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June 6, 2005 
VOL.
43, NO. 11Oakland,
CA
School leaders make student success possible
As we applaud the achievements of our schools' graduates,
The Voice also wants to commend the hundreds of administrators, teachers,
support staff, and volunteers who have worked so diligently throughout
the year. Their wise leadership and constant dedication provide the basis
for our graduates' success.
We are highlighting in this section seven of those outstanding educators.
•Theresa Larouche
•Rick McGrew and Joe Marino
•Kathie Graber
•Karen Mangini
Janice Cooper — ‘a
respected
and esteemed educator’
“The last thing I ever want to be is a teacher,”
young Janice Deatsch vowed every time she helped her mother, Flo, a longtime
classroom veteran, correct homework papers and decorate bulletin boards.
But then, a funny thing happened on the way through high school. By the
time she was ready to enter college, the young woman’s vow had crumbled
like fine chalk dust. She had learned to appreciate her mother’s
vocation.
As a result, Cal State Hayward found itself with another aspiring teacher
among its freshman ranks. Today, Janice Cooper, nee Deatsch, is celebrating
36 years as a faculty member and co-administrator at St. Joseph Elementary
School in Fremont.
Even though her chief duties these days are coordinating the school’s
preparation for a WASC visit in spring of 2006, designing curriculum,
and serving as development director, Cooper still likes nothing better
than “sneaking out of my office” a couple of times a week
to coach advanced junior high students in algebra. “Teaching kids
is so life giving,” she said.
But tutoring three or four kids is a lot different from the situation
Cooper came into when she first joined the St. Joseph faculty in 1969.
“There were 52 students in my fourth grade class, and when I look
at that room now, I don’t know where I put them all,” she
marveled.
Cooper’s principal, Mission San Jose Dominican Sister Mary Virginia
Leach, also marvels — not about those crowded classrooms of yore,
but rather about the abilities of her co-administrator.
Sister Leach also serves on her religious community’s General Council,
“so working with Jan has been a blessing and privilege because she
has made it possible for me to wear my other hat.”
“Jan has served tirelessly and is a respected and esteemed educator
who now works with some of her former students who have children in our
school.” said Sister Leach.
Cooper says, “It’s great to have all those connections.”
A few of them involve her own family. Cooper’s two sons attended
St. Joseph’s and All Saints in Hayward, the family parish. And now
her two grandchildren, Justin, 9, and Renee, 7, are in the third and second
grades, respectively, at St. Joseph’s.
What’s it like to have grandkids as part of your work environment?
“Well, we try to keep boundaries,” Cooper laughs, “although
sometimes they do come in to my office for a little TLC.”
Cooper recalls one day when maintaining the boundaries turned a mite humorous.
Justin, then a kindergartener, had been sent to the principal’s
office. When “Grandma Janice” called her daughter-in-law to
report the incident, she switched roles, and said in her best school officialese,
“Mrs. Cooper, this is Mrs. Cooper calling.”
Jill Chacon – ‘the best secretary we ever had’
A few weeks ago on National Secretaries’ Day,
Jill Chacon received a congratulatory card hailing her “as the best
secretary we ever had.” The senders weremembers of the kindergarten
class at Our Lady of the Rosary School in Union City.
Of course, theirs wasn’t the only card. Chacon received admiring
missives from kids of all ages at the school.
It was the latest in a series of honors.
Last May the eighth grade dedicated its yearbook to her, with the inscription:
“To our magnificent secretary. Even though one of her two military
sons, along with her daughter-in-law, Susan, is in Iraq, she still has
a strong will that helps her get up every morning and do the vocation
that she knows and loves.
“In times of need, she knows that we, the faculty and students of
Our Lady of the Rosary and our parish community, are there to comfort
her and support her. For the past six years, we have discovered the compassion
and strength of Mrs. Jill Chacon and we hope that she can grace our school
with her presence in future years to come.”
