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Alumni

Where Are They Now?

Did you know that we currently have four Black Pine Circle School parents who attended the school themselves as kids? Indeed, it’s true. Learn a little about how they feel our school has changed—or not!

Mary Ann Pearson
I attended Black Pine Circle School from 1977 through 1979, Kindergarten through 2nd grade. Now I am a special education teacher. I work at a small non-profit, non-public school in Alameda, Children’s Learning Center. We work on a contractual basis with school districts to serve students with behavioral and social skills challenges.

My daughter gets a real kick out of the fact that she goes to school where I did, and loves looking through old school photos of my sister and I during our Black Pine Circle School days.

The basic principals of exploration, music, and the fun of learning are still the same at Black Pine Circle School. But wow, things have been taken up a notch! I can’t get over the music program, the math club, and the many specialists who come in and work with our children. On more than one occasion, I have found myself wishing I could do it all again.

Jean-Gabriel Bankier
I was at Black Pine Circle School for three very formative years of middle school—1976 through 1978. I’m excited to share that I have just been appointed President and CEO of the Berkeley Electronic Press.

The most significant change I saw when I came back to Black Pine Circle School, and it was bittersweet, was to find that a library had been built on our prison ball terrain. In all seriousness, however, I’m more struck by the things that have stayed the same, such as the emphasis on creative thinking, intellectual curiosity, and music.

Erik Price
I attended Black Pine Circle School between 1973 and 1981, Kindergarten through 7th grade. My two brothers, Matty and Daniel, also attended. I’m currently an assistant commissioner at the Pac-10 Conference where I help the ten universities in our league operate their athletic departments and sports teams.

The Lower School is remarkably the same as it was forty years ago. I think its consistency is part of the reason it feels so cozy and nurturing to new families. In my opinion, the biggest and best difference at Black Pine Circle School is the creation of the Upper School at its separate campus across the street. Many people don’t realize that K-8 was once housed completely at the Lower School facility, using combined-grade classrooms. It was intimate, to say the least! Nowadays, the middle school years at Black Pine Circle School are more vibrant, more sophisticated, and they offer students a much more exciting experience.

Edith Friedman
I was at Black Pine Circle School from 1975 through 1977, 7th and 8th grades. I’m currently a fundraiser for a nonprofit that works on global health.

Size seems to me the most salient difference between Black Pine Circle School then and now, and perhaps the emphasis on community service (not something I recall from my time at Black Pine Circle School). I’m most impressed by the elements that seem to me unchanged after three decades: teachers and staff whom middle-schoolers find trustworthy and thought-provoking; the emphasis on music; and a congenial group of students who make newcomers welcome. Black Pine Circle School was a haven for me in 1975, and it seems to be again for my son.

STUDENT ALUMS – INTERVIEW WITH DYLAN MATTINGLY
CLASS 2005

Dylan Mattingly is an 18-year-old musician and composer who graduated from Black Pine Circle’s Upper School in 2005. He started playing the cello at 5, composing music at 7, and picked up the piano and electric bass at 11 and 12 respectively. He played in Black Pine Circle’s Upper School orchestra, even composing some pieces for the group. He was also a member of the Berkeley Youth Orchestra, studied at Crowden School of Music, worked privately with David Ramadanoff, conductor of Young People’s Symphony Orchestra and former Assistant Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, and as a seventh grader tied for second place in a Cincinnati Conservatory composing competition (the first place winner was 22!).

After graduating from Berkeley High last June, Dylan now attends the Bard College Conservatory of Music in New York, double majoring in Music Composition and either History, Classics, or Philosophy.

I interviewed Dylan by email, to check up on what he’s doing now and to get some perspective on how attending Black Pine Circle School has contributed to his life, musically and otherwise.

How did your years at Black Pine Circle School influence you?
In predominantly good ways. There are always things that are exciting [in life], those things you wait all day for. Usually they’re the smallest things. For example, today I’ve waited all day to come home to attack Babylonia in Civilization III (a computer game), to write down a particular moment of music that’ll amount to no more than ten seconds of a ten minute piece, or even just to finally fall asleep after nodding off all day. But my years at Black Pine Circle School framed the world in such a way that everything in it could be something exciting.

When Mr. James assigned a project in 8th grade that was to research anything in history that we had questions about, I got butterflies in my stomach. Mr. G would make it so that math was a crafty mind-sport (like I’ve always thought of pitching in baseball, which is a sport I play), and math problems would pose themselves as intricate codes waiting to be cracked. Ms. Caruso had us read and understand books that I am still re-reading in college classes. I recently used things I learned about the Oresteia in my 7th grade English class in my Athenian Century class at Bard!

Black Pine Circle School advertises itself as an institution deeply engrained in the Socratic method. The Socratic method goes much further than simply “asking questions.” Black Pine Circle School gives its students the possibility to find the joy in the questions themselves, and that’s what really matters.

Is there a particularly memorable teacher or incident from your Black Pine Circle School years that you could describe for us?
Mr. James, who is now gone (though I presume his legacy remains!), has been one of the prime inspirations of my life since I first became aware of him (in 6th grade? before?). Never before and never since have I met anyone who could speak so eloquently and make every moment of the day seem like an elaborate form of art. I’ve found that an essential ability is to be able to make the most drab, boring things in life interesting. Mr. James made all of life seem like undiscovered territory.

For the Science Fair in 7th grade (I think), my friend Sam and I had decided to build a crossbow. We were deep into construction of the bolt when Mr. James knocked on the door of the Science room and called us into his office. Naturally, I assumed the worst. I was shorter than the plaque on the door, and it was terrifying to look up at the word “Headmaster” as I walked in. He told us to “have a seat,” in his scholarly British accent. Sam’s shoes rattled against the floor. Mr. James sat behind his desk. “I hear you boys are building a crossbow,” he said. I was preparing for guilt. “I have three crossbows,” he continued, “including one that I built in the last month. I use them for shooting rats on my houseboat. Or naughty children…” His wicked sense of humor was enough to bring out the devious fun in anything. I love writing music more than anything, and I won’t be able to spend my life doing anything else. But man, do I want to be a History teacher like Mr. James.

What was not so great for you at Black Pine Circle School?
Being thirteen is not fun. Even if you think it’s fun while you’re thirteen, you’re wrong. There is nothing good about being thirteen. Human beings are at their most vulnerable and their most vindictive. When you are thirteen, hold through. You will be fourteen, and it will be better. And parents, don’t worry. When you worry that your kids are becoming dangerously malicious creatures, they’re just thirteen. It’s not your fault.

Could you please describe the role music has played in your life thus far?
I started going to my brother’s violin lessons when I was two weeks old and continued for 8 years. When I was five, I thought that I wanted to play the flute or the harp. My mom told me that because those were hard instruments, I wasn’t allowed to start until I was six. So instead I picked the cello. I don’t know what force was driving me towards the harp, but I’m very glad I was dissuaded. I do not like the harp.

At the behest of my cello teacher, I started writing little bits of music when I was seven, for practice reading. I kept writing. My original intention was to create music that I liked, as I erroneously and arrogantly thought that I had found all the music that I was going to like that was already written! My musical horizons have since broadened and I find this a ridiculous claim, