Ms. Abelli-Amen was born and raised in Massachusetts on a beach known as the "south shore" just north of Cape Cod and very close to the famous Pilgrim Rock! She earned her Bachelor's Degree in Geochemistry from the Massachusetts State University there on the south shore. Her next move had to have taken a lot of courage - she admitted to feeling some trepidation about it! Her mom even made sure she had a round-trip ticket to allow her to immediately change her mind once there and come home. She decided to move across the entire country away from her large loving family and pretty beach to attend foggy Humbolt State University in the very northwest corner of California. She earned her Masters Degree there in Geology and Environmental Systems. She also met her husband there who, after their wedding in New Hampshire, eventually took a job in Petaluma. Please click here to continue reading and to see some fun photos!

Trisha Shew grew up in Eureka, California, and attended schools there all the way through her first semester at College of the Redwoods when she got married at just 18 years old. Her husband was in the Coast Guard and his assignments took them from Cape Disappointment, Washington, to Cape Cod, Massachusetts and then to Two Rock right here in Petaluma. Trisha says she "loved traveling and discovering the treasures of new places and making new friends." Trisha says that she and the other Coast Guard wives became like family and they were a great support for each other when their husbands were "at sea" for weeks or months at a time - especially during the holidays. Fond memories of Cape Cod include very cheap lobster and huge "Crab Fests" in the base housing neighborhood. Please click here to continue reading this story.

If you did not know Ms. Bender, you might say that the most striking thing about her is that she is really tall! Once you do get to know her, you will find that she is particularly personable - just the type that makes a perfect teacher. She will tell you short stories about herself and you will then know that the most striking thing about Ms. Bender is her giving, sensitive spirit and desire to care for and be of service to others. To try and help make an entertaining story, she started this interview with four "cool things" from her life - but we'll get to those later. Ms. Bender is a dedicated iRide Petalumavolunteer (assisting seniors to & from appointments) and manages the serving of a weekly dinner for Redwood Gospel Mission, a nomadic shelter that provides evening accommodations. Ms. Bender also embraces charity opportunities as they come up. For example, she did a mission trip several years ago with her church to assist Native Americans at the White Earth Chippewa Reservation in Minnesota. This reservation is where her mother grew up and went to school. Although Ms. Bender grew up in Petaluma, Ms. Bender is a card-carrying member of the Chippewa Tribe! To return to those original four "cool things" from Ms. Bender's life... 

1) she was born the day Disneyland opened in LA!,   

2) she ran a marathon in Paris – and was an avid runner until an injury 14 years ago,

3) she skydived on her 40th birthday, and

4) on her next big birthday she plans to do the Camino de Santiago (a long hike primarily in Spain) - one of the most important Christian pilgrimages during the Middle Ages.

Although Ms. Bender is highly educated both from SSU and later Dominican College where she earned her Masters in Education and an Administrators Credential, she is also a life-long learner through extensive recreational reading. Last year she read135 books! And she has read over 90 this year (2018)!

Only a life-long learner would have been able to complete a 20-year business industry career, retire from it, and then begin a vastly different career in teaching.  Ms. Bender has been teaching in Petaluma for over 23 years - 10 of which were at Kenilworth.

Ms. Bender has three very fun possessions.  First is a Harley Davidson motorcycle. The motorcycle hobby runs in her large family.  She grew up with five brothers and two sisters and at least 3 or 4 of them have Harleys.  The second is a lop-eared bunny named Bucky. This lucky Bucky is a rescue, and third, Ms. Bender has a Clementine orange classic Volkswagen Bug - a project that employed a friend that restores cars.

Mr. Jamerson grew up in East Oakland and went to the public schools there. He graduated from Skylane High School. For fun, as a kid, he would ride his bike all over town and would ride bikes with friends to see movies at Grand Lake or Parkway theaters. Nowadays, he is a great Oakland A's fan but likes all Bay Area teams. He and his beautiful wife have two energetic young boys, ages 10 and 6. Currently, he is attending Sonoma State, taking 5 classes this fall and again this spring to earn his administrators credential. He earned his Master's Degree and Counseling Credential from SSU a few years ago.

Although clearly self-directed and motivated now about his professional path, it was not always this way for Mr. Jamerson.

His passion to become a high school counselor probably stems from his experience with his own high school counselors. Although in elementary school his counselor placed him in their G.A.T.E. program (for students with high test scores and creativity/leadership aptitudes), when he got to high school, a counselor or teacher did not help direct him or motivate him for his future. Mr. Jamerson’s parents were busy working and relied on their son’s school to prepare him for his future. Mr. Jamerson says that he never really thought of his future when he was a youth and, unfortunately, he did not see a role for himself as an adult.  

 A young, teenage-Mr. Jamerson began to direct himself through high school and discovered that if he purposely failed the more difficult courses then he could take them in summer school where the courses were much easier!  Mr. Jamerson loves sports and probably would have spent his entire high school career in sports but as a young 13-year-old, no one gave him the news that football practice started in the summer. In late August, when he asked about football, it was too late to try out.  Mr. Jamerson says that he greatly regrets not playing sports in high school. Soon after missing tryouts for football, from age 14 to 18, Mr. Jamerson worked year-round at three different KFC's and this enabled him to buy a car in his junior summer and stop taking the bus to school.

Upon graduating from high school, an 18-year-old Mr. Jamerson moved into an apartment with 4 other young men, in L.A. and started attending a junior college there.  Amazingly, he worked and paid for everything himself without any financial aid or parental support. He only went to college and took college classes because, he says, that’s what his parents expected him to do and insisted that he do.  He discovered an interest in film working for two different film producers and he was also hired as an extra in movies. He decided he wanted to write and direct movies. This interest came about once he discovered that movies can be for more than just entertainment and that they can inspire change and good.  The movie Birth of a Nation with Nate Parker was pivotal for Mr. Jamerson.

Mr. Jamerson discovered that he had finished all his general education courses at his L.A. junior college just by luck! He had never been counseled on what courses to take.  He went to live in Boston for a year and then drove to New Orleans to live there for a while. Deciding to get back into school and study film, Mr. Jamerson then looked at universities.  He wanted to go to NYU or to UCLA where his half-brother had graduated from, but he had never really tried to get good grades and so his GPA was not high enough to apply. He discovered that he qualified for San Francisco State and within a couple of months he was enrolled.  Mr. Jamerson’s finances were so tight that he had to crash enroll in every course and then pay his tuition at the end of each semester.  He did not know about financial aid and by a miracle, he says, he managed to pay for all his college and earn his bachelors degree in Cinema.

We are so happy to have Ms. Kesseru start this year as our new English teacher. She has been teaching for many years but she has not always been a teacher! Growing up in the '60s in Braddock, Pennsylvania there was much violence and unrest. Her dream there as a teenager was to become an artist and move to California. Although it took her three tries to finally move permanently to California, she did it! She also became a glass sculpture artist and studied in England for two years. Her hobby in her youth was windsurfing on the East Coast in Maryland where she and her husband built a house from scratch on a lovely country property with a creak. In Maryland, she worked as a contractor for the Navy at the Naval Air Station Patuxent River. Later, as a mother of 3 boys, she and her sons took up the hobby of gold mining in Quincy in the Sierras! For 14 summers they did gold mining with a friendly team of old-timer experts and have collected many nuggets!