Aug. 27, 2013
hwchronicle.com/news
News A11
New to the Upper School
New additions to faculty at the Middle School
Foreign Language Department
>> Tim Schmall
The foreign language and math departments will each gain three teachers, whose native lands span from Poland to France.
JESSICA SPITZ/CHRONICLE
Jerome Hermaline Native French speaker Jerome Hermeline will teach French III, French III Honors and French IV at the Upper School this year. Hermeline was born in northern France, and he spent seven years in Paris studying at the Sorbonne. Last year was Hermeline’s first year of substitute teaching French at the Alliance Francaise in Newport Beach. “I left [Alliance Francaise] because it was a subbing job, and I wanted a full-time job,” Hermeline said. Hermeline chose HarvardWestlake because he liked the atmosphere he found here. “At every other school that I visited, the people there seemed to be sad and they were sulking, but when I came here, everyone was smiling and welcoming,” he said. — Jonathan Seymour
JONATHAN SEYMOUR/CHRONICLE
Tim Schmall, a lighting designer, loved his job, but wanted something more permanent and exciting. After stumbling upon Harvard-Westlake he instantly knew what he wanted to do. After lots of phone interviews Schmall flew to Los Angeles where he was interviewed by former president Tom Hudnut. Working with eager Harvard-Westlake students is the thing. Schmall said he is most JONATHAN SEYMOUR/CHRONICLE
Yi Jiang
Aaron Bluestein
Yi Jiang will teach multiple levels of Chinese from Chinese II to the AP courses at the Upper School. Jiang taught in China, Singapore and Norway before moving to Los Angeles in 2009 to teach at a parent’s association at Santa Monica College. Jiang has written articles for the Myriad Journal and papers on Chinese typology for conferences in China, Singapore and the United States. “The articles I published help me to build a very solid background,” Jiang said. Jiang said she is nervous but excited to meet students. “I am anxious about the new life, especially the first year, but I am very happy to be working with my students and my very good teaching team,” she said. —Cole Feldman
Aaron Bluestein will join the foreign language department this year to teach sections in both Spanish III and Spanish III Honors. “I am most looking forward to working with so many extremely bright and motivated students and an incredibly supportive team of passionate and seasoned teachers,” Bluestein said. After graduating from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Bluestein worked at the Education First Foundation of Foreign Studies for 10 years before earning his Master’s at Columbia University Teachers College. Bluestein moved to California to get a change from New York City and to be closer to his brother, who was living in the Los Angeles area. —Henry Vogel
Math Department
JESSICA SPITZ/CHRONICLE
CAITLIN NEAPOLE/CHRONICLE
Six newcomers will join the middle school faculty this year. Three will go to arts departments and three to academics.
BENJAMIN MOST/CHRONICLE
Jason Fieldman ’98
Kasia Williams
Joe Busch
Jason Fieldman ’98 will teach Design and Data Structures Honors, Advanced Topics in Computer Science and Precalculus: Trig & Functions at the Upper School. Fieldman attended University of California, Berkeley for his bachelor’s degree and worked as a software developer at Stealth Startup and Aha Mobile. Middle school programming teacher Jessica Kaufman heard that Fieldman was making apps and asked him to speak to students. After a few talks, upper school math department head Paula Evans asked Fieldman to speak to the upper school students. Fieldman substituted a few times and decided teaching was more fun than coding. “It’s much more rewarding when working with kids and seeing the reactions of the kids and seeing them happy and it makes you feel proud,” he said. — Sid Kucheria
Kasia Williams began ballroom dancing when she was 11 and continued throughout her high school career in Poland, where she lived. As Williams got older, she realized her skill level was behind her age group, so dancing became just a hobby for her. Williams did not leave the ballroom behind when she moved to the United States at age 18 and joined a dance troupe. She has practice once a week and said she hopes to balance her dance career with eaching in the upper school math department. Williams is looking forward to teaching her Algebara II, Topics in Calculus and Statistics and Introduction to Calculus Honors classes. “I don’t know what to expect,” Williams said. “I don’t know if my teaching approach will reach all the students. I always like the moment when they go ‘ooh, I get it!’” — Caitlin Neapole
Joe Busch will teach AP Statistics, Advanced Honors Seminar in Math and Algebra 2 with Analysis this year. Born in New Jersey and raised in Connecticut, Busch went to college in Boston and got a master’s degree from NYU. He then moved to Los Angeles, where he received a fellowship to study mathematical logic at University of California at Los Angeles and earned his PhD. Busch also has experience at internet-based companies such as Monster.com and Lycos, where he worked before beginning his teaching career. He is especially excited about Harvard-Westlake’s collaborative math department and motivated students. “Mathematics is very elegant and beautiful and full of surprises, and I really enjoy working with students and having them see this side of mathematics,” Busch said. — Benjamin Most
excited about. “Working with the students is the most exciting part,” he said. “It’s fun to see students get excited doing what I love to do.” When Schmall isn’t working in his time consuming job of light design he enjoys being outdoors. “I go running and biking. I bike to work almost every day,” Schmall said.
