Teachers

Andy Thomas teaches kindergarten.

Robin Goldman almost seems to have been destined to teach at John Muir Elementary. She majored in biology and minored in chemistry at Vermont’s Castleton College before heading west with plans to pursue graduate studies in plant biology at UC Davis. But she changed her mind after a stint as a plant virologist and headed to Santa Cruz where she led backpacking trips for a summer. A job with AmeriCorps brought her to Berkeley where she taught high school kids to start a flower design business and designed the garden at Rosa Parks Elementary School. That project led to a position as the school’s first garden coordinator and the inspiration for her next career choice. Ms Goldman got her teaching credential at Mills College and came to John Muir as a kindergarten teacher in 2001. Two years later she was pink slipped and transferred to Thousand Oaks Elementary, where she taught for a year before winning a return trip to John Muir as a first grade teacher.

If you think Ann Einstein is smart...

Marlo Warburton’s academic passion is mathematics, and her greatest life regret is abandoning its study for a seemingly more practical degree in sociology. “By high school, I knew I wanted to be a math teacher. I still want that math degree.” At John Muir, she is known as a teacher who brings a fiery enthusiasm for math and writing to 4th and 5th graders. She has discovered that students develop academically when taught “lifelong thinking skills, like how to prove or disprove a conjecture. Sometimes I read their work and think, ‘Am I teaching college students? This is brilliant!’”

Melia Hong is the offspring of Berkeley public schools. She attended Oxford Elementary, Longfellow/King middle schools and Berkeley High. Her mother was a long-time principal at Emerson Elementary, and, once she became a teacher, Ms. Hong knew she wanted to teach in the Berkeley schools. “There was no district that had the kind of diversity of Berkeley. That was a huge part of my decision to come back,’’ she said. “I liked it when I grew up and I wanted that.’’ She comes from a rich and diverse family tradition, too. She is part Korean, and her father was raised in Hawaii. Ms. Hong goes to the islands to visit family each summer and performs with traditional Hawaiian dance groups.