Tam News May 2023

THETAMNEWS

Wise Beyond Our Years

May

California Homeless Union v. Sausalito By Anika Kapan

Wise beyond our years By Savy Behr

Gay straight alliance advocates for gender neutral changing rooms By Caden Bernstein-Lawler

Pop-up prom to promote sustainable fashiom at Tam By Colette Hale

Photo essay By Catherine Stauffer

Anti-vape club starts at Tam High By Lauren Felder

Sexual assault lawsuit against TUHSD persists By Chloe Bowman

Early release leading to academic unsettlement for student athletes

By Kelsey Cook

The Entrepreneur club By Gabe

Schwartzman

Profile: Trevor Islam By Annie Shine

Dear Reader,

This unique issue of The Tam News starts off with two features written by Anika Kapan and Savy Behr. “California Homeless Union v. Sausalito” describes the contributions those living in Sausalito have made to benefit the community and how they are being impacted by the legal issues with the city. “Wise Beyond Our Years” highlights all of the lingering mental effects of the pandemic and how teenagers are continuing to deal with trauma.

News begins with an article titled “GSA Advocates for Gender Neutral Changing Rooms” by Caden BernsteinLawler. In this brief it is emphasized that GSA made huge strides to improve the accommodations for those using gender neutral changing rooms. However, there is still room for improvement. Colette Hale reports on the pop-up prom which took place in Ruby Scott Gym and how it encourages students to shop sustainably when selecting their prom attire. News concludes with an article describing the sexual assault lawsuit against the Tamalpais Union High School District. Chloe Bowman includes key details regarding the lawsuit and how the story is relevant to members of the community.

Lifestyles and Sports wraps up the issue with three articles written by Kelsey Cook, Gabe Schwartzman, and Annie Shine. The article, “Early Release Leading to Academic Unsettlement for Student Athletes”, reveals all of the negative aspects that go along with leaving class early due to sports games. Next, the entrepreneur club is featured because of their impressive efforts to bring guest speakers in. In addition, the club presidents are able to provide the club members with more knowledge on how to continue with their passions for starting a business. A profile on Trevor Islam finishes the issue by describing all of his athletic achievements this past season on the boys’ varsity soccer team.

Editors in Chief

Fiona Matney •

Juliette Lunder

Managing Editors

Tyler Rothwell •

Dylan Boon

News

Catherine Stauffer •

Carley Lehman

• Colette Hale

Lifestyles/Sports

Wesley Slavin •

Emma Pearson •

Kelsey Cook • Dola

Tibbs

Features

Lauren Felder •

Anika Kapan •

Jack McIntire

Opinion

Sophia Weinberg •

Kayla Boon •

Shaina Mandala

Social Media

Hannah Bringard •

Kayla Boon •

Ashley Townsend

Graphics

Zach Breindel •

Anika Kapan •

Violet Howard •

Gabe Schwartzman

• Hannah Bringard •

Chloe Bowman

Reporters

Savannah Behr

• Caden Bernstein-Lawler • Hillary Betz • Dylan

Boon • Kayla Boon

• Chloe Bowman •

Zachary Breindel • Hannah Bringard •

Tyler Byrne • Samuel Catrini-Abdullah •

Elisa Cobb • Dylan Collister • Kelsey

Cook • Lauren Felder

• Asher Goldblatt • Griffin Gustafson • Colette Hale • Violet Howard • Anika

Kapan • Siobhan

King • Claire Lawson • Carley Lehman

•

Juliette Lunder •

Shaina Mandala •

Fiona Matney • Jack

McIntire • Asa Moore

• Ana Murguia • Jude

Paine • Emma Pearson • Nathan Robinson • Tyler Rothwell

• Gabe Schwartzman

• Luella Searson •

Volume XIV, No. VII

April 2020

A publication of Tamalpais High School

Established 1919

Tamalpais High School

700 Miller Avenue Mill Valley, CA 94941 www.thetamnews.org

The Tam News, a student-run newspaper publication, distributed monthly, is an open, public forum for student expression and encourages letters and article contributions. The Tam News reserves the right to edit submissions for length and content. All content decisions are made by student editors. The Tam News is published monthly, though dates may vary. The Tam News is nonprofit and any proceeds and contributions are used in the production of the newspaper publication and for journalism education. Additional information concerning contributions or advertising can be obtained by writing to the address provided above or through our website. Copyright © 2020 by The Tam News. All rights reserved. Reproduction is prohibited without written consent.

Design

Hillary Betz • Dylan Collister

Copy Editors

Samuel Catrini-Abdullah • Ana Mur-

guia • Tyler Byrne •

Jude Paine Adviser

SJ Black

Annie Shine • Wesley Slavin • Catherine Stauffer • Flynn

Stuart • Dola Tibbs

• Ashley Townsend

• Sophia Weinberg •

Zane Yarnold

Cover

Anika Kapan Printer

California Homeless Union v. Sausalito

by Anika Kapan photos courtesy of the California Homeless Union

A$540,000settlement between the Marin County branch of the California Homeless Union and the City of Sausalito resulted in the permanent closure of the city-run houseless encampment at Marinship Park on Aug. 15.

This is the latest development in an ongoing legal struggle with the city that has resulted in numerous closures and relocations for the Sausalito houseless community, which began as an anchor-out camp in Dunphy Park named Camp Cormorant.

Anthony Prince, California attorney and general counsel for the California Homeless Union, explained the outcome of the Settlement. “This was not a big legal victory by any means,” Prince said. “It was this political victory in the sense that for 18 months, this community persevered against some of

the worst possible conditions imaginable.”

Prince and the union have been organizing houseless communities in California for about eight years, preventing cities like Sacramento, Santa Cruz, and Salinas from enforcing anti-houseless measures like daytime camping ordinances.

“This agreement creates an opportunity for Sausalito’s municipal government to refocus its resources directly toward getting housing for each resident while also providing other services to the entire Sausalito community,” Sausalito’s press release regarding the settlement stated.

The recipients, however, feel differently.

“Not everyone who needs housing assistance got it through this settlement,” Prince said. “It was a com-

promise, in some sense that we had a gun to our heads because the city was perfectly willing and happy to just continue litigating and closing the camp by attrition.” According to the union, Sausalito’s conduct in managing the encampment was more of a sustained effort to make conditions as hostile as possible within the camp, therefore forcing people to leave and gradually but indirectly closing it down.

A feature article published by The Tam News in the fall of 2021 documented the lives of Camp Cormorant residents, many of them anchor-outs: members of the mariner community that had lived in Richardson Bay for years before their boats were removed by the Richardson Bay Regional Authority. The boats were said to have been removed because of environmental concerns regarding the eelgrass

that grew on the bottom of Richardson Bay.