During the months that her family was in Iraq, each classroom set up its
own altar with photos of the trio. Every day they offered prayers for
their safety. When Peter and Susan returned last June, the school welcomed
them with a major celebration.
For Chacon, these outpourings are akin to being in the embrace of a large,
supportive family— “I love being in a Catholic school environment,”
she said. She thrives on the multi-tasking that is so much a part of the
job – returning messages and phone calls, tallying attendance, dispensing
ice packs, bandaids and hugs. “I feel like I have 150 kids of my
own. Some of the teachers need a mom, too, sometimes,” she added.
Our Lady of the Rosary’s popular secretary has been at the school
since August 1997.
Previously, she had served as an aide at St. John’s School in San
Lorenzo. Coincidentally, Gloria Galarsa, her principal at St. John’s,
later moved to Our Lady of the Rosary.
The two of them work well together. Says Chacon: “The nice thing
about my job is that Mrs. Galarsa has always treated me like a partner.
She has always respected my opinion. She and the staff have always made
me feel that I’m an important part of the school.
“I also have two pictures in my office that kind of sum it up –
one says ‘One hundred years from now nothing else will matter except
the hope that I have been important in a child’s life.’ The
other one says, ‘I can handle any crisis – I have children.’”
Gloria Galarsa notes: “Jill never faltered in her belief and love
of God and country, which she and her childhood sweetheart, Pete, have
instilled in their children. She is a beloved and selfless member of our
school community and is often referred to as the ‘real principal.’”
Therese Larouche – ‘vision and dedication to our community’
To students at St. Paul School in San Pablo, Therese
Larouche is the teacher who introduces them to the world of art, the counselor
who supports and advises them through their school careers, and an advocate
and coordinator for pupils with special needs.
No matter which role she is playing, said principal Teri Cullen, Larouche
gives generously of her energy and commitment. “Her vision and dedication
to our community are second only to her devotion to our faith and her
family,” Cullen said.
For her part, Larouche finds much to appreciate at St. Paul Parish and
school. “I was baptized at St. Paul,” she said, “also
my husband. We were married here. My husband, who’s one of nine
children, came to school here. Our kids were baptized here. So there’s
a real personal connection.”
And beyond that, she said, the school is 50 percent Latino, and she is
Mexican-American. “It feels like home,” she said, “especially
when I’m working with Spanish-speaking families.”
Larouche, the mother of two children and a resident of El Sobrante, has
worked at St. Paul for four years. She taught second grade her first year,
and took up her triple role as art teacher, counselor and special needs
coordinator the following year.
Before she arrived at the school she taught art at Salesian High School
and at the National Institute of Arts and Disabilities in Richmond, where
she worked with developmentally disabled students.
She already had a background in counseling when she arrived at St. Paul,
and at her principal’s suggestion she attended a diocesan workshop
on special needs. “It just was a natural fit,” she said.
She has an innate understanding of how children learn differently, she
said, and is able to see what they need and how to help them.
“We work with kids that are different learners,” she said.
She joins with teachers to come up with strategies, assess the students’
needs, and communicate with families. She meets three to five times a
year with students and family members, and continues to work with them
as the child goes “from teacher and teacher, grade to grade.”
Her counseling work is primarily with children at risk, those with academic
or behavioral problems. She looks for “physical, emotional and academic
cues,” she said.
Some children, she said, are academically advanced and bored in class;
others need to work off physical energy and may benefit from getting up
and helping in the classroom.
Her young artists, in kindergarten through eighth grade, learn everything
from color theory to religious art to major artists of the world. Each
year she organizes an art festival, transforming classrooms into galleries.
This year Grade 6 displayed works that represented prayer in art form.
Larouche admitted that, by the end of the week, she is “pretty tired,”
but she is delighted with her work at St. Paul. “I get to use a
lot of my gifts from God,” she said. “I love it here.”
