WINTER 2021 / ISSUE 13
Community Engagement & Service
Contents . . .
A reflection on the spirit of service PAGE 2
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Spring Night: coming up soon
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Reflection by Craig Appel
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Raphael House work and the Waldorf connection
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Reconsidering community service at the HS
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#DayofService: Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr.
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Alumni Profile: Daniel Anderson, HS Class of 2014
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Waldorf Connect: AWSNA Networking Platform
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Valentine’s Day: second grade photos
Upcoming Events
Spring Night Date TBD Late April or Early May
Spring Night planning is underway! The new year brings a renewal of hope and reflection on all that we have overcome. We are still in awe at how our community showed up for last year‘s virtual Spring Night and put faith in us to deliver an event like we never had before. This year, we aspire to bring another program filled with student work and reminders of what makes our school extraordinary. We look forward to sharing more details with you soon. Sign up to volunteer in a Spring Night Production Team, or join the Communication Team.
Reflection by our Administrative Director
Dear Friends, I am grateful that San Francisco Waldorf School has been open for in-person school and parallel learning for students at every grade level during the pandemic. My gratitude extends to every teacher and parent, who muster creativity, adaptability, perseverance, trust, and engagement to launch and sustain in-person school. For many of us adults, we are committed to keeping school open in this impossible moment out of a sense of service to our children, born of the love we have for each of them. I have come to realize that during a pandemic or not, school itself is a service project. We are giving so much of ourselves to ensure the way forward is healthy, intriguing, and engaging for our children so that they may create and improve the world of the future for everyone. This newsletter contains examples of community engagement and service by current students, families and alumni. This spirit of service to each other and our community is not only at the heart of the school itself but also an enriching part of the lives of each member. Thank you to the faculty, families, students, and friends who continue to give of themselves to help our children and community thrive. Warm regards, Craig Appel
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Toddler Room music time at the Raphael House
Raphael House Work and the Waldorf Connection q & a with volunteer manager kellen sarver
How did the Raphael House come to be ? Raphael House was founded in 1971. This year we are celebrating our 50th year anniversary. Our Mission is to help low-income families and families experiencing homelessness strengthen family bonds by achieving stable housing and financial independence.
Toddler room mural and wooden furniture
Raphael House was originally founded as a shelter for women and children. However, our founders quickly realized that there were no shelters for families where fathers could also stay together with their children. Soon, we became the first family shelter in Northern California. We are a privately-run shelter for families with 31 rooms, usually
serving around 31 families experiencing homelessness. Raphael House does not receive city funding, which allows us to maintain a sober facility and the flexibility to quickly respond to family’s needs with our programming. What services do you offer? Raphael House has two major components: our Residential Shelter and our Bridge Program. As part of our Residential Shelter, families have access to private rooms, intensive case-management and coaching, three daily nutritious family-style meals, housing search support, career development and job placement, family wellness support, financial planning and parenting courses, K-12 academic tutoring and mentoring, and academic and summer camp scholarships. Many of our services are also aimed at strengthening family bonds that may have been impacted during the course of experiencing homelessness. On average 85% of families successfully transition from our Residential Shelter into stable housing.
Once families move out of our Residential Shelter, they are eligible for the Bridge Program. Our Bridge Program is our aftercare program where families can receive many of the same supportive services offered in our Residential Shelter, such as career support and K-12 tutoring, for up to 18 years after leaving Raphael House. The Bridge program ensures that families can maintain their stable housing and are able to escape the cycle of homelessness permanently.