Camp Cormorant was formed around January 2021 and was forcibly relocated in June 2021 by the Sausalito Police Department, first to the Marinship Park fields and then to the Marinship Park tennis courts. Marinship Park, at the time of the first attempted move, was found by the court to contain numerous health and safety concerns, one of which was the fiberglass pollution from the nearby boat-crushing operation.

The initial relocation was justified by the city’s adoption of Resolutions 6008 and 6009 in February 2021, which prohibited daytime camping, closed most city property to overnight sleeping, and established procedures for the clearance and seizure of property in the encampment. The Sausalito police then entered the Dunphy encampment later that month, making an attempt to clear the area which was met with resistance from the community.

ing order that prevented the city and the police from moving the encampment.

Sausalito’s resolutions and the relocation were accused of violating both the United States and California constitutions by the union, which sought an immediate injunction to prevent the closure of the Marinship encampment and the enforcement of the daytime and nighttime camping bans. The Union also cited Martin V. Boise, a 2018 decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that banned cities from preventing houseless people from sleeping on public property when there were no adequate alternatives like shelters.

Prince ultimately attributes the union’s involvement to the people actually living in the community. “There was already an existing group of leaders out there,” he said. “That’s how we organize. We don’t just bring people in from the outside. We are usually contacted by people that are already fighting within the camps.”

“We’re not waiting for anyone to step in and solve the problem, from amongst those who created the problem,” Prince said. “Our primary objective is to empower. The whole process has been one of empowering homeless people.”

quests from the union for the city to intervene were ignored, and gradually residents got sick, injured, or intimidated and as a result, left the encampment.

“The original account was maybe 40 to 45 people and dwindled down to maybe 30 to 35 when the move to Marinship Park took place,” Prince said. “A lot of people left because the conditions were so intolerable.”

Sausalito hired Urban Alchemy (UA), a nonprofit organization operating in the Bay Area since 2018, to manage and provide security for the encampment. The organization is mired in controversy–articles by the Pacific Sun, the Frisc, and even Google reviews of UA all point to a violent and mismanaged workforce, with unchecked power over encampment residents.

UA also imposed unfairly harsh rules on encampment residents, such as the removal of any residents gone for more than seven days. In one instance, officers removed the belongings of a man who had gone on a trip.

“He thought himself a human being and he had a right to go somewhere

“[Camp Cormorant] was able to successfully resist the Sausalito Police Department when they came to tear the encampment down, and so they had to back off that night,” Prince said.

After the unsuccessful move, he said, the union was contacted by the residents of Dunphy Park. “The very next day they asked us if we could intervene and also file some kind of action in court, which … morphed into 18 months of litigation back and forth, bringing various motions, fighting the city.”

Prince and the union finally filed a lawsuit in February 2021 against the city, resulting in a temporary restrain-

The union has moved on to helping and training houseless individuals to file their own pro se (without an attorney) lawsuits against the city, which the settlement in no way prohibits.

Conditions in Marinship park were dangerously bad; residents dealt with contaminated water, exposure to fiberglass from the nearby boat crushing operation, and cramped living conditions following the encampment’s relocation to the Marinship Park tennis courts. Numerous re-

ABOVE: union representative Arthur Bruce signs settlement agreement.

“This community persevered against some of the worst possible conditions imaginable.”

ed to extend its contract with Urban Alchemy until the presiding judge ordered the organization’s removal.

“It became clear that the city’s strategy was just to just keep individually kicking people out and closing the camp by attrition,” Prince said. “So we then insisted that it was time to come to the table and get the case resolved.”

The settlement, reached Aug. 5, dictated the payment of $18,000 by the city to 30 eligible recipients, all residents or former residents of the encampment. The funds are to be given in a lump-sum payment to the union, which is then responsible for managing and distributing the money for each of the individual recipients. The union is required to provide a report to the city each month and to coordinate with a city-provided “qualified housing manager” – measures intended to ensure that the money is being used solely for housing arrangements.

“The homeless themselves are perfectly capable of taking this financial

assistance and making their own decisions about where the settlement could be spent,” Prince said. In the weeks after the settlement, recipients have put the money towards leases, mobile homes, and other housing apparatus. “[They’re] shattering that myth that you just can’t trust homeless people with money,” Prince said.

The settlement does not address the constitutionality of the anti-camping ordinance, which remains in place. And now, because of the encampment’s closure, houseless residents of Sausalito that did not receive the funds will return to their original position before the initial lawsuit: sleeping on the streets wherever they can.

city, Mayor Janelle Kellman discussed the settlement and plans for Marinship Park. “This agreement will allow us to help folks restore their lives in a way that is far more compassionate and safer than the unfortunate circumstance of living outdoors,” she stated in the release.

The mayor declined when asked for further comment by The Tam News, citing the confidentiality of the settlement—which, along with the original lawsuit, is on public record. Only the identities of the settlement recipients are confidential.

According to the press release, Sausalito has already spent around $1.5 million in “unanticipated costs” in managing the encampment. “They could have housed every single [Marinship Park] resident in an apartment unit for two years,” Prince said.

Instead of helping, he said, the city’s aim was the removal of the houseless community. “They’re willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer’s money to fight this relatively small group of homeless people,” Prince said. “And it seemed, unfortunately, that the majority of people in Sausalito were okay with that.”

“The next homeless person who comes to Sausalito [who is] threatened with arrest, misdemeanor conviction and citation, whatnot … guess what, we’re gonna challenge the ordinance all over again,” Prince said, discussing the ordinance.

In a press release issued by the

Despite heavy spending, it appeared to some that the city had no intention of settling. According to Prince, they had to be ordered to enter into negotiations with the union by Judge Edward Chen, the presiding judge.

During settlement negotiations, the city refused to compromise on the closure date of the encampment on Aug. 15. “[That] was less than two weeks away, actually 10 days away [from the agreement] so there is no way, there is just no way that we’re go-

“It became clear that the city’s strategy was just to keep individually kicking people out and closing the camp by attrition.”

ABOVE: “Anchor Outs Against Hate” sign in Dunphy Park.

ing to be able to … get people into some kind of housing situation,” Prince said.

Although the union asked numerous times for an extension, the city remained immovable. “I asked for two weeks, they refused. I asked for one week they refused. And so we then turned our attention to just getting people out of there, because the one thing we did not want to see was the spectacle of the police coming in,” Prince said.

Two days following the removal of the residents, trailers and catering tents of a filming crew had moved in across the street from the encampment into corporate buildings and parking lots at 2330 Marinship Way. Mayor Kellman admitted to the Pacific Sun that Sausalito had “known” since March that “The Last Thing He Told Me,” an Apple+ miniseries starring Jennifer Garner, would be filming and setting up its base camp in Sausalito. Mayor Kellman insisted that the film production had no influence on the deadline.

