La Lettre spring 2011

La Lettre | 1mars 2011

March 2011

French American International School | International High School | Lycée International Franco-Américain

Special Insert:2009-2010 Annual Report

WhyInternational

EducationMatters

destination:the worldBeyond The ClassroomFrench American International School

students learn about the world by

venturing out into it. In September,

Middle School 6th graders spent a

team-building weekend in the Marin

Headlands learning about nature and

the environment.

La Lettre | 3

IN THIS ISSUE

From The Head | 4

Board’s Eye View | 14

50th Anniversary | 18

Advancement | 20

Alumni News | 24Gabriela De GoliaSalimata GassamaAlumni Reunion December 2010

Soirée des Arts et des Vins | 28

SPECIAL INSERT: 2009-2010 ANNUAL REPORT | 33

Diversity and Inclusion | 52Black History Month

The Green Project | 55The Rooftop GardenCork Recycling Hayes Valley Farm

Service Learning | 61Lower School Chores For CharityPeer Counseling

Globally Engaged | 64IB World Student ConferenceProject Senegal | Songs For Senegal

Performing Arts | 70The Fall Play | Winter ConcertStudent-Directed One Act Plays

Le Cirque | 82

Athletics | 86

March 2011La Lettre is a publication of French American International School and International High School | Contents © 2011 | Rick Gydesen, Editor150 Oak Street. San Francisco, CA 94102 | (415) 558-2000 | www.internationalsf.org | French translations by Mireille Gaonac’h

La Lettre

Above: International High School French Bac students present their annual Le Cirque, a circus spectacular in the school gymnasium (page 82.) Cover Photo: Sebastian Deery (2 Yellow)

contemplates a sketch in Lower School art class. photos by rick gydesen

4 | La Lettre march 2011

Why International Education Mattersby jane camblin

Head of School

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”pericles; greek politician, general and statesman, 495-425 bc

Over the last 50 years the school may have grown tremendously, but at its heart it has always remained true to its original mission, one that supports diversity in all its many forms while promoting academic rigor and intercultural understanding. Our founders strongly believed in the value of a French, bilingual, international

education but also in something more: in the words of one of our earliest trustees, James McClatchy, “We wanted to create an academically challenging private school that didn’t look like all the others we had visited, a school where our children would be both in the world and of the world, a school where we all understood the value of the notion of giving access, in the real sense – not as a perfunctory nod to charity, but as an authentic advantage to everyone in the community. It was this quality that attracted me as a parent to the school in the first place, and it is this value I will defend until the end.”

In 2011, we continue to honor these core values and to teach genuine intercultural respect, not as an alternative to a sense of national or cultural identity, but as an essential part of living an engaged life on our planet in the 21st century. To this end, our school, unlike many of those in Douglas McGray’s article (see page 6), provides in-depth programs in philosophy, economics, geography, theory of knowledge and world history and literature. These, combined with challenging coursework in math and sciences, encourage our students to become knowledgeable critical thinkers and active lifelong learners. Unlike the students cited in McGray’s work, French American International School scholars are culturally sophisticated, highly literate, speak at least two and often multiple languages fluently, have a strong grasp of logic and the value of scientific method, are aware of world events, and understand that there may be many differing solutions to difficult ethical and political issues. Above all, while they are team-players and at ease in differing situations, they can definitely think for themselves and are not shy to express their own (informed) opinions.

Lost in America was first shared with me by French American parent John Cate. The author, who lives in San Francisco, graciously waived his copyright fee. We thank him most sincerely and publish the article to illustrate “Why International Education Matters.”

Jane Camblin at the November 2010 Soirée des Arts et des Vins.

Notre établissement a considérablement grandi au cours des 50 années qui viennent de s’écouler, mais il reste fondamentale-ment fidèle à sa mission originale, au service de la diversité sous toutes ses formes, sans cesser de promouvoir la rigueur académique et la compréhension interculturelle. Nos fondateurs croyaient fermement en la valeur d’une éducation française, bilingue et internationale, mais également en ce qu’exprimait en ces mots un des premiers membres de notre Conseil de gestion, James McClatchy :

« Nous voulions fonder un établissement scolaire privé au programme pédagogique rigoureux, et qui ne ressemblerait pas à tous ceux que nous avions visités, un établissement dans lequel nos enfants seraient à la fois dans le monde et rompus aux usages du monde, un établissement dans lequel chacun comprendrait la valeur de la notion d’accessibilité, dans son vrai sens – pas une concession superficielle à un devoir de charité, mais un avantage véritable pour chacun au sein de la communauté. C’est la qualité qui m’a séduit en premier lieu en tant que parent, et c’est cette valeur que je défendrai jusqu’à la fin. »

En 2011, nous continuons à honorer ces valeurs fonda-mentales et à enseigner le vrai respect interculturel, pas une alternative à un sens de l’identité nationale ou culturelle, mais un élément essentiel d’une vie engagée sur notre planète au 21e siècle. Dans cette perspective, notre établissement, contrairement à beaucoup de ceux dont parle Douglas McGray dans son article que vous trouverez ci-dessous, offre des programmes approfondis en philosophie, en économie, en géographie, en théorie de la connaissance, en histoire du monde et en littérature. Ces programmes, associés à des travaux de haut niveau dans le domaine des mathématiques et des sciences, encouragent nos élèves à faire preuve de ré-flexion critique et à apprendre toute la vie durant. Au contraire des élèves dont il est question dans les travaux de McGray, ceux du Lycée International Franco-Américain font preuve de sophistication culturelle, ils sont très cultivés, parlent au moins deux et souvent de multiples langues couramment, maîtrisent parfaitement la logique et comprennent la valeur de la méthode scientifique, ont une bonne connaissance de l’actualité mondiale, et comprennent qu’il peut exister de nombreuses solutions différentes à des problèmes politiques et éthiques épineux. Surtout, même s’ils ont le sens du travail en équipe et sont à l’aise dans différentes situations, ils sont tout à fait en mesure de réfléchir d’eux-mêmes et ne craignent pas d’exprimer leurs propres opinions (informées).

C’est John Cate, un parent d’élève du Lycée International Franco-Américain, qui m’a fait connaître « Lost in America ». Son auteur, qui vit à San Francisco, a gracieusement renoncé à ses droits d’auteur. Nous le remercions de tout cœur et publions l’article pour illustrer « Pourquoi l’éducation in-ternationale est importante ».


destination: leadershipMiddle School Student Council. Our students are encouraged and mentored early on to develop the skills and motivation to become leaders in their communities. This year’s student council, clockwise from upper left, are Marie-Claire Moazed, Secretary (8 White), Cyrus Unvala, Vice President (7 White), Larson Holt, President (8 Red), and Nick Thayer, Treasurer (8 White).


MissionGuided by the principles

of academic rigor and

diversity, the French American

International School offers

programs of study in French

and English to prepare its

graduates for a world in which

the ability to think critically

and to communicate across

cultures is of paramount

importance.

Guidé par des principes

de rigueur académique

et de diversité, le Lycée

International Franco-Américain

propose des programmes en

français et en anglais, pour

assurer la réussite de ses

diplômés dans un monde dans

lequel la pensée critique et la

communication interculturelle

seront déterminantes.

Lost in Americaby doUglas mcgray

The following article was originally published in Foreign Policy Magazine on April 25, 2006. Douglas McGray is a fellow at the New America Foundation.

Christina is a modern, multi-tasking, American 15-year-old—fiddling with her new iPod, sassing the tall boy slouched beside her, and get-ting an impromptu lesson in

Filipino culture at an after-school pro-gram in Oakland, California. “I speak Tagalog and Filipino,” says the group’s counselor, Michelle Ferrer, “two lan-guages from the island where my fam-ily comes from.” Christina is puzzled. “The Philippines is an island?” she asks skeptically. Ferrer nods and Christina frowns. “I thought it was in China,” she says. Ferrer tries not to laugh. “Girl, you thought I was Chinese?” she teases gen-tly. “No,” Christina clarifies, “I thought the Philippines was a country in China.”

In California, where Christina lives, more than 1 in 4 of the state’s residents were born outside the United States. Schoolchildren speak more than 60 languages at home. Globalization is everywhere you look. Here in Oakland, an 11-year-old African-American boy has impressed international audi-ences with his uncanny Chinese arias. In nearby Fruitvale, nearly 100,000 locals turned out last fall for a Mexican Día de los Muertos celebration. To the south, in Silicon Valley, a Bollywood cineplex effortlessly sells out its Hindi screenings. A few blocks from my San Francisco apartment, a shop that spe-cializes in goods from Brazil (the area around Goiania, specifically) shares its block with a Vietnamese restaurant and a yoga studio, where yuppies chant in Sanskrit as they bend and sweat; out-side, Caribbean reggaeton blares from the windows of Japanese tuner coupes.

But for all the changes globalization has brought to the average American kid’s cultural and commercial ecosys-tem, the average classroom has lagged far behind, even in cosmopolitan Cali-fornia. Take foreign languages. In the late 1940s, more than 90 percent of kids

who studied a foreign language learned French, Spanish, or Latin. At the end of the century, a radically different era, that figure remained the same. At least two decades after political scientists decided China would be the world’s next major power, only a little more than 1,300 public high school students studied Chinese—just 8 percent of the number studying American Sign Language. More than 25 years since the oil crisis showed the Middle East to be the world’s most vital and volatile region, only about 500 American public high schoolers were enrolled in Arabic classes, while some 175,000 studied Latin instead. Two thirds of American students never studied a second lan-guage at all in the year 2000.

That’s just the most obvious anachro-nism. Many U.S. states have introduced world history classes, but few find time for modern Africa, Asia, Latin America, or the Middle East. Islam, for instance, makes a single scheduled appearance in California’s history and social studies curriculum, in a survey of ancient societies for 11- and 12-year-olds. That provincial tendency lingers into college. Although half of all college-bound Americans say they hope to study abroad, only 1 percent actually follow through on those plans. And nearly half of those students travel to just four countries in Western Europe: Britain, France, Italy, and Spain. In 2004, Italy attracted more American students than all of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East combined.

As a result, young Americans like Christina represent something of a para-dox: surrounded by foreign languages, cultures, and goods, they remain hope-lessly uninformed, and misinformed, about the world beyond U.S. borders. In 2002, with their troops occupying Kabul, Afghanistan, and both Washing-ton and the rest of the world debating a possible invasion of Iraq, 85 percent of 18- to 24-year-old Americans surveyed by the National Geographic Society could not find either country on a map. And it gets worse: Sixty-nine percent failed to find Britain, 29 percent could not find the Pacific Ocean, and nearly a third believed the U.S. population to be somewhere between 1 and 2 billion.


For most of U.S. history, a clique of exclusive universities and military academies trained an elite group of bright young men to handle the nation’s minimal foreign concerns. But America has a different role in the world today, and the world has a different role in America. The U.S. military maintains more than half a million soldiers, intel-ligence officers, staff, and contractors abroad, and employs some 50,000 foreigners. Together, they operate more than 700 bases in roughly 130 countries—the shadow of America’s interests in the world. At the same time, foreign influence in the United States grows every year. In West Virginia, a state mocked by smug urbanites as a backwater, local businesses did more than $3.1 billion in foreign trade in 2005, and investment from some 75 global firms created more than 30,000 new jobs.

Of course, fretting about public education is something of a national pastime. Every few years a new survey comes out, showing that American schoolchildren lag behind their global counterparts in science and math. That inevitably sends lawmakers and the public into a panic. Soon, we hear, the United States will become a nation of baristas and retail clerks, while Asians leave their kids with the Nannybot, commute to work on cold fusion-powered monorails, and fine-tune the software that will put Microsoft and Google out of business.

And yet, for all the anxiety that science and math education inspires, the state of global languages, politics, history, and culture in U.S. schools may actually be scarier. Whether it is translating and analyzing intelligence intercepts in Arabic and Farsi, guiding American industry through new mar-kets in Asia, collaborating with research partners across the globe, or shaping the foreign policy of the world’s only superpower at the ballot box, young Americans will struggle to bear their responsibilities.

The Hermit ClassroomThe United States was barely a

toddler, in nation years, when public


schoolhouses began to spread across the country. It was a radical notion: teaching every poor farm boy or miner’s son to read, write, add, and learn about the great men who founded their democracy, at a time when European governments still considered primary education a privilege. But the movement was rooted in anxiety. America was suddenly a republic, but a republic of foreigners—disparate, multilingual, barely connected to a distant government in Washington, and ill-equipped to weigh matters of state when they cast a vote.

Public education was designed to manufacture citizens. American textbooks appeared, scrubbed clean of continental influence. Georgia legislators actually banned study abroad before the age of 16. Even bitter political rivals of men such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson saw the utility in building up a few common heroes. If Americans had nothing in common but America, then public education would unite them.

A homogenizing civic education prevailed without much dissent for more than a century, mostly because new waves of immigrants—Italians, Irish, Eastern Europeans—kept arriving. That ethos did face challenges. When, in the 1840s, German Americans in Cincinnati, Ohio, lobbied for their children to learn German, school administrators feared losing this wealthy, educated community to private schools, so they squeezed German into the curriculum. Later, Italian immigrants put pressure on New York City schools, and in the 1930s, an Italian-American principal offered his kids the country’s first Italian class. Still, traditional ideals endured.

It took two world wars, the rise of an ambitious Soviet Union, and the birth of technologies that exploded any notion of safe distance for the United States to rethink its isolationist bent. Public education would change, too. But if the world outside demanded American attention, American classrooms mostly resisted the call. After all, when the Germans rose in World War I, Americans did not rush to learn the enemy’s language; they banned it from public schools. (By 1922, just 13,000 American public school students studied Ger-man, down from nearly 325,000 in 1915, when only Latin was more popular.) Why would the Cold War proceed any differently?

American education did react to the 20th century’s growing internationalism, at least for a moment, after the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik program in the late 1950s. Shaken by Moscow’s achievement, American legislators passed the National Defense Education Act, funding everything from advanced scientific research to foreign-language study. For more than a decade after Sputnik’s flight, language education boomed in a way it never has since. But most of the money went to French and Spanish. And the largesse was short-lived. When budgets tightened in the 1970s, international courses were the first to go, and the number of students in foreign-language classes dropped every year. By 1980, less than 1 in 10 universities required any foreign- language study for admission, down from one third in the 1960s. Nobody seemed concerned.

The globe-spanning perils and opportunities of the Cold War may have preoccupied Washington, D.C., but in

education, the fight was at home, and over the past. Take California’s world history curriculum (fairly thorough, by American standards). Children in the seventh and eighth grades study a culturally diverse history of the world, up through the Middle Ages. Due credit is paid to the contribu-tions of great African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Latin American civilizations. But by the time students hit the 10th grade, they reach the Industrial Revolution, and “world” history turns into the history of the United States and Western Europe. “The conservatives will say it’s OK to include the traditions of ancient and medieval cultures,” explains Ross Dunn, a history professor at San Diego State University and coauthor of an influential draft of national history standards in the 1990s, “but that once you get to 1500, the focus should be on the West, because that’s where the action is.”

University campuses, too, became battlegrounds in the 1990s, as students and professors staked out new American identities that put race, gender, or foreign heritage on equal footing with American citizenship. Conservatives lashed out at this “political correctness.” Ironically, though, these fights over what it means to be American rarely considered American identity in a wider world. For all the heartwarming talk about respecting diverse cultures, 92 percent of American undergraduates never take a foreign-language class.

An Incomplete GradeSputnik fell to Earth and faded from memory. But there

would be other opportunities to shake schools out of their provincialism. None seems more striking, in hindsight, than a report commissioned by the White House in 1978. Pointing to unrest in the Middle East, and a line in the 1975 Helsinki Accords that compelled signatories to promote the study of foreign languages, Congressmen Paul Simon and Leon Panetta called on President Jimmy Carter to appoint a commission to assess the state of international studies. Their report, Strength Through Wisdom, was blistering. “Americans’ incompetence in foreign languages is nothing short of scandalous,” the authors wrote. “The United States requires far more reliable capacities to communicate with its allies, analyze the behavior of potential adversaries, and earn the trust and sympathies of the uncommitted.” And yet, the report argues, “our schools graduate a large majority of students whose knowledge and vision stops at the American shoreline, whose approach to international affairs is provincial, and whose heads have been filled with astonishing misinformation.”

The report’s authors, 25 luminaries of American academia, politics, and the media, proposed more than 100 pages of possible reforms, from requiring international education courses for all teachers in training, to launching regional language centers across the country that would support foreign-language instruction. Congress shrugged. “People who either were children of immigrants, or had language ability, or members [of Congress] who traveled abroad got it,” Panetta recalls. “But there wasn’t broad support for what we were doing, either from the administration or from the

La Lettre | 9

destination: communityThe Buddy System Sara Rowbotham and Bereket Kassaye (1 Green) team up to cross Oak Street safely as they head to an assembly in the gymnasium.


congress.” None of the reforms were adopted.A generation of Americans grew up and left for college.

The Cold War ended. The Internet came of age. Falling airfares turned foreign continents into weekend getaway spots. Average Americans developed strong opinions on everything from outsourcing, foreign pharmaceuticals, and global warming, to pandemic disease, terrorism, and the politics of oil. Globalization became a buzzword, and then a simple fact of life. Unsurprisingly, American college students began to seek out new foreign languages and study abroad in greater numbers. But they did so with little encouragement. In 1996, congress actually chopped 20 percent from the budget of the Fulbright Program, which sends American graduates around the world for advanced study. Education reformers devoted most of their energy to math, English literacy, and standardized testing, and many primary schools dropped social studies and foreign languages altogether.

Earlier this year, President George W. Bush finally revived some of the ideas in Strength Through Wisdom, with a new National Security Language Initiative. The modestly funded measure encourages foreign-language study as early as kindergarten, and requests new money to train and certify foreign-language teachers, particularly in so-called critical languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Hindi, and Russian. It also promises to subsidize foreign study for high school and college students, and bring native speakers from abroad to teach in U.S. classrooms.

The business community, too, has started to champion the

cause. According to a Committee for Economic Develop-ment study, 30 percent of large U.S. firms surveyed in 2002 believed a provincial, monolingual workforce had cost them business opportunities overseas. Even the College Board, a nonprofit organization that administers U.S. exams for college admissions and credit, has started to come around. Only six years ago, it offered two Advanced Placement (AP) exams on the writings of the Roman poet Virgil, and none on the politics, economics, history, and literature of five of the world’s continents. It finally introduced a world history exam in 2002, and next year it will offer its first exams in non-European languages—Chinese and Japanese. The Col-lege Board’s executive director for the AP program, Trevor Packer, also revealed that test planners are considering a shift that would put much more emphasis on the United States in a global context for a major update to their flagship U.S. History exam. “We have to reflect best practices at the university level,” Packer says. “What we’re finding are courses that do a better job than in the past of integrating U.S. history into global themes.” Because the College Board defines educational rigor in American high schools, any shift in its outlook would have wide repercussions.

It could all begin to add up to another moment for international education in the United States. But the previ-ous moments have been just that—moments. And there are reasons to worry this one will be no different. As The New Republic pointed out in January, the president’s language initiative may promise $24 million to promote foreign-

Above and Beyond 2011 Michael McCory, head barista at Java Beach Café (owned by parents Buffy and

Patrick Maguire), and High School Assistant Principal Joel Cohen at the annual faculty and staff thank-you dinner hosted

by the three Parents’ Associations. Photo by Donna Vallin

Boston Alumni Reunion The Alumni Association held its first Boston regional gathering on Tuesday, March 8, 2011 at the French Library and Cultural Center. Hosted by alums Courtney Coile ‘89 and Adam Camblin ‘08, the event offered Boston-area alumni, parents of alumni, and friends of the school a chance to catch up over wine and hors d’oeuvres. Above: Benoit Denizet-Lewis ‘93, Jane Camblin, and Alysia Abbott ‘88.


language instruction in K-12 schools, but that seems pretty paltry compared to the $206 million he requested to fund abstinence-only sex education. And ultimately, what happens in American classrooms today is driven by standardized tests, administered by state governments. In California, teachers know that contemporary global themes such as disease, information technology, migration, and environmental policy make up about 10 percent of the “standards” they are supposed to teach in 10th grade world history, but they represent only one question on the 60-question state exam. With so much history to cover, and so much emphasis on test scores, teachers are under pressure to cut out extras. For now, foreign languages and global politics, economics, history, and culture are dispensable.

World ClassThat is not to say there are no bright spots. Ask around, and

you will hear stories of individual teachers who slip global context into the curriculum, often with a lot of imagination. “It’s mostly individuals who, because of their personal experiences, value international education, and try to find ways to fit it in,” says Peter Hammer, social studies content specialist for the San Francisco Unified School District. “It takes a great deal of determination on the individual teacher’s part, and support from outside the schools.”

