Kent in action

Here is Kent, honored by Stanford, doing what he does so well.

Drinks with Draper in Burlingame

This year we are inviting all local CSUS graduates to join alumni and current and former faculty on Wednesday, December 28 from 5:00 to 8:00 at Steelhead Brewery 333 California Drive in Burlingame. We will be in the large back room with four pool tables, and that room only caters to those 21 and older. Plan to enjoy beer, wine and bar food with your Crystal friends. And, of course, if you live out of state and are home for a holiday visit, please attend.

RSVP to me: jdraper@csus.org, and I look forward to seeing you there.

Kent Holubar honored by Stanford University

Kent, who recently celebrated 30 years on the CSUS history faculty, is becoming sort of a legend for his excellent teaching. To underscore that point, Stanford University sent him a letter acknowledging his success in the classroom with an attached note from his former student, Taylor Grossman '11.

Congratulations, Kent. Well deserved.

Kent Holubar honored by Stanford University

Kent, who recently celebrated 30 years on the CSUS history faculty, is becoming sort of a legend for his excellent teaching. To underscore that point, Stanford University sent him a letter acknowledging his success in the classroom with an attached note from his former student, Taylor Grossman '11.

Congratulations, Kent. Well deserved.

Amanda Stone '02 marries David Heise

Mom, Amanda and David

On Friday evening the Delta View Golf Club was light up with the glorious wedding of Amanda and David followed by dinner, toasts and dancing.

When I taught Amanda Spanish, I named her "Preciosa," and she lived up to her nick name at her wedding.

Congratulations Amanda and David!

Liz Karr Pola '88 visits Crystal

Liz came to campus today for a visit and enjoyed lunch with Tom Woosnam, Kent Holubar, Deb Hunt, Wells Wadleigh, Bill Kwong and Tim Patterson. Liz and her family are back from some serious travel, and she has lots of great stories. I taught her Spanish back in the day, and she had reason to use it for real in Spain and South America. She, Mike and the three boys are all healthy and happy.

Rod Jacobsen "Jake" celebrates 60th birthday with friends

Jake is surrounded by friends and former colleagues at CSUS who gathered from far and near to celebrate his 60th birthday at Thacher School in Ojai, CA. From left to right: John Draper, Tom Robinson (English), Jake (English), Mike Petty (history) and Alison Anderson Draper (English). We taught together in the late 70's and have been the best of friends ever since.

Dick Loveland sure knew how to hire!!!

Makeda Murray '86 visits Peninsula Bridge students

Makeda with Ned Diamond, CSUS math and Bridge Site Coordinator

Makeda grew up in East Palo Alto, CA and attended CSUS for high school. She related to us how much she loved her Crystal experience and that the long train ride each school day did not bother her a bit. She told of the great importance that formal education meant to her family. Both her parents have college degrees and her grand father was the Mayor of EPA!

While in college at Pitzer, her academic passion was writing screen plays, and she thought her career was certainly to be a famous writer. She took some time away from writing and began teaching 4th grade. She found herself in a room full of wonderful, under-served children with almost suffocating needs; educational and emotional. To begin to satisfy those myriad needs, she founded An Open Door non-profit. http://anopendoor-la.org/home/about-us/ Her sole calling now is to continue working with those under-served youth through her non-profit and to "strenghten the family unit in hopes of improving our society."

She gave the students a handout called E. P. G. B.

Get an Education!

"Knowledge is the foundation that empowers me to make good choices and see positive results."

Live your Purpose.

"What is your passion? What is your dream? Strive to do that which you were born to do. Dream big and never give up."

Give Back

"Everyone can do something to help someone else in need."

Makeda's message and personal experience were inspirational for all of us. Keep up your good work my dear friend.

Gene Gurkoff '94, Tramatic Brain Injury Expert

Gene is currently a post doctoral researcher at UC Davis, and he took time to visit our Peninsula Bridge students this summer and talk to them about the ravages of brain injuries from accidents and sports. Here he is introduced to the students by Ned Diamond, CSUS math teacher and Bridge Site Director.

