Meet Francine Shirvani

Photo Credit: Zoey Patterson

By Zoey Patterson

Francine Shirvani is the second of two new French teachers at Athenian to be reported on here. She’s teaching French 3 and AP French. While she speaks French natively, she began teaching it out of pure happenstance.

“To become a citizen, they said...they needed language teachers,” Shirvani said. “So I decided, okay, I’ll teach French for a year until I get my green card.”

However, Shirvani wound up teaching French for much longer than a year.

“I love to teach, I love French, and the kids,” Shirvani said. “I love teenagers, which, some of my friends, they say, ‘you’re crazy’—no! They’re great!”

Despite this, before coming to Athenian, Shirvani had actually retired from teaching.

“I did College Board stuff, you know, corrected APs, taught teachers, and I thought, you know, I miss the classroom, I miss the kids,” Shirvani said.

Distance learning has thrown a bit of a wrench in Shirvani’s plans to return to teaching.

“I’m completely new to this Zoom thing and all this technology, although I do love technology,” Shirvani said.

In addition to technology and teaching, Shirvani has a multitude of other interests.

“I love to swim, so if I don’t swim, I am a basket case,” Shirvani said. “I love to sew...I love French music, French TV, anything French.”

Shirvani is not exclusively French, though.

“I love this country, but I’ve kept a lot of my culture, and my father was Iranian, Persian, my mother French, so I’m tri-cultural,” Shirvani said.

American culture is one Shirvani is still being exposed to and learning more about.

“Obviously, my English is not perfect yet, but at least I have lost the French accent,” Shirvani said. “But my daughter always makes fun of me, because she was American-born, and she’ll correct me all the time, and I love to be corrected because that’s how I improve my English.”

Improving her English is one of many tasks and goals of Shirvani’s.

“There’s 24 hours in a day, and you get up, and you have so much to do, and you go to bed, and there’s still 15 other things you wanted to do, but you need to sleep,” Shirvani said.

This is Shirvani’s justification for a core trait of hers.

“I never get bored,” Shirvani said. “I’m a little prejudiced that way—it’s boring people who get bored. That’s terrible for me to say, but it’s true. I mean, how could you get bored?”

Meet Lizette Ortega Dolan

Lizette Ortega Dolan

By Zoey Patterson

Lizette Dolan is a new Humanities teacher at Athenian, but it’s not her first time working here.

“I was hired as Dean of Equity and Inclusion back in 2006, and I…did a lot of explicit training on equity and inclusion,” Dolan said. “I had just developed an Ethnic Studies course at the school where I was teaching before I came to Athenian, so I was really excited to bring that knowledge and that energy and passion to a different school.”

Dolan explained that part of what attracted her to Athenian was the emphasis it places on equity and inclusion.

“I…really believed that there was an authentic desire to improve the learning environment for marginalized groups,” Dolan said.

Athenian’s community is also something Dolan is glad to return to.

“I’ve been working independently for about three years as a consultant, and so I’m excited to now kind of be a part of a team again,” Dolan said.

Dolan is even more excited for when Athenian can return to normal in-person classes.

“That’s one of my favorite places to be…in the classroom with students,” Dolan said.

However, classes aren’t the only thing Dolan misses from before COVID–19.

“I certainly see myself as the hostess with the mostest,” Dolan said. “I love having people here. I love, like, setting the table and deciding on what I’m gonna serve and making little name cards…I love hosting, so that’s what I miss the most.”

Dolan’s own ideal meal, however, is less common for hosting.

“It’d be French toast with sausage, scrambled eggs, sourdough bread, sour cream on the side, and fake maple syrup,” Dolan said.

But that would not be the only component of Dolan’s ideal start to a day.

“I would love it if it was a normal thing for every day to start like a musical,” Dolan said. “Like, if I could wake up and be like ‘ONE DAY MORE’...like, everyday, where that is just, like, normal, I’d love that. I think it’d be great.”

Musical theater is not, in fact, Dolan’s main passion, especially in the realm of school.

“I absolutely love, love, love history,” Dolan said. “And…studying history and the humanities is everything, everything’s connected to it, it’s all about, literally, humanity.”

To explain this, Dolan paraphrased the words of a more famous humanities expert.