Some adventurous school districts have let their foreign-language programs evolve with the times. When

the Washington, D.C., suburb of Fairfax, Virginia, began to attract new immigrants in the 1980s, schools reflected the change. Today, students can study Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Latin, Russian, and Spanish. New York’s Henry Street School takes Chinese-language students on field trips to Chinatown, where they speak Mandarin with curious shopkeepers and restaurant owners, and benefit from an easy and inexpensive study abroad-like experience. And then there is the spread of two-way bilingual immersion schools. At the public Alice Fong Yu elementary school in San Francisco, children learn everything from math to social studies in both Cantonese and English. By the time they reach high school, they are totally bilingual—cognitively wired to learn more languages, and culturally wired to understand America’s place in the world.

A few schools are experimenting even further. At the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center, an influential public charter school in the sprawl north of Los Angeles, Eugene Astilla stands at the head of a classroom full of high school freshmen. His students, overwhelmingly Latino and over-whelmingly poor, are dressed in black and white (red and blue are gang colors, and banned in class). Astilla teaches world history at a new satellite school, the Vaughn International Studies Academy. It’s one of eight pilot programs nationwide, funded by the nonprofit Asia Society and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to try to bring the contemporary world to every class in the school day, even science and math.

Today, Astilla asks his kids to compare Benito Mussolini,

MLF Delegation Members of the Mission Laïque Française (MLF) visited the campus in November during the AEFE/French Embassy Seminar held in San Francisco for senior managers of French schools in the U.S. and Canada. From left to right: Pierre Vittoz, Head, Dallas International School,

Richard Ulffers, International High School Principal; Edouard Mayoral, Proviseur Adjoint; Tex Schenkkan, Chair, French American International School Board of Trustees; Jane Camblin, Head of School; Jean-Christophe Deberre, Directeur Général de la Mission Laïque Française; Jean-François Genay,

Délégué MLF-Amérique du Nord; Polly Lyman, Director of Advancement; and French American Trustees Azeb Gessesse and Stephane de Bord.

march 2011

Adolf Hitler, and Saddam Hussein. All used violence to stay in power, several suggest. “They used propaganda,” one student points out. “Good one!” Astilla says approvingly. He quizzes the class on facts. “Can someone tell me the name of Saddam’s party?” he asks. “Sunni?” one kid says, hesitantly. “No, but good guess,” Astilla says. “I’ll give you a clue. It’s something you kids don’t take often enough.” A boy in the back raises his hand. “The Shower Party?” he asks, and half the room jumps in at once: “Baath!”

The readings on Hitler and Mussolini are in the standard textbook. The readings on Saddam are downloaded from the Web. And that is how it goes in every class—teachers hit the stuff the state expects kids to know but lead detours out of the textbook to try and put things in a global context. Take a lesson going on next door, on plant biology, where the teacher, Noah DeLeon, mixes overhead slides on photosynthesis with world agriculture maps. He goes over the mechanics of plant reproduction, but also prompts kids to think about the wider meaning of plants, from the debate over corn-derived ethanol as a fuel source to food security around the world. “There’s no curriculum out there,” explains Principal Yvonne Chan. “There isn’t any model.”

All the students at Vaughn take Spanish and Chinese. Because many of them are fluent Spanish speakers, or native Spanish speakers who had to master English, they pick up Chinese quickly—a second foreign language always comes more easily. Next year, the school will begin to offer Arabic as an elective. Neighborhood parents, many of whom speak only Spanish, are among the school’s biggest supporters. “Our children need languages other than Spanish and English to compete globally,” says Imelda Sierra, whose daughter attends the school.

Large American cities have always been international and multicultural, but the nation’s 2000 Census was something of a landmark. For the first time, new immigrants were more likely to settle in a suburb than in a big city such as Los Angeles, Miami, or New York. States that were home to very few recent immigrants a generation ago, including Maine, Minnesota, and North Carolina, are finding new languages and new cultures in their midst.

Of course, cultural diversity does not automatically give a community a global outlook. Many American children of immigrants reluctantly speak two or three languages, but otherwise stay willfully ignorant of their parents’ na-tive countries. White suburbanites may hear Hindi in the neighborhood for the first time, notice a new sari shop at the corner strip mall, develop a regular craving for takeout tandoori, and still think Kashmir is for sweaters. But new immigrants make foreignness immediate for Americans, in a way that citizens of small countries on crowded continents take for granted.

That may be the best hope for a broader commitment to international education in U.S. schools. Whether the United States looks to its growing and dispersing immigrant com-munities as a resource, though, may depend on how well the nation overcomes some longstanding ideas—namely, that Americans are easily drawn to foreign loyalties, and that

public education should be a defense against cultural dis-solution. Many critics, for instance, still rail against bilingual education as an un-American accommodation to foreigners. Just look at conservative pundit Tucker Carlson’s reaction to the Bush administration’s National Security Language Initia-tive. “People are really influenced by their study abroad,” he argued. “Do we want, in other words, the federal government paying, possibly to create more converts to radical Islam? Because that is actually what’s going to happen.”

An inward-looking education system didn’t stop the United States from becoming rich and powerful in the 20th century. It would be a mistake, though, to assume that what worked for previous generations will still work in the future. Scientific research teams have become multilingual, multinational, and multidisciplinary. Businesses are staking out suppliers, partners, and storefronts overseas. Teachers and students must welcome and integrate a growing number of new immigrants into their communities. Soldiers, often teenagers with no education beyond high school, deploy alongside allies from dozens of different countries, and negotiate language and cultural barriers in situations where time and precision can make the difference between lives saved and lives lost. In the 21st century, everyone is a potential diplomat.

But it isn’t just the world that’s changing; it’s the very nature of knowledge. Grammar, spelling, and multiplication tables may remain comfortingly constant, but theories in science, technology, politics, and economics can become dated by the time a textbook publisher goes to press. “What’s different today,” says Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, professor of globalization and education at New York University, “is the rapid rate in which knowledge becomes obsolete. That means that learning has to be focused on cognitive skills.” Think about good computer education: It doesn’t just teach kids to perform a task, it teaches them how to learn unfa-miliar technology. The same holds true in global economics, politics, and society, which can shift—and shift the world’s competitive landscape—as fast as a new operating system can turn a two-year-old laptop into an expensive typewriter.

We may live in a democratic age, but the international system is no democracy. The United States can solve crises that entire continents, working together, cannot. It can also sink most treaties, veto any global consensus, undermine the United Nations, and make far-reaching decisions that the rest of the world must live with. Savvy countries have realized that, and angled for influence with American youth. The Chinese government put up funding to encourage the College Board to develop its new AP Chinese exam, and Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal recently donated $40 million to introduce ambitious Georgetown and Harvard students to the Arab world. Americans should be grateful for their concern. In a few years, Christina’s disoriented peers will land jobs in Washington, get their first set of business cards from multinational firms, and sit in judgment of U.S. foreign policy every four years. The United States can no longer afford an isolationist education system, any more than the world can afford an isolationist American public.

12 | La Lettre

La Lettre | 13

destination:collaboration

1,000 Origami CranesAaron Long (8 Blue) and Kai Sata (8 Red) help each other master

the art of origami during the school’s daylong “Rite of Spring” celebration, held on the Spring Equinox, March 21, 2011.


Board of Trustees

Board’s Eye Viewby josh nossiter

Trustees Debbie Zachareas and Josh Nossiter consult on the wine presentation at last May’s Dîner d’Epicure.

What does the Board of Trustees do? A query posed not infrequently to board members, and those who have been following this column over the years might have seen the question tackled in this space once or thrice before. So if the ensuing results in a mild attack of déjà vu, the certain cure is

to skim quickly and proceed to the varied topics addressed elsewhere in La Lettre.

Who We AreMeanwhile, the board. There are twenty-two of us, led by

our new Chair, Tex Schenkkan, and including our Honor-ary Chair, Consul General of France Romain Serman and ex-officio members, Head of School Jane Camblin, and the French Cultural Attache, Denis Bisson. Most of us are parents of French American students or of alumni. One of our num-ber, Frances Hochschild, is both parent and alumna. Some are newcomers; others have served for a decade or more. Diplomats apart, our ranks include lawyers and architects, business executives and consultants, bankers and financiers, educators and educational consultants, non-profit executives, and civil servants. We have started businesses, run schools, designed buildings, written books, raised children. We have in common a devotion to the school, and to its mission of providing a superb education to continuing generations of students.

You’ll see us at school events, though we’re not easy to pick out of the crowd. On at least three occasions during my years of service we’ve been given impressive brass name tags. I still have one, though remembering to wear it is another matter. But chances are we’ll seek you out and introduce ourselves. Those of us whose children have long since graduated are especially keen to hear about the doings of current parents and their students. Many of us have acquired a fair amount of institutional history, and we’re always glad to answer questions and talk about the school.

What We DoThe board has but two related functions: To secure the

present and future of the institution, and to hire and retain the strongest possible Head of School. Every other aspect of the school, from classroom to sports field, library to playground, is entirely in the hands of Jane Camblin and her team. The board does act as a resource, providing the administration with what expertise we command in our different specialties. But the day-to-day running of the school, in all its dizzying complexity, is emphatically not our department. And for that board members are truly thankful.

Service on the board is voluntary and unpaid; indeed, the board is a significant source of fundraising revenue for the school. We meet for several hours at a time, approximately every two months, with an annual retreat that takes place near the beginning of the school year. The perks of office consist of a parking pass for the school lot, good only for non-school hours, and the snacks Executive Secretary Donna Vallin provides for us at meetings that can extend late into the night.

The matter of our meetings varies, though always in service to one or the other of our two basic functions. Many topics are perennials. Jane and her team produce and advocate for the budget each year, but the board must vote its approval. That budget to a certain extent depends on tuition rates, and those are set by the board at levels the administration feels are adequate to carry out the mission of the school. The board also hears from the different academic sections and departments, with regular reports on test results, college admissions, overseas trips, activities, and enrollment. The board, or members of it, meet regularly with our colleagues from Chinese American School, and both boards manage The National Center for International Schools, the jointly-owned body that owns and runs our facilities.

Where We AreIn fact the facility has been a dominant theme of recent

board meetings. When we first moved to 150 Oak Street in 1997, some of us wondered what we were to do with all the extra space. Now, even with the expansion to Page Street, our growing school yet again bulges at the seams. Academic space, sports and play space, new labs, classrooms, commons, and gyms, are all on the table. Although our continuing ex-pansion is driven by the administration’s carefully considered needs, the board plays a central role in helping to finance and execute the facilities master plan. Over the past few years the board has been instrumental in solidifying the school’s

La Lettre | 15

destination:discoveryFrench Track Biotech LabAnaëlle Thommasson, 10th

grade, uses a micropipette

to transfer a solute made

from M&Ms, which will

migrate into a silica gel

in order to find out its

composition.

mars 2011


Conseil de GestionBoard of Trustees

2010–2011Romain Serman

Consul Général de France Honorary Chairman

Gerard (Tex) Schenkkan Chairman

Adam Cioth Chairman Emeritus

Ronald Kahn Vice Chairman

Leigh Sata Vice Chairman

Vernon Goins Secretary

Patrice Maheo Treasurer

Denis Bisson Attaché Culturel

Stephane de Bord Orpheus S.L. Crutchfield

Azeb GessesseFrances HochschildDiane Jones Lowrey

Dwight LongDavid Low

Kathleen LowryChristine MotleyJosh Nossiter

Anne-Marie PierceYoung ShinGreg Thayer

Debbie Zachareas

Conseil HonoraireAdvisory Council

Martin Quinn Chair

Judithe BizotJoan Chatfield-Taylor

Thomas E. Horn

Représentants des Parents d’ÉlèvesParents’ Association

Representatives

Rona Spiegel Lower School/Primaire

Stephanie Lima and John Cate Middle School/Collège

Terry Amgott-Kwan and Rachel Shu High School/Lycée

financial position. Strong institutions do not stand still, and at this juncture, securing the present and future of the school includes a significant expansion and reconfiguration of the physical plant.

Indeed, what with expansion and moves, an ever-stronger academic and financial footing, a consistent questioning of the status quo and a willingness to test the occasional limb, French American and International have been in fairly constant motion since my eldest started at the school over twenty years ago. Trustees past and present have found being vital components of a vibrant and dynamic institution more than sufficient reason for service.

Correspondence is welcome, to [email protected].

Que fait le Conseil de gestion ?

C’est une question fréquemment posée aux membres du Conseil de gestion, et ceux d’entre vous qui suivent cette chronique depuis quelques années ont déjà eu l’occasion de lire la

réponse dans ces pages à une ou deux reprises. Donc, si la lecture de cette chronique prend des airs de déjà vu, n’hésitez pas à la parcourir rapidement pour passer aux différents thèmes abordés dans le reste de ce numéro de La Lettre.

Qui sommes-nous ?Laissez-moi vous présenter le

Conseil de gestion. Nous sommes vingt-deux, sous la présidence récente de Tex Schenkkan, dont entre autres notre Président d’honneur, le Consul Général de France, Monsieur Romain Serman, et des membres de droits tels que la Proviseure, Madame Jane Camblin, et l’Attaché culturel français, Denis Bisson. La plupart d’entre nous sont des parents d’élèves ou d’anciens élèves du Lycée International Franco-Américain. L’une des membres du Conseil de gestion, Frances Hochschild, est à la fois parente d’élève et ancienne élève. Certains sont nouveaux venus. D’autres y siègent depuis au moins dix ans. En plus de diplomates, on trouve également parmi nous des avocats et des architectes, des cadres d’entreprise

mars 2011

et des consultants, des banquiers et des financiers, des éducateurs et des consultants du domaine de l’éducation, des cadres d’organisations à but non lucratif, et des fonctionnaires. Nous avons fondé des entreprises, administré des établissements scolaires, dessiné des bâtiments, écrit des livres et élevé des enfants. Nous sommes tous animés par le même dévouement au service de l’établissement, de sa mission qui est d’offrir chaque année une éducation incomparable à une nouvelle génération d’élèves.

Vous nous rencontrerez à l’occasion de manifestations sociales organisées par l’établissement, même s’il n’est pas facile de nous distinguer du reste des participants. En au moins trois occasions au cours de mes années de service, on m’a remis des badges de laitons impressionnants. J’en ai encore un, même si j’oublie souvent de le porter. Il est toutefois probable que nous irons vers vous pour nous présenter. Ceux d’entre nous dont les enfants ont terminé leurs études secondaires depuis longtemps sont particulièrement intéressés par les accomplissements des parents actuels et de leurs enfants. Beaucoup d’entre nous ont accumulé une mémoire institutionnelle impres-sionnante et c’est toujours avec grand plaisir que nous répondons aux ques-tions concernant l’établissement et que nous en parlons.

Que faisons-nous ?Le Conseil de gestion assume deux

fonctions connexes : veillez à la pros-périté et à la pérennité de l’institution, et embaucher et conserver le Chef d’établissement le plus compétent possible. Tous les autres aspects de la gestion de l’établissement, de la salle de classe aux terrains de sports, en passant par la bibliothèque et les cours de récréation, relèvent de l’entière responsabilité de Jane Camblin et de son équipe. Le Conseil de gestion est donc une ressource qui met son expertise dans chacun de nos différents domaines de spécialisation au service de l’administration du Lycée International Franco-Américain. La gestion quoti-dienne de l’établissement, dans toute son étourdissante complexité, ne relève

toutefois pas de notre compétence, et nous nous en félicitons.

Le service au sein du Conseil de gestion est volontaire et bénév-ole. En effet, le Conseil de gestion représente une source considérable de revenus sous formes de donations pour l’établissement. Nos réunions durent plusieurs heures, environ tous les deux mois, et nous participons à une retraite au début de chaque année scolaire. Les avantages indirects de la fonction sont en tout et pour tout un permis de stationnement sur le parking de l’établissement, valable seulement en dehors des heures de classe, et les en-cas que nous offre Donna Vallìn, la Secrétaire de Direction, à l’occasion de réunions qui peuvent se prolonger jusqu’à des heures tardives de la soirée.

Les thèmes de nos réunions sont variables, mais restent toutefois tou-jours en relation avec l’une ou l’autre de nos deux fonctions fondamentales. Beaucoup des sujets sont abordés périodiquement. Jane et son équipe produisent et défendent le budget tous les ans, mais c’est au Conseil de gestion qu’il appartient de l’approuver. Ce budget dépend dans une certaine mesure des frais de scolarité, qui sont fixés par le Conseil aux niveaux que l’administration estime nécessaires à la mise en œuvre de la mission de l’établissement. On présente également au Conseil de gestion des rapports relatifs aux différents départements et domaines scolaires, en particulier des états périodiques des résultats des évaluations scolaires, des acceptations dans les universités, des voyages à l’étranger, des activités et des inscrip-tions. Le Conseil de gestion, ou certains de ses membres, rencontre régulière-ment nos collègues de l’établissement sino-américain, et les deux conseils de gestion sont chargés de l’administration du National Center for International Schools, l’entité en propriété commune qui et gère nos locaux.

Où sommes nousLes locaux sont en fait le thème

dominant de nos réunions les plus ré-centes. Lorsque nous avons emménagé au 150 Oak Street, en 1997, certains

d’entre nous se demandaient ce que nous ferions de tout cet espace superflu. Maintenant, même après l’expansion sur Page Street, notre établissement en plein essor est encore à l’étroit dans ses murs. Les espaces scolaires, de sport, de récréations, de nouveaux laboratoires, les salles de classe, les espaces sociaux et les gymnases sont tous à l’ordre du jour des discussions. Même si notre expansion permanente est motivée par des besoins soigneusement évalués par l’administration, le Conseil de gestion joue un rôle déterminant dans le cadre du financement et de la mise en œuvre du plan directeur des locaux. Au cours des quelques dernières années, il a contribué de manière importante à la solidification de l’assise financière de l’établissement. Les institutions dynamiques ne restent pas immobiles, et à ce moment déterminant de notre histoire, la préservation des acquis de l’établissement et la garantie de sa pérennité passent par une expansion et une reconfiguration significatives de nos locaux physiques.

Du fait de son expansion et de ses déménagements, de la consolidation permanente de ses acquis scolaires et de sa situation financière, de sa remise en question incessante du statu quo et de sa disposition à la prise de risques occasionnels, le Lycée International Franco-Américain est en évolution relativement constante depuis que l’aîné de mes enfants a fait sa première rentrée dans l’établissement il y a maintenant plus de vingt ans. Pour les membres du Conseil de gestion passés et actuels, ap-porter une contribution vitale à la vie de notre institution vivante et dynamique est une justification plus que suffisante à notre service.

N’hésitez pas à me faire parvenir vos courriers à [email protected].

Support theAnnual Fund!

La Lettre | 17

18 | La Lettre

50th Anniversary

50 years neverlooked so good!

Hey, Look What I Found!

Do you have lurking in your attic – or in an old shoe box, perhaps? – some old photos or other memora-

bilia from your years at French Ameri-can? Would you like to share them with us, even in digitized form?

In anticipation of celebrating the school’s 50th Anniversary next Febru-ary, we are hoping to gather some ar-chival material from the 1960s through 2000. Do you have an old program or invitation to a school event? A photo of Kermesse or Back à Dos from decades ago? We would love for you to share those souvenirs with us. (Something that is a real timepiece, like your old uni-form from the 1960s?) As many as pos-sible will be incorporated into the 50th Anniversary. You can either give it to the school, or if you want to keep your item it can be scanned and sent to us.

Please contact the 50th anniversary at [email protected] or 415-558-2021.

Calling All Alums!

The school is turning 50 in February 2012, and we want to make sure all alumni/ae to be invited to the birthday party. If you

know of a former student who doesn’t regularly receive communications from us, please have them get in touch with Alumni Affairs at 415-558-2014 or [email protected]. We will thank them (and you!) with a copy of A Look Back, Dan Harder’s fabulous history of the school.

Allan Bausbaum, longtime parent and former Board Chairman on the old Buchanan Street campus.

march 2011

Coming February 11-12, 2012


On Valentine’s Day, 1962 “…a group of Francophile visionaries and activists decided to take matters into their own hands and create a very different kind of private school in San Francisco. Inspired by the notion that an excel-

lent education could be rigorous yet liberal and innovative, challenging yet democratic and inclusive, our founding Board members embarked on what some had said, at the time, was impossible: the creation of a fully bilingual French/American school in the heart of an Anglophone city in the United States.”