Gene became interested in the brain while at CSUS in Mr. Paterson's science class and has developed his passion for research, and especially teaching, over the past dozen years at Davis. He hopes to become a full professor and devote his career to teaching about TBI.

With a vivid powerpoint and video presentation, he made several important points that were especially important to his middle school audience. He encouraged the kids to always work hard and take full opportunity of opportunities like Peninsula Bridge. He made a strong pitch for them to go on to college and not to worry about the expense. Only 2 of his 11 current, very diverse doctoral students paid full tuition.

He moved on to some sobering head injury statistics. There are 1.7 million reported brain injuries a year and 50,000 of those patients die. He had some rather graphic pictures and video that caught the students attention, and he finished with, "Always wear your helmet."

Many thanks for Gene's presentation, and believe me, he is a great teacher.

Liz Stewart Maurage '84 visits campus

Liz has lived for the past 19 years just north of Paris in the quaint town of Bovelles. She and her husband, Francois, have two children ages 6 and 8, and Liz teaches English at a local engineering college. We have plans to set up a regular Skype conversation in English and French for some of her students and some of our advanced French students.

When Liz came home to visit her parents recently, I invited her to join Dave and me for lunch and a long stroll down memory lane. Liz was sorry to have missed Dave's retirement party in May, but they used our lunch together to quickly catch up and talk about her important role in our athletic program of the late 70's and early 80's. Dave referred to Liz as a consummate athlete who was always a solid performer in cross-country (Cross-country athlete of the year in 1981), track, basketball and swimming.

Liz has fond memories of Crystal in those days and looks forward to a return visit in February.

Alums around the world and Skype

It was 6:00 PM Thursday and 9:00 AM Friday morning in Taiwan when we connected our Skype video camera with David Schainker '04 for a student to alumnus conversation about life in China.

Nine of our Mandarin language class students addressed "life in China" with David and got riveting answer from a man who is walking the walk and prefers to be totally immersed in the language and culture.

Two or our current students commented off mike that they really believed what a younger alum had to say, and they were ready to make the plunge.

Thank you David. Let's do it again.

Rebecca Miller DuMaine and Dave Miller Trio

Rebecca knocked it out of the park at the Oak City Bar and Grill recently in Menlo Park. She is the vocalist with her dad's trio backing her terrific pipes.

They return to the same venue on Friday, May 20, and I suggest we gather a bunch of Crystal alums to kick back and enjoy some really great jazz. Standing room only so make a reservation for dinner to get a seat! See you there.

See you there!

Medical Breakthrough for dreaded intestateitis

For generations men and women of a certain age have developed sickening symptoms from self-neglect of the malady of remaining chronically intestate. Morbidity is common for stricken adults who do not seek professional advice and attention. To continue living with intestateitis is painful and shameful because the inevitable outcome has significantly deleterious effects on their issue per stirpes.

For a limited time, John Draper, Philanthropy Advisor, will reveal the secret to arresting the nagging symptoms of intestateitis and bring instant relief to the patient.

jdraper@csus.org

Philanthropy advisor

Crystal Springs Uplands School

Vertical Gardens on Campus

And above the first Wolly Pockets garden installed on the western wall of the Science Building.

Marian's garden today.

Marian and the beginning of vertical gardens

The concept of growing a vertical garden at CSUS was inspired by the enormous vertical garden across the street from the BHV department store in Paris. Check the link below to see other examples in Paris.

gridskipper.com/archives/entries/201/201671.php

Our beautiful campus boasts lots of vertical, white outside wall space, and I began to think we could build one of our own. Fast forward to Ian Rosenfield's '10 senior project on possible architectural visions for the new middle school and his mention of the inclusion of vertical gardens. Marian Pearcy '10, who was in attendance at Ian's fantastic talk, shared an interest in the hanging gardens, and we converged on Ian after the talk. Within minutes we decided to build a beta as an experiment, and I set out to get help from Mr. P and Chris Read in our science department. Since Chris is in charge of the horizontal garden, she jumped on board immediately.