Nevertheless, due to the rushed deadline, the union was forced to temporarily house settlement recipients at expensive motels like the Muir Woods Lodge that charged what Prince called “exorbitant” rates. “For a person who has no credit history, who has no rental

history, who doesn’t have ID … To get a place, to get an apartment? It’s nearly impossible,” Prince explained.

“Around $20,000 of the settlement funds were spent on temporary housing in the weeks after the closure that would have otherwise gone to more sustainable and permanent housing for the recipients,” he said.

“They never disclosed to us the existence of this agreement,” Prince said. If the filming contract had indeed played a role in the city’s insistence on the deadline, he said the union could potentially seek damages for fraud in the inducement, a legal issue where one party is tricked or misled during contract negotiations. “If we had known [about the filming], and I’m not saying it’s a fact, but if it turns out that was a factor, that would have impacted … our negotiation position.”

As of now, the union has sent evidence preservation letters, which are typically sent to potential defendants in an anticipated lawsuit, to both the city of Sausalito and the production company. The union asserted that it has no intention of creating an issue with the production company’s involvement, however.

Sausalito’s explanation for the closure date was their belief that Robbie Powelson, a union organizer and longtime member of the houseless community in Sausalito, was bringing other houseless people to the encampment in an attempt to expand it.

“[He] had no intention of rounding people up. This would make no sense. Why bring people to Sausalito when the camp has been closed?” Prince said.

“We’re talking about over $20,000, which came out of the individual shares of those entitled to the housing assistance,” Prince said. “That should come out of [the city’s] funds.” The production company paid the city upwards of $10,000 for com-

FEATURES

mercial filming, parking, and public encroachment permits.

An Aug. 26 update on the city website stated that Sausalito is now “actively seeking funds from the State of California and the County of Marin to offset costs related to the encampment and the settlement agreement.”

City Manager Chris Zapata could not be reached for comment on this request.

“These cities are failing. They think they can criminalize the homeless, kick them out. I got news: it’s not gonna happen. More and more people are going to be facing housing crises, and they’re gonna end up on the street, a lot of them,” Prince said.

According to CalMatters, a California nonprofit focusing on political policy, the number of people without stable housing has increased by at least 22,500 since 2019 to around 173,800 individuals at time of publishing.

A study by the World Bank Group warns another global recession may be on the horizon for 2023 as a result of widespread inflation, meaning that unemployment rates, housing prices, and interest rates will all be on the rise. Because of this, the housing crisis, and the treatment of houseless people by their cities, will become increasingly relevant to California’s policymakers, communities, and at-risk families and individuals.

“These are Sausalito residents, people who in many cases lived a good chunk of their lives there, they rented apartments in the past, and paid rent, a lot of that went to property taxes, sales taxes, raised children, went to schools, they are part of the artistic community,” Prince said. “They are contributing members of the Sausalito community. They’re residents. They’re not just ‘the homeless.’”

ABOVE: Union collects samples of post-storm contaminated water.

“They are contributing members of the Sausalito community. They’re residents. They’re not just the homeless.”

Wise beyond

by Savy Behr graphics by Anika Kapan

Acompleteshutdown. Empty classrooms, students each separated by walls, and the threat of a contagious virus. We adapt to a drastically different life. The pandemic gradually slows down. Schools reopen, students are reintroduced to a strained sense of normalcy. Once again, we must regulate hormonally-altered emotions in one of the most tumultuous periods in a person’s life. We are back to navigating friendships, schoolwork, and just basic aspects of school like rule-following and time management.

which we already know cause negative cognitive changes.

The study consisted of 163 adolescents living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Initially, researchers were studying the effects of stress on psychobiology during puberty. Both brain-imaging technology and self-assessments were used. During the long-term study, it became clear that the pandemic had distinct effects on the brain functions being studied.

The post-pandemic group showed higher rates of severe internalizing mental health problems, reduced cortical thickness, larger hippocampal and amygdala volume. The physical changes signify advanced brain age. Reduced cortical thickness, a larger volume of certain brain parts, and accelerated brain maturation may not strike the general public as distinctly negative. Yet, these things are highly damaging in teens and are typically signs of trauma.

“We already know from global research that the pandemic has adversely affected mental health in youth, but we didn’t know what, if anything, it was doing physically to their brains,” Marjorie Mhoon Fair professor and director of the Stanford Neurodevelopment, Affect, and Psychopathology (SNAP) Laboratory

The House is on Fire Stress Changes the Brain

Naturally, this transition isn’t easy. Students struggled to acclimate first to quarantine, then the return to normalcy. This was evident in our behavior. However, the changes that students’ brains have suffered are worse than initially thought, because, as a recent Stanford Medical study revealed, this damage is reflected in physical changes. In other words, psychobiological damage impacts adolescent behavior on a deeper level than simply “struggling to adjust.” The striking fact is that the post-pandemic world is new territory: a worldwide study on psychological damage with no possible control group.

The house is on fire. Teenagers’ social, emotional, and academic development is struggling post-pandemic. While efforts are being made by the Tamalpais High School administration to provide mental health support, many believe more could and should be done.

The pandemic caused rapid maturation of adolescents’ brains. The Stanford study, titled “Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Mental Health and Brain Maturation in Adolescents: Implications for Analyzing Longitudinal Data,” compared the results of stress from the pandemic to the proven impacts of “violence, neglect, and family dysfunction,”

at Stanford University, Ian Gotlib, said. Gotlib is the first author of the study.

The field of stress research and especially its physiological effects is relatively very new. The earliest acknowledgement of stress in a scientific context was in the early 1900’s, when neurologist Walter Cannon first described the “fight or flight” response. In the study of an organ that, in many ways, remains a mystery, the Stanford study was crucial research.

“As a result of social isolation and distancing during the shut-down, virtually all youth experienced adversity in

Beyond our years

the form of significant departures from their normal routines. In addition, financial strain, threats to physical health, and exposure to increased familial violence were alarmingly common during the pandemic,” the study explains.

So how do these physical changes impact adolescents’ behavior? Reduced cortical thickness can cause increased impulsive and risky behavior, disturbances in attention span and memory, increased risk for psychosis, and even potentially lower IQs, according to various studies published in the National Library of Medicine’s National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) between 2013 and 2018.

The growth of the hippocampus and amygdala occurs naturally as people age. This growth is the result of an incredibly complex system about which little is known. However, in simple terms, increased activity in these parts of the brain causes them to rapidly grow more neurons, which is what happened to many of us.

The amygdala coordinates emotional responses to triggers, such as fear as a response to threats. But a larger amygdala early in life is associated with an increased risk for mood disorders like anxiety, according to a 2013 study also conducted by Stanford.