So begins Jane Camblin’s preface to A Look Back, the intriguing tale of the first 45 years of French American Inter-national School. Follow Dan Harder’s narrative as it traces the school from its original incarnation as French American Bilingual School with 23 students, through growing pains and moves, and to its current robust size of 1001 students, and now known as French American International School and International High School.

In anticipation of the school’s 50th Anniversary, we are happy to provide a copy of A Look Back to all parents, grand-parents, alumni, former faculty, and friends! Simply send your

name, current mailing address, and class year or other affili-ation to [email protected] or to 50th Anniversary Committee, French American International School, 150 Oak Street, San Francisco, CA 94102.

Then share with us in celebrating the 50th Anniversary on February 11 and 12, 2012. Circle your calendars today!

If you can identify any of the incomplete names in the class photo above, please contact Jaime Tollas at (415) 558-2014.

1965, 1st and 2nd Grade. Top Row, from left to right: Mark Brown, Raoul, Eric, David Vogel, Roger(?). Middle Row: Jill Schwier, Mary Kuder, Lisa Mengel Stackpole, Rachel, Tina(?). Seated: Ann Hutchinson, Angela Parks, Io Beebe, Angela Parks’ twin sister (Maureen? Beth?). Two Boys Seated in Front: (???) Shaw, Toby D’Amico.

Below right: Jeanette Rouger, the first Head of School, and early FABS students.


Advancement

Every year, gifts to the Annual Fund provide French American and International with the working capital to support the daily functions of the school. Everything from tuition to faculty salaries to maintenance expenses are supported by the An-nual Fund.

Individual support comes from all constituen-cies: current parents, alumni, past parents, faculty and staff, grandparents, and friends. All of these individuals recognize that at our school, like all independent schools, tuition alone cannot meet the expenses of our operating budget. The Annual Fund touches every aspect of our school and helps maintain the academic excellence for which we are known.

Quality education is expensive. Maintaining the high qual-ity and distinctive style of the education at French American and International means hiring the best faculty, attracting top students, providing the resources and experiences our students need to flourish, and doing all of this in a highly competitive independent-school landscape. Your gift sustains that excellence.

Giving matters because your generosity makes it possible for us to provide students with the kind of rigorous and enriching educational experience that is the hallmark of nearly 50 years of French American and International.

Fundraising: An OverviewFrench American International School and International

High School are able to provide an outstanding, global educa-tion thanks in large part to the extraordinary generosity of our community. The school’s long-term success is ensured by the financial and volunteer support of parents, alumni, grandparents, faculty and staff, and corporations and founda-tions. Key annual fundraising initiatives include:

Annual Fund. The Annual Fund is used for current-year expenses including faculty salaries, classroom programs, and general operations. The school’s largest ongoing campaign, the Annual Fund is conducted by a team of eight co-chairs and over 50 outreach volunteers.

Corporate Matching Programs. Most large corporations have giving programs that will match employee donations to charitable organizations. Please consider increasing the impact of your personal donation by checking with your company today.

Soirée des Arts et des Vins. Now held in November, the Soirée transforms the Dennis Gallagher Arts Pavilion into a food-and-wine-lover’s paradise when ten restaurants and 24 vintners come together for a celebration of gastronomy and the arts. Featuring wine tastings and food prepared by local chefs, it’s a great kick-off to the school year, and a fabulous way to immerse yourself in the community and enjoy some gustatory delights – all to the benefit of the school’s programs!

Le Dîner d’Epicure. Held in a private home for a maximum of 40 guests, the Dîner d’Epicure is an intimate evening of the best food and wine. The goal of the Dîner is to keep the costs down and the quality and the funds raised as high as possible. The 2010 Dîner raised $26,000 for the school.

Auction. The Auction is a community-wide event featuring dinner, music, dancing, and silent and live auctions. The Auc-tion committee is made up of over 150 volunteers with skills ranging from database-building to sewing to fundraising, and provides an excellent avenue for meeting fellow parents.

Volunteer. None of these initiatives would be possible without the tireless support of volunteers from all levels of the School. Volunteer opportunities range from the short-term to the long-term and the creative to the strategic. If you are interested in volunteering your time, please contact the Office of Advancement to discuss those opportunities which might be a good fit for your interests. (415) 558-2017.

Thank you for your gift to the Annual Fund!

Mark your calendars for the gala 29th Annual Auction, Saturday, May 7, 2011 at the Palace Hotel in San

Francisco. This year’s theme is Paris Jazz, an evening of music, silent and live auctions, and a way to support the school and enjoy the company of fellow parents and friends.

For information, contact David Fierberg at [email protected], or call 415.558.2017.

ParisJazz

FÊTE DES ENCHÈRESSAMEDI 7 MAI • SATURDAY MAY 7, 2011

PALACE HOTELSAN FRANCISCO

Volunteers

Volunteering at FUNdraising events at French American International High School is just that: FUN! And boy-howdy! do I ever know that for a fact! I have been volunteer-ing since 1999 at the annual Auction and Soirée, and whenever I can for anything else.

Therefore please join us whenever you can, for as many hours as you can devote. You will meet some wonderful FUN-loving and hardworking parents. I look forward to see-ing you soon for Big Fun!

Theresa A. MullenTara, Grade 11

Volunteering at French American has been incredibly rewarding. I have been heavily involved in several volunteer opportuni-ties over the last few years, and I seem to keep coming back for more! Not only have I developed great friendships through vol-unteering that will last through the school years and beyond, but it also brings great satisfaction being involved in a school I feel passionate about.

By showing my children that personal contribution and direct involvement are im-portant, I am making the school community a more dynamic and “living” place for our family.

Kimberly BranaghCollin, 3 White

I have volunteered at the school for over 12 years. Volunteering has given me great insight to not only the inner workings of the school, but also a very good rapport with the teachers, administration, Board Mem-bers, and countless parents.

I highly encourage everyone to volun-teer. Let your kids know that you are truly interested in where they spend most of the days, and nights, should they get into extra-curricular activities in high school.

Stephanie Lima Tyler, 7 Red and Shelley, Grade 11

Theresa Mullen (left) and Monica Hernandez at the Soirée des Arts et des Vins, April 2010

Stephanie Lima at the Annual Auction, November 2007

Kimberly Branagh at the Dîner d’Epicure, May 2010

Three parents share the rewards and joy of volunteering.

22 | La Lettre

Support the 2010-2011 Annual Fund today!

415.558.2014www.frenchamericansf.org

We are all a piece of the puzzle. Nous sommes tous une pièce du puzzle.

Every piece counts.

french american international school | international high school lycée international franco-américain


Alumni News

The primary purpose of the Alumni Relations

program at French American International

School and International High School is to

provide relevant and convenient avenues for

alumni to connect with the school and with

one another. The Alumni Association is open

to all students who at one time attended the

school – whether in its current incarnation,

or under the monikers FABS, FAIS, IHS, or

LIFA.

Our alumni population is large, international,

and diverse, and includes people who gradu-

ated in 8th grade, 12th grade…or merely at-

tended the school for a few years somewhere

in between. In order to group alumni with their

friends and peers, we encourage all alumni to

use as their class year the year they graduated

high school – whether or not they graduated

from French American International.

Whether you are looking to get involved in

person through events, or virtually through

Facebook, LinkedIn, or the school’s online

portal, we look forward to hearing from

you! For more information about Alumni

Relations at French American and Interna-

tional, visit internationalsf.org/alumni

or contact:

Jaime Tollas Manager, Alumni Relations

[email protected]

24 | La Lettre

Salimata Gassama Class of 2006A Message from Abroad

How are you? It has been so long! I hope everything is going well at International. For my part, I’m currently a 4th-year medical student in Paris. It’s a lot of work, but thankfully, I really love what I do. I’m currently in general surgery and I’m learning a lot. It’s awesome.

I actually wanted to talk to you about a project of mine that I did last year. I organized a humanitarian project with eight other

students from my faculty in the jungle city of Iquitos in Peru, in the Amazon. I was actually the head of it. We first helped an American NGO called Amazon Promise that is planning to build a 2000-square-foot medical clinic in the huge city slum called Belen. We offered them a 33-foot emergency boat as well as a 262-square-foot facility that serves as a waiting room for their pre-clinic (they don’t have all the money yet to build the clinic, so they built a temporary facility), but also as an auditorium where the NGO members will be able to give prevention classes to the inhabitants of Belen. We also taught STD prevention to teenagers and children from Belen. In this extremely impoverished area, many of these kids fall into prostitution to survive and inevitably are exposed to STDs. It was great to use our medical knowledge to their benefit. The whole project cost around $32,000.


We spent all of last year working hard to raise enough money, and received grants from several French institutions that allowed us to achieve the project. After four weeks of humanitarian actions, we spent three days in the midst of the jungle in a small Indian village where we met a shaman and participated in a 10,000-year-old Indian traditional ceremony. We then spent two weeks discovering the rest of Peru, Cuzco, Lake Titicaca, Arequipa, Ica, the ruins of Nazca, and finally Lima. Peru is an amazing country with a beautiful culture. It was truly an unbelievable experience. Furthermore, the project got the attention of some important people back in France.

We were invited to participate in the French national competition for the best college student humanitarian project award. Out of 400 projects, we made it to the eight finalists. Unfortunately, we didn’t win, but it was a great honor to have come so far, and we made a documentary of the project.

I still keep contacts with our partners in Peru. Apparently, things are going well since there is now drinkable running water and compost toilets in the facility. This is a pretty amazing thing in a slum. I’m giving you the NGO’s website, for anyone who is interested in working with them: www.amazonpromise.org. They have great jungle programs for students! I’m already so glad we came that far, but I hope we will go even further. I hope to hear from you soon.

[email protected]

Gabriela De Golia Class of 2009

After having graduating from International in 2009, I am now a sophomore at Wesleyan University in Con-necticut. I plan on majoring in the university’s unique interdisciplinary Science in Society Program, which promotes an integrated study of sciences and social

studies in a way somewhat similar to the BAC S program.Additionally, I have been living in the university’s

“French Hall” with seven other sophomores, hosting various Francophone/French-themed events with my hallmates and promoting French studies on campus.

Other than that, I have been involved in various extracur-ricular activities for the past two years. Among them are political activism, such as GOTV during the past elections, performing arts in dance and theater, and volunteerism. It’s been a wonderful sophomore year to be sure!

The following article by Gabriela was published in the Wesleyan Argus in 2010.

Political Activism At Its Most Basic Levelby gabriela de golia

As most of us are well aware, last Tuesday’s Midterm Elections marked an important reshaping of the political terrain in Washington D.C. and across the country. Some would argue that nowhere were the stakes higher than in Connecticut, where the governor’s race was determined by a mere handful of votes days after the election. However, I am not here to address the outcomes of the elections. Rather, I wish to draw attention to Wesleyan students’ dismaying lack of involvement in them.

One would think that at Wesleyan, of all places, most students 18 and over would be registered voters who partake in the election process. However, after speaking with numerous schoolmates, the contrary has become apparent. An alarming number of registered students failed to vote last week, in Middletown or elsewhere. And many others aren’t even registered.

This, in my view, is hypocritical of a student body that is so quick to label itself as politically active. For a school with

Gabriela De Golia, 3rd from left, back row.

La Lettre | 25


a history, reputation, and self-image of political activism as impressive as ours, this is an ironic and disheartening reality. Consider the fact that our school was able to organize the sensational Affirmative Reaction campaign within a mere week. And within the past year, projects such as the Kibera School for Girls and the Media Project have gained national recognition. These are but a few examples of what we, as a school and individually, can do and have done.

We as a student body are informed on national and world affairs. Many of us are also passionate about the ideas of social justice, gender equality, etc. And yet, despite our history of leadership and the concern several of us had for these recent elections, many of us failed to partake in the most basic act of political activism: voting.

We cannot take this privilege for granted. Nor can we think that our votes don’t matter. There is little need to remind us that many crucial elections have been determined by margins of less than 1% – in smaller races, that could be the equivalent of one of our dorms. In other words, one person’s activism can and has been making a difference. And if we don’t participate in the process of electing our government officials, what right have we to complain about their actions? And, last, but certainly not least, so many youth in the world fight and die for the right to vote.

I hope that we as Wesleyan students will not only be politically active in our thoughts and our actions on campus, but much more so in the politics of our local and national communities. If we are to claim ourselves members of a politically active campus, we must actively promote change we see fit, not only in the world at large, but also in the smaller communities we live in. And on a most basic level, voting does just that.

De Golia is a member of the Wesleyan Class of 2013.

project ethiopiaGabriela De Golia on the 2007 Community Service trip to Ethiopia.

march 2011

Alumni: We’re Networking!

The Alumni Relations program is getting social – cyber-social, that is. Building on our popular series of annual reunions and regional gatherings, we are seeking to create more opportunities for alumni to engage with each other and with the school, whether they are in the same city or halfway around the world. Following are a few of the ways you can

connect with us online.

Stay up to date by following us on Facebook:facebook.com/frenchamericaninternationalalumni

In September we launched our Facebook fan page: facebook.com/frenchamericaninternationalalumni

Unlike our previous Facebook group page, this new page offers more interactive capabilities and will feed into your existing stream. See what’s happening with fellow alumni, as well as what’s going on here at school. Visit the page and “Like” it today!

Professional NetworkThe alumni population of French American and Interna-

tional spans 50 years and six continents, and contains a wealth of experience and expertise. How better to tap into this network than through our professional networking group on LinkedIn?

linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=1812121

Alumni Portal with Searchable DirectoryThe Alumni Portal offers a comprehensive, searchable

directory for alumni and faculty, as well as news about cur-rent activities on campus and upcoming alumni events. To gain access to the portal, fill out the online form to receive your login and password. Please note that when filling in your class year, use the year you graduated from high school, whether or not you completed high school at French Ameri-can or International.

www. internationalsf.org/alumni

Regional Gatherings 2011French American International is planning to expand its

Regional Gatherings itinerary in 2011, including our first-ever Boston reunion, which was held on March 8 at the French Library and Cultural Center. Will you be in New York in June? Paris in September? Keep an eye on the website for details.

Late June TBD: New York City Regional Gathering

July 14, 2011: Bastille by the Bay, San Francisco

September/October TBD: Paris Regional Gathering

French American and International’s 50th Anniversary celebration, February 11-12, 2012

La Lettre | 27mars 2011 La Lettre | 27

On Thursday, December 16 French American and Interna-tional hosted the annual Alumni Winter Party at Les Joulins Jazz Bistro in San Francisco’s Union Square. Approximately

30 alumni from the 1980s through 2010 gathered to enjoy a light dinner, live mu-sic by student-faculty band StuFac, and of course conversation and reminiscence with old friends and current and former faculty. Alumni Council president Vernon Goins welcomed the group, and announced the Alumni Association’s new presence on Fa-cebook and LinkedIn (for details, see page 26 in this issue).

Special thanks to French American par-ents Osman Uner and Martina Erhart for providing the popular venue.

The Alumni Association will host more re-gional gatherings in 2011, including Boston, New York City, and Paris.

Leslie Adams, FacultyApril Al-Shamma Jean ‘89Brooke Anderson ‘95Betsy Brody, Faculty Sebastien Dufresnes, Faculty David Fierberg, StaffMichel Fuller ‘92Jeffrey Gates ‘01Vernon Goins ‘88Shani Harris-Bagwell ‘00Anna Heery ‘08Natalia Idzkowski ‘06Nicholas Jones ‘06Vanessa Kainz ‘90Cheryl Labrecque, FacultyPolly Lyman, Staff Edouard Mayoral, Staff

Jake Moritz ‘07William Moritz ‘08Jean-Pierre Nagy, Faculty Daniel Paz, Faculty Matthew Perifano, FacultyJasmine Redmond ‘10Roger Schachtel, Former FacultyJeffrey Skacel ‘03Elaine Sullivan ‘06Tyson Thomas ‘88Jaime Tollas, Staff Richard Ulffers, FacultyFlorica Vlad ‘01Max Von Euw ‘02Jayne-Louise Webb ‘01Alexandra Williams-Fleck ‘05Sarah Wood Kliban ‘83

Alumni Winter Party Attendees

Alumni Winter Party december 2010

mars 2011


Special Events

soirée des arts et des vins

More than 400 people attended our newly conceived and heartily received Soirée des Arts et des Vins on November 14, 2010. The excep-tionally successful event brought together the art of the Vintner and

the art of the Chef in our Dennis Gallagher Arts Pavilion.Huge thanks go to our event Co-Chairs, High School Parent

Clydene Bultman and Lower School Parent Debbie Zacha-reas. What makes their participation even more exceptional is their willingness to create this event a second time in less than six months! We are all simply amazed at how skillfully and seemingly-effortlessly they recruited our 25 wineries, ten restaurants, and culinary artists.

We also appreciate the many volunteers throughout the school who helped make this such a wonderful success. The décor that transformed our Arts Pavilion was remarkable! The ease with which our guests were welcomed and passed through our registration tables, the check-out process and overall organization of the event is a testament to our skilled volunteers and their commitment to French American and International. Thank you one and all!

We look forward to seeing you again in November 2011 for the third Soirée des Arts et des Vins. A wonderful way to kick off our school year has been established – don’t miss it!

For more information, please contact Events Man-ager David Fierberg at [email protected], or call (415) 558-2017.


Co-Chairs Debbie Zachareas and Clydene Bultman

mars 2011

30 | La Lettre march 201130 | La Lettre march 2011


destination:excellenceThe Art of WinningBrian Benavides (Grade 12) and

Denia Ebersole (Grade 11) bring

the same level of commitment,

excellence, and poise to their

athletic endeavors as they do to

their academic studies.

Photos by Ruriko Ishizuka Benavides


T he school’s second annual Dîner d’Epicure was held on March 10, 2011. Thanks to a small but generous group of attendees, the dinner raised over $43,000 to support the school’s annual operations, including financial aid and other ongoing programs. Many thanks to Christiane de Bord, grandmother of four Lower School students, for offering her Pacific Heights home for the evening; to

chef Philippe Gardelle of Chapeaux! for the exquisite dinner; and to Trustee Debbie Zachareas for pairing and explaining the wines with each course. And most of all to Event Chair, Kimberly Branagh, for organizing a most memorable gathering.

Le second « Dîner d’Epicure » s’est tenu le 10 mars 2011. Un petit nombre de participants au grand cœur a permis à l’école de rassembler plus de 43 000 dollars au bénéfice des activités du Lycée International Franco-Américain. Nous tenons tout particulièrement à remercier notre hôtesse Mme Christiane de Bord pour

nous avoir ouvert les portes de sa résidence à l’occasion de cette mer-veilleuse soirée, le Chef Philippe Gardelle de Chapeaux! pour un dîner exquis, et Debbie Zachareas, membre du Conseil de gestion, pour sa sélection et sa présentation des vins qui ac-compagnaient chaque plat. Nous remercions égale-ment de tout cœur Kimberly Branagh, l’organisatrice de ce dîner on ne peut plus mémorable.

Le Dînerd’Epicure

french american international school | international high schoollycée international franco-américain

Communiqué annual report 2009-2010

Special Insert

La Lettre | 33

34 | french american and international

Head of School

It is with great pleasure and pride that we can share with you in this edition some of the many accom-plishments of the French American International School as we fast approach our 50th anniversary year. Our school was founded on February 14, 1962, with the same fundamental mission as today, one focused on socio-economic and cultural diversity, on academic rigor and excellence, and on

inspiring students to become compassionate and contrib-uting global citizens. Over the course of the last half-cen-tury this bold vision has stood the test of time as we have consistently offered a rigorous, international academic program delivered by faculty recruited from around the world, broad exposure to many languages and cultures, strong math and science curricula in two languages, an unparalleled arts program, and ever-increasing opportuni-ties for students to travel and live abroad.

Looking ahead to the next 50 years, our school, along with our peer institutions, will continue to face the signifi-cant challenges of our times: What must we do to con-tinue to recruit and retain excellent international faculty?

How can we remain affordable, yet sustain – and enhance – a complex and innovative program? How do we best attract a capable and diverse student body? How do we incorporate changes to our curriculum and remain fresh and relevant? How should we best teach the students of the 21st century, the so-called digital natives? How do we design and enhance our facility to support a more diverse pedagogy?

These are just some the important questions that our school’s Administration and Board of Trustees work daily to address. In the pages that follow, we highlight some of the serious work being done on these fronts. Steady increases in annual donated revenues and solid growth of the school’s endowment have made it possible for the administration and the board to prioritize budgeting for meaningful student scholarship support and competitive teacher compensation, while continuing to keep tuition at a median range in comparison with our peer schools.

Additionally, we are well along in our efforts to develop our campus to better serve students and teachers. The tradition of continual campus enhancement as demon-strated by the campus remodel and expansion on the 5th and 6th floors and the opening of the Dennis Gallagher Arts Pavilion will soon be followed by the summer of 2011 construction project designed specifically to enhance the Middle School experience on the 4th floor.