Rooftop garden
Do you know the history behind the relationship between the Raphael House and SF Waldorf School? Our previous executive director, Father David Lowell, had two children attending SF Waldorf. I believe they are both SF Waldorf Continued on page 8
A high school student plants the living wall outside the Bushnell Center
Reconsidering Community Service by joan caldarera, high school humanities teacher
Love is higher than opinion. If people love one another the most varied opinions can be reconciled — this is one of the most important tasks for humankind today and in the future: that we should learn to live together and understand one another. If this human fellowship is not achieved, all talk of development is empty. —Rudolf Steiner
Why do we ask the students to do community service? What is the pedagogical intention behind the request? Certainly, we are hoping to awaken our students to the world around them in a very real way that involves putting thought into action: doing something. To the degree the students devote themselves to work in the world, they begin to build capacities within their nascent ego-beings that will give meaning to their lives. We know that our students crave meaning and purpose and serving is a sure path to fulfilling that often unstated desire. “The healthy social life is found only when in the mirror of each individual soul the whole community finds its reflection, and when in the community the strength of each one is living.” Somehow, our students must be part of, reflections of, the community in which we find ourselves. Together we build it within the walls of the school, and then we move outward from our center to our neighborhood. Rudolf Steiner has explained that in anthroposophical communities we can experience our first awakening to the spirit in our encounters with others, and these encounters form our greater community. It is true that we do not exist in isolation, and our students realize this, of course. The one value that every
senior class has seemed to agree on when they sit together with the faculty at the end of their schooling, is the value of community. In 1986, social psychologists McMillan & Chavis formed a theory that has become the most widely accepted understanding of how communities work. Called “Sense of Community,” they describe it in one sentence: Sense of community is a feeling that members have of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that members’ needs will be met through their commitment to be together (McMillan, 1976). Community flourishes through unselfish action as Steiner says in what is called “The Fundamental Social Law”: In a community of human beings working together, the well-being of the community will be the greater, the less the individual claims for himself the proceeds of the work he has himself done; i.e., the more of these proceeds he makes over to his fellow workers, and the more his own requirements are satisfied, not out of his own work done, but out of work done by the others. Background The way our current Student Service Program is presented in the Continued on the next page
5 Student and Parent Handbook has not really changed much since the founding of the high school; it may even be better articulated now than it was in the past, with an inspiring list of goals.
a deeper, more developmentallybased way, in a way that is more reflective of our values as a Waldorf school.
From Student and Parent Handbook, 2015-2016 Service Learning Projects endeavor to accomplish the following goals:
As a faculty we can start by coming to a shared agreement of what we mean by “service.” For example, the seniors read an article written by Rachel Naomi Remen entitled “Helping, Fixing, Serving.” In the article she makes the case that “service is not the same thing as helping.”
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Meet community needs Create a collaboration between school and community Incorporate significant input from students Integrate with each student’s academic curriculum Create a structure that allows time to think, talk, and write about the service activity Foster the development of a sense of concern for others Include an evaluation by everyone involved: students, teachers, community agency
With such an impressive list of goals, how is it that our students are not taking their community service work to heart; how does it devolve into collecting hours because “we have to?” Instead of the feeling in the school of collective joy in this work, there is too often a feeling of cynicism. We know that teenagers are very adept at spotting inauthenticity, and this is probably at the heart of the difficulty. We need to “walk our talk,” by understanding in the depths of our thinking what we stand for as a school and what our social mission might be [what you have experienced/witnessed of the students and ask other faculty what their experience has been.] So much of what I wish to point out in asking us all to reconsider community service is already known to us, contained in one way or another in the above goals. It is a matter of re-enlivening the program. We need to look at it in
What Is Service?
Helping is based on inequality, it’s not a relationship between equals. When we help, we may inadvertently take away more than we give, diminishing the person’s sense of self-worth and self-esteem. Now, when I help I am very aware of my own strength, but we don’t serve with our strength, we serve with ourselves. We draw from all our experiences: our wounds serve, our limitations serve, even our darkness serves. The wholeness in us serves the wholeness in the other, and the wholeness in life. Helping incurs debt: when you help someone, they owe you. But service is mutual. When I help I have a feeling of satisfaction, but when I serve I have a feeling of gratitude. Serving is also different to fixing. We fix broken pipes, we don’t fix people. So, fundamentally, helping, fixing, and serving are ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak; when you fix, you see life as broken; and when you serve, you see life as whole. Community Engagement Program Once we have agreed to the distinctions outlined above, knowing that our work with the students is also in the moral realm, then we need to decide what the
parameters of our request of the students should be. I would like to suggest that we keep our service as local to the school as possible and certainly not outside San Francisco. The school is part of a community already, and the community is part of us. It is an economic community in the Steinerian sense: we are all meeting each other’s needs, in what can be thought of as the circulation of gifts, rather than of currency.