“The larger the amygdala … the stronger its connections with other parts of the brain involved in perception and regulation of emotion, the greater the amount of anxiety a child was experiencing,” the Stanford Medicine study states. This phenomenon also occurs in other animals.

According to a 2021 article published by the NCBI on the functions of the amygdala, this region of the brain plays a key role in both emotional processing and stress response. It processes a spectrum of stimuli from simple to complex interactions. The amygdala generates and processes not only emotions, but other types of signals like loss aversion, monetary loss, and actions with potentially negative outcomes. It is responsible for our perception, reward system, vigilance, attention, motivation,

and ability to respond appropriately to situations. The amygdala also processes people’s more volatile emotions and responses, like aggression.

Like the amygdala, the hippocampus is evidently important for social, emotional, and academic development. Yet, little is known for certain about the specific functions of the hippocampus. Prominent theories often show connections between the hippocampus and regulating learning, memory encoding and consolidation, and spatial awareness. However, according to a study published in the Oxford University Press, we do know that the hippocampus is especially vulnerable to damage from things like seizures, head trauma, and stress.

has worsened post-pandemic, according to a press release by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in March 2022. Put simply, things were bad before. Now, they’re worse. A summary of survey findings published in 2019 by the CDC further confirms this alarming truth. This survey showed that “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness increased by 40 percent from 2009 to 2019 for U.S. high school students.”

Another 2022 press release by the CDC revealed that more than half of students experienced emotional abuse at home. One in ten percent experienced

Out of the Frying Pan, into the Fire

Grey matter is one of the most significant parts of the human brain. Cortical thickness, which decreased while the amygdala and hippocampus grew, refers to the width of the cerebral cortex, a folded sheet of neurons with a width of usually a few millimeters. Many studies, including a 2020 study conducted by neuroscientists from Vanderbilt University and the University of Maryland show that the cerebral cortex is important for language, memory, reasoning, thought, learning, decision-making, emotion, intelligence, and aspects of one’s personality. The study concluded that when cortical thickness decreases as a result of “toxic stress” leads to greater cortisol release, the stress hormone, which lessens executive function. Toxic stress refers to any prolonged, frequent or severe adversity, which for many, quarantine was, as our brain physiology shows.

The pandemic exacerbated stressors in many areas of life, for all demographics of people. Students who relied on school as a social-emotional outlet and support system were forced to stay in abusive, unstable, and unsafe home environments.

The rate of teen mental health issues was increasing before the pandemic and

physical abuse by a parent or other adult in the home, including hitting, beating, kicking, or physically hurting the student. Nearly one in three percent reported a parent or other adult in their home lost a job.

However, marginalized groups were more heavily impacted. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and Black students were among the most likely to commit suicide during this period. According to a 2020 survey by The Trevor Project, a global nonprofit, 40 percent of LGBTQ+ youth seriously considered suicide in 2019. In 2021, the number hit 45 percent. When asked by

“We already know from global research that the pandemic has adversely affected mental health in youth, but we didn’t know what, if anything, it was doing physically to their brains.”

percent), and “nervous” (54 percent).

COVID-19 more severely affected people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and low-income people in the United States. According to an article published by the United States Census Bureau (CB), Black Americans had higher rates of “economic and mental health hardship.”

The CB compiled a list of reasons for this: insufficient housing, food insecurity, and an already higher risk of mental health problems like anxiety and depression. Black Americans are not the only group experiencing mental health problems as a result of the pandemic at a disproportionate rate. A 2020 study published by the CDC clearly reflected that people of color, women, LGBTQ+

ing else. There were negatives and pos itives, although that fails to capture the scope of the experience. It shaped us as a generation for better or worse. Now, it’s time to focus on how best to support ad olescents in readjusting to a different life once again.

What Does this Mean for Tam?

Administration and teacher’s re sponses to a generation of students with rewired brains is something that should be handled with utmost care: the situation is complex, the research is new. These psychological changes were unprecedented and there’s really no protocol for a universally traumatized population, which is arguably what adolescents are suggested by these studies to be at this point.

There is a full spectrum of student opinion when it comes to the effectiveness and efficiency of administration and teacher’s responses, attitudes, policy changes, etc. Genuine efforts of teachers to support students post-pandemic rarely go unnoticed.

Americans, among other marginalized groups, plus younger Americans in general, showed a decrease in mental health during and after the pandemic.

“I was depressed, it was one of the first times I’ve experienced mental health that bad. I think I changed a lot from [the pandemic], in a way I know myself better now, I’m more close to myself in a way,” Tam senior Avi Perl said.

“[During COVID], school, for me, for the first time, became unmotivating and unstimulating,” Tam senior Eleanor Octavio said. Yet, like Perl, she also gained valuable skills, “Stress levels were definitely 10x higher after COVID, but to be honest, I came out of COVID with the ability to communicate with others so much more productively.”

The experience of being suddenly cut off from almost everyone we know and any sense of normalcy was like noth-

“What I’d ask for from some teachers and members of administration would be to be more understanding, maybe more respectful of our mental health and our needs when it comes to school. Just, sometimes a general sensitivity to students’ [experience] is needed,” Perl said.

Octavio agreed. She believes more sensitivity can and should look like concrete action. “Giving a little time for adjustment would be really beneficial. Also, putting increased resources towards Wellness and peer mentoring programs, since we are seeing more people needing to use these programs.”

However, on the other side, those in education must rapidly adapt to something for which there aren’t exactly guidelines.

demic. Fifty-six percent of public schools reported an increase in “classroom disruptions from student misconduct,” 48 percent reported an increase in “acts of disrespect towards teachers and staff,” and 49 percent reported an increase in “rowdiness outside the classroom.”

Students’ development within the classroom is suffering in a multitude of ways. We now know that the pandemic affected adolescents’ ability to focus, exercise self-control and good decision-making, motivation, emotional regulation, mood, memory, and even increased our risk for disorders like anxiety and psychosis, among other things.

But how do these changes actually

“What I’d ask for from some teachers and members of administration would be to be more understanding...of our mental health and our needs when it comes to school.”

look in a classroom setting?

Tam High’s teachers can certainly speak to the challenge of teaching post-pandemic. For some, these behaviors are on a very minor level, for others it is severe enough that teachers themselves experience burnout. According to an article that Forbes published this year, 90 percent of teachers experienced burnout.

U.S. History and AP U.S. History teacher Jennifer Dolan is alarmed with

hard, instead of, you know, demonstrating persistence and grit,” she said.

Dolan is also concerned that her current students may not be as prepared for the AP exam, in May, as her previous classes. She attributes this in part to an unwillingness to go beyond the bare minimum.