The Board of Trustees and the entire community would like to take this opportunity to extend our most profound gratitude to the visionary donors who continue to support us so generously and allow us to keep our hopes for the future of our unique institution very much alive. In fact, all of the advances in our school and in the strength of our financial position are made possible thanks to the extraor-dinary commitment, generosity and efforts of our commu-nity, past and present, and we remain sincerely grateful for all of the many gifts to the school, which represent a widespread confidence in our institution.

In short, we thank you, all of our donors, volunteers and friends, for having demonstrated both vision and philanthropic generosity: your commitment sustains the school’s special mission as we move forward into the sec-ond half-century of the school’s existence.

JANE CAMBLIN, Head of School

communiqué | 35

J’ai le grand plaisir et la grande fierté de vous faire part dans ce numéro de certains des nombreux accomplissements du Lycée International Franco-Américain, alors que nous approchons rapidement de l’année de notre 50e anniversaire. Notre établissement a été fondé le 14 février 1962, avec la même mission fondamentale que celle qui est la sienne aujourd’hui, une mission centrée autour de la diversité socio-économique et culturelle, de la rigueur académique et de l’excellence, conforme à notre vocation qui est de faire de nos élèves des citoyens du monde capables de compassion et productifs. Cette vision audacieuse a résisté à l’épreuve du temps tout au long du demi-siècle qui vient de s’écouler, et nous avons continué à offrir au fil des années un enseignement scolaire international rigoureux dispensé par des enseignants recrutés dans le monde entier, une vaste exposition à de nombreuses langues et cultures, un programme solide de mathématique et de sciences en deux langues, un programme d’art sans pareil, et des opportunités sans cesse plus nombreuses de voyages et de séjours à l’étranger pour nos élèves.

Au cours des 50 années à venir, notre établissement, tout comme les autres institutions semblables à la nôtre, continuera à devoir faire face aux défis importants de notre temps : Que faire pour continuer à recruter et fidéliser un personnel enseignant international et de grande qualité ? Comment faire en sorte que nos frais de scolarité restent abordables, tout en maintenant, en améliorant même, un programme à la fois complexe et novateur ? Comment être le mieux en mesure de séduire des élèves qualifiés et provenant de milieux divers ? Comment incorporer des changements à nos programmes pour faire en sorte qu’ils restent d’actualité et passionnants ? Quel enseignement dispenser aux élèves du 21e siècle, les enfants de l’ère numérique ? Comment concevoir et aménager nos locaux pour favoriser au mieux l’offre d’une pédagogie diversifiée ?

Ce ne sont là que quelques-unes des questions importantes auxquelles l’administration de l’établissement et son conseil de gestion doivent répondre au quotidien. Dans les pages qui suivent, nous vous présentons certains des travaux sérieux qui sont en cours dans tous ces domaines. L’augmentation soutenue des revenus des donations annuelles, et la croissance solide du fonds de dotation en capital de notre établissement, ont permis à l’administration et au conseil de gestion de donner priorité à des bourses d’établissement conséquentes et une rémunération compétitive des enseignants dans le cadre de la planification budgétaire, alors que nous maintenons les frais de scolarité au niveau de la médiane de ceux des établissements scolaires comparables au nôtre.

Par ailleurs, nos efforts d’aménagement de notre campus pour mieux servir nos élèves et nos enseignants sont en bonne voie. Dans la tradition d’amélioration continue dont témoignent le réaménagement et l’expansion des 5e et 6e étages, ainsi que l’ouverture du

Pavillon des Arts Dennis Gallagher, un projet de construction estivale dont l’achèvement est prévu en 2011 sera spécialement conçu pour améliorer la qualité de la vie au 4e étage du Collège.

Le Conseil de gestion et l’ensemble de la communauté souhaitent profiter de cette occasion pour exprimer leur profonde gratitude envers les donneurs visionnaires qui continuent à nous témoigner leur soutien si généreux et leur confiance en l’avenir de notre institution si unique. En fait, tous les progrès de notre établissement et la solidité de son assise financière sont rendus possibles par l’engagement extraordinaire, la générosité et les efforts de notre communauté, passée et présente, et nous tenons à lui faire part de notre gratitude la plus sincère pour ses innombrables contributions à la vie du Lycée International Franco-Américain, et la confiance en celui-ci dont elle témoigne ainsi.

En quelques mots, nous tenons à remercier tous les bénévoles et amis qui ont fait preuve à la fois de vision et de générosité philanthropique : c’est grâce à votre engagement au service de la mission particulière de l’établissement que nous entrons avec confiance dans le deuxième demi-siècle de l’existence du Lycée International Franco-Américain.

JANE CAMBLIN, Proviseur


State of the School

We are pleased to report once again that, despite the economic turmoil and uncertainty, the school remains financially solid and fully capable of delivering on its mission to current and future students.

Prior YearWe finished last fiscal year with a slight operating sur-

plus due to higher-than-budgeted enrollment and some favorable expense variances due to careful cost manage-ment. Our annual fundraising efforts improved over the previous year but have not yet returned to pre-recession levels. Due to the lingering effects on our community of the recession, our level of financial aid remained higher

than recent years (although comparable to prior peak lev-els). This has enabled us to retain students and families who have invested heavily in mastering our bilingual and international programs. This is an obvious benefit to them, but is also of great value to the rest of our community, which benefits from their French language skills, diverse backgrounds and in many cases years-long friendships.

Our cash operating reserves, which provide a crucial safety net for the school against uncontrollable exter-nal shocks, are healthy but just below our target. This is a result of using a portion of the reserves to cover the recession-induced fundraising shortfall we experienced in the purchase and renovation of 66 Page Street into the Dennis Gallagher Arts Pavilion – exactly the kind of situ-ation for which we maintain operating reserves. Accounts receivable have risen slightly but not to a level to cause concern. The endowment rebounded well from recession lows, but remains below its pre-recession peak. The build-

ing maintenance reserves, held by NCIS on behalf of both Chinese Amer-ican and French American, remain at target levels.

A joint team from Chinese Ameri-can, French American and NCIS spent many hours working to refi-nance the debt on our shared facilities and properties. The result is a slightly larger debt outstanding, but at a great-ly improved and now fixed, not vari-able, interest rate over a twenty-five year period, thus eliminating interest rate risk, and providing some reduc-tion in our annual debt service costs.

Looking ForwardThe Board of Trustees and the Se-

nior Management Team are engaged in some near-term planning and improvement efforts, as well as the development of a long-term vision for the school.

In the nearer term, we have been working on a number of initiatives in the Lower and Middle schools. A “Bilingual Task Force” was created in the Lower School to review and imple-ment best practice, and provide our

communiqué | 37

students optimal opportunities for dual language mastery. For the Middle school, we anticipate some renovations, refurbishment and innovative new pedagogies at 150 Oak Street to enhance the learning environment for students.

We have been working closely with Chinese American and NCIS to develop a comprehensive master plan for the jointly-owned properties. We believe that, under the zon-ing ordinances which affect us, we could over time build out our facilities in such a way that would largely meet the anticipated needs of both schools. The challenge now is to take the high-level concepts of the master plan and find an initial project that will work for both of us. Those discussions are ongoing.

We would also like to create an Early Childhood Cen-ter, which would allow us to add one more PK-3 class, and provide better age-appropriate facilities. We are engaged in a dialogue with Church of the Advent, across Hickory from the main campus, about the possibility of a joint project on church property. More broadly, we have benefited enormously from our partnerships with neigh-boring institutions such as the Hayes Valley Farm, SF Conservatory of Music, SF Symphony and SF Ballet, and the FoolsFury Theater Company, all of whom have pro-vided significant hands-on learning opportunities for our students at each school section.

Finally, we will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the school in 2012 and preparations are underway for that milestone.

Longer term, we have been developing a vision for the school in the next ten to fifty years. The Strategic Plan-ning Committee of the Board has been looking at the vi-ability and relevance into the future of our current mission (conclusion – more important than ever); the eventual, ideal size of the school; issues of financial and economic sustainability as costs and therefore tuitions rise; improve-ments to the international nature of our programs; chang-es to our approach to learning and teaching, dubbed “School of the 21st Century”; and the facilities required to support these concepts.

The school is financially strong and has a vibrant and diverse community. Enrollment is at record levels and ap-plication interest is high. By any standard – test scores, college acceptances, alumni success – we are delivering on our unique and uniquely valuable mission. As we write this in early April, our senior Class of 2011, many of whom are recipients of school-based financial aid, has been of-fered 11 places at Ivy League universities and 17 at UCLA and Berkeley, with many more to go. This, in a highly competitive environment where a 7% admit rate is not unusual. Indeed, a celebration of diversity and academic excellence! This is why we exist.

GERARD (TEX) SCHENKKAN JANE CAMBLINChairman, Board of Trustees Head of School

Nous avons le plaisir de vous annoncer qu’encore une fois, en dépit d’une conjoncture économique incertaine, l’établissement conserve une assise financière solide et reste pleinement en mesure d’accomplir sa mission au service de nos élèves actuels et futurs.

Exercice antérieurUn léger excédent d’exploitation a été constaté à la

clôture de l’exercice fiscal qui vient de s’achever, en raison d’effectifs quelque peu supérieurs à ceux prévus au budget, ainsi que de certains écarts favorables au niveau des postes de dépenses, permis par une gestion prudente des coûts. Les résultats de nos activités de collecte de fonds sont en amélioration par rapport à l’année précédente, sans toutefois atteindre les niveaux enregistrés avant la récession. Les effets de ce ralentissement économique continuent à se faire sentir sur notre communauté, de sorte que le niveau de l’aide financière est resté plus élevé que dans un passé récent (il reste toutefois comparable à celui des niveaux les plus importants précédemment enregistrés). Ceci nous a permis de conserver des élèves et des familles qui ont fortement investi dans la maîtrise de nos programmes bilingues et internationaux. Il s’agit bien sûr d’un avantage indéniable pour ces élèves, mais c’est également un atout important pour le reste de notre communauté, qui peut ainsi bénéficier des bienfaits de l’immersion dans un environnement francophone, et, souvent, nouer des relations d’amitié durables avec d’autres élèves issus de différents milieux socio-économiques.

Nos réserves d’exploitation liquides, qui permettent à l’établissement de bénéficier d’un coussin financier crucial pour faire face aux chocs externes qui échappent à notre contrôle, sont solides, mais légèrement inférieures à notre cible. Nous avons en effet utilisé une portion de ces réserves pour couvrir un déficit dû à la récession des donations destinées à financer l’achat et la rénovation de 66 Page Street, maintenant le Pavillon des Arts, ce qui est exactement la raison pour laquelle nous conservons des réserves d’exploitation. Les comptes à recevoir sont en légère hausse, sans toutefois atteindre un niveau préoccupant. Le fonds de dotation en capital a partiellement recouvré la valeur perdue du fait de la récession, mais son niveau demeure inférieur à celui qui était le sien avant la crise. Les réserves destinées à la

maintenance des locaux, détenues par NCIS pour le lycée sino-américain et le Lycée International Franco-Américain, restent au niveau ciblé.

Une équipe conjointe du lycée sino-américain, du Lycée International Franco-Américain et de NCIS a beaucoup travaillé en vue du refinancement de la dette correspondant à nos locaux et propriétés. Nos obligations sont maintenant légèrement supérieures, mais le taux d’intérêt correspondant est considérablement plus favorable et maintenant fixe, et non variable, sur une période de vingt-six ans. Nous avons ainsi éliminé tout risque de fluctuation des taux d’intérêt et réduit le coût annuel du service de notre dette.

Perspectives d’avenirLe Conseil de gestion et l’équipe de la direction ont

procédé à un certain nombre de travaux de planification à court terme et d’amélioration, et ont défini une vision à long terme pour l’établissement.

A plus court terme, nous travaillons sur un certain nombre d’initiatives au niveau de l’école primaire et du collège. Un « Groupe de travail bilingue » a été mis en place à l’école primaire pour étudier et mettre en œuvre des pratiques d’excellence, et offrir à nos élèves des opportunités optimales de maîtrise des deux langues. Pour le collège, des travaux de rénovation et de réaménagement sont prévus au 150 Oak Street, et de nouvelles pédagogies novatrices seront mises en œuvre pour améliorer l’environnement d’apprentissage des élèves.

Nous travaillons en étroite collaboration avec le lycée sino-américain et NCIS, en vue de la mise au point d’un plan directeur complet des locaux en propriété conjointe. Nous pensons que, compte tenu des règlements d’urbanismes auxquels nous sommes soumis, nous devrions être graduellement en mesure de développer nos locaux de sorte à ce qu’ils répondent dans une large mesure aux besoins prévus pour les deux établissements. Le défi auquel nous sommes maintenant confrontés consiste à mettre en application les concepts de haut niveau du plan directeur, et à identifier un premier projet

convenant aux deux établissements. Des discussions sont en cours à cet effet.

Nous souhaitons également créer un centre dédié à la petite enfance qui nous permettra d’accueillir une classe de maternelle petite section supplémentaire, et de disposer de locaux plus appropriés à cet âge. Nous sommes en pourparlers avec l’église « Church of the Advent », de l’autre côté

de la rue Hickory, en ce qui concerne la possibilité d’un projet commun sur sa propriété. De manière plus générale, nous avons énormément bénéficié de nos partenariats avec des institutions voisines telles que The Hayes Valley Farm, le Conservatoire de musique de San Francisco, l’orchestre symphonique de San Francisco et le Ballet de San Francisco, ainsi que « The Fools Fury Theater Company », qui ont tous permis à nos élèves de chaque section de l’établissement de bénéficier d’opportunités d’apprentissage pratiques importantes.

Enfin, nous célébrons le 50e anniversaire de notre établissement en 2012, et des préparations sont en cours en prévision des festivités correspondantes.

À plus long terme, nous avons défini une vision pour l’établissement dans la perspective des dix à quinze années à venir. Le Comité de planification stratégique du Conseil de gestion examine la viabilité et la pertinence de notre mission actuelle à l’avenir (conclusion – plus importante que jamais) ; la dimension définitive idéale de l’établissement, les questions de durabilité financières et économiques, ainsi que les coûts et donc les augmentations des frais de scolarité ; les améliorations à la nature internationale de nos programmes ; les modifications à notre approche de l’apprentissage et de l’enseignement, ce que nous avons appelé « l’établissement du 21e siècle » ; et les locaux nécessaires à la mise en application de ces concepts.

L’assise financière de l’établissement est solide et sa communauté est à la fois dynamique et diverse. Les effectifs atteignent des niveaux record et les candidatures à l’entrée dans l’établissement sont très nombreuses. Quels que soient les critères que l’on choisisse, les scores des tests normalisés, les acceptations dans les universités, la réussite des anciens élèves, nous accomplissons notre mission unique et incontournable. Au moment où nous vous écrivons au début du mois d’avril, notre promotion de terminale de 2011, qui comprend de nombreux bénéficiaires de bourses d’établissement, s’est vue offrir 11 places dans des universités de la « Ivy League » et 17 à UCLA et Berkeley, et nous n’avons pas encore toutes les réponses. Cela, dans un environnement extrêmement compétitif dans lequel un taux d’acceptation de 7 % n’a rien d’inhabituel. Sans aucun doute, une célébration de la diversité et de l’excellence académique ! C’est là notre raison d’être.

GERARD (TEX) SCHENKKAN JANE CAMBLINPrésident du Conseil de gestion Proviseur


communiqué | 39

Alumni $4,645 0.4% Miscellaneous $12,454 1% Grandparents $29,215 2%

Matching Gifts $32,316 3%

Friends of the School $40,750 3%

Alumni Parents $62,955 5.0%

Foundations $112,000 9%

Board of Directors $147,354 12%

Current Parents $402,659 32%

Events (gross) $421,633 33%

Fundraising Revenue By Source 2009-10 $1,265,981

Parent Participation by Grade 2009-10

PK3 PK K 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

89%

93%

74%

76%

66%

80%

81%

87%

87%

100%

75%

84%

81%

80%

65%

Total Revenue By Source 2009-10

Trips, Summer Camp,After School 7.4%

Endowment Release 0.7%

Tuition 85.2%

Advancement 5.8%Other/Bank Interest 0.9%

Operating Expenses 2009-10

Program Salaries, Taxes, Benefits 57.7%

Administration:Salaries, Taxes, Benefits 11.2%

Facility Expense 10.4%

Program: Other Operating Expenses 10.4%

Administration:Other Operating Expenses

5.2%

Bond Debt Service 5.1%


Endowment

As of last June, the Endowment had risen to just under $5M from the previous fiscal year close of roughly $4.6M. This is still well off its fiscal year-end peak before the recession of nearly $5.6M but clearly an improvement year over year. As of this writing, the Endowment stands at nearly $5.8M which is approaching its all-time high.

There has been no focused Endowment-building campaign for some time, so donations were mod-est, primarily the final installments of previously commit-ted gifts.

We’re pleased that the Endowment was able to provide $155,000 to the School while still growing from the previ-ous year.

The following presents a brief summary of the financial results of the Endowment for FY 2010:

Beginning balance (July 1, 2009) $4,591,162

Donations received 23,540

Net realized and unrealized gains, interest, dividends 520,252

Expenses (27,511)

Transfers to French American International School (155,000)

---------------

Ending balance (June 30, 2010) $4,952,443

==========

Unchanged from last year, roughly 62% of the assets are designated as the School Fund (unrestricted as to use), 37% as the Financial Aid Fund (restricted to sup-porting scholarships) and 1% as the Faculty Development Fund (restricted to supporting teacher training).

As noted in last year’s report, actual asset distribution returned to near-target levels and have remained there since.

Assets as of June 30, 2010 Actual Target

Fixed Income 37.3% 35% Domestic Equities 33.4% 40%Foreign Equities 23.4% 20%Real Assets 4.7% 5%Cash and Equivalents 1.2% 0-5% After many years of service to the School and, most re-

cently, to the Endowment, Martin Cohn has stepped down from the Endowment Board. It was at Martin’s instigation that the Endowment was set up in its current form, and his active participation in all the decisions at that time and subsequently have been key to the Endowment’s suc-cess. Thank you, Martin.

As a consequence of taking on the role of Chairman of the school’s Board of Trustees, I have stepped down as President of the Endowment Board. I am succeeded by Ron Kahn, whose deep experience with the school and in the investment world make him an excellent choice to take the Endowment into the future.

The FutureThe members of the Board of the Endowment continue

to be pleased with how the Endowment weathered “the Great Recession.” We look forward to a renewed empha-sis on growing it from new donations, with a particular focus on planned giving.

As always, we welcome your interest in and donations to the Endowment Fund for the French American Interna-tional School. Thank you for your support.

GERARD SCHENKKANChairman, Board of Trustees

Endowment Board MembersRon Kahn, PresidentFrances Hochschild,

Vice President and Secretary

Annual Report of the Endowment Fund of the French American International SchoolFiscal Year ending June 30, 2010

Keith Geeslin, Treasurer Martin CohnJames Kirk

communiqué | 41

Background of The Endowment Fund of the French American International School

The Endowment was created as a separate not-for-profit corpora-tion in the first half of 2002. Its sole purpose is to support French American. It was created to ensure that donations to the school for endowment purposes would be used exclusively for that purpose, and to create a structure that will enable the endowment to grow substantially. The endowment funds held by French American in 2002 were transferred to the Endowment in August and Septem-ber of that year.

The Endowment has a relatively simple structure. The Board of Trustees consists of six people, of whom four are appointed by the Board of French American and the remaining two are selected by the first four. The current Board consists of three members of the French American Board, plus a mix of current and former parents. Only the President, Vice President and Treasurer are authorized to make financial transactions.

The Endowment Board has established several policies to guide its work. The Endowment exists to provide financial support to the school, but its primary objective is the preservation of capital for future generations. The Board’s investment and spending guidelines are therefore conservative. Expenses are kept to a minimum. With no permanent administrative staff at the Endowment, the finance and advancement offices of French American provide the necessary staff work, which is modest. Outside auditor Armanino McKenna performs an annual audit. Gifts to the school are as described in the report above.

communiqué | 41


Donations to the SchoolReceived July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2010. For a list of contributions by Grade Level, visit internationalsf.org/advancement

The Communiqué is produced to inform the French American and International com-munity about philanthropic activity and school accomplishments. This edition of the Communiqué includes donor lists for the last full fiscal year (July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010). Great care has been taken in preparing this report to make it as accurate as possible. The Advancement Office apologizes for any errors or omissions. If you should note an inac-curacy, please notify us at 415-558-2015 so that we can correct our records. French American International School and International High School are a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization.