Rick McGrew and Joe Marino –
coaching in sportsmanship
Rick McGrew and Joe Marino are the two guys you see
at the snack bar when you enter the gym at St. Bede School in Hayward,
two longtime coaches, mentors and volunteers who have helped three generations
of children learn self-worth and sportsmanship.
“They make it a gym where kids like to hang out,” said Bill
Ford, director of Catholic Youth Organization for the diocese. “They
greet people and make people feel comfortable.”
Both men began coaching when their own kids were playing sports at St.
Bede, back in the 1960s, and they’ve never left. McGrew said he
just likes “being around the kids, helping the kids,” and
Marino feels likewise. The kids “are a lot of fun,” he said.
“They kind of grow on you.”
McGrew will be coaching eighth grade basketball next year, and Marino
will stick pretty much to manning the snack bar and making sure things
run smoothly in the gym. In the past both men have served as the school’s
athletic director, and they’ve been involved in basketball, baseball
and track.
The snack bar, a center of attraction in the St. Bede gym, is noted for
its 50-cent hot dogs, which, Marino said, still bring in a profit. School
principal Constance Dalton said the hot dogs “feed our neighborhood
on the weekends.”
McGrew and Marino have showered their attention on kids from public schools
as well as St. Bede, and in south Hayward, Ford said, “This is a
much needed ministry because there are so many kids.”
He is especially impressed by their care for all youngsters they have
worked with. “They always talk about individual kids,” Ford
said, “not just the star athletes.”
Marino said he sees his former athletes “all the time,” and
he attends as many games as he can when they play for local high schools
– Moreau Catholic, Bishop O’Dowd, Mt. Eden and Tennyson.
McGrew said he hopes his work with three generations of kids will help
them as adults. “I hope they grow up and be stronger young men and
strong husbands,” he said.
Both men were involved in sports themselves when they were younger, and
they passed their love of athletics on to following generations, including
their own children. Today, after more than 40 years at St. Bede, said
principal Constance Dalton, they still “make sure boys and girls
from five to adulthood enjoy the thrill of sports and teamwork.”
Kathie Graber – mentor for budding actors
If you think kids are mostly interested in sports, TV
or surfing the Web, while ignoring the arts, surprise.
Case in point: Last year, when Kathie Graber, the new director for enrichment
at St. Michael School in Livermore, put out a casting call for 20 middle
school actors and actresses, 40 kids showed up.
An absolutely stunned, but delighted Graber tweaked the script so she
could include everybody.
“This year, we’re even bigger. We’ve got 85 kids involved,”
said Graber.
Their most recent production was “Hello, Broadway,” a tour
de force which brought together musical numbers from “Phantom of
the Opera,” “Annie,” and a tribute to the “Wizard
of Oz.”
Whoever would have thought that Kathie Paviglianti, a stage-struck teenager
from San Leandro who acted in high school plays, would one day be bringing
her love of the thespian arts to an equally theater-smitten group of elementary
school kids?
Chalk it up to life’s little twists and turns. After graduating
from the old Pacific High School, “now the site of Nordstrom’s
Rack,” she majored in early childhood education at Los Positas College
in Livermore. Classes included art and drama.
Then, Kathie married Larry Graber and they had three kids. When Graber’s
little brood reached school age, she began volunteering, and later working,
at St. Michael, their parochial school.
By the time her oldest had reached eighth grade, Graber knew she’d
need a more lucrative job to help finance the tuition at Moreau Catholic
High in Hayward. She found the perfect position – director of day
care for Livermore Laboratory Children’s Center, an off-site day-care
facility for employees’ children, infants through age 10.
One afternoon, a group of the older kids decided they wanted to write
a play and stage it for their parents, but they had a hard time putting
all the pieces together, Graber recalls. So they asked if she’d
write a script for them.
Graber agreed and enlisted parents’ help in making costumes and
gathering props. By the time opening night arrived, so many people were
psyched up, “we had to have it outside. There were 300 people in
the audience.”