“I think she’s an amazing teacher who really values her students’ well-being. She’s really caring and empathetic,” Gigi Schulman, current senior, said of Dolan and her classroom environment.

Being a teacher post-pandemic has proved difficult for Dolan regardless. “It’s just challenging me in ways I haven’t been challenged in a long time. You know, I’m having to kind of go back to things I had to try when I was a new teacher. Because classroom management is an issue now,” Dolan said.

As a teacher of 25 years, she doesn’t expect to have to consider these factors. She doesn’t think her students are bad kids, she emphasizes. However, she believes that core skills, from successful note-taking to a general respect for a classroom environment, need to be retaught.

years, she also feels like a new teacher. With these new challenges, Levine emphasized the fact that she, like all educators, is teaching against a backdrop of mental health crisis.

“There is a more serious undertone to what happens, there’s so much pressure … students need to be reading, they’re developing their literacy skills, but also I don’t want students to go home and not sleep and be stressed and overly anxious,” Levine said.

These factors add an element of pressure to the job. Being a teacher has always been a big responsibility, but now, stakes seem incredibly high.

Levine believes that building positive relationships with students and ex-

isolated and unfocused on a level she hasn’t seen in a long time.

“So I’m seeing much more of students just like, standing up and walking across the room and starting a conversation while I’m talking. And they’re not bad kids, they just, it’s like, they haven’t been constantly reminded of how we have to act, when we’re in a small group of people are, like in a classroom setting,” Dolan said.

“I think a lot of people got used to teachers being pretty easy graders, because everything was just so up in the air. But as teachers returned to a level of, ‘this is what the work looks like,’ it’s very frustrating and scary for some kids. They go straight to like, ‘I can’t do this, it’s too

Essentially, Dolan’s class is concerningly not interested in each other or in the material in the way pre-pandemic students are. She does believe that students who missed the second half, who are now seniors, did miss less crucial time in school than her current juniors. Her own past students, current seniors, speak to this.

“Her class was totally different from [how Dolan describes her present class], we weren’t quiet. We would talk about the stuff we were learning,” Tam senior Cayden Alley, said.

Abigail Levine, who teaches Strategic Peer Mentoring and Core English, also feels constantly challenged teaching post-pandemic. Like Dolan, she is also now having to consider behavioral issues and classroom management as well as her curriculum and student’s academic success.

Although she’s taught for twenty

plicitly teaching behaviors, especially to underclassmen, is crucial in helping students get developmentally back on track.

She thinks this process will be a collaborative effort between students and educators, “The world still expects people to show up and do school the traditional way. Maybe we need to rethink how we do things as educators, I feel that would look like a partnership between what students need to do and what we need to do in education,” Levine said.

Students and teachers alike seem to want clarity and structure dealing with the post-pandemic transition. As Levine said, “We’re all kind of acting in the dark a little bit.”

Yvonne Milham, Tam High’s Wellness coordinator, has worked in schools for the past two decades.

“Putting increased resources towards Wellness and peer mentoring programs [would be beneficial] since we are seeing more people needing to use these programs.”

“What we’re noticing is that resilience is a lot lower. There are things that bring students to Wellness that may have not in the past. For example, people realizing maybe they’ve studied the wrong material in a test and not being able to cope with that. I’ve seen the reactions of students and they do seem different than past reactions,” she said.

She has observed that regulating after a student’s reaction has been triggered is also more of a challenge.

“We give students 10 to 15 minutes to regulate in Wellness. In the past, that was absolutely enough time, it takes students a lot more focus now.”

Milham also speaks to what it truly looks like when students miss multiple years of socializing.

“In the spring, students will come in curious about how to ask someone to prom, things that maybe just would’ve been more natural before,” she said. “You miss middle school, maybe even freshman year, you miss those moments. When we’re talking about dating, and asking people to dances and doing things like that, [school] is sort of preparation for adulthood and relationships.”

Dean of Student Success and history teacher Nathan Bernstein explained that teachers have the choice independently to acknowledge the pandemic at all.

“At least in my classroom, there was a lot of understanding and saying like, okay, we need to slow down and reteach stuff,” Bernstein said.

While this is something, it’s nowhere near enough to combat the severe, lasting effects of the pandemic.

future the study implies. It’s unclear at this point how these changes will affect us long term.

The house is on fire, and we want help. Teens are aware we’re struggling, and that can’t be argued. Many are afraid for our futures as students with potential neurological changes that we don’t yet understand scientifically.

However, this isn’t a death sentence for our ability to regulate, process, socialize, and learn. Not at all. The human brain, particularly the adolescent brain, is incredibly powerful.

“There is always hope - plasticity may be important in repairing or taking over function of brain areas affected by trauma,” Gotlib said.

The extent of human’s neuroplasti-

We do not yet fully know what the brain is capable of when it comes to repairing pandemic damage. Yet we do know there are ways to effectively treat the results of other trauma, both on severe and minor levels. Bottom line, because of our brains miraculous ability to heal itself, there is undoubtedly hope.

As UNICEF’s title of their 2017 compendium on adolescent neuroplasticity states, adolescence is “a second window of opportunity.” The text clarifies that little is known specifically about applying neurological theories and findings to intervention, echoing what has been said by Gotlib and many others.

Teens are more prone to what the document refers to as “patterns of behavior” — where common habits and choices, such as less sleep, spiral into a highly problematic cycle. However, according to UNICEF, “it is crucial to understand that adolescence is also a window of opportunity for positive spirals – establishing healthy patterns of behavior, and social and emotional learning that can increase positive developmental trajectories.”

Although the situation is uncharted territory, it’s nuanced, complex, and relative, we do know for a fact that part of this problem can be solved simply by teens interacting with each other.

“It’s not all bad. Go talk to your friends, but actually talk to them. Be in a group and make eye contact, be impacted by what someone is saying. I will 100 percent say that hanging out with your friends and truly being there, sharing similar experiences, it’s great for your brain. I’m seeing positive change, in the last year, the teenage mind is very resilient. There’s a lot of change that can still happen,” Milham advised.

So What Do We Do Now?

We are back in school, and many students are adjusting well, but just because quarantine is over doesn’t mean students aren’t experiencing lasting effects. Our mental health, and ability to succeed in school, socially, and later on in adulthood is struggling. It needs to be acknowledged and managed, as we don’t yet know whether the damage is irreversible.

Neurologically, our generation is different from teens born just a few years earlier. Our brains are older than our chronological ages, as emphasized in an article published by Stanford University, which goes in-depth on the uncertain

city, essentially our brain’s ability to rewire its structure, is also a relatively new area of study. Yet the small amount of research almost always reaches that same conclusion.