My dear friends, we will only be equal to our task if we do not regard it only as a comfortable intellectual undertaking, but instead as being moral and spiritual in the most eminent sense… —Rudolf Steiner
So, the important point here is to work on the school’s relationship to its community. Relationship is one of our foundational values, the whole of our teaching is based on it. As Cristof Wiechert points out in Solving the Riddle of the Child: The Art of the Child Study, we can “invoke every conceivable shade and nuance of feeling.” He continues: But in all cases, when I meet another person, a process of self-perception begins. How am I behaving? What unexpressed yet real feelings are living in me? How clear am I in what I’m saying? Can I be myself, or is something mingling with me that is not really me, or that I do not wish to be? (Wiechert, 2014, 20-21) Continued on page 11
In memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. @sfwaldorf #DayofService
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: what are we doing for others? -Martin Luther King Jr.
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Everybody can be great, because anybody can serve. -Martin Luther King Jr.
Following in Dr. King’s footsteps by taking action to build a “Beloved Community,” a society based on justice, love, and equal opportunity, high school students were invited to participate in a Day of Service during the Martin Luther King weekend. Some chose to clean up their homes and neighborhoods while others participated in planting the living wall at the new Bushnell Center for Athletics and Community on campus. With these students’ help, the Center is now complete, and the green wall will grow to decorate and replenish the city with fresh air in the West Portal neighborhood. The second grade spent a part of their outdoor education day honoring Dr. King through service as well. They chose to pick up trash in our beloved Presidio. The children were eager to help protect nature and made an impact quite quickly, ridding one climbing area of over 10 glass bottles alone! One student exclaimed, “[Martin Luther King, Jr.] would have been mad about all that garbage left behind!” Indeed.
Alumni Profile: Daniel Anderson, Class of 2014 high school alum commits to service in the political sphere
Did you start in politics by volunteering? I’ve always been interested in politics and the impact it can have and how important politics is in our day to day lives and the role the government can play. That never manifested itself in more than casual interest in high school. But the one thing I knew when I was in college is that I really love San Francisco. It’s my favorite place to be. I always wanted to contribute back to the city and help make it better. I didn’t really know how I would do that. It’s just where my heart was at. When I was senior in college, I was talking to Renita LiVolsi, the Admissions Director, and she mentioned she has a friend, Theo Ellington, who was an aspiring politician. I had coffee with him, and after I graduated, I reached out and asked if he needed any help on his campaign because I thought that would be an interesting world. As soon as I started volunteering there, I got hooked. I loved being out in the community and talking to people and being able to tackle the biggest issues facing the Daniel Anderson, SFWHS Class of 2014 city. I volunteered for him, interning three days a week while I worked parttime. Did that for a few months, then eventually went full time on his campaign as the Field Director, in charge of all the other volunteers and making outreach plans on who we were going to talk to, what doors we were going to knock on, and what folks we were going to call. I did that through the 2018 election. Then I wasn’t sure I was going to stay in politics but it was so fun, and the impact you are making on the world is so apparent. I joined another District Attorney race in 2019 for Lief Dautch. After that race, I wanted to get more involved in the progressive side of things. So, I reached out to Jim Stearns, another San Francisco Waldorf connection. He and I started working together on a ballot measure. It was spearheaded by Supervisor Aaron Peskin. It was called Neighbors for Small Business. That was all about addressing the vacant storefront crisis. We passed that measure, and I stayed on to help Supervisor Peskin with his re-election campaign and also worked for Jackie Fielder who was running for State Senate, doing financing and fundraising for both those candidates. Did your San Francisco Waldorf High School education influence your trajectory? I got started in politics from a connection at the school. It’s a great community. There are a lot of people there who are dedicated to making a difference in the world. A fair number of Waldorf graduates are now involved in the political sphere here in San Francisco. Just this past election there were 6 supervisorial seats up for election, and there were Waldorf grads working on 3 of those. Myself, Emma Stearns (class of 2015), and Ben Gurewitz (class of 2016). Another fun connection is that when I was working with Dautch 2 years ago, we had an intern who I found out went to school in West Portal. It was Ewan Barker Plummer, who is now a sophomore at SFWHS, and he was just elected as a Board Member of the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club, which is one of the prominent LGBTQ Dem clubs in the city. He is incredibly involved in politics at such a young age. There’s clearly something in the water that’s getting these SF