Thus began a long-standing tradition of play production at Livermore Labs
Children’s Center. Over the years —17 to be exact –
Graber amassed a stunning collection of costumes. When she decided to
retire from the busy, strenuous year-round day-care director’s job,
Graber was able to take many of the costumes with her because her successor
didn’t do drama.
Graber returned to St. Michael’s to help a friend who was volunteering
there. When the friend retired, Graber was invited to join the staff as
director of enrichment.
Her program provides training in art, drama and small motor skills. Originally,
the drama piece was just for second and third graders, but from her many
years’ experience, Graber knew that theater training was just as
valuable for older kids.
Acting in plays builds their self-esteem, teaches them to work with other
kids, and helps them learn to follow directions, she explained, adding
“drama is such a good way to reach children, especially the quiet
ones.”
Besides “Hello, Broadway,” students have taken part in “A
Tribute to Walt Disney,” “Christmas Around the World,”
and “Why Christmas Trees Aren’t Perfect.”
Graber refuses to take all the credit, saying she couldn’t put the
productions together without the help of her principal, San Rafael Dominican
Sister Emmanuel Cardinale, her daughter, Kim, and the large bevy of parent
volunteers. “They are just great.”
Karen Mangini – ‘an amazing transformational leader’
If John Lennon, the late Beatles singer and composer
of the wistfully beautiful peace song, “Imagine,” could come
back for a visit to the East Bay some Wednesday morning, his gentle heart
would be touched.
Lennon wrote what probably has become his most famous composition during
the early 1970’s. In part, the lyrics invite us to “Imagine
no possessions, no need for greed or hunger… a brotherhood of man.
Imagine all the people sharing all the world. You may say that I’m
a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”
Well, in Concord, there is a Catholic school called St. Agnes with a peace-centered
principal named Karen Mangini, who not only dreams, but lives out the
energy of Lennon’s words. Once a week, Mangini brings the students
together for a Peace Keeper Assembly.
“Karen has designed this assembly with great care and love,”
reports middle school teacher, Merrilee Silveira.
Each Wednesday, two students from each classroom are nominated to present
their peaceful findings from the previous week. Student representatives
from kindergarten through eighth grade do more than “imagine”
what true peace could be like. Mangini has trained her kids to become
astute observers of human nature — juvenile spiritual reporters,
if you will, — ferreting out living examples of Christ-like actions
they have seen over the past week.
“They stand and speak from the front of the church about peaceful
acts that they have observed at school, and in our community, church and/or
world. Then, the whole school sings a peace keeper song,” said Silveira.
Afterwards, Mangini acknowledges birthdays from the preceding week and
celebrates baptismal anniversaries, as part of this special assembly.
And then, like a mother who is happy to read her child’s favorite
book each day, no matter how many times the little one has heard it, Mangini
asks her peace keepers, “What does Jesus ask of us?”
Students individually respond, “To walk humbly, act justly, and
love tenderly.” Mangini reminds them that if people follow these
simple, yet powerful beliefs, “we will change the world piece by
peace,” said Silveira.
Silveira continued, “If you were to meet Karen, you would realize
immediately that she is an incredible child of God, His Noble Peace prize
nominee, who has been chosen as a channel of peace.
Mangini’s peacekeeping moves well beyond the church setting.
“She’s a terrific role model,” said Silveira. Mangini
knows every student and family member by name. One of her major goals
is to have positive learning outcomes and she does this with sincerity,
a kind heart, and through Christo-centric lenses.
Combine all of these elements, and one has a portrait, said her colleague,
of “an amazing transformational leader.”
Janice
Cooper, St. Joseph School, Fremont
Jill
Chacon
Our Lady of the Rosary School
Union City
Therese
Larouche
St. Paul School,
San Pablo.
Rick
McGrew St. Bede School, Hayward
Joe
Marino St. Bede School, Hawayrd
Kathie
Graber
St. Michael School, Livermore.
\
Karen
Mangini, St. Agnes School, Concord