To summarize an article published by the American Psycological Association last year, while the teenage brain is highly vulnerable to negative change in stressful environments, that same system allows our brains to repair and positively rewire themselves in healthy, supportive environments. Our brains can be repaired at any age, yet in adolescence, we are primed to do this. This neural circuitry is arguably the teenage brain’s greatest strength.

The pandemic was terrible in many ways. Teachers, students, and all people alike experienced brain changes and the strain of a disease infecting the world. We all deserve empathy as we repair and come to terms with this damage.

As people with developing brains, teenagers need support, these changes are not something we are equipped to handle ourselves. A responsibility to research teen development and to create systems and programs that support the issues we need you to understand we have. We need those trained to put out this fire to do everything possible not to create a generation marked by pandemic trauma and further drag on this incredibly challenging period of history. ♦

“The world still expects people to show up and do school the traditional way. Maybe we need to rethink how we do things as educators... like a partnership between what students need to do and what we need to do in education.”

GSA advocates for gender neutral changing rooms

By Caden Bernstein-Lawler

Tamalpais High School’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) met with Assistant Principals Andy Lieberman, Tara Ranzy, and Karin Hatton on Jan. 25 to discuss improving the gender neutral changing room.

Currently, Tam High has a designated gender neutral changing room in Ruby Gym, but it hasn’t been ideal for those who need to use it.

“It was always filled with people that were vaping there, people would skip class in there, and I used to be late for class like 50 percent of the time when I used it,” sophomore Thilonius Dahms said.

“It doesn’t feel very validating and it just feels like it’s not where you should be,” Haven Armistead, another non-binary student, said about the gender-specific changing rooms.

Dahms started the conversation with the Tam High administration about the need for a new system. They

discussed the issue initially over email with Lieberman.

“All three of [the assistant principals] came to one of our meetings and all three were incredibly helpful and are trying to work with us through this,” Dahms said.

Another change discussed involves the gender neutral bathrooms, such as the one in Wood Hall, having a pass so that people who don’t feel comfortable using other bathrooms get priority. Students may have noticed signs on gender neutral bathrooms reading “Special Pass Only” which is part of the new system designed by GSA and the Tam High Administration. This is intended to make sure that the bathrooms are used more exclusively by those who do not feel comfortable in the gender-specific bathrooms.

“The purpose of this pass which you can get by talking to people in the office or coming to us [at GSA] is try-

ing to be more exclusive to people who only feel comfortable using the gender neutral bathroom,” GSA co-President Jess Lester said.

Gender-neutral bathrooms will occasionally be locked during class hours to prevent drug use. However, this leaves non-binary students with no designated bathroom. The new system is designed so this is no longer an issue.

“I wanted a safe place to use the bathroom and that was my safe place and then they [gender-neutral bathrooms] were locked,” Armistead said.

The new systems around gender-neutral changing bathrooms is currently taking effect as GSA and the assistant principals continue to meet. The GSA co-presidents said they hope to take more active steps in making the campus a safer space for LGBTQ+ students.

Pop-up prom drive to promote sustainability at Tam

By Colette Hale

For the past five years, Stephanie Young, a licensed social worker and active parent in the Tamalpais High School community, has helped to run Tam’s Pop Up Prom Drive. This event aims to create community at Tam by providing formal wear for everybody and anybody who wants to attend prom.

In 2018, Young started the event informally with a few students who needed extra support obtaining formal wear, and eventually it grew into an actual store. She had the idea to start the store because she thought it would be a great way to bring everyone in the community together.

This year, Young is running the event with Tam junior Sophia Weinberg. Their goal is to get as many students to donate prom attire as possible and get students involved in the community, that way there can be enough items for everyone to get what they need.

“It’s an event where everybody feels included, because it’s not about

affordability, it’s about sustainability. It’s a green event,” Young said.

It is an eco-friendl event because it promotes sustainability and allows students to rewear items so they don’t have to buy new ones.

“We try to consider all items and think if someone would want to wear it. We try to take everything because you never know what someone will want,” Weinberg said.

This year the drive is taking place from Feb. 4 until the end of March, and students can go get their formal wear on March 30 and 31, when the store opens. Students can drop off their donations at the Mill Valley Community Center or the Tam High office. Additionally, the student-run business, KK Swaps, will also be accepting donations at their next sale on March 11 and 12, at 224 Laverne Ave.

Students of all grades and genders can go to the Pop-Up Prom Drive, and everything is free. Last year, there were about 200 dresses, 50 suits and a couple 100 pairs of shoes. Around

200 students were fitted, and everything that was not taken was shared with San Rafael High. Additionally, on the second day of the sale, all schools, public and private, were able to come and shop for prom attire, which will be a continued practice this year.

“I would love for students to donate any formal wear that they have because this ultimately is for them. I would like him to know that there will be a place set up on March 30 and 31 in the Ruby gym, where everyone will be welcome to participate by donating and taking formal wear so they can be prom ready,” Young said.

Transparency: Sophia Weinberg is a section editor and reporter for The Tam News. To remain impartial, she was not given access to edit or pre-read this article ♦

“I set up a sign and six hearts at my favorite mural alley in SF, Clarion. I was joined by a person who was clearly both without housing and without food. They were engaged in seeking both. As I left, they stopped to reorganize the hearts into a display that better met their idea of ideal display.

When I pulled away in the truck, they came walking out of the alley . . . carrying all six hearts. My first thought was, well, that can happen when you release hearts into the wild. I’ll circle the block and offer to buy them.

When I came around the block, I saw them hand one to someone else, and now they were carrying only 2 . . . looking to give them away. I got a quick photo as I had to get back to work.

They were doing exactly what I asked, sharing their hearts.”

By Catherine Stauffer

In the midst of the pandemic, a movement of love was spurred by Mill Valley sculptor Tim Ryan as he began bending hearts out of the metal rings that form wine barrels; today he has made 1,290.

Affectionately deemed “The Heart Guy,” Ryan began creating and leaving piles of hearts around Mill Valley and its surrounding area, asking for people to share their hearts with those who needed it. The movement blew up online, taking a life of its own as Ryan started teaching others how to make hearts.

“I think it’s better having multiple hands touch something,” Ryan said. “There’s a certain amount of letting go of quality, but as I keep saying to people, you’re sharing your heart. I don’t get to say how deep the bends should be or how round your heart should be. It’s your expression.”

“Last week an amazing stranger asked for three hearts for a wedding, one for her, one for her new daughter in law, and one for the new in-laws. I had a couple rings left in the yard, bent them, she offered to buy them, and I declined. We share our hearts. When she picked them up she insisted on making a donation for me to buy more rings. She left enough for me to buy 80 rings, so yesterday I picked up 200 rings in Pacheco, and texted her my thanks for getting me to be active in this project again.

