As the second semester begins, new faces have appeared in the classrooms and offices of the Upper School. English teachers Stephen Connolly and Tia Barth, along with administrative assistant Cindy Banh, share their experiences leading up to and working at the Upper School with The Winged Post.

Stephen Connolly has been through a range of experiences, including living on both coasts of the country playing baseball, and writing online tutorials. Yet they all have led to where he is now: a substitute teacher at the Upper School.

Connolly, who has been working at the Upper School since the beginning of the school year, will be teaching Sharron Mittelstet’s Literature into Film elective for the remainder of the semester.

Connolly has lived in California since moving from Massachusetts to San Jose during high school. He attended high school at Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose and completed an undergraduate program at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Upon graduation, he returned to San Jose to earn his master’s degree in English at San Jose State University.

Connolly became connected to the Upper School through his father, Joe Connolly, Dean of Students at the Lower School, who was able to help him set up an interview for a substitute teaching position. After substituting for a few teachers near the beginning of the year, Connolly was offere an extended substitute position for Mittelstet, which he gladly accepted.

“I enjoy teaching literature because it is more about facilitating a discussion and approaching literary works from a critical, analytical perspective. I definitely feel more in my element in the English classroom,” Connolly said.

Connolly is currently working towards becoming a permanent teacher, using his extended substituting experience as an opportunity to gain a better understanding of the job. He is hopeful that a full-time position will open up as early as next year, and he feels that the Upper School would be the perfect place for him to teach.

“This school is unique. I mean, the students are really about as diligent as they come,” Connolly said. “It’s exciting to come to school to teach and know that the students will be interested in what you have to say, and they are excited about learning, or at least willing to get all of their work done.”

At the same time, he knows that there will be challenges with switching to a full-time teaching position including learning to create lesson plans, grading assignments, and performing other duties that are not required of substitute teachers.

************

Her favorite authors are John Steinbeck and Toni Morrison. She loves trail runs and half marathons. She enjoys watching sports. Some know her as Evan Barth’s wife, but others just know her as Tia Barth, the new teacher for Sharron Mittelstet’s American Literature classes.

Barth completed her undergraduate education at Stanford University and her master’s degree at Boston College.

“I have always loved school,” she said. “I really just loved learning and that was sort of my starting point.”

Reading and writing were two of her passions that carried on into her collegiate studies and her career.

“In my spare time, I did find myself loving to read, loving to write, so I just sort of gravitated toward that in my studies,” she said. “When I got to college, it was so wonderful to just be able to, for my schooling, do something that I loved to do anyway.”

Barth became a teacher because of her experiences with some of her teachers and coaches throughout her life.

“I had some incredible teachers and coaches, particularly in high school, and just really was inspired by them and felt like, besides my parents, those people really had made an impact on me,” she said. “I felt like I would like to be that figure for other people.”

This year is not the first year Barth has taught at the Upper School; she taught American Literature for two years before taking a break to raise three children, two of whom are in the Lower School and one who has not started school yet. She also replaced Mittelstet last year for some time.

Though getting acclimated has been difficult for Barth, mainly due to logistical changes, she has really enjoyed getting to know the students and being in an educational environment again.

“From the moment I stepped in and started talking with the students, it’s been so fun,” she said. “They are so responsive, engaged, funny, and hard-working, and it’s just great to interact with them.”

Barth thinks that as a teacher, her job is not just to impart wisdom to her students.

“I just hope that they feel that the things they do in the classroom have meaning to them beyond the grade and the class,” she said. “[My job] is to help them find that for themselves and maybe ask them some good questions to get them thinking.”

********

At the beginning of the academic year, Cindy Banh joined the Upper School as a part-time administrative assistant, managing attendance records in Dobbins Hall.

Banh has spent her whole life in the Bay Area. She attended Oak Grove High School and Mission Junior College in San Jose and Mills College in Oakland, where she majored in Biology. After graduating, she went on to work as a pharmacy technician at Kaiser Permanente, where she utilized her background in biology.

“Generally, I helped dispense medications and made sure that patients were getting the right medications in the right dosage amounts. [Helping them] was very rewarding,” Banh said.

After working at Kaiser, Banh applied for a job at the Upper School because she wanted more flexibility in her schedule to spend time with her fiancé’s children. She and her fiancé are planning to marry in March.

“My position at Harker allows me to have the school days and summers off to spend with [my] kids. Hopefully, they will be able to attend Harker.”

Banh enjoys her current position and likes working with her colleagues at the Upper School. However, she would like to expand her job to full-time.

“I love it here. I love the kids. I love the positive environment; it’s very different. Even though I do have to deal with sick students [in the attendance office], I enjoy this type of work more than patient care,” Banh said.

Banh has found her time at the Upper School wonderful and everyone constantly welcoming and kind to her.