ENDOWMENT FUNDS AND CAPITAL PROJECTSGifts received July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2010French American and International greatly appreciates the generous support of the parents, alumni and friends listed below who made gifts or pledges to endowment, capital projects, and other special fundraising initiatives during the 2009-2010 fiscal year. Also recog-nized below are donors who made payments during 2009-2010 on prior year pledges to the Campaign Plus Capital Campaign.

Endowment FundGregory and Patricia Thayer

The John Kearin FundGifts made in memory of John Kearin, 1955-2008

Patrick KasteinJean-Pierre Nagy

Claire Vidal FundGifts made in memory of Claire Vidal, 1944-2009

Paul Fogel and Yvette Chalom

Capital Projects$250,000+Anonymous (2)

$100,000+The Kahn Family

$50,000+Mackenzie, Blair, and Lily Moll

$25,000+Anonymous (1)David Hearth and Lauren Hall

$2,500+Anonymous (1)David Fierberg and Deborah

Baron

$1,000+Paul Lowrey and Diane Jones

LowreyLeigh Sata and Wendy ChinLeon and Karen Traister

$500+Levi Strauss & Co.Dwight Long and Beverly

PattersonPatrice and Ping Maheo

up to $499James De Golia and Terri

HanaganDavid Di Francesco and

Maureen MurphyAaron Levine and Patricia

Ryan

Acknowledgments

The Annual Fund is the School’s single largest fundraising initiative, supported by donors from every constituency. We are extraordi-narily grateful for the generous financial support provided by our current families, 72% of whom made gifts or pledges to the Annual Fund in 2009-2010; ad-ditionally, we are fortunate to have the continued support of parents of alumni and former students, alumni, grandparents, and faculty and staff. We value these relation-ships, which continue to anchor and define the broader school community. We hope to see many of our supporters at community events throughout the year, and look forward to greeting all of you at our 50th Anniversary celebration in February 2012.

Gifts to the Annual Fund sup-port the following critical areas of school operations:

2009-2010 ANNUAL FUNDGifts received July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2010

Faculty Development Performing and Visual Arts Athletics Library Science & Technology Need-Based Financial Aid

Special thanks to the co-chairs of the 2009-2010 Annual Fund, and to the nearly 50 volunteers who supported their efforts as class captains and Phonathon volunteers.

Robert Bottome & John Dallas, Lower School

Chuck Han & Paul Lowrey, Middle School

Gary Bultman & Beatrice Burgess, High School

Chuck Han & Charlie McCoy, Cercle du Proviseur

communiqué | 43

INDIVIDUAL DONORS

Cercle du ProviseurAll donors of $1,500 or more are counted in the Cercle du Proviseur giving society.

Président($50,000+)

Anonymous (2)Adam Cioth and Beth Cobert

Conseil de Gestion($25,000+)

Anonymous (1)The Kahn FamilyJeannik LittlefieldMay and Stanley Smith

Charitable Trust

Proviseur($10,000+)

Anonymous (3)Terrence and Louise AustinChristian and Corrina BonomoPeter Christey and Valerie

WillsCitigroup FoundationLucille Dedier MeyerThe George H. Sandy

FoundationJoshua MarguliesSusan McClatchyGregory and Patricia Thayer

Proviseur Adjoint($5,000 - $9,999)

Anonymous (2)Barclays Global InvestorsHoward and Gail Berman

Robert and Sharon BottomeDerek Covert and Mary

ConnickJohn Paloglou and Dorothy

GreeneAriel Poler and Cindy

WeitzmanMichael and Tana PowellRobin Wright and Ian Reeves

Principal($2,500 - $4,999)

Anonymous (3)Gary and Allison BeckmanJared and Claire BobrowMarie BourgetMark Bronez and Veronique

LauriaultJane and Roy CamblinSteven Carnevale and Kelly

GormanTimothy and Stella ChenThierry d’Allant and Ruth

BersonStephen and Andrea DoverBrian Ferrall and Laurie PostonChristopher and Andrea GalvinGerald George and Christine

WardellHervé and Florence GoguelyTim and Shailly GuleriRamzi and Maria HaidamusGina HillDavid and Andrea KennedyAlison KileyCharlie and Jeanette McCoyLaura MilnerAnne-Marie and Robert PierceLawson and Jane ReedLeigh Sata and Wendy ChinHarinder Singh and Ramninder

Hansra

Skywords Family Foundation, Inc.

M. Bradley Smith and Michele Trufelli

The Thendara FoundationTristan and Evelyne

Thommasson

Chef du département($1,500 - $2,499)

Anonymous (2)Khaldoun and Amy BaghdadiPaul Banas and Jasmine KimBank of AmericaChuck Bloszies and Courtney

BroaddusEric and Beth BrillFrederic and Odile CanadasJohn Cate and Jeanne

MyersonGregg and Donna CummingsJames Curran and Jacqueline

LytleDolby LaboratoriesGavin Dollinger and Mariane

MerleTrevor D’sa and Anne

ZimmermanThomas Duffy and Diana

Tang-DuffyKen Ebanks and Suzanne

Abele-EbanksThomas Eby and Denise

St. OngeJean-Pierre and Patricia

FalconnierVince Foecke and Linda HintonDouglas and Anne-Sophie

FreedmanRonald and Beverly GarrityThe Herbst FoundationSteven Hirsch and Paik-Swan

Low

Geoffrey Holtz and Christine Ferrari

Valerie and Thierry JahanRanjit Kapila and Miho NasuJuan Kong and Donna

Kempner-KongRobert Kugel and Diana

DamazoVictor Kwok and Chun Cha

ParkCarlene and Henry LaughlinBrian Lavan and Michelle

KuhneMark and Carol LerdalAaron Levine and Patricia

RyanThomas and Stephanie LimaPaul Lowrey and Diane Jones

LowreyPatrice and Ping MaheoDavid and Christine

McSpadden


The Mudge FamilyChristine Motley and Neil

O’DonnellRichard and Ashley RochmanMichael Rowbotham and Karin

Lottrup PetersenJames and Cecile SchwankeOwen and Molly SeitelJoann ShankYoung Shin and Eloisa TejeroSkoll FoundationJoel Slavonia and Susana

NolesColin Smith and Barbara

Fagan-SmithStephen Street and Natalie

Marine-StreetJohn Surnow and Elizabeth

MoyG. Victor and Susan TreyzDavid Unietis and Anita

VermeulenJohn and Debra VarianZeev Vax and Marcia Bana

TonettoFrank and Sarah WagnerSeth and Margaret WeissmanWells Fargo Bank

Mentor($500 to $1,499)

Anonymous (23)Abbott LaboratoriesHoward and Anne AllenMagnus Almquist and Elda

ChecaFred Altshuler and Julia

CheeverJim and Jennifer AnnunziataLowell and Jo Anne ApletDomenico and Alexandra

Azzarello

Christophe and Annabelle Bach

Frederick and Hilary BaldiDaniel Bane and Olga

Cyimana BaneHenry Bannister and Kyoko

WatanabeAndrei and Natalie BareliRaphael and Natalia BaronDavid Beck and Debra RobinsOlga BeilinPhilippe and Katherine BellevinMichael and Ruriko BenavidesTom Blair and Mayumi BlairRita BrantnerJoseph Bravo and Rika UedaSteven Brock and Leah SirkinKimiko Burton ‘82Bernard and Beatrice CarrotCharles Schwab & Co., Inc.Alejandro and Sylvia CorpuzJonathan Craig and Patty

NozatoJudy CraigJohn and Claire CurranFrank and Elena Dal SantoDon David and Olivia LeaoBrian Davis and Casey KimballLaurent and Adriana de BordStephane de BordMonique de la PlazaDenis Descause and Romana

RicciDarryl DeWaldPhilip DionPaul and Evelyn DravisMax Drukman and Lisa

FeldsteinMartin and Maria EbertJonathan EpsteinDavid Evans and Marie Josee

DumoulinDennis Fisher and Melanie

AdamsMark and Christine FisherPhillip Fong and Diana YouDavid and Sonya FranklinFremont Group Charitable

FoundationFrench American International

Lower School Parent BoardGap, Inc.GenentechPhilip and Jane GieslerFelix Hack and Ann LucchesiDavid Hearth and Lauren HallChristie HochschildRobert Horvat and Veselka

BudimirEric Hughes and Priscilla

WanerusStewart and Noreen IrvingLester and Lidia JacobsonMatthew and Sara JennisonWilliam Johnston and Bobbie

FischMax and Beth Kellenberger

Anne KelleyGary and Emily KetchenTony and Rita KimGeorgios Kiurtsidis and

Katarina BakerovaSteven Kusmer and Patricia

PludeJohannes and Linda

LamprechtFred and Barbara LauPhilippe and Annabel LavielleRichard Lawless and Ellen

FilvaroffJohn and Rebecca LeeLevi Strauss & Co.Asriel and Carmela LevinWinston Little and Amy

RubensteinKathleen and Dexter LowryKarine Luguet and Shinichi

EguchiFrederick Luhmann and

Theresa HenryPatricia LurieGonçalo and Rebecca

Macieira-KaufmannTrey and Amie MacPheeCharlotte MakoffCharles Marcus and Catherine

SullivanJohn and Kathryn MarpleVernon Mathews and Kathleen

RadicsThe Mathias Lloyd Spiegel

FoundationFrance and Margaret McCoyAdrian and Cynthia McDermottMedarexMerrill Lynch & Co.Terence and Abigail MeurkTheodore and Kirsten MiclauMicrosoft CorporationAlec and Galina MiloslavskyRoger and Challis MosherOleg Muza and Tatyana

VildermanJosh NossiterYasuo and Judith NozatoDoug Nugent and Becky

MortimerEmmanuel and Joy NwabuezeDaniel and Mara O’DayOracle CorporationRodrigo Palacios and Gilda

Miralda

Jonathan Pick and Audrey Bourguet

Richard Pierce and Audrey Brandt

Thomas Pistor and Ewelina Bindarowska

Andrew Posselt and Faye Jamali

Liz Prior RunniclesStefan and Michelle RaczekTed and Courtney RiceAlex and Ladan SalehDavid Samra and Erica

Pearson SamraJenny Sandelson and Jiri

WeissBry and Ciela SartéCarolyn SasserJoseph and Patricia ShankJacqueline SingerRobert and Melissa SobrepeñaGretchen Sommerfield and

Bonnie CardellPaul SpiegelMark and Lori SpiegelLeo and Jeanne SteffenFabrice and Blanche SteibléSteve Stone and Bridget

Baskett-StoneChristophe and Diane SuchetRoger Swanson and Lena

ZhangSileshi Tadesse and

Mulumebet ChallaClaudio and Elizabeth TarchiKristina Tarczy-Hornoch ‘88Laila TarrafAndrei Terebilo and Nina

BubnovaBarry and Valerie TonerLeon and Karen TraisterEsref and Joan UnerUnilever United States

Foundation, Inc.Patrick VertaMarina Vidal-Young ‘89Paul and Angela VillarChristopher and Lilian WagnerAdil and Lori WakilPaul Wolters and Amy SehnertMark Yesayian and Scott

LauzeZhenya YoderBertram and Alice Young

communiqué | 45

Coach(up to $499)

Anonymous (47)David and Barbara AbecassisSolange AbecassisAdobe Systems Inc.James AdrianGarrick and Terry Amgott-

KwanHassan and Laleh AminArthur and Natalie

AnchipolovskyJames AndersonPercy Angress and Livia

LindenJaime Arbona and Anne CairdMarilou ArionesFelix and Madina AryehFred and Beth AsperinEd and Cindy AstrachanMark Audigier ‘94 and

Christina AudigierBruce BaikieRegan BalintonDaniel Barahona and Sylvia

VenturaRonald BarclayFranck Barrat and Vanessa

BarratMartin and Sarah BarrsDominique Bayart and

Jonathan HaydenMatthew BensGeorge and Martha BensSeymour and Edith Bergman

Anthony Berman and Sarah Voynow-Berman

Ragnvald and Joelle BerntPatrick BertrandAsim Bhansali and Brittny

BottorffYnze Bijl and Tina SmithEric Blomquist and Karen

CavanaghChris A. Bloszies ‘04Eileen and Alain Blum-

BourgadeJohn Boatwright and Attilia

LombardiBeth BolesRobert Boles and Christine

Lebeau-BolesCarole BoschBlaise Bourdais and Adrienne

FairRoss and Karen BoylanMichael Brainard and Allison

DoupeBrian Brantner and Matthew

FullerAndrew and Mara BrownPeter Bruce and Kathleen

BisacciaMichael Burbank and Cindy

RobertsWilliam and Beatrice BurgessMichele BurtonJeff and Nathalie CabiliRonald Calandra and Bonita

CalandraJean-Claude and Ninive

Calegari

Val Casilang and Digna ReyesDickson and Chitra ChanPatrick and Dorothee

ChanezonPhilippe and Meredith

CharpantierXi Tao Chen and Xiao Ling

GuanFrancis and Lillian ChinFrank Cialone and Mimi

PowersRobert and Elizabeth ClearyMatt and Cindy ClementzKaren CloptonShirley CobertRobert ConnickJohn Conroy and Delia

DempseyJoseph Crittle and Imelda

JohnsonJeannine CuevasSvetuslav and Ksenia

DanichMichael Dart and Janine

DarwinGraeme Davis and

Stephanie RobertsonBenjamin DavisJames De Golia and Terri

HanaganPieter De Haan and Ruth

RaineroRosemary de Heer and

Mark AbramsonNilus De Matran and

Jennifer Morla-De Matran

Yves and Michelle DelieuvinIvan Delventhal ‘92John DiamanteFabio Dias FerreiraJulie DohertyAdebayo Domingo and Kofo

Egbeyemi-DomingoKevin Dorning and Marion

LovingerRuss Drinker and Deborah

HoldemanFrank and Jennifer DroletMichael DrummLaurent and Mary Jane DuboisDamian and Yanitsy DueñasAndrew Dunbar and Zoee

Astrachan


Craig DunhamHerbert and Sarah DunmeyerBob and Connie EbyScott EcholsJoan ElliotCharles and Lois EpsteinXavier and Jelena ErhartMarc Escobosa ‘91 and Meg

EscobosaCihat Esrefoglu and Ozgul

YolcuRaymond and Sadia FaberLarry Farkas and Karen GibsonPaul Fayollat and Judy FayollatThomas Feeney and Andrea

FeeneyBlaine and Maria FeinsteinSteven and Haydée FelsovanyiTarly Manak and Marie FerreiraNorman Ferrer and Katherine

JamesDavid Fierberg and Deborah

BaronWilliam and Mary FilenerThomas and Denali FilesDennis Finn and Diane

PritchardAl and Marion FischMichael FishermanNicolas Fiszman and Christina

HellmichAlfred FleckDavid Ford and Beate Israel-

FordRichard and Barbara FosterRobert FosterAlexander Fowler and Megan

McVayJill FoxeBernard and Hannah

FriedlanderJulia FriedlanderJames and Christen FriedmanPaul and Paloma FriedmanBruce and Michele Fuller

Michel Fuller ‘92Florence Fuller-Boardman ‘90

and Brad BoardmanDeven Gadula and Dana

PetersenCarol GaffneyFrancois Gaillard and Marie

PerreyBarry and Laura GalvinRoger and Irma GarciaMartin Garduno and Maria

VillagranDay Garson-Darmet and

Florence RaynaudSebhatleab Gebremedhin and

Saba MesfinDaniel and Kim GéniniLuis GervasiJane GideonDavid Gilson and Marcia SettelFamily of Nigel GoodwinGoogle Inc.Toni GraevenDavid Greenthal and Sheri

RichmondCédric Guyot and Laure

LathamRobert Gyemant ‘83Nadia and Carl HackettLawrence and Deborah

HamiltonBob and Benna HarrisRuth HayesKaren E. Heisler ‘78William and Theresa HenryJustin and Amy HessFrances Hochschild ‘80Rick Holman and Toby LevyChristopher Honeysett ‘83 and

Kim HoneysettJeff and Karen HornHanru Hou and Evelyne Hou-

JouannoJean-Francois and Nancy

Houdré

Stephen and Elizabeth HoweDavid and Cheryl HowellFlorence HuangKevin and Parisa HudsonRonald HypoliteIntel CorporationDana Isaac ‘04Mark Iverson and Wendy

LowingerJoseph and Patricia JacquesReverdy Johnson ‘92 and

Alexis JohnsonVeryl JohnsonThomas and Claire-Marie

JohnstonDavid and Alison JonesMr. and Mrs. Ellis JonesNathalie Kakone and Laurie

BlavinJamil and Mounira KanaanehLeslie Kardos ‘82 and Miguel

BarronSteven Karp and Pascale

MacleodGilles KarpowiczBogale Kassaye and Hanna

AlemayehuAndreas Katz and Judith

PowellWayne and Colette KeenAndrea KellerPatrick Kennedy and Nichele

HarrisWalter and Jill KentAbdelghani and Aicha KerrarJohn and Linda KieselThomas and Lynn KileyTheon KingJean KleinJohn Knightly and Floriana

SpezzaWalter and Murni KnoepfelGeoff Knoop and Tricia van

KlaverenHoward Koenig and Elizabeth

Rody KoenigAmiel and Catherine KornelLoïc and Carrie Kreitmann

Steve and Arlene KriegerMichael and Lisa KrouseJeanne KwongLeslie LambertPierre Lapeyrade ‘83Olivier LaudeDaniel Laury and Anne DautunNeil and Wei LawrenceLin LawsonAndrea Lawson-GrayPierre and Susan Le CorreLaurance Lee and Dr. Sofia

TouamiPolly LegendreRichard and Gerry LeidleinHowie LeiferCarla LeshneBenoît Levet and Vinita

Srinivas-LevetStephanie LevinYakov Litinetsky and Maria

LitinetskyLewis Loeven and Sarah

BurbidgeDwight Long and Beverly

PattersonShannon LucasCaren LudmerToby LudmerChristopher and Liesl LudwigFrederick and Lucy LuhmannOle Lütjens and Bonnie LysePolly LymanDonald and Janine LytleKarim and Kathryn MachiMichelle MacKenzie-Menendez

‘85 and Eduardo MenendezMelissa MackieWilliam Magill and Alexandra

MagillPatrick and Elizabeth MaguirePhillip and Mona MalikLillian MandelmanSarah MarguliesMichael Martins and Sabrina

SayreYutaka and Yoshiko MatsumotoPeter McDonald and Aryanna

McDonaldKathleen McGee ‘08Jim and Michele McGovernBrian McGuireErika and Jesse McMillinPeter and Barbara McSpaddenRussell and Georgia

McWhinneyJohn Mendelson and Veronica

SegredoMerck & Company Inc.Evan MetcalfNancy MeyerJacquie MeyersAnna Miller ‘93Christina E. Mills ‘94Kathleen MoazedSteven MoazedRandy Mon and Izumi Sakai

communiqué | 47

Michael Montgomery and Jeanne Finley Montgomery

Geoff and Lisa MooreChris Morales and Diane

DuBoisAda MoralesCelinha MoreiraClarence Moreland and Laura

TelepGeorge Moridis and Vassiliki

FissekidouSusan MortimerVictor and Linda MurrayLydia MurrayAbbas and Nada NehmeAlex Nerland and Lisa SignoffChristopher and Christa

NicholasPaul and Jennifer NockEric Oillarburu ‘84 and Aimee

OillarburuJeppe Oland and Pernille

Pradel OlandMitchell Omerberg and Polly

MarshallAlexei Oreskovic and Jessica

Branson OreskovicRaoul and Carol OreskovicJuan Ortellado and Mireille

Gaonac’hVictor Ortiz de Montellano and

Melissa RodgersSondra OsorioJeffrey Paine and Margaret

ParkinsonKenneth Patsel and Galina

AlexandrovaAndrew Pennell and Heidi

Bjornson-PennellDavid Peters and Rhonda

RubinsteinPG&E CorporationAdrian Phillips and Pamela

Cassidy-PhillipsTitus Pierce and Concepcion

Vindell

Marshall and Alice PiersonGeorge and Catherine PludeJuliette PowellJames Propp and Denise

Childers-ProppChris Quan and Joan

Fischer-QuanRegina Ranoa-BertrandJean and Charisse RathleEvangela RemoundosFlorence Richard-Van Doren

and Zachary Van DorenPascal and Virginie RigoSheila RileyBarton and Shirley RochmanIrene RodgersDaniel and Alexandra RodoniMark Rogers and Carol