She responded, her RV burnt to the ground on her way to the wedding with all decoration and wedding dress destroyed. But she was safe, and able to salvage our hearts ... they were the altar at the beach wedding. I can’t make this stuff up, it’s such a beautiful intimate story of someone sharing their heart.”

Photos courtesy of Tim Ryan, additional photos by Catherine Stauffer

“The Heart Guy”: A photo essay

Anti-vape club starts at Tam High

By Lauren Felder

Like most other programs, Tamalpais High School’s Tobacco-Use Prevention Education (TUPE) task force dwindled during the COVID-19 quarantine and online school year. This spring, however, Spanish teacher Kelli McGiven and counselor Tyrone Robinson are finding a new team at Tam among students across all grades.

Previously, when McGiven taught Peer Resource — an elective class that’s making a return under a new teacher next fall — TUPE was integrated into those students’ curriculum.

“That was easier because I had a group of students that were already interested and invested in educating others on social issues … so right now I think the hard part is finding students that really want to do that work and are interested,” McGiven said. “[Substance abuse] can be a topic that may not be easy for all teens to discuss with their peers.”

Now, students interested in getting involved can anticipate twice-monthly tutorial meetings, ranging from 10 to 15 minutes to a whole period depending on what suits the group’s needs. This tutorial time will be primarily dedicated to preparing and practicing TUPE slideshows. These presentations will be given by students on the team to Tam’s ninth-grade social issues classes as well as middle schoolers at Mill Valley Middle School and Bayside Martin Luther King Jr. Academy.

“I think TUPE is an important program at Tam because students have access to these types of products earlier and earlier, so it’s important to be able to inform them about the consequences it can have on them … people don’t really think about the long term,” junior and TUPE member Zoe Lyko said.

Lauren Widdifield, another junior TUPE member, expanded upon the benefits of young people educating their peers on substance abuse. “Being close to the same age as the people you are teaching is beneficial because it’s more like advice from a friend … showing that there are other ways you can keep busy from first-hand experiences,” Widdifield said.

In addition to directed work time in tutorial meetings, TUPE members will have the opportunity to learn more about educating their peers and younger grades on a Feb. 8 field trip to the Marin County Office of Education. Spanning the full school day, this excursion invites high school peer educators to develop new communication strategies with their peers and the student population. County coordinators and TUPE peer educators are a few of the presently expected event guest speakers.

As with the tutorial meetings, this field trip will count toward students’ community service hours.

“Students will gain presentation skills, have time to practice presenting in groups, learn new facts about nicotine, tobacco, and THC; collaborate in site-specific teams to create mission statements to empower and enforce their work post-training,” an informational slide on the field trip explained

during an introductory TUPE lunch meeting held on Jan. 31.

TUPE at Tam operates under a harm-reduction model.

“The idea is that we don’t tell anybody what to do or not to do. We just provide information to the community so they can make better…healthier choices,” McGiven said. “Because sometimes students are vaping, or they have a Juul, but they maybe don’t know how many cigarettes [are in that pod], how fast they’re going through it, or think it’s vapor not chemicals in a vape pen … so I think it’s really about providing the community with more accurate information so they can make those healthier choices.”

To get involved with TUPE, email McGiven at kmcgiven@tamdistrict. org or drop by Room 200 with your interest. “Being a TUPE student representative is low commitment, high reward,” McGiven said. ♦

Sexual assault lawsuit against TUHSD persists

By Chloe Bowman

A man identified as John Doe, from Novato, is suing the Tamalpais Union High School District (TUHSD), claiming that he was sexually assaulted for three years by former Tamalpais High School tennis coach Normandie Burgos.

The lawsuit states that from 1999 to 2002, Burgos committed rape, sexual harassment, molestation, and sexual battery, during John Doe’s time on the Tam tennis team. Additionally, Doe is suing the district for negligence, because he claims that an employee walked in on Burgos molesting him, and did nothing to stop it.

“Doe’s allegations are the latest in a decades-long string of abuse claims against Burgos, who in 2019 was convicted in Contra Costa County on 60 counts of child molestation in Richmond,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle

Burgos is currently serving a 255year sentence at Mule Creek State Pris-

on in Amador County, after being initially arrested in 2017, on suspicions of sexually assaulting two minors.

“Burgos thought he was meeting a student but instead waiting detectives cuffed him, capping their 6 month investigation,” according to a 2017 article by KTVU News.

He was accused of sexual assault by two Richmond minors, one who was 14 when the abuse began.

The trauma that John Doe claims he endured at the hands of Burgos affected his personal life, decades after the abuse ended. He said he was unable to start a career until he reached his thirties, and had attributed a failed marriage as a result of the abuse as well.

“When I was raped, it’s something that steals who you are. It makes everything uncertain,” he said in the article. “I wanted to start this lawsuit because they took so much away from who I was.” ♦

Early release leading to academic unsettlement for student atheletes

By Kelsey Cook Tamalpais High School administration

preaches academics over athletics. There are rules in place that students must maintain a certain GPA and attend a satisfactory amount of classes in order to participate in school sports, but students are consistently having to leave their fourth or seventh period early during their sports season, which undermines this idea.

Do academics really come first, then? Tam has been allowing early release for years, partially because the school doesn’t have lights bright enough for night games due to nearby resident preferences.

“Early release can become really stressful for students depending on which period you miss, usually fourth or seventh,” varsity soccer player and junior at Tam, Julia Costle, said. Costle expressed how she missed almost all of her seventh period during her soccer season and had to put in a lot of extra work to stay caught up, which became difficult.

“Some teachers are not accommodating, so they don’t give extensions for the time you’re out of class. Your teachers think

school is the priority and coaches think sports are, so it’s hard to balance both,” Costle said.

Nowhere under athletic clearance or signups does it inform students and families that students will have to leave class early anywhere from 12 to 3 p.m., causing students to miss one or even two full class periods on any given day.

“I do like early release, but there is that huge setback where you’re behind in your classes and have to do extra work as well as having to watch the lecture again which gets tiring,” varsity baseball player and junior at Tam, Ryder Covey, said.

Covey wishes the school would let Tam athletes choose the period they miss.

“I would rather miss an elective over chemistry and math because those are really hard classes to stay caught up with,” he said.

Last year, when Covey was missing his fourth period English class, he said he had a C most of the season.

The school attempted to fix things by putting tutorial at the end of the day to let athletes leave without missing class during

the 2021-2022 school year, but it caused a large number of students to skip Tutorial. The result was the school moving tutorial to be between fifth and sixth period again. Now, on Wednesdays and Fridays, early release is as early as 12:50 p.m. and students miss the entirety of their seventh period class.