Waldorf High School grads into politics. What did you study at Vanderbilt? Was it something you had decided on while at the high school, and have your studies helped you in your political career? My major was Human and Organizational Development, specific to Vanderbilt. It’s certainly come in handy in politics, and it’s really helpful with the work in teams I’ve had to do. The process of learning in that major was similar to learning at Waldorf. There was a lot of going out in the real world, interacting with the community, and the freedom to making the degree what you wanted. There was a lot of looking at how people worked together as a team and understanding different perspectives. I felt more at home in that major coming from Waldorf than in some of my other classes that required me to read the textbook, memorize the textbook, move on to the next textbook, which is something I never found fulfilling in any way. My time in Waldorf was most instrumental in that choice. It’s where I learned how to learn. Continued on next page
9 Did these studies build your ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes? I think the first thing is talking to different types of people. Being from a diverse city like San Francisco helps. I was born and raised in the Bay Area, but I went to college in Nashville, which provided a whole host of different perspectives. The second thing is having some theoretical framework to view them through. That’s where my college and high school education helped me. So here are all these people with all their different opinions but how can I make sense of them, how can I translate this data to do actionable things in my day-to-day life? In Waldorf, I had to think things through for myself and work things through as a group. This is the big advantage of the high school experience at SF Waldorf; because the classes are small, because you are doing things with the same group of people for so many years in a really tightknit way, you can’t just go on to new friends if a disagreement arises. So you’re working through interpersonal conflicts and forming strong bonds because of it. It’s helpful in a professional context where you have to work together and you can’t just ignore people.
Neighbors for Small Business measure
As a young adult in politics, you must have had the self-confidence and practice necessary to speak up, to have your own opinion and fight for what you believe in. Where did that confidence come from? The opportunities for leadership at the high school and being able to express yourself, whether that’s in a classic way in student council or as class president or by being able to start clubs if you’re interested in something and taking ownership of that, I think that instills entrepreneurial spirit, with is key for campaigns. It’s bootstrapping, very from the bottom up. It’s being able to take on a nebulous situation and make the most of it. Then get people in line and be an inspired leader. I think Waldorf does a good job of that. When you’re not studying just to get things right on the next test or when you’re not locked into a formulaic thought process, you expand and build your muscles in dealing with more chaotic situations where rules and outcomes are less clear. That’s campaigning. Things are always changing and going off the rails. I think my Waldorf education prepared me for adapting in unstructured situations. Research has shown how creativity is general and transferable, a muscle that if exercised in the arts can be used in other contexts like STEM subjects, which seems to relate to your experience. Totally. What you run into politics around policy is that people sit around and wait for a good idea to strike. There’s a quote I always think about from my time at the high school from Dr. Carini. I think it was some physics problem we were working on. We were discussing someone’s genius. These geniuses are so creative but it’s not just about them sitting around waiting for it to come. Creativity is about getting out there, trying things, working really hard, and doing a lot of things that don’t work until you have that lightbulb moment. This comes from getting your hands dirty. That’s something Waldorf stresses across disciplines, especially in the sciences. And it’s the way to make an effect in public policy. When we’re talking about creativity, we’re talking about problem solving, which means doing the work. Can you tell us about your switch to consultancy and your new business? After this November election, I started a consulting firm, Maier Anderson Fundraising, with my friend Noah Maier, who I met many campaigns ago, to help non-profits and political candidates who are stressed with the big scary problem of fundraising and tackle that problem to raise the money they need to make the change they are trying make in the world. I have never been and will never be the person who gets up on the soap box to affect change. I know that my role is the person who can look at the systems that are unjust, like our finance system around politics, and ask: how can we shift these systems to make them work better for people? I saw there was a real lack in politics of people who are comfortable in the finance world. Noah and I are in sync with that we think our world needs and have complementary skill sets, so we wanted to work together. A fundamental part of it was that there are no elections in SF in 2021 so we knew we had to create something else to stay in the campaign world and keep helping people. We’re really excited so far and look forward to evolving as a firm.