SalvagioneThorina RoseSten Arne Rosnes and

Elisabeth KrahwinkelPeter and Gerlind RothenDavid SafirJeff and Larissa SandFrank and Marian SataRimon and Hadil SawayaEdward and Virginia SayreKatherine Schenkkan ‘06Earl and Jean SchneiderSanford and Tobey SchreiberLloyd Schuknecht and Barbara

IgnatiusRajambal and Annamalai

ShanmugamYoung Hee ShinClaude Sidi and Lynn ChingLawrence Simi and Janet

RogersJohn and Janet SimpsonMichael and Diana SiuCarolle SkovSteven Skov Holt and Mara

Holt SkovMark and Emily Slichter

Paul Sloan and Linda SimoninBrad Smallridge and Vicki

KlebanStephen Smith and Suzanne

BlumenthalJoy Smith-KyneArthur SnyderFrank and Elisa SommerfieldGilbert SoroquereRona SpiegelSteve Spillan and Demetria

Vong-SpillanBala SrinivasSusan Stahlek

Philippe and Angelika StampfNathaniel Stookey ‘88 and Jodi

Dunmeyer Stookey ‘88Richard and Martha StookeySun Microsystems, Inc.John Sutton and Sarah SkinnerEszter SzocskaMichael Szotak and Beverly

LehrAlyson TalleyJocelyn L. TejeroCatherine Theilen Burke ‘78

and John BurkeLeslie Theodore


Laurent and Dominique Theulier

Michael and Elizabeth ThomasTyson Thomas ‘88Robert ThorntonPatrice and Theresa TollenaereAnthony Trask and Karen

RegelmanLilian TsiXavier Tsouo ‘88 and Sarah

TsouoTimm and Alicia TurnbladTom Twietmeyer and Valérie

BianquisFabrice and Lisa UrrizalquiAlexander Vakoula and

Yekaterina PolosukhinaRead VanderbiltAlexander Varshavsky and

Julia LatifiVladimir and Zinaida VexlerLisa Victor and Blair HerbertJethro Villegas and Josephine

VillegasVisaJean-Baptiste Volta and Marie

Vorilhon-VoltaSebastian von Nagel and

Deborah Tibbetts von NagelMr. Wagne and Ms. WagneJeffrey WalkerErin WallenTim WallenKo Pen Wang and Shu Lian

WangMichael Watts and Mary Beth

PudupMathieu Weber ‘93Joshua Weinstein and Jayne

GoldsteinBart and Lynn WeitzenbergCharlie and Chris WhisenandBrenda WilliamsTeresa WilsonMee Mee WongHenry and Debbie WongDavid Woodard and Paula

Blacona

Charles and Roni WorkRichard Wurzelbacher and

Anne FrenchDebbie ZachareasPaul Zarefsky and Jacqueline

Reed

FOUNDATIONS$50,000+Anonymous

$20,000+May and Stanley Smith

Charitable Trust

$10,000+Citigroup FoundationThe George H. Sandy

Foundation

$2,500+Skywords Family Foundation,

Inc.The Thendara Foundation

$1,000+The Herbst FoundationThe Tom Merit Hancock Family

Fund

CORPORATIONS AND MATCHING GIFTSFrench American and Interna-tional thanks the many parents, past parents, alumni, and friends who took advantage of matching gift opportunities through their employers to increase the value of their gifts to the school last year. The companies listed below contributed a total of over $40,000 in matching gifts, retail rebates, and advertising revenue to support French American International School’s 2009-2010 Annual Fund, providing important funds for all areas of our academic program. To learn more about matching gift opportunities, visit: http://www.matchinggifts.com/frenchamericansf/

AbbottAdobe Systems Inc.Alegro Private ToursAperio Group, LLCBank of AmericaBarclays Global InvestorsCharles Schwab & Co., Inc.DolbyFACTS Management CompanyFerry Plaza Wine MerchantFremont Group Charitable

FoundationGap, Inc.GenentechGoogle Inc.Intel CorporationLands’ End, Inc.Levi Strauss & Co.MedarexMerck & Company Inc.Merrill Lynch & Co.Microsoft CorporationOneCauseOracle CorporationPG&E CorporationPhoenix Glass Decorating

CompanyPlant ConstructionPrager, Sealy & Co., LLCSavvy SourceSkoll FoundationSun Microsystems, Inc.TargetUnilever United States

Foundation, Inc.Union Bank of California, N.A.VisaWells Fargo Bank

ALUMNIAlumni/ae of the school – whether they call their alma mater FABS, FAIS, French American, IHS, or International – continued to support to the school’s Annual Fund in meaningful ways. Alumni contributed $5,000 to the 2009-2010 Annual Fund. (Number in parentheses indicates total number of years of giving.)

April McCrae Al-Shamma Jean ‘89 (10)

Mark Audigier ‘94 (8)Chris A. Bloszies ‘04 (3)Kimiko Burton ‘82 (5)Nina (Louie) Cannon ‘94 (4)Eloise De Mil ‘04 (7)Loïc Delieuvin ‘97 (3)Ivan Delventhal ‘92 (2)Ashley Dennis ‘02 (2)Faustine Dufka ‘08 (2)Marc Escobosa ‘91 (2)Michel Fuller ‘92 (11)Florence Fuller-Boardman

‘90 (2)Vernon Goins ‘88 (3)Robert Gyemant ‘83 (2)Lauren E. Hart ‘04 (6)Karen E. Heisler ‘78 (17)Frances Hochschild ‘80 (11)Christopher S. Honeysett

‘83 (15)Dana Isaac ‘04 (5)Reverdy P. Johnson ‘92 (11)Leslie Kardos ‘82 (10)Pierre Lapeyrade ‘83 (3)Michelle MacKenzie-Menendez

‘85 (7)

communiqué | 49

Kathleen McGee ‘08 (1)Anna Miller ‘93 (15)Christina E. Mills ‘94 (8)Alexander Nichol ‘00 (5)Eric Oillarburu ‘84 (4)Katherine Schenkkan ‘06 (2)Nathaniel Stookey and Jodi

Dunmeyer Stookey ‘88 (7)Kristina Tarczy-Hornoch

‘88 (9)Catherine Theilen-Burke

‘78 (8)Tyson Thomas ‘88 (7)Xavier Tsouo ‘88 (4)Marina Vidal-Young ‘89 (1)Mathieu Weber ‘93 (10)

CURRENT AND FORMER GRANDPARENTSWe are extremely grateful for the generous financial support pro-vided by current and former grand-parents, many of whom made gifts to the Annual Fund in 2009-2010, whether living nearby the school or on another continent. We warmly embrace these members of our extended community and look forward to sharing the French American experience with them, through La Lettre or via updates on our website!

Anonymous (7)Solange AbecassisHoward and Anne AllenLowell Aplet and Jo Anne ApletFred and Beth AsperinEd and Cindy AstrachanRonald BarclayGeorge and Martha BensSeymour and Edith BergmanBeth BolesRita BrantnerMichele BurtonShirley CobertRobert ConnickSvetuslav and Ksenia DanichHerbert and Sarah DunmeyerBob and Connie EbyJoan ElliotCharles and Lois EpsteinWilliam and Mary FilenerThomas and Denali FilesAl and Marion FischRichard and Barbara FosterBernard and Hannah

FriedlanderBruce and Michele FullerCarol GaffneyBarry and Laura GalvinFamily of Nigel GoodwinBob and Benna HarrisRuth Hayes

William and Theresa HenryChristie HochschildVeryl JohnsonEllis and Eugenia JonesAnne KelleyJohn and Linda KieselThomas and Lynn KileyTheon KingJean KleinSteve and Arlene KriegerLin LawsonRichard and Gerry LeidleinToby LudmerFrederick and Lucy LuhmannDonald and Janine LytleLillian MandelmanSarah MarguliesYutaka and Yoshiko MatsumotoFrance and Margaret McCoyPeter and Barbara McSpaddenRussell and Georgia

McWhinneyEvan MetcalfAda MoralesSusan MortimerRoger and Challis MosherLydia MurrayRaoul and Carol OreskovicGeorge and Catherine PludeJuliette PowellBarton and Shirley RochmanIrene RodgersFrank and Marian SataEdward and Virginia SayreEarl and Jean SchneiderSanford and Tobey SchreiberJoann ShankJoseph and Patricia ShankRajambal and Annamalai

ShanmugamYoung Hee ShinJohn and Janet SimpsonJacqueline SingerCarolle Skov

Frank and Elisa SommerfieldGilbert SoroquereBala SrinivasLeo and Jeanne SteffenMartha and Richard StookeyFrank and Sarah WagnerJeffrey WalkerKo Pen Wang and Shu Lian

WangBart and Lynn WeitzenbergCharlie and Chris WhisenandCharles and Roni Work

SPECIAL EVENTS 2009-20102009 Annual Auction, 2010 Soirée des Arts et des Vins, 2010 Dîner d’EpicureGifts received July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2010

French American International School and International High School host three fundraising events annually, raising critical monies to support school opera-tions as well as our standard-bear-ing financial aid program. Over 200 volunteers and 700 attendees bring these events to life over the course of the year. The school would like to acknowledge the co-chairs of these important initiatives in the 2009-2010 school year.

Corrina Bonomo & Jana Klein, Auction (November 2009)

Clydene Bultman & Debbie Zachareas, Soirée des Arts et des Vins (April 2010)

Kimberly Branagh, Dîner d’Epicure (May 2010)

ScholarshipThe 2009 Auction and the 2010 Soirée des Arts et des Vins culminated with a live auction and paddle raise to support scholar-ships and financial aid at French American and International. The school thanks the many guests who participated in these fundrais-ing drives for their generous support.

$5,000 - $9,999Jared and Claire BobrowChristian and Corrina BonomoBrian Ferrall and Laurie PostonDennis and Sabrina HiggsSteven Hirsch and Paik-Swan

Low

$2,500 - $4,999Allan Basbaum and Marcia

Fortnoff

$1,500 - $2,499Anonymous (1)John Cate and Jeanne

MyersonPatrice and Ping MaheoYoung Shin and Eloisa Tejero

$1,000 - $1,499Anonymous (1)Jim and Jennifer AnnunziataJane and Roy CamblinPhilippe and Sylvaine CasesAdam Cioth and Beth CobertThierry d’Allant and Ruth

BersonStephane de BordDouglas and Anne-Sophie

Freedman


Dick GraceGeoffrey Holtz and Christine

FerrariValerie and Thierry JahanJuan Kong and Donna

Kempner-KongSteve and Arlene KriegerAsriel and Carmela LevinPaul Lowrey and Diane Jones

LowreyDavid and Christine

McSpaddenJosh NossiterEvangela RemoundosAlex and Ladan SalehGerard and Judith SchenkkanAdil and Lori WakilJoshua Weinstein and Jayne

GoldsteinSeth and Margaret WeissmanMarcus Yoder

$500 - $999Anonymous (2)Christophe and Annabelle

BachPhilippe and Katherine BellevinKimiko Burton ‘82Frank Cialone and Mimi

PowersRobert and Elizabeth ClearyOrpheus Crutchfield

Laurent and Adriana de BordDavid Fierberg and Deborah

BaronChristopher and Andrea GalvinRonald and Beverly GarrityMichael Gerrity and Katherine

Patty-GerrityKathleen and Dexter LowryTerence and Abigail MeurkRodrigo Palacios and Gilda

MiraldaAnne-Marie and Robert PiercePascal and Virginie RigoGregg Seo and Jana KleinHarinder Singh and Ramninder

HansraChristian and Diane Spirandelli

Up to $499Anonymous (3)Leslie AdamsBank of AmericaAsim Bhansali and Brittny

BottorffStefano and Katherine BiniMichael Brainard and Allison

DoupeBrian Brantner and Matthew

FullerBetsy BrodyJean-Claude and Ninive

Calegari

Steven Carnevale and Kelly Gorman

Philippe and Meredith Charpantier

Joshua CohnErin CroninJohn Dallas and Anne

LongsworthDon David and Olivia LeaoAlexander and Evette DavisRosemary de Heer and Mark

AbramsonJerry Di VecchioRuss Drinker and Deborah

HoldemanTrevor D’sa and Anne

ZimmermanKen Ebanks and Suzanne

Abele-EbanksFACTS Management CompanyGap, Inc.Jane GideonLiz HillDavid and Cheryl HowellGary and Emily KetchenNeil and Wei LawrencePierre and Diane LemorThomas and Stephanie LimaDwight Long and Beverly

PattersonNiris Lui and Scott PatonJim and Michele McGovernJean MonjauzeChristine Motley and Neil

O’DonnellRobert and Paige MullinLeslie NakajimaAlex Nerland and Lisa SignoffDavid and Sheila O’ConnorLynn PieronBrett RobertsJenny Sandelson and Jiri

WeissJoann ShankBouchra SimmonsMark and Emily SlichterColin Smith and Barbara

Fagan-SmithSteve Spillan and Demetria

Vong-SpillanAlyson TalleyTimm and Alicia TurnbladTom Twietmeyer and Valérie

BianquisRichard and Cynthia UllfersEric Verdin and Melanie OttSilvia and Achim VoermanekAndrew and Joy WoeberMatthew and Beatriz Work

EVENT DONORS AND UNDERWRITERS

Auction 2009Table PurchasesBrittny Bottorff and Asim

BhansaliJane and Roy Camblin

PatronsSuzanne Abele-Ebanks and

Ken EbanksLouise and Terrance AustinClaire and Jared BobrowChris and Corrina BonomoSharon and Robert BottomeKimberly BranaghOrpheus CrutchfieldStephane de BordAnne Dautin and Daniel LauryMark and Christine FisherBeverly and Ron GarrityNadia Hackett and Carl

AndersonElsie JuettenThe Kahn FamilyAndrea and David KennedyJana Klein and Gregg SeoJean KleinCarmela and Uzi LevinPaul Loeffler and Mike SullivanPaik Swan Low and Steve

HirschAnne-Marie PierceGerard SchenkkanColeen SchoenheideRona SpiegelDiane and Christian Spirandelli

communiqué | 51

Wine and Beverage UnderwritingBaggy’s LiquorsLe Beau MarketLinda and David BeckerAlexander BeilinKimberly BranaghFerry Plaza Wine MerchantsFoggy Bridge WineryPaul Loeffler and Michael

SullivanNathalie and Charles NealSilver Pines Vineyards

In-Kind DonationsA La Turka Turkish FoodAmici’s East Coast PizzeriaAsian Art MuseumWilkes BashfordChris and Corrina BonomoDe Young MuseumMaria HaidamusGina HillPatricia JacobusNada NehmeOra SchulmannDina SroujiSilvia and Achim Voermaneck

Event and Faculty Fund UnderwritingLinda Chan AkamineRita BrantnerGarth CummingsChristiane de BordMary Jane and Laurent DuboisKate and Jerry GoldbergThomas and Claire Marie

JohnstonAlison Kiley

Henri Monjauze †

Chris Motley and Neil O’Donnell

Hadil and Rimon SawayaCelia and Bry SartéChloe and Gilbert SoroquereBarry and Valerie TonerSandy Zweifach

Dîner d’EpicureUnderwriters and In-Kind DonorsCleanFishCyprus String Quartet Chef Philippe GardelleRamzi and Maria Haidamus,

HostsThompson River Ranch

Soirée des Arts et des Vins Wine and Food DonorsAndante Dairy Broc Cellars & Broadside

WineryChambers & ChambersCharles Neal SelectionsChouchou French Bistro Cline CellarsCold HeavenDalrymple’s CondimentsDashe CellarsDuckhorn WineryFlowers Vineyard & WineryFoggy Bridge WineryFreeman WineryGrace Family Vineyards

Hourglass WineryJardinière RestaurantLa BoulangeLioco WineryLuli and Swirl WinesMartine’s WinesMiner Family WineryOakville Ranch VineyardsOtoro Sushi Oxbow Cheese MerchantParr SelectionsPiperade Restaurant Pisoni Vineyards and WineryQupé Wine CellarsRNM Restaurant Robert Sinskey VineyardsSauce Restaurant Southern Wine and SpiritsTallulah Winery/ Artisan

Growers & ProducersTerra RestaurantThe Sorting TableThompson River RanchWait Cellars

Wines of Ribera del DueroWineWise and Terry Theise

Estate Selection

Special ThanksMichael BauerCalparrio TravelDuckhorn Wine CompanyDick Grace, Grace Family

VineyardsHourglass VineyardJardinière RestaurantDaniel KlingebielDJ Nathalie NealSF Jazz High School All-Stars

ComboSan Francisco Conservatory

of MusicSt. Helena HotelTerra RestaurantThompson River RanchDebbie Zachareas

† deceased

52 | La Lettre

Diversity & Inclusion

We’re Better Together

This fall, International High School established a new initiative, Diversity and Inclusion, tasked with ensuring that our students and families feel safe, supported, and successful in the school environment. We believe that the best educa-tion occurs in a school made up of students,

families, teachers and staff drawn from many different backgrounds and experiences. We honor the uniqueness of each individual and embrace diverse backgrounds, sexual orientations, values and points of view to build a strong, inclusive community, and to prepare students for lives in a society in which communicating across cultures and from a multiplicity of perspectives are of paramount importance. We believe that our strength comes in large measure from our ability to learn from and with one another, to respect our differences, and to find common ground.

The Community Diversity Alliance, composed of staff, faculty, and parent/guardian representatives, is dedicated to helping the school move forward with further efforts toward inclusion and diversity. The committee, as well as the high school Multicultural Students’ Association (MSA), and the Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) are open to anyone who would like to participate. For more information, contact Betsy Brody, Director of Inclusion, at [email protected]

February is Black History month, but not only are we celebrating Black History, but “togetherness”. Right now, I’d like to remind you of the great things our ancestors have done, and the hard work they put forth as individuals and as a team, to build the much more equal and united environment we live in today.

During the civil rights movement many people fought to have equal rights. Thanks to them, after nearly a decade of protesting, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, guaranteeing rights for all Americans, regardless of the color of your skin. A lot of times we don’t realize how lucky we are for the privileges and luxu-ries we have today. But let’s stop now! Look at the person to your right. Now look at the person to your left. Know that you are better together! As a team, we can build a force and go against any negative setback. Without the support of each other, who knows if these laws could have been passed?

So whether it’s supporting each other by watching our teams play in their basketball games, watching your friends perform in the One Acts, saying “thank you” to your teacher for a great lesson, or being there for your senior friends because they’re freaking out about the IB. It’s doing these things that make our community stronger and more united.

emani’ lewis Grade 12

Civil Rights Era icons Belva Davis and Carol Ruth Silver (2nd and 3rd from left) join hands in singing “We Shall Overcome” at a January 31 assembly to kick off Black History Month.We Shall Overcome.

La Lettre | 53

Clockwise from upper left... Black History Month. Members of the MSA (Multicultural Students’ Association) with guests Belva Davis and Carol Ruth Silver at a special assembly on January 31 to kick off Black History Month. Student organizers Emani’ Lewis and Joshua Byrd. Carol Ruth Silver displays portraits of her fellow Freedom Riders. Belva Davis shares an inspirational story from her childhood in Berkeley.

54 | La Lettre


The Green Project

After a long dry season, the garden on the school rooftop was completely dried out and lifeless except for a few succulents. With a goal of bringing life to this space, we initiated a project this year to create a

sustainable ecosystem suited to our coastal climate. Since the garden is a part of the school, the project natu-

rally has a strong pedagogical emphasis and is designed to involve the various levels of the school. A gardening elective class is thus offered this year for middle school students. Each Monday afternoon, 15 students do hands-on gardening from 12:50 to 1:35. At the end of the year, we would like to have them give tours of the garden to lower school kids with “Nature for our five senses” as the theme. In addition, the project is a perfect case study for the high school Ecology Club, and daily engages high school students since they eat lunch on the rooftop.

There are several challenges in order to create a sustain-able ecosystem on a rooftop garden in the middle of San Francisco’s Civic Center. The garden’s most basic needs are fertile soil with adequate irrigation. We must also create enough biodiversity and down-to-earth land management which will allow us to reach the ecological balance needed to sustain the entire system.

The middle school students engage in various activities during elective gardening: Daily maintenance of the garden (watering, weeding,

pruning, etc.) Preparing planter boxes (adapted to our rooftop set-

tings and plant choice) Creating fertile soil Seeding fruits and vegetables Transplanting vegetables, fruits and plants Harvesting food and seeds

High school members of the Ecology Club are responsible for advanced documentation work on different ecological concepts and eco-friendly practices such as plant companion-ship, compost making, crop rotation, mulching, ecological management of “pest” populations, ecosystems/communities of California, sustainability, biodiversity, ecological balance

and conservation. The middle school elective students are also introduced to these concepts.