“There’s this great quote that I like by Paulo Freire that says, ‘It’s about learning how to not simply read the word, but read the world,’ and I feel like, as a humanities teacher, that’s what I’m supporting students in doing.”

Meet Nenelwa Tomi!

Nenelwa Tomi

By Zoey Patterson

Nenelwa Tomi is the new Associate Director of Admissions and Financial Aid. She’s especially interested in working in admissions because of the unique perspectives she can bring to the table.

“In thinking about my role here...what comes to me is my experience in admissions as a student ...and just feeling like there wasn’t much support along that journey, and feeling like there were people in the spaces who didn’t represent the experiences that I had gone through,” Tomi said. “So part of what drew me to this work was trying to be that person for others, to see themselves represented.”

Tomi is also interested in how the current pandemic provides an opportunity to reimagine Athenian’s admissions process.

“I think this year, because we don’t have the capacity to have prospective families visiting our campus, it offers us a really interesting opportunity to think of new ways to showcase our experience, or...what distinguishes Athenian from other spaces and places,” Tomi said.

The current admissions process, she said, has “been a bit stale.”

“We’ve all done kind of the same things across institutions,” Tomi said. “Whether you are at a school on the East Coast or the West Coast, you kind of have the same standard of experience. We just have different campuses.”

However, Tomi not only believes in Athenian’s mission, but has a personal connection to it.
“It values experiential learning, which is something that was a core component of my upbringing not just in the classroom, but also outside of [it],” Tomi said.

Tomi finds this quite meaningful and is excited to share it with more people.

“The fact that I’m at an institution that places high value on that...idea of creating and innovating in the classroom and finding ways to be yourself, or bring yourself into that classroom space, is so powerful to me,” Tomi said. “[I want] to think about how to increase...the capacity that Athenian has to reach more phenomenal students to experience this.”

Being off-campus, however, has made it harder for Tomi to properly acquaint herself with working at Athenian.

“It’s kind of a strange space to be in in terms of being a new person because you don’t even know how to be proactive because you don’t really know people, and you don’t know the systems yet,” Tomi said. “So it’s been great to engage with...forum and community meetings and see students from that perspective, but it’s been strange to not meet them.”

Tomi is still eager to meet whoever she can within the limitations of (partial) distance learning.

“I encourage students—or faculty and staff who are interested—to just reach out,” Tomi said.

When we do fully return to campus, Tomi has a note on something distinctive students might notice about her.
“I love to sing, so you can find me singing in the car,” Tomi said. “If you’re ever leaving the Athenian parking lot and you see someone singing and dancing in their car, that’s probably me.”

Meet Robert Nelson

Robert Nelson

By Zoey Patterson

Robert Nelson is a new Humanities teacher at Athenian. He’s teaching ninth graders this year, which might be conducive to developing relationships with students for him in particular.

“It takes people a while to get me,” Nelson said. “People kind of think I’m...grumpy or aloof, and kind of distanced, but honestly, if you talk to students who have been with me and had me for multiple years as a teacher, you [will] find that we have a really close, trusting relationship.”

Nelson added that these relationships, which often last beyond graduation, make his job particularly special.

“They’ll still send me emails and tell me about their college courses and ask my advice on this and that,” Nelson said. “I think that’s the best thing about being a high school teacher…[getting to] watch as students get older, and play a part in that, but also keep in touch after they’ve gone on and done awesome things.”

Nelson is also looking forward to interacting with the Athenian community.

“[I love] the feeling that you get when you’re in the right place and the people around you share your values and share your ideas about what education should be,” Nelson said. “When people genuinely believe in the power of education, you come together around it.”

Even so, the community is only one of the nice things at Athenian.

“One of the things that is very appealing about Athenian is just the physical location of it, being right near Mount Diablo,” Nelson said. “I’m very much an outdoors person, so I can totally relate to that.”

The aesthetic side of the outdoors is not the only thing about it that Nelson appreciates, however. He also enjoys “just you being outside” and interacting with the outdoors.
“I like throwing a ball around, whatever type of ball it is,” Nelson said. “In high school, I played baseball, football, and ran track.”

These things have also helped Nelson interact with other people.

“You’re part of a team, and you automatically have this community set up for you,” Nelson said. “They want to welcome you in and make you a part of their team.”

This was particularly important to Nelson as a child because he moved around frequently.