Campaigning for Jackie Fielder
Continued on page 12
Waldorf Alum Connect
Raphael House Continued from page 3
more ways to stay engaged
High School graduates (Gregory in 2006 and Victoria in 2009). Although Fr. David Lowell retired in 2010, the influence of Waldorf Education on Raphael House’s programs is still evident.
Routine is a huge component of Raphael House as well, which I think might be related to Waldorf education. Every weekday, we have a schedule that includes storytime, tutoring club, snack, and dinnertime. We strongly encourage residents to attend dinner together! This routine and structure helps make Raphael House feel so homelike, which introduces an element of safety for the children.
What elements found in Raphael House are particularly Waldorf, would you say?
Waldorf alumni and their families can find these exciting opportunities and offerings on AWSNA‘s Waldorf Alum Connect platform: •
Waldorf Alum Business Directory
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Networking opportunities
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Mentorship and mentee opportunities
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Jobs and internships
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Alum parent registration
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Alumni map by location, industry, year
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Plain ol’ fun
This network now has nearly 1,700 registered alums and seeks to reach 2,500 by the end of the year. Are you an alum or an alum parent? Connect with community and register today. Lastly, Nita June, AWSNA Director of Alum Relations, will be hosting a Waldorf Alum Zoom Social Hour every other week. The next one will take place on Monday, March 8, 2021, at 4:30 PM PT (5:30 PM MT, 6:30 PM CT, 7:30 PM ET). Sign up for a Zoom invite.
I’ve had the pleasure of taking a tour of the Waldorf School and have had Waldorf families tour here at Raphael House as well. Our Toddler Room, which serves children ages 0 to 4, looks a lot like your Kindergarten classrooms with wooden toys, chalkboard murals, and watercolor-like, sponge-painted walls.
Dinner time is community time
How has SF Waldorf School donation drives helped serve your families? SF Waldorf is our major school donor and it is the only school we are affiliated with where all grades participate in a drive. I believe the Thanksgiving drive brought in around 50 boxes of food! This recent Essentials drive brought in another 30+ boxes of items for our families.
An art-infused Children’s Program
Another similarity I have noticed is that our children’s programming revolves around art. After taking with our longtime staff, it sounds like some of our Children’s Program teachers were trained in chalkboard art or were former Waldorf teachers. We have an evening hour for the children at 6:30pm each weekday, where kids do art projects and other activities.
Mitch and Bri dropping off drive donations Continued on the next page
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These donations of goods help both our Residential and Bridge families! Receiving items such as toiletries, new children’s clothing, and cleaning supplies helps families prioritize other important expenses such as rent and helps them maintain their financial stability long term. Last year we were able to serve 243 adults and 360 children with supportive services including providing essential items, children’s clothing, and birthday gifts! How has the pandemic affected your organization? During COVID, the maximum number of families in our Residential Shelter has been brought down to 12 due to distancing regulations. The great news is that we have actually been able to increase the number of families we can serve through our Bridge program! Most families find stable housing outside of San Francisco, and it can be difficult for them to get to Raphael House for after school tutoring or in-person appointments with our Career Development Manager.