“It adds a little more work, but it doesn’t bother me. I think it’s good that the kids are playing sports, it makes them happy,” Tam history teacher Jon Hartquist said. He believes if there was a way the school could set up a schedule so students don’t miss the same class every time and have a rotation it could help.

“Despite early release, kids are pretty good at making their work up. In the grand scheme of things to worry about, this isn’t one for me,” Hartquist continued.

Early release and missing multiple classes every week can cause additional stress to an already fairly overwhelmed student body. The school needs to start accommodating student preferences and making students aware of the setback they may have in advance. ♦

The Entrepreneur Club

InMay of 2022, two Tamalpais High School seniors, Ben Kraaijvanger and Luke Bulger, founded the Entrepreneur Club. The club meets on Thursdays every few weeks and strives to teach budding entrepreneurs about the intricacies of starting a business and what it takes to be your own boss.

“What we wanted to do was create a place at Tam where people who are interested in becoming entrepreneurs can learn and grow that interest,” Kraaijvanger said.

“Yeah,” added Bulger, “and I don’t think that’s ever been done before. I’ve seen finance and investment clubs and stuff, but never a club for people who want to be their own boss.”

Both Kraaijvanger and Bulger have entrepreneurship in their blood. Kraaijvanger’s mother, Grace Kraaijvanger, founded and is the CEO of the Hivery, a local digital community and inspiration lab. Bulger’s father, Chris Bulger, has founded and runs

By Gabe Schwartzman

multiple successful sports camps across California.

It is no surprise that both Kraaijvanger and Bulger have a passion for entrepreneurship and wish to pursue it in the future.

“My mom has definitely inspired me to become an entrepreneur,” Kraaijvanger said. “Watching her start all of her businesses has shown me that this [entrepreneurship] is a real job that can make real money.”

With over 30 members, the Entrepreneur Club at Tam offers presentations by the two presidents along with frequent guest speakers. These guest speakers include local entrepreneurs who have made a name for themselves in the world of business and have the knowledge to share.

So far, the club has heard presentations from Helen Russell, founder of Equator Coffee, Warren Gendell, founder of Club Evexia, and Grace Kraaijvanger.

“The Entrepreneur Club draws in

crowds of students when they hold guest speakers, as it is a fantastic privilege,” said Kraaijvanger and Bulger, to be able to hear firsthand stories from people who followed their dream of becoming an entrepreneur, and succeeded. The speakers also provide a chance for students to ask questions, which is very popular amongst eager club members.

“I think people love the speakers because it shows that it’s possible to make it as an entrepreneur … if you work hard enough,” Bulger said.

Kraaijvanger and Bulger are both applying to business programs for their higher education, with Michigan being their first choice. They hope that since they started the Entrepreneur Club, they have been able to pass on their passion and knowledge to their peers at Tam High. Follow @tamentrepreneurs on Instagram for information on future meetings. ♦ MAY

PROFILE: TREVOR ISLAM

By Annie Shine

our 3-0 win,” Islam said.

Jack Knowles, senior varsity soccer player, explained how Islam’s mentality and overall energy have impacted the team the most this year compared to past seasons.

“Last year he [Islam] urged everyone to get into the right mentality, but this year he’s not only done that but shown what the right mentality looks like,” Knowles said.

Islam rarely takes a day off and is constantly aiming to improve his skills along with pushing the team to its highest potential. Whether it’s train-

his first years of high school, Islam quickly became a necessity to the team and the overall Tam soccer program. In the early pre-season months of Islam’s junior year, it had come to his attention that their prior coach had left and it was time to start hunting for a new coach.

Islam took it upon himself to search for a head coach and get in contact with parents and the current athletic director at the time. After several months of searching, Islam secured a head coach for the program who later led the team to the MCAL semi-finals

Trevor Islam, senior varsity soccer captain, born and raised in Mill Valley, Calif., has been playing soccer since he was just four years old. Currently in the Marin County Athletic League (MCAL) Islam is ranked No. 1 for the 21 goals he has scored this season, which is over double the amount of the No. 2 player.

Islam has played for three consecutive years on the Tamalpais High School varsity team and has been a part of the Marin Football Club (Marin FC) for seven years. For the past two years, he has competed on their U19 Blue team, which is the highest-ranked soccer team in Marin County.

So far this year, Islam has had three hat-tricks, meaning he’s scored three goals in one game. His hat-tricks took place in his second game against Terra Linda High School, Marin Catholic, and San Rafael.

“This season we played against Terra Linda and we had previously lost to them during our game on Monday, Jan. 16, which was a home game. Shortly after, on Jan. 21 we played them away at Terra Linda and I scored my first hattrick of the season, which resulted in

ing during his off days, thinking about what needs to be done in order to beat his next opponent, getting to practice early and being the last one to leave, Islam has done it all.

“He gets to practice early every day, and all the practice I’ve seen him putting in at the field over and over and over again has payed off. I’m extremely proud to be his friend … Trevor has put his all into soccer this year, it’s what he eats and breathes,” Knowles said.

After being on varsity early on in

and ended up being one of Tam’s most successful soccer seasons.

In past seasons Islam has played midfield, which is both offense and defense, so going into this season he was expecting to do the same.

“Starting the season I knew we had a lot of good players on the team but I wasn’t sure where they’d all fit in and what their roles would be, including myself,” Islam said.

Shortly after starting this season, head coach Shane Kennedy helped Is-

Photos Courtesy of Maya Breckenridge

lam identify where he was needed the most.

“Our coach Shane has helped a lot … Shane helped me improve and unlock more potential that I didn’t have in previous years. I’m proud of myself because in the beginning of the season I thought I’d be playing in the midfielder more often and not scoring as many goals. But as the season went on I learned I had more of a talent for that and I’m proud of myself for changing my game to provide the team with what it needed,” Islam said.

The leadership Islam has provided the team has impacted each teammate in different ways.

“Trevor is a leader on our team, he’s the lead goal scorer and he really brings everyone on the team up with positive energy and I really appreciate everything he has done for our team,” Louis Sherman, senior varsity teammate, said.

“Trevor has been such an impact player leading the team to so many great victories, he is a true leader and great captain,” Ian Murdoch, senior co-captain to Islam, said.

After an outstanding four years in the Tam soccer program, it is no surprise that Islam has built some of the strongest, long-lasting, friendships and relationships. The team unity and

leadership that Islam has brought to the program is showcased through the way he plays in games and his attitude on and off the field.

“This is definitely the best season I’ve ever had, but the number of goals I’ve had is definitely due to how well my teammates are playing. Because I play striker, I am in a position to actually put the ball in the back of the net, but the goals come from the hard work that the rest of the team puts out in order to make this happen,” Islam said. ♦