— Jonah Ullendorff
>> Joe Schenck After teaching dance at schools and studios in Los Angeles for the past seven years, Joe Schenck will be a new dance teacher at the Middle School. Schenck will teach Contemporary Dance Workshop I and II as well as Dance Production. “I’m honestly most excited for getting into the studio with the students and turning
on the music and dancing with them,” Schenck said.” Schenck is a current core member of Diduolo Dance Theatre Company. “The company is a sitespecific dance company so we create dance pieces in unique locations using architecture and space instead of putting in just on a flat stage,” Schenck said.
— Kelly Loeb
>> Lilas Lane Lilas Lane, a former actress and SAT and ACT tutor, will join the middle school history department this year. Lane has been interested in history since early childhood when her father would recite Chaucer’s work in the original Old English. When she was an undergraduate, she was not planning to become a history major. However, she found herself
taking an increasing number of history classes and realized that was part of who she was. “There’s a relationship with history and acting because [acting] is getting into someone else’s life and trying to understand and embody it in a certain way,” Lane said. “That’s what history is; it’s thinking about the similarities of what people felt then and what I feel now.”
— Sharon Chow
>> Claire Cochran ’06 Claire Cochran ’06 will teach Visual Arts 7 and Mixed Media classes at the Middle School after acting as an assistant to upper school visual arts teacher Marianne Hall last year. Cochran has taught history courses at the Charter High School of the Arts Multimedia and Performing. However, this will be the Harvard-Westlake grad’s first
time teaching studio art in a formal classroom setting. “It’s interesting because for me, graduating HarvardWestlake seems like two years ago even though I graduated in 2006,” Cochran said. “It feels really, really recent so I am excited to kind of have a relatively recent perspective on being a student here and engaging kids in art.”
— Sacha Lin
>> Mercedes Barletta Mercedes Barletta moved to Los Angeles two weeks ago and will begin teaching Latin at the Middle School this year. Barletta will teach all grades and all levels of Latin. She and fellow Latin teacher Moss Pike decided to change the direction of the curriculum to focus more on the culture on which the language was founded. “I’m
>>
really excited to work with colleagues who are as interested in the cultural aspect of Latin as I am,” Barletta said. Barletta attended Wesleyan College, where she double-majored in classical civilization and archaeology. “I’m excited to be in a new city and continue the work I love,” Barletta said.
— Lauren Rothman
Jennifer Lechevallier ’98
Jennifer Lechevallier ’98 will return to the middle school campus to teach French 1A, 1B and 1 New classes. After graduating from Bard College in New York with a B.A. in French Studies and a semester abroad in Paris taking classes at The University of Sorbonne IV. After college, Lechevallier pursued a career in film, working in film production and development.
However she soon found her way back to language, teaching both French and Spanish to students through a private company, and now her job at the Middle School. “There’s a lot of faculty here who taught me, which is completely surreal and amazing; they really remember you, which is a surprise,” Lechevallier said. “It’s a really special community.”
— Kelly Riopelle