We are currently growing winter vegetables, such as lettuce, purple spinach, broccoli, brussel sprouts, potatoes, onions, yellow chard, snow peas and fava beans. We just recently transplanted radishes, after several weeks of seeding in small containers.

We did not forget herbs. Cilantro, parsley, oregano and thyme are growing nicely, and you can smell the difference between them!

Although planting fruit may seem ambitious during the fall, our strawberry plants just rewarded us with our first ripe strawberry! A young Meyer lemon tree is also producing its first lemons, and word has it that they are pretty good!

Two additional California native trees were also recently transplanted: a beautiful red-trunk Manzanita and an island bush poppy (with beautiful yellow flowers!). In addition to adding grandeur to the setting, these trees will provide shade for plants and students alike. Let us be patient and watch them grow...

Native sages, fuchsias and a few other plants (including vines to cover the fences) are slowly finding their place in the garden, while planter boxes are being upgraded to help retain moisture in the soil during the dry season.

We choose plants that are interesting to examine ecologi-cally, as well as for the variety of ways in which they engage us. All of these plants exhibit interesting visual properties as they are beautiful to look at. They may also be appealing or surprising to the touch and occasionally (veggies, fruits and some flowers) to the taste. Finally, each plant fills the garden with its individual smell (especially herbs and native plants) and our ears with wind, bird, insect and pod-exploding noises! This should be enough to make lower school students’ heads spin and conclude their sensual visit to the sky-garden.

Come and see, smell, touch, hear, and taste the garden in the sky!

Sterile Rooftop Cement Versus Ecological Environment For Students:

The Garden In The Sky ProjectMURIEL VEBER Upper School Biology and GeologyOLIVIER MAZEAS Lab Technician

With a goal of bringing life to the Rooftop at 150 Oak, we initiated a project this year to create a sustainable ecosystem which will be more suited to our coastal climate.


13 billion cork wine stoppers are produced every year worldwide.

French American students have recycled 300,000 of them.

christine lemor-drakee started the cork recycling program in October 2007 with students Henri Drake, Nathaniel Harder, Nick Lepage, Miles Durham from the High School and Rémi Drake from the Middle School. We knew the first challenge would be finding a place in the U.S. that could use our collected corks and

organize a sustainable collecting system. Students would meet regularly to sort the real cork stoppers

from the plastic and synthetic ones. I Googled regularly, and finally found a program starting up on the West Coast. In November, these IHS students and Erin Wallen from the school’s Green Task Force met with Jack Squires to learn about cork and the new efforts by Amorim-Portugal and Portocork to launch a cork recycling program in partnership with Willamette Winery who had started a similar program in Oregon and Washington. It was called Recork America.

Florence Lestrade-Vieira at the Hickory reception desk and Lisa Konczal (our former Middle School coordinator), put cork collection bottles on their desks. We soon realized

that we had to think bigger – and three cardboard boxes were introduced, each able to contain 3,000 corks. These corks were then transported to the Nature Friends Club in Marin for storage in a garage until someone from Recork could pick up a full load to take to their warehouse in Napa.

Some parents involved in the food industry started to collect corks in their businesses and send emails to their friends. I contacted Whole Foods stores in San Francisco and Oakland and they started to collect corks for us too, followed by Philippe Gardelle from Chapeau! on Clement Street, Neal Imports, Arlequin Wine Merchant on Hayes Street, and Baker Street Bistro. Debbie Zachareas from Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant & Wine Bar was particularly helpful. We also started collecting from many of the local Hayes Valley restaurants, doing pick-ups twice a month. Recork America’s goal was to collect one ton in one year. We did it in 4 months.

Debbie Zachareas had a connection at the Culinary Institute of America: Crystal M. Collins of the Wine Institute. Crystal was collecting 400-900 corks a day, and told us that Whole Foods would be opening a store in Napa. Rebecca

three years of wine cork recycling at french american and international


Martin was instrumental in developing this effort in the Whole Foods’s Green mission. Now, every Whole Foods store in the US is doing it.

In October 2008, we were part of the “Sustainability Day” at French American, and organized cork games for the young students. The Kindergartners liked it so much, that they included it in their curriculum as a “big numbers experience” for a few years. In December, cork recycling was part of the Community Service program at IHS and students sorted corks on the rooftop with some staff members and prepared the bales for Whole Foods stores. Students who helped included Anastasia Danish, Henri Drake, Peter Finn, Krista Gon, Nathaniel Harder, Adam Hodes, Robert Jahan, Isidro Johnson, Ariel Kent, Allie Koscove, Morgan Kusmer, Nick Lepage, Valerio Marcelli, Curtis Meyer, Larissa Murray, Christian Rosnes, staff members Erin Wallen, Russ Jones, and Richard Ulffers, and parents Elizabeth Tippin and David

Peters from the school’s Green Task Force. Eventually Steven Leslie, a local artist who specializes in

cork recycling art (oneofacork.com) started to collect and use the corks from the school, Hayes Valley restaurants, two spots in the Presidio, the Sports Basement and the YMCA, as well as the EcoCenter of the SF Environmental Department.

In 2010, Recork America split up in two entities: Reharvest in Oregon and Washington state and Recork in California. Whole Foods is now collecting for Reharvest, while Recork gets their corks mainly from the local wine industry, as we are giving our SF corks to the artist. Reharvest transforms the cork into packaging for wine bottles, and Recork is now a partner with the Canadian soles and sport sandals maker, Sole. Their next casual sandals will be made with our recycled corks, named Napa and Sonoma. Their first series with regular cork are sold at Shoes and Feet on Lombard.

About 13 billion cork wine stoppers are produced every year worldwide. On our own, we recycled one ton of them—about 300,000 corks. Recork just announced that they have collected 10 tons so far. The collection spots that we started in San Francisco are all still active (except at our school). This fall, we are planning on meeting with the SF City Zero Waste department and Matt Hughes from Sole, the sandal maker, to see if our city could be the first one to organize a citywide cork recycling program. Email me if you want me to send you some links or articles that I have been collecting since 2000 about cork recycling.

[email protected] and http://recork.org

58 | La Lettre march 201158 | La Lettre

Beyond the Classroom


BuddingWormologists

For the past six months, French American students, faculty, and families have had the rare

and exciting opportunity to experience firsthand the mechanics and joys of farming in an urban

environment through Hayes Valley Farm’s Youth Education Program.


benjamin grass After School Program

On a windy Tuesday morning in late November, the Kindergarten classes returned to school covered in mud and buzzing with excitement. The children had spent the first part of the school day exploring Hayes Val-ley Farm (on Oak Street two blocks west of the campus), poking their

fingers into revived topsoil, tasting the edible plants and flowers of the Freeway Food Forest, identifying various insects and fauna that inhabit the grounds, and, of course, burying themselves up to the waist in soil freshly transformed from composted materials. For the past six months, French American students, faculty, and families have had the rare and exciting opportunity to experience firsthand the mechanics and joys of farming in an urban environment through Hayes Valley Farm’s Youth Education Program.

The first-grade classes have been visiting the farm once a week for the last month and a half as a part of the HVF’s first curriculum integration pro-gram, working closely with garden educators Janelle Fitzpatrick and Lindsey Goldberg. Lindsey describes the project: “The budding wormologists and the HVF Youth Educators created worm-ariums to observe what worms do underground. We filled up two jars with four different layers of earth: clay, compost, mulch and leaf matter. We borrowed a few of our red wiggler friends from our worm bin onsite and placed them on top of the leaf layer, closest to the top of the jar. We poked holes in the lid to ensure circulation of oxygen, and reminded the wormologists that they needed to cover the worm-ariums with a dark cloth because worms do not respond well to excessive exposure to light.” Back at school, the children have been taking notes and illustrating their discoveries in nature journals, handmade from recycled materials found at the farm.

These exchanges have been so successful and rewarding that the second grade teachers are now collaborating with Hayes Valley Farm to plan a similar project for their classes this coming Spring. The after-school program has offered a nine-week garden education course at the farm, and as the new after-school session begins, HVF is collaborat-ing with the Ceramics class in order to co-create art for the farm.

The educators at Hayes Valley Farm also extend the invitation to families to participate in a variety of educational programs for children and adults on the land. The farm’s upcoming Spring and Summer Camps are excellent ways for students to learn about the world of growing food in the city, and the farm hosts family days during many of the national holidays. If you would like to get involved with the farm or if you are interested in knowing more about the programs available, visit the farm’s website at www.hayesvalleyfarm.com.

60 | La Lettre


Service Learning

chores for charity

Congratulations to last year’s 2nd grade students for their fantastic efforts that earned $546.69 to donate to Partners

in Health for their work in Haiti!

The International High School has a long and distin-guished history of Service Learning, instilling in our students the importance of community service and the values of em-pathy and global awareness it instills... whether it be feed-ing the homeless in our own San Francisco neighborhoods, raising funds for relief efforts abroad, or building schools in Ethiopia and Senegal. The following article by 2nd grade teacher Erica Katz illustrates how we begin the process ear-ly, by encouraging youngsters at French American to begin developing an instinct to help others.

by erica katz

How can young children make a difference in the face of a large tragedy? Our class came up with one good solution: during the weeks following the earthquake in Haiti, our students asked their families if they could do extra chores at home to earn money. The money was then donated to Partners in Health, an organization selected by

our school because of their 20 years of work in Haiti. Many parents came up with creative ideas for ways their children could help at home, and were willing to pay them for their work. Some of the chores the students did included helping with meal preparation and clean-up, helping with the laundry, taking out the garbage, taking care of plants, vacuuming, and more. Students also earned money by doing fun things like giving parents backrubs, and asking birthday party guests to donate to the cause. It was exciting to see the children’s en-thusiasm for the project. They were thrilled to come to class and tell their teachers and classmates about the work they did and the money they collected. Everyone felt good about the project, even if they didn’t participate directly. We knew

that some families had already made large donations, and that not everyone was able to donate. Still, it felt like a real team effort as children congratulated each other on their work, and we saw the collection bin getting filled up each day.

A few highlights... Charlotte was happy to tell us about the 15 piles of laundry she helped to wash and fold. Hanif explained that he got $1 to keep, $1 to spend and $1 to give each week. Emma told us, “for my birthday party six people came and everyone donated $10. All of that added up to $60 for Haiti. I thought that was a good idea.” Kaya, who had come to school very sad following the earthquake because he had seen on television that people did not have access to clean water, was so happy to be able to earn money to help by washing dishes and taking out the trash. Each day he came in with a big smile as he added more money to our collection bin. Minialuce summed up the project saying, “When I saw how much people were bringing in I never thought we could collect that much and it made me feel really good!”

Each school year we try to incorporate a service learning project into the 2nd grade curriculum. Students are involved in choosing the project. Oftentimes a project comes about because of a natural or man-made disaster such as the earthquake in Haiti or the Cosco Busan oil spill in San Francisco Bay in 2007. After the oil spill, students collected sheets and towels to donate to the International Bird Rescue Research Center in Fairfield (www.ibrrc.org). With the help of Meredith Charpantier, carloads of towels were dropped off at the Center for their use in cleaning oiled birds. Other projects have come about through ties to schoolwide efforts, such as the bake sale and book collection for Project Senegal. Second graders donated French picture books which were carried by high school students on their trip to visit the school in M’Bour, Senegal that they are supporting. They also sent along cards that they made for the kids in M’Bour, and they were quite excited when they received cards and drawings in return. Our kindergarten students also got involved in sending and receiving cards.

This year we have not yet decided what our 2nd grade service learning project will be. We’ve just begun discussing some possibilities, and students are busy brainstorming ideas. Whatever they choose, it’s bound to be a big success thanks to their energy and eagerness to help.


carrie martino-jacobsHigh School Counselor

Under the supervision of the high school counsel-or, the International Peer Counseling program consists of seniors who volunteer their time to serve as mentors to their classmates and peers. The students undergo special training during a series of lunchtime workshops to acquire the skills to provide effective and responsible

mentoring skills. Among their varied responsibilities, peer counselors have played a key role in connecting with incom-ing 9th graders and new students in an effort to facilitate the transition to high school. Peer Counselors also mentor inter-ested Middle School students throughout the school year.

The lunchtime workshops are open to all high school students, and often feature guest speakers from a variety of social service organizations, such as Suicide Prevention, Marijuana Anonymous, ALATEEN, Body Image, and Healthy Relationships. Some of the guests also conduct workshops during advisory periods with 9th graders, presenting topics such as How Drugs and Alcohol Affect Your Brain, Student Stress: Healthy Ways of Managing Stress, and Cigarette Smoke and Lung Health.

Some of the events which Peer Counselors have either sponsored or played a key role in this semester include the

New Student Pot Luck Luncheon, the New Student Brunch, New Student Orientation and the Freshman Retreat, Back-to-School Night, and panels at the three Open Houses for prospective families during the fall. They also provide “Brain Fuel During Finals”, healthy snacks for students during Final Exam Week.

In the school’s spirit of Service Learning, the student counselors sponsor the International High School Food Drive every November, soliciting food donations from each homeroom. The winning homeroom for the third year in a row was English/TOK teacher Kate Goldberg’s advisory, with a total of 475 donated food items. The total number donated by International was 1,658 items, the largest total in four years. The food was donated to the San Francisco Food Bank, making a huge difference in the many lives of people who are threatened by hunger.

peer education and counseling

Community Service Steering Committee. Back Row, left to right: Meghan O’Day, Raphael Linden, Eva Victor, Corbin Halliwill, Thomas Murray, Nicolas De Golia. Front Row: Allie Koscove, Alexandra Luce, Allison Le Corre, Erida Tosini-Corea, Darcy Covert.



destination:creativityThe Art of The PossibleMorgan McMillin (Grade 9) masters

the art of commedia dell’arte in

Kyommedyogen, the 2010 Interna-

tional High School Fall Play at the

Dennis Gallagher Arts Pavilion.

La Lettre | 63


Globally Engaged

The IB World Student ConferenceAugust 2010 | Corvallis, Oregon

nettizanne davis12th Grade IB

When I signed up for the IB World Student Conference in August of 2010 it seemed like an amazing opportunity, but then during the summer I was so busy with my extended essay, world literature pa-per, and art projects that I found myself regretting having signed up. How wrong I was! The five days I spent at the confer-

ence were the most educational, enlightening and enjoyable part of my whole summer.

At the Portland Airport we met our first fellow IB World Student delegate, Mathew from North Carolina. Living in the Bay Area, I have not had the opportunity to meet many kids from other parts of the country, so it was an eye-opening experience to meet so many interesting and intelligent people from places like Alabama, Florida, Texas and Nebraska.

In addition to those of us from the U.S, there were students from Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, China, Japan, England, Canada and Germany at the conference. It was incredible to discuss our different worlds and make

lasting connections, and the conversations I had on this trip were some of the most rewarding I have had in my life. When I spoke to Daniel from Mexico, I discovered that he came from a very strong intellectual leftist guerilla family, and I was fascinated by his political views. I learned a lot from him about Mexico and its relationship with the United States. Then I would talk to Maria Jose, also from Mexico, whose uncle was a senior member of the Mexican army; unlike Daniel, she was extremely pro-government. These and other contrasting conversations will sustain me during my senior year of the IB, helping me develop my own beliefs and view of the world.

This conference showed me how much I and We can do to change the world. Although sometimes I moan about the IB and cry over late-night homework, I must say that I am truly a believer in the value of an IB education. Being with all these amazing IB students from around the world showed me once again the strength and beauty of the cohesive IB World community, which I consider myself fortunate to be a part of.

Corbin Halliwill, Nett Davis, and Curtis Meyer.


corbin halliwill12th Grade IB

Along with approximately 280 other IB students from around the world, I spent a week this past August attending the IB World Student Conference in Corvallis, Oregon. Our primary goal for the week was to develop CAS projects in our assigned Global Action Team (GAT) groups. Each team worked with a faculty facilitator whose role it was to initiate discussion and make sure the group stayed on schedule. De-spite the presence of the facilitators, each project was entirely student-run. Our facilitator, Mr. Ferko, spent most of his time just walking around listening to what we were discussing. He once said: “This is the best kind of teaching, when you get to silently watch the students teach themselves.”

My GAT group was initially split between two projects, with one group arguing for an environmental initiative to create a coalition between green clubs at different schools, while the other group wanted to create a forum where people could share their cultural pride and experiences. In the end, we all agreed upon the environmental project. The next day we discovered that another GAT group had chosen a similar project, and we decided to merge our projects, which would bring together 40 schools around the world. Our joint project, “WE BE GREEN”, can be viewed at http://www.tig.org/webegreen.

During the conference, I felt empowered by the work that I did with 280 other IB students from around the world. For one week, we were able to focus all our energy on issues of international consequence such as global warming, world peace and child hunger. I was greatly impressed by the intelligence, dedication, and sense of responsibility that the students I met at this conference embodied, and I came back inspired and encouraged. IB students are being trained to be world leaders, and no one who attended this conference would doubt for a moment that we have the energy and willingness to create a better world.

cUrtis meyer12th Grade IB

This past summer, six of my ninety days of vacation were spent with 280 other lucky IB students at the IB World Student Conference in Corvallis, Oregon. These six days were filled with lectures, activities, group discussions, and soccer games. Together we listened, cooperated, expressed concerns, and proposed solutions to global problems. The level of collaboration between so many young people, representing so many different cultures and beliefs, was astonishing; it appears that IB students, despite their differences, are all motivated to learn and grow. I was proud to be one of the lucky IB students at this conference, and I came away from it with the belief that the magnitude of our combined accomplishments and ideas will be powerful enough to change the world.

allie koskove11th Grade IB

For five days last August, IB students from around the globe gathered at a conference in Corvallis, Oregon that proved to be both informative and inspirational. Each day began with a seminar in a large auditorium, where speakers with different backgrounds and passions educated and interacted with us. The intelligent, articulate and often witty speakers included a successful young Internet entrepreneur named Michael Furdyk and a filmmaker named Jeremy Gilley, both of whom shared their stories of how they had become global activists. A marine biologist taught us about the state of the oceans as preparation for a trip we took to the Oregon coast.

Throughout the conference, students from very different economic backgrounds were thrown together: some of us came from families that have to struggle to make ends meet, while others had drivers and housekeepers. Students from around the world brought their cultural habits and customs to the conference, and free time was a whirlwind of different languages, accents, songs and dances. Despite the brevity of the conference, the participants bonded on deep levels, and when it was time to say goodbye, many tears were shed for new friends who live far away but will never be forgotten.

Curtis Meyer relaxing on the beach in Oregon during the IB World Student Conference.


ProjectSenegal

An update, a look forward and back by Corbin Halliwill, a senior who traveled to Senegal in 2009 along with eleven other students, and is now co-head of

the student Community Service Steering Committee.


corbin halliwill 12th Grade

The 2010/2011 school year has been our most suc-cessful year of fundrais-ing for Project Senegal. Despite the economic downturn, we have suc-

ceeded in raising around $12,500, which includes $1,500 from calendar sales, $3,280 from our annual Songs for Senegal Concert, and €3,000.00 ($4,585.00) awarded to us by the Pe-ter Ustinov Foundation and the European Council of Independent Schools for the purpose of building a fruit and vegetable garden for our sister school in M’bour, Sen-egal, Ecole Natangué.

Since the beginning of construction in 2008, Ecole Natangué has grown in stages, and is now offering a first-rate pre-school and primary education to 420 economically disadvantaged students from Kindergarten through 3rd grade. Located in one of the poorest neigh-borhoods in M’bour, the school also functions as a community center, offering literacy classes, job training, and micro-financing dona-tions and non-interest loans to mothers who are struggling to support their families.

The garden we will be funding with the Peter Ustinov award will be used for educational purposes and will also provide food for the snacks and lunches given to the students.

This year, twelve students were selected as the student delegates who traveled to Senegal along with Eliza-beth Cleere, our Service Learning and CAS Coordinator, and biology teacher Christine Bois. During their stay in M’bour, the students helped plant the new school garden and volunteered at

Service Learning Coordinator Elizabeth Cleer receives the Peter Ustinov Award on behalf of Project Senegal.

Corbin Halliwill was the official videographer on the 2009 Senegal trip.

the school. I had the chance to go on the first trip to Senegal in 2009, and I confess I find myself a little jealous of the twelve new elegates. I shared some thoughts and advice with them in a letter before their departure:

“Lying ahead of you is the discovery of a new culture and the opportunity to be captivated by a beautiful country and its people. I really wish I could travel back with you this year and share again in the excitement and uniqueness of this experience. If I could give you one piece of advice, I would say: ‘Never, never be afraid to connect with another person.’ This applies both to the people you meet there, and the people you are traveling with. The first day of your trip will be exhausting as well as an experience in culture shock, but also unforgettable. Stay curious and keep your senses open, and you will be thankful you did. Do not rely on your camera to capture memories, but absorb them as a permanent imprint in your mind’s eye. I wish you the best on your trip, and I hope to see you return with renewed excitement and passion for the project.”