But it was Marian who took the lead and the call for action. She and I visited local nurseries for help, and we developed a plan to build a small vertical garden to be about 2.5' by 2.5'. The "we" part of the equation vanished when Marian told me that she would build one at home over a weekend. She produced our first garden using a plastic flower box framed with wood, filled with dirt and moss and covered with screen mesh. Success!!!

With the successful creation of Marian's garden, Chris Read and I went into high gear with the idea of a larger hanging garden along the wall of the Uplands science wing. The key to the larger garden is a commercial product called wolly pockets.

www.woollypocket.com/?gclid=CL_I47KL_KYCFQqAgwod4yEpGg

We plan future installations of vertical gardens as cover for the black chain link fences along the entrance driveway of campus.

Drinks with Draper in Chicago January 22, 2011

Crystal alums and two former faculty gathered at the Downtown Marriott for conversation, some libations, bar food and many laughs about life on campus years ago. From left to right: Michael, Deborah Greenberg's (English teacher) husband, "the hand," Jen Acker, Lauren Whittam, JJ Hill (Spanish teacher), Louis Brownstone, me, Ann Levy and Becky Dedo.

The educator who changed my life

Evelyn Taylor 1923 - 2010

I remember the day I walked into the Principal's Office at North Shoreview Elementary School with my San Mateo Leadership class and met Evelyn Taylor. It was a cold day in February, 1992, and I was not at all ready professionally to grasp what I was about to learn.

Evelyn was a force of nature and had the immediate commanding presence of a powerful leader and a teacher with a heart of gold. But before I go on, a little about where I was coming from in 1992 and years before.

As a youth, I grew up in Hastings-on-Hudson in Westchester County, New York on a slightly isolated property that had been in the family for a long time. My friends in elementary and high school were all white with the exception of Hilton Clark, my best buddy in those days. He was, I think, the only black kid in our school system in the 50's.

I went to college at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, and I do not remember a single student of color in my four years there. I did not cut the widest social swath, but that is my honest memory through graduation in June, 1961.

My first teaching gig was at The Trinity-Pauling Boarding School in Pauling, NY., and I have the same memory of no kids of color but lots of Canadians who could play hockey like pros!

Before arriving at Crystal Springs Uplands, I had three more important stops along the way: a Master's Degree in Spanish in Madrid from Middlebury College, a four year stint at Dickinson College and three years completing Ph.D Spanish course work at the University of Arizona. None boasted students of color!

I arrived in Hillsborough, CA in late summer 1976 and began my now 35-year-long career at what was Crystal Springs School for Girls. The girls school was a gem and along with Dick Loveland and Jim Garrison, the other two men on campus, we plodded along doing our best to educate the mostly white young ladies. Boys began arriving in the fall of '77, but our racial mixture was tilted toward white students for many more years. (Parenthetically, I am very proud to tell you that 48% of our current student population self identify as "other than white.")

The point of this rambling is to help prepare you for my shock when I came upon a small school on the East side of the Bayshore Freeway that was populated mostly by kids of color-and many "under-served"kids with desperate needs. Evelyn had a big jar of peanut butter and a loaf of Wonder Bread on her book shelf because, "Some of my kids don't get enough to eat." In the corner she had a large cardboard box of used clothing because, "Some of my kids don't have enough clothes to wear to school." She took us to visit a few classes on that memorable Leadership Education Day, and I was blown away by the kids and the frustration some of them had with their classwork.

On the way home I had a flood of images of the day, and all I could think of was what an incredible school we had with hot chocolate at snack, wonderful teachers and students with nice clothes. I had a significant, career changing epiphany!

I determined to try to help a few of Evelyn's kids, and as a direct result of meeting her, I began the summer outreach classes known as SummerQuest, Gateway and currently, Peninsula Bridge. www.peninsulabridge.org. I am proud to say that for the past 22 years, CSUS has been the summer home to hundreds and hundreds of under-served public school students who have directly benefited from our healthy food and superb summer school faculty.

The outreach to those kids twenty years ago was CSUS' first foray into the exciting realm of "public purpose," a topic which I will expand upon in later blogs.

Thank you, Evelyn Taylor, for your dedication, inspiration and total love for your kids.