Are there ways to volunteer and get involved as an individual? Typically, we have both group and individual volunteer opportunities. Group volunteers can help with cleaning, sorting donations, and other organization projects around our Residential Shelter or can help prepare and serve dinner in our kitchen. Individuals can apply to become volunteers in our adult and children’s programming such as Tutoring Club, Toddler Time, or ESL Tutoring. However, due to Covid-19, we are currently not able to have any on-site volunteers, and our remote volunteer shifts are currently filled. You can always check back on our website for updates or to submit a volunteer application which will be held on file until on-site opportunities resume. You can find more information here or by emailing me: Kellen Sarver.~
Community Service Continued from page 4
and spiritual in the most eminent sense.” Don’t we hope for our students this awakening of a sense of responsibility and similar self-perception? My feeling is that we can foster this through close encounters, community relationships, the kind that endure for more than a two-week summer trip or a day at a far-flung agency. This is where the idea of local comes in. The community makes the school possible. How do we “give back” to the community? We keep it local, as a sort of reciprocity, to show gratitude. Local. If students are fortunate enough to travel to other countries to do service work, then it is extra, something to write about or to add to their college applications, but it is not service in the school’s community. We want to work starting at home, keeping it as equitable as possible, for all the students, whatever their means or opportunities. In light of all of this, I propose that we change the name of the program from Student Service Program, with its two prongs of Out of School Community Service and In-School Community Service to Community Engagement Program: Student SelfDirection and Community. Self-Determination
Grade school students load food donations
By moving some of our services to a remote format over Zoom, more families are able to access supportive services from Raphael House. We are also serving more families in need through providing things like birthday gifts for children, rental or bill assistance finds, and grocery gift cards.
Weichert also suggests that an effect of encounters that results from the world reflecting us back to ourselves is the development of a sense of responsibility, which awakens suddenly in relation to one’s actions and “makes possible…that not only the other is changed, but above all I am myself.” (Wiechert, 2014, p. 21) He was speaking of a different context, of course, but the effects of encounter are generalizable, and certainly go to the heart of what we can regard as “moral
Tapping into each student’s own sense of responsibility is another goal. Requirements are extrinsic; we want to guide the students toward work that arises from within themselves, out of true interest. So, it will be up to us to elicit that interest. One way to invite them to direct themselves, is through the writing of proposals, which are self-generated and come out of the students’ own interests and possibilities. Proposals are the means of student self-direction. The students must think about what they can offer to the community: “this is what I plan
Continued on next page
Community Service Continued from page 11
to do this year.” We could set aside a day or part of one at the start of the year, or better yet, at the end of the year before. Ninth graders could be more carefully guided by asking them to think about what they might do when they first visit the school as the in-coming class in May. We then follow up by sending a letter about the need for a proposal with the summer mailing. (This would probably help returning students as well.) Proposals could be collaborative. This is an opportunity for student self-direction—and, it’s for the community, not just for themselves. The service work can still tie into a senior project, especially if a 12th grader has identified a need arising from work s/he has done in the past three years. Review is a process that allows for community self-determination: the proposals are reviewed by the community. We organize a community review board made up of parents, student peers (Student Council? Peer educators? Elected or appointed?), maybe even people from the neighborhood, from the Merchants’ Association, or from Ardenwood. The review board has a charter that outlines how it is constructed, when and how it meets and makes determinations. Members could be elected or appointed by the community. Once approved, the students are responsible for reporting on their progress, perhaps even treating it as reporting to peers and
sharing experiences. This would then create a community around community engagement with minimal management from faculty or staff. And yet, what a wonderful opportunity for faculty and staff to learn from the students about what motivates them in life.~ *Note: The high school’s Community Engagement Committee continuously works to review and update policies on community engagement and service to best serve student growth and development. Dr. Joan Caldarera holds an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from U.C. Davis. She began at SFWS as a Kindergarten teacher then become a class teacher. Dr. Caldarera joined the high school faculty in 1997. She has taught Humanities and served as the Chair. Her four children are SFWS graduates.
Alumni Profile Continued from page 11
What services do you offer? We set up both a fundraising strategy and a finance plan. There is a lot of money in politics, but it’s about getting the money to the right place. There are a lot of details to it. At the end of the day, it is figuring out who to ask for money, then asking them. This is so hard for most people. A lot of what we do is coaching people through that process. People want to give, want to make a difference, and want their money to go somewhere that’s valuable. The hold-up is almost always on the asker’s side.
Working in politics on the ground teaches you how to ask for votes, and you develop a thick skin around rejection. That’s a great skill to have. That’s why I recommend that everyone volunteer on a political campaign. ~ Interview with Marketing Director, Samantha Cosentino Baker, recorded and transcribed on February 8, 2021