I would like to thank everyone at the school for their ongoing support of Project Senegal.

Project Senegal 2011International High School students enjoy a special moment with local children from M’bour on this

year’s trip to Senegal. Their experiences will be published in the next La Lettre.

68 | La Lettre

SenegalSongs for

erida tosini-corea 12th GradeMember of the Community Service Steering Committee

On November 5, 2010, Inter-national High School host-ed its 4th annual Songs for Senegal concert. The con-cert brought in over $3000 in proceeds that will go

directly to our sister school in Senegal, Ecole Natangué. The talented perform-ers included students from International High School as well as FAIS and CAIS, and the acts ranged from a creative version of a song by Lady Gaga to traditional Senegalese drumming. The concert was a student- driven project that demonstrated the dedication of our students to their international project as well as the impressive array of talent present in our student body.

The night was truly an enjoyable event. The audience that packed the school gym was comprised of parents, family members, students, teachers and friends, who actively participated when requested by the performers to sing along or stand up and dance.

The evening ended with a jam led by M’bor Faye, a master Senegalese drum-mer. He was accompanied by students and staff from the high school, who did an amazing job at improvising, blend-ing their voices and various musical instruments to create a unique sound. A sense of community swelled through our school gymnasium by the end of the night as we celebrated not only the purpose of the event but also the talent within our student body. For another year, the Songs for Senegal concert served as our special way of giving back and coming together.

La Lettre | 69M’bor Faye, master Senegalese drummer


Performing Arts

KyommedyogenThe 2010 Fall Play

70 | La Lettre


the 2010 Fall play

Kyommedyogenmichelle haner HOD Theater

The Fall Play, Kyommedyogen, an evening of comedy with an international twist per-formed to full houses at the Pavilion for two weekends in November. The show includ-ed three Japanese Kyogen

plays, three Italian commedia dell’arte pieces, as well as an opening clown routine and several short vignettes us-ing larval masks.

To undertake the three Kyogen plays – Busu (Sweet Poison), Hikku-kuri (The Cowardly Bandits), and Fumi Yamadachi (Caught in a Sack) – the company trained in the techniques and style of traditional Japanese the-ater with acclaimed local artist Jubilith Moore of Theater of Yughen. Director Brad Cooreman explained, “Blocking in Kyogen theater is handed down from master to student and the cast worked with Jubilith in this way, faithfully imitat-ing her voice and movement, and only later finding their own unique inner spirit within the imposed structure.”

For the commedia dell’arte pieces – Home from the Wars, The Path of True Love and Fool’s Gold – the cast worked on mask techniques to explore the bold physicality and comic traits of this tradition’s stock characters. They also worked with improvisation to give the pieces a spontaneous, up-to-date feel.

A charming clown piece that opened the evening was performed by Morgan McMillin and inspired by the work of the clown Avner the Eccentric. Over the course of the evening, between the larger pieces, Chloe Barrs, Guard Rob-inson and Ariel Lowrey used large, white larval masks to weave a poignant, funny story of three naive characters, each obsessed with obtaining a blue box.

Cooreman explained, “Both the larval masks and the clown offer pure physi-cal theater. There is no spoken word. However, in rehearsals, we found that many of the lessons we learned from Kyogen and commedia dell’arte applied to these pieces as well. They too be-came forums where we found evermore common ground between diverse comic approaches and traditions.”

mars 2011


An Evening of Contemporary French Theater

French-speaking students, staff, faculty and local artists took part in an evening of readings of new French plays by major contemporary writers at the Dennis Gallagher Arts Pavilion on October 21, 2010. The evening was produced in collaboration with FoolsFURY, an acclaimed local company that has been working with International High School students within and beyond the classroom over the past three years.

The evening was dedicated to discovering new voices in French contemporary theater, and thus featured plays by Fabrice Melquiot, Laurent Gaudé, Wajdi Mouawad and Anne Sibran. The evening started with a reading of an extract of Sibran’s Je Suis la Bête performed by Platypus Theater under the direction of Pascale Couderc. It was followed by a reading from Melquiot’s Le Monde Inouï, in which 11th and 12th grade students from the French Baccalaureat program evoked a strange, fantastical underground world. The third reading, Laurent Gaudé’s Salina, featured faculty members and French actress Camille Bertrand. The evening closed with excerpts of Wajdi Mouawad’s Forêts, performed by members of the staff and faculty under the direction of Franck Bessone.

After the readings, the performers joined audience members for a reception with conversation over food and drink revolving around French contemporary theater in general and the evening’s readings in particular.

The Rite of Spring ProjectAcclaimed conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier Visits International High School

Members of the upper-school faculty met in the Arts Pa-vilion on Friday, January 14 to plan activities for the Rite of Spring Project,

scheduled for the Spring Equinox on March 21. The inspiration behind this day stems from the desire to find ways to integrate Stravinsky’s famous ballet The Rite of Spring (Le sacre du print-emps) into every classroom in the up-per school. We hope to transform the curriculum and the school with discus-sions, performance lectures and creative projects, such as a Mandala of personal

objects and a ritual dance celebrating springtime performed by students from the lower and high school, accompanied by members of the middle school and the San Francisco Conservatory.

The January 14 workshop was led by music teacher David Williamson and Andrea Yannone from the Keeping Score division of the San Francisco Symphony. The evening continued with a very special question-and-answer session with the symphony’s guest conductor, Yan Pascal Tortelier, who brought The Rite of Spring into context of the evening’s all-Russian program. After a short reception, the workshop members headed over to the Symphony for the performance. Truly the best way to prepare for a concert.

World AIDS Day 2010 On December 1, International High School music studentsperformed at the ceremony in the National AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park.


david williamson | Music Faculty

This year’s Winter concert was themed “Kaleidoscope” to highlight the diversity of musical interest and talent at our school. From Balinese Gamelan to Debussy (not as different as you might think!) to R&B to singer-songwriters, so many styles were repre-

sented, and rarely with so much passion and ability.

We began with the Middle School Jazz Band that is flourishing under the

direction of Dr. Pascal Thiam, followed by one of my favorite young bands, Fog City who played Secret Agent Man. The 9th-grade music class has been focusing on the young “pop” talent of Jason Mraz. The 10th grade focused on modern soul and hip-hop as well as Gamelan. “Voice,” under the direction of Loretta Duncan, ended the first half of the evening with two songs, Runaway by the Corrs, and Galileo by the Indigo Girls, and left ev-erybody wanting more.

Perhaps my favorite piece was the “surprise.” After 11th grader Reylon Yount played a virtuosic piece on the

Chinese Yangqin, he was joined, one at a time, by his fellow 11th-grade IB music students to perform The Gorillaz song Hong Kong.

New works by Nick Martin, Daniel O’Keeffe, Gabriel Kyne and Morgan Kusmer showed off the compositional talent of our student musicians, and the evening came to a soulful end with Joshua Byrd’s band, performing enthu-siastic gospel numbers.

Thank you to everyone who came to support our young musicians. It was a great night.

74 | La Lettre

76 | La Lettre winter 2011

Playsone-act


The annual Student-Directed One-Act Play Festival showcases the work of a select group of seniors, who, with great independence, undertake all aspects of directing a one-act play. They set up rehearsals, work with actors, oversee a design team and take a show from early conception through full performance.

The One-Act Play Festival offers an eclectic evening of theater, celebrating student initiative

and creativity. The short pieces run the gamut from drama to comedy, from classical to contemporary pieces and some-times include original, student-written plays.

This Property Is Condemned by Tennessee Williams Directed by Lara Baez

One cold white winter day on railroad tracks stretching through rural Mississippi, Tom, a 15-year-old boy, runs into Willie, a 13-year-old girl. They strike up a conversation, and Tom learns of Willie’s strange past. As they speak, Tom re-alizes that not only is Willie’s property condemned, but her life is as well.

Crazy Eights by David Lindsay-AbaireDirected by Meghan O’Day

Late one night, Connie returns home to her dilapidated sixth-floor walk-up, only to find her parole officer sitting with the lights off in her apartment. He has climbed up the fire escape and baked her a torte. When her male friend arrives a few minutes later the situation gets even more complicated. The play offers a humorous look at if, where and how boundaries can be established… and broken.

The Still Alarm by George S. Kaufman Directed by Jacob de Heer-Erpelding

Bob Barclay and his good friend Ed Jamison are having a pleasant chat in a pleasant hotel room. What will they do when they are pleasantly told that the visit might have to be cut short due to unforeseen circumstances? Certainly noth-ing too rash.

This play first appeared at the time of the Great Crash, after the decade that experienced the rise of the far right, kindling for disaster. It is an absurdist look at paralysis before crisis.

Heart in the Ground by Douglas HillDirected by Isaac Traister

Karen’s baby has just died, but all around her she finds only enemies. She wants simply to bury her dead child nearby, on the family property she loves. But to do so, she must overcome the threats of a jealous brother and the fears of a distraught husband. She must face her past and find courage, even in the midst of this deep loss.

Fear of Spheres by Lisa LoomerDirected by Roie Levin

A therapist leads a healing session for a hilarious and eclectic group of characters suffering from Spherophobia – or fear of round objects. The play is one big general nervous breakdown; it examines preconceptions about fear and pho-bia, as well as the rather ubiquitous condition of perpetual stress and indecisiveness. Written in 2008, Fear of Spheres pushes strong, incisive thematic material for a troubled and fearful modern audience.

78 | La Lettre

La Lettre | 79


The One-Act Play Festival

offers an eclectic evening

of theater, celebrating

student initiative and

creativity.


le spectacle de

cirque

Every fall, International’s French Bac PE students put on a circus spectacular in the Oak Street gymnasium for the children in the French American Lower School. This year, under the direction of PE teacher Christophe Hugon, the Bac students were joined by their French Physics and Chemistry teacher, Julien Saggiotto, who astounded everyone with his amazing juggling skills.

82 | La Lettre


rancke wurzelbacher Terminale S

Durant ces deux dernières années, ma classe de EPS a travaillé (dur) sur un spec-tacle de cirque pour l’épreuve de Bac. Le thème de notre spectacle était « 60 années de musique ». Notre classe était

divisée en 4 groupes et chaque groupe devait inventer une chorégraphie de 8 minutes selon son thème musical : les an-nées hippies (60s), les années disco (70s), les années pop (80s), et les années grunge (90s). Il y avait aussi deux chansons de danse qui représentaient les années rock (50s) et une transition entre les années 70 et les années 80 (2000s).

Le matin du spectacle, nous sommes tous arrivés au gymnase vers 8h pour préparer la scène et répéter une dernière fois le spectacle prévu pour 10h30. Tout le monde était nerveux, stressé et pourtant il y avait aussi un certain enthousiasme dans l’air. Le spectacle était une épreuve du Baccalauréat pour les terminales mais aussi un excellent moment pour les plus petits. L’ouverture du spectacle nous a donné confiance en nous car les enfants ont (tout de suite) bien aimé un professeur (M. Julien Saggiotto) et sa performance avec plusieurs diabolos. A chaque fois qu’un groupe passait nous entendions les applaudissements et encouragements du public. Chaque groupe éblouissait le public avec au moins un exploit. Parmi les exploits les plus appréciés, les enfants ont pu voir une fille sauter à la corde d’une boule à une autre, puis des jumelles sont montées sur la même boule sans tomber. Un garçon a lancé son diabolo dans l’air, fait un salto arrière et a réussi le rattraper. Et à chaque fois qu’un groupe sortait de la scène, les coulisses étaient pleines de visages ravissants. A la fin du spectacle, il ne restait personne de nerveux car on savait tous que le spectacle avait été un grand succès.



collage collège

middle school moments1 Middle School Student Jazz Band. Le groupe de jazz du Collège.

2 8th Grade Students on a field trip to the De Young Museum. Les 4ème au Musée De Young.

3 8th grade students collect data for their science fair project. Comment obtenir des données pour les projets de sciences.

4 Student in the library. Dans le calme de la bibliothèque.

5 Team building activity during the 6th grade retreat in the Marin Headlands. Activités de groupe pendant la retraite des 6ème.

6 Best friends... Amies pour toujours.

1 2

34

5


7 Naturalist-led tour in the Marin Headlands. Découverte de la nature au parc de Marin Headlands.

8 8th grade students at lunchtime. A l’heure du déjeuner.

9 Rec room during morning break. Pendant la récré.

10 The first-ever Middle School Cross Country Run in Golden Gate Park. Le tout premier Cross du Collège!

6 7

8

9

10

the middle school in pictures


Athletics

International High School Winter Sports Wrapby Frank drollet

he winter sports season concluded with some goals met while others were not. The beauty of athletics is it mirrors the ups and downs in life. You can train and prepare every day, and you hit the shot at the buzzer to win the game, or the ball bounces just out of your reach as time expires.

Thanks to the commitment and dedication of our coaches and student athletes, our Jaguar winter sports teams rep-resented International High School with sportsmanship and Jaguar pride throughout the season.

TPhotography by Ruriko Ishizuka Benavides


Girls’ Varsity BasketballOur girls’ varsity team had an out-

standing year finishing 20-8 and making the North Coast Section Playoffs. The Jags finished in second place in league at 11-3 and, with 7 freshmen, 2 sopho-mores, 3 juniors and 1 senior making up the squad, the future is looking very bright indeed for our women’s program. Congratulations and good luck in col-lege next year to our lone senior Avril-Keyehra Al-Shamma, whose leadership and team spirit will be missed.

Junior Denia Ebersole and freshman Natalie Kelly led a balanced attack as they each averaged 15 to 20 points per game. However, the real story here is how this group of girls worked extremely hard each day to improve not as indi-viduals but as a team. It is very difficult to make your teammate a better player. These girls made it look easy as each of them improved every game.

Of course, none of it would have been possible without excellent teachers, and in our women’s basketball coaches we have three: head coach Charlene Murphy, and assistant coaches Leslie Walker and Reed Harrington. They were the rudders that kept the ship sailing on course throughout the season.

Boys’ Varsity BasketballHow can you say a team is not excit-

ing when senior Brian Benavides scores a school record 37 points and takes a 3 point shot with 3 seconds left in a must win game? And hits it to win the game, as the crowd went wild! The team fin-ished 4-6 in league, and just missed winning their playoff play-in game as Brian’s three pointer to win fell short. Yes, it was an exciting year.

Our boys’ team is also young, gradu-ating only 2 seniors, Brian Benavides and Jackie Chen. Both seniors gave the team stability and a sense of pride as they led them through a difficult season. Congratulations and good luck to Brian and Jackie next year in college. There were many opportunities for our Jags to win close games that their inexperience prevented. Not once did our players hang their heads as the team improved each game.

If you saw the first game of the sea-son and came back for the last game of the season, you would have thought you were watching a different team. And you were, thanks to head coach Aaron Mullin, and assistant coaches Damian


Crosby and Alex Iljas. Their composure, leader-ship and teaching ability have laid out a path for success next year.

Boys’ JV BasketballCoach Lorne Barfield came back for his third

year knowing that he had a returning JV squad that would be much improved along with a good crop of freshman players. With a large turnout of fresh-man and sophomore players, the team improved each game as they finished the season 6-10 on the year. Led by the steady play of sophomores Hugo Thommason and Thomas Karatzas, the Jags played an exciting fast-paced style.

The school community, especially the parents, would like to thank all of our coaches for the incred-ible amount of time and effort they put into reveal-ing the outstanding character our student athletes have. Go Jaguars!!!

La Lettre | 89

Middle School Cross CountryLe premier Cross du Collège

keelin davis 6 White

At the beginning, I was extremely nervous. And when they called us to the start, I had butterflies in my stomach. But when I started running, I felt great. The wind was whisking my hair out of my eyes and the cold air kept me cool. At the stadium, where we had to do a lap, I was at the front with only a couple of

other students. Toward the end I started getting tired but I kept my pace. Then one or two kids came closer, and decided to go ahead. I quickened my pace and tried to catch up to them. They were pretty ahead, so I had decided to just keep moving forward and not think about anything else, since I was so tired. I was done with the lap. I knew that I had just a little left of the race.

When I saw the finish line, I sprinted to the end, got my card and collapsed. I was exhausted! In the end, I’m glad I did the race.

côme cabrère 6 White

J’ai bien aimé le cross parce que les 6e partaient d’abord, puis les 5e et enfin les 4e. Le parcours n’était pas trop long et très agréable à courir. Le départ des 6e a été très rapide peut-être même un peu trop, car on en voyait qui avait du mal à respirer. Plein d’élèves se précipitaient pour essayer d’être les premiers. Finalement, il y a quelques enfants qui se sont détachés nettement du groupe et qui ont continué

à courir dans les bois. Parfois on voyait des adultes qui faisaient des gestes pour nous indiquer la direction. Nous avons continué un moment sous les bois jusqu’à ce qu’on arrive sur un stade. Une fois sur la piste, il fallait en faire le tour (c’était peut être l’endroit monotone de la course) et en-suite il fallait prendre une sortie qui se trouvait à notre droite. Ensuite, nous avons continué sur un chemin qui serpentait et au bout du parcours, la foule des élèves de 5e, 4e, profes-seurs et quelques parents, nous attendait avec des cris de joie et des félicitations. Sur la dernière ligne droite, sous les encouragements des spectateurs, les coureurs essayaient de rassembler leurs dernières forces pour dépasser ceux qui étaient proches d’eux. Une fois qu’ils avaient dépassé la ligne d’arrivée, les professeurs nous donnaient des nu-méros pour savoir quelle place ont avaient eu. J’ai réussi à arriver 8e. Quand nous nous sommes arrêtés de courir, après la ligne d’arrivée, on nous a donné des bouteilles d’eau. Lorsqu’on buvait, on pouvait voir les coureurs qui passaient derrière nous. Une fois que tous les 6e furent arrivés, les 5e partirent et puis les 4e. Quand tous les élèves furent arrivés, ils étaient épuisés.

Une fois le cross fini, on prit plusieurs photos de groupes sur lesquelles on voyait tout le monde. A la fin de la matinée, certains repartirent avec l’école et d’autres avec leurs par-ents. Le cross était une très bonne idée. Le seul défaut était qu’avant la course il faisait vraiment froid. Heureusement on se réchauffait en courant!


Academic Calendar

mars 2011 La Lettre | 91

2011Mon, Aug 15 Athletics Try-outs

Wed, Aug 24 New Faculty Orientation

Thur-Mon, Aug 25-29 All Faculty Orientation

Tues, Aug 30 Grades 6–12: Back to School Day

Tue-Wed, Aug 30-31 Lower School Teachers Class Preparation

Thurs, Sept 1 Grades PK3–5: Back to School Day

Mon, Sept 5 No Classes–Labor Day

Week of Sept 12-16 Upper School Retreats (Grades 6-12)

Mon, Oct 10 Teachers In-Service

Sun, Oct 23 Midterm

Mon-Fri, Oct 24-28 Fall Break (Athletics in session)

Mon, Oct 31 Classes Resume

Thur-Fri, Nov 10-11 Upper School PT Conferences (No classes 6–12)

Thur-Fri, Nov 17-18 Lower School PT Conferences (No classes PK3–5)

Wed-Sun, Nov 23-27 Thanksgiving Break (classes let out at noon)

Mon, Nov 28 Classes Resume

Fri Dec 16-Jan 2 Winter Break (classes let out at noon)

2012Tues, Jan 3 Classes resume

Mon, Jan 16 No Classes– Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Tues, Jan 17 Lower School In-Service (No classes PK3–5)

Fri, Jan 20 End of 1st Semester

Sat-Sun, Feb 11-12 French American 50th Anniversary Celebration

Mon-Fri, Feb 20-24 No Classes–February Break

Mon, Feb 27 Classes Resume

Thur-Fri, Mar 15-16 All School PT Conferences (No classes PK3–12)

Thurs, April 5 Upper School In-Service Day (PK3–5 in session)

Fri-Sun, Apr 6-15 No Classes–Spring Break

Mon, April 16 Classes Resume

End of May 5th Grade Graduation

Fri-Mon, May 25-28 No Classes–Memorial Day Break

Tues, May 29 Classes Resume

Fri, June 8 12th Grade Graduation

Mon, June 11 8th Grade Graduation

Thurs, June 14 Last day of Classes

Fri, June 15 All Teachers Meetings


A Look Back

50 Years of International Education50 years never looked so good!

Mark your calendars for French

American and International’s

50th Anniversary!

February 11-12, 2012

La Lettre spring 2011

Documents

Transcript of La Lettre spring 2011