“Being a person who sort of has to adapt to new places and has to get used to new communities, it gives you a sort of perspective on people wherever you go,” Nelson said. “There are people who are very likely to find differences in comparing people from one place to another, but I like to think of it more like similarities, like looking for human nature and what makes us all very the same, in a way.”

This is part of the reason Nelson ended up teaching history.

“I’d always wanted to explore more things about the history that was around me...the differences between peoples and towns and landscapes always interested me, so I just wanted to know more,” Nelson said.

Nelson has an interesting personal history as well.

"My mother is from Iceland, and there are a lot of cool things about being descended from a small group of people,” Nelson said. “There’s only about 250,000 to 300,000 of them in the country right now, and they have a really well-documented history, so if I actually did my genealogy...it would go back over 1,400 to 1,500 years.”

The variety in Nelson’s backstory gives him an interesting way to explain who he is.

“I like it when people ask me where I’m from,” Nelson said, “because I never have a good answer.”

Meet Amy Pitsker

Photo Credits: Amy Pitsker

By Zoe Patterson

Amy Pitsker is one of two new French teachers at Athenian. She’s teaching French 1, 2, 3-Honors, and 4-Honors. While she loves French, she started learning it because of a different interest of hers: art.

“I grew up around art, and I really loved art, and I wanted to go see some of this art at some point in my life as a young person,” Pitsker said. “And so I asked my mom, how can I get to [this museum], and she said...if you learn French and went to a school that had a study abroad program, you could get there.”

However, as Pitsker learned French, she began to fall in love with many aspects of the language and culture.

“I got really passionate about the language and the beauty of the poetry in the language,” Pitsker said. “I really loved it. And also, the cinema was another thing that really drew me in.”

Pitsker is quite interested in the arts in English as well, especially in music.

“I love talking about songs,” Pitsker said. “My favorite song right now would probably be Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here.’”

Making her own music is something that Pitsker claims not to be good at, but that she enjoys regardless.

“I picked up the guitar in my 30s, and I’m all self-taught, so I’m not very good, but I’ve gotten better over the 20 years I’ve been playing,” Pitsker said.

Pitsker’s love of live music in particular has been unfortunately affected by the current situation with COVID-19.

“Dancing to live music...is the thing that feeds me and centers me,” Pitsker said. “It’s the thing that I have to do to feel really in my body. And I’ve been dancing...and it’s just not the same. I miss that so much I can’t even tell you.”

However, in other areas, Pitsker has long been an adaptable person who is open to change, partly due, she says, to her childhood.

“I went to—I think it’s 13...K–12 schools, and I think one of the reasons that’s important is that it developed me personally in a lot of ways,” Pitsker said. “Like, I’m really flexible and curious, and I think both of those things came out of having moved so many times and having to change communities so many times that it became a way of being for me to be a person who welcomes change and newness. I like things that are new.”

This has, in fact, influenced Pitsker’s experience with French.

“Even within the United States, I’ve lived in different cultural kind of groups of the US, and they’ve been really different...and then of course, I lived in Paris for a year, and that was very different, and I’ve traveled in a lot of French-speaking countries that are different as well, and lived for, like, a month in France a couple of times,” Pitsker said. “All of this is the kind of thing that is fed by my childhood of having to change so often and explore what’s new and rise to the moment.”

Pitsker has always looked at this affinity for change optimistically and considers it an important part of her life.

“When you leave a place, there’s always things you miss, but then there’s always something good about where you’re going, so that’s kind of my motto in life,” Pitsker said. “There’s always something good about where you’re going.”

Meet Catherine Lu

Catherine Lu

By Zoey Patterson

Catherine Lu is Athenian’s new Mandarin teacher. She moved to the United States from China four years ago, and is interested in what she could learn at Athenian about American culture.

“I feel that through school, the place I work, I know this country, or this culture...I just feel there’s still so many things about this country I need to know and to learn, and I feel school is really a good place [to do that],” Lu said.

Lu is also excited to learn about Athenian culture specifically, and expressed a particular interest in the international students.

“I’m very excited to now have a lot of students from China, and I just feel, I don’t know, just naturally close to them,” Lu said. “This year, two of them applied to be my TAs, and I’m very excited about that, too.”

The outdoor aspect of Athenian also appealed to Lu when she chose to come here, especially because of her previous teaching job in San Francisco.

“The driving and the commute can be very stressful there, and...I’m not very good at parallel parking, so whenever I’d drive there, I’d just feel so scared...and so I was like, hmm, maybe I should work in a more open space area,” Lu said. “When I found this opportunity came up...I had never heard of this school before, but I see Danville, and there is open space, and you know, it’s more nature—I was like, hmm, maybe I should explore that school.”

Not only does Lu have TAs she’s looking forward to connecting with, she’s also a ninth grade advisor.

“I feel that my favorite part of being a teacher is having a close connection with my advisees,” Lu said.

The fact that they are in ninth grade also interests Lu, especially with the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I feel, as ninth graders, they might feel all different kinds of emotions when they join the Athenian high school in this situation, so I will try my best to help them to have a better, more smooth transition,” Lu said.

Lu herself has definitely felt the effects of the pandemic, as it has impacted some of her favorite hobbies.

“I love swimming and hiking. That’s why I feel a little depressed during the pandemic, because I cannot go swimming anymore,” Lu said.

But the pandemic has not put a damper on every aspect of Lu’s life.

“I feel like this is a fun part of my life, especially now, considering, you know, the outside world, and the pandemic, and everything,” Lu said. “Whether I can come to the class, it’s just to calm myself down and to remind me there’s still good things in life and we still have hope.”

Meet Phillip Hadley

Phillip Hadley

By Zoey Patterson

Phillip Hadley is the new Applied Calculus teacher at Athenian. Though he’s teaching his Nexus class from Nova Scotia, he’s looking forward to interacting with Athenian students.

“Back in 2008, I started swim coaching at Athenian, and I was at another school at the time...the students that I was working with through the swim team, they were mature, they were motivated, they had a tremendous sense of a responsibility to the community and to themselves,” Hadley said.

Hadley also expressed interest in working with other members of the Athenian community.

“I’ve really been enjoying and appreciating the community of educators,” Hadley said. “There are so many passionate teachers at Athenian that care so deeply about the art and the science of teaching.”

Hadley explained what he liked so much about interacting with the teachers in particular.

“When you’re around passionate people about anything, I think that it’s infectious,” Hadley said.

Hadley’s own passion for math was rather latent, and all but absent when he was a student.

“I did not enjoy math in any of my secondary education...and then I ended up doing my degree in physics and philosophy, so I dealt with a lot of math,” Hadley said.

He particularly enjoys the class he teaches, Applied Calculus, partially because of its appeal to students.

“A lot of our examples come from peer reviewed papers, so they’re not things that are just made up, so it’s very easy to answer that question students invariably ask me, which is ‘when is this math ever useful?’” Hadley said. “Well, in this case, it’s super useful!”

The world around us, Hadley added, makes the course’s subject matter ever more relevant and helpful.

“We do a lot of modeling and a lot of data analysis and a lot of looking at graphs and tables, and I think that that is tremendously important, knowing how to do that well, and effectively,” Hadley said. “We are just inundated with graphs and tables and charts, and being able to sort through those and think about them critically, I think, is an important skill to have.”

Math, however, is not the only powerful thing Hadley finds important in his day-to-day life.

“I can talk about film all day long...the power of film, to me, is it’s visual,” Hadley said.

Hadley has two favorite films: M, a 1931 German film, and The Bicycle Thief, a post-World War II Italian film, and loves both because they harness this power.

“With M, it’s a silent film, and yet the storyline is very easy to follow, and I would say even more so with The Bicycle Thief, because...it’s in another language and there’s very few subtitles, and I always say you could get along just fine without the subtitles,” Hadley said. “They really come back to the actors’ acting and...the cinematography.”

While Hadley’s strengths and passions seem to be film and mathematics, less enjoyable things have also played a role in his life and shaped who he is today.

“When I was a teenager, I used to do door-to-door sales in my first year out of college, and then became a car salesman, and the lessons that I learned in people skills in those two experiences were absolutely tremendous,” Hadley said. “I’m a terrible salesman...but I learned an awful lot about people during that time.”

This year, Hadley is excited to learn about the people at Athenian and how they’ve changed since he started coaching swimming here.

“Somehow, miraculously, the kids are even better,” Hadley said.