Michelle Vote, of Seattle; and parents, Kathleen Sharon and Gary Franklyn Vote, of Novato. All are in our thoughts. Below, Director of Athletics and chess coach Ray Orwig shares his memories of this member of our community.

I am still friends with today, our hearts and love go out to Kevin’s family. That reminds me, all my best to Ray Orwig—I would not be in the man I am today without him.”

CLASS OF 1994Jodie Van Horn is the director of clean-tech outreach for the Sierra Club in San Francisco.

CLASS OF 1996Ashley Bangart Syme and her husband Kirk live in San Francisco with their two kids, Charlie (3) and Olivia (1).

CLASS OF 1999Congratulations to Alex Varner on his second-place finish at the San Francisco Marathon on July 29. He finished the race in 2:27:15. After graduating from Saint Mark’s, Varner went on to Branson and Da-vidson College. He recently earned his MBA at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

CLASS OF 2000After getting a culinary arts degree from the Califor-nia Culinary Academy in San Francisco, Sierra George went back to UC Berkeley to finish her degree in nutritional sciences. She graduated last year and is currently doing her dietetic internship in Baltimore, Maryland, at the UMMC hospital to become a regis-tered dietician.

Danielle Kendrick graduated from UC Berkeley law school in 2012. She will join Latham Watkins law firm in San Francisco.

CLASS OF 2001Among his many endeavors, Sean Moylan founded greenjuice.com.

CLASS OF 2002Sarah Lopez earned a bachelor’s degree from Loyola Marymount with a major in history and a minor in political science.

After graduating from UC Davis in 2010 with a dual BA in communication and sociology, Sophie Shulman moved to San Francisco and worked at a law firm for a year and a half. She now works for Marin Magazine as an editorial assistant, publisher’s assistant, and office manager. She soon will have two of her stories published—a non-fiction story on the Web site The Write Place at the Write Time and a fiction story in The Chrysalis Reader in January. She enjoys living in the city while pursuing a career as a writer.

CLASS OF 2004James Brenner graduated from Johns Hopkins in May 2012. In June he started working at Teneo, an interna-tional political finance advisory firm, in Manhattan. He majored in political science with a focus on mid-east relations and hopes to be traveling to the Middle East office.

Timothy Gaumond graduated from Georgetown University and is currently living and working in New York City in the financial industry.

Emily Shulman graduated from UCLA with an anthro-pology major and film minor in the winter of 2012. She is now working at the J. David Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco as the fellowship coordinator in the

CLASS OF 1989Christian Bundy earned his PhD in clinical psychology, and in August 2012 he accepted a full-time position as a clinical psychologist at the VA Medical Center in Asheville, North Carolina. He looks forward to planting roots there with his wife and two young children.

CLASS OF 1990Charles Hodges and his wife recently had their first child. He writes, “I’m doing well, married, living in Marin. But, at least as important, if not more, is that we lost Kevin Vote [’90] this year. I joined the chess team in 3rd grade and was Kevin’s friend and teammate until graduation in 1990. On behalf of my family, and other alumni from our class, many of which

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IN PICTURESBranson held Middle School Pride Day in December 2012. Our alums showed their colors, of course.

Quentin and Pierce, Class of 2010

John ’10 Leah ’09

basketball team. He is also preparing for a service trip with the St. Bernard Project next summer. He will be assist-ing in the continued rebuilding of New Orleans.

Michael Dunne came in fourth place with a time of 12:50:1 in the 13-14 boys division of the 2012 USATF National Junior Olympic Cross Country Champi-onships in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on December 1.

Jessica Gallo is a freshman at Marin Catholic and was recently cast as Paulette in Legally Blonde at the Throckmorton Theater.

Sam Greenspan is a freshman at University High School in San Fran-cisco and played on the freshman-sophomore soccer team.

Tucker Roy attends Avon Old Farms in Connecticut and was recognized with an honorable mention in a Connecticut poetry competition in December. He was invited to read the poem on Janu-ary 21, 2013, for Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, at the Amistad Center for Art and Culture in Hartford.

Audrey Zhao is a freshman at Marin Academy, where she joined the tennis team and continues to play chess.

TELL US YOUR LIFE STORY! We love hearing from our alumni. Contact alumni coordinator Christine Maguire to share news: [email protected].

LIKE US ON FACEBOOK. Look for our page under Saint Mark’s School - San Rafael, CA, and get invited to join our alumni group by e-mailing Christine Maguire.

grants and contracts department. Gladstone is a biomedical institute that works to find cures for Alzheimer’s, AIDS, and heart disease. Emily assists postdoctoral fellows get re-search grants. On the side she enjoys drawing and graphic design; her work can be seen at emilyshulman.com. She lives in Marin with her boyfriend.

CLASS OF 2006 Alysa Smith is in Costa Rica on a semester abroad. She is living with a family while taking language and cultural classes.

CLASS OF 2007 Evan Greenwald attends Sarah Law-rence in Bronxville, New York, and is studying creative writing and music.

Mollie Rowe is a sophomore at Willamette studying psychology and theater.

CLASS of 2008 Abigail Smith is enjoying her first year at Chapman College.

Gena Topper is majoring in molecular biology at Cornell University as a pre-med student. She also plays on the ultimate frisbee team.

CLASS of 2009 Eva Geisse plans to attend Whitman College, where she has been accepted on early decision.

CLASS OF 2010 Teddy Mauzé was front and center, scoring both goals, including the golden goal in overtime, for the Tamalpais High Red-tailed Hawks soccer team to win their third consecu-tive MCAL championship title following a 2-1 victory against Marin Catholic in November.

CLASS OF 2011Claire Kirkpatrick is a sophomore at Marin Academy. She lived with a French family in Paris for three weeks this past summer. She then hosted the 16-year-old daughter of her host family here in Marin.

Jake Chiang attends Marin Academy and returned to campus in October for our annual Family Fun Run.

CLASS OF 2012 Avik Banerjee is a freshman at Sonoma Academy and plays on the varsity soccer team.

Aaron Emanuel is a freshman at the Urban School in San Francisco and enjoys being in the city.

Wally Dryden is a freshman at the Bay School and plays on the junior varsity

2013

Kate ’09 and Olivia ’09

MARCH1

JUNE14

Trivia Night 6 p.m. in the gym

AUGUSTtbd

Alumni breakfast 8:30 to 10 a.m.

Graduation10 a.m. to noon

Class of 2009 reunion—details to come!

Maddie, Elena, and Ava, all Class of 2011.

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Our 2012 fall play was the sweet and sour melodrama The Pride of the Pickle Factory. Jugglers, acrobats, dancers, and musicians shared the stage, and the production even featured cameo appearances by faculty and administrators.

39 Trellis Drive, San Rafael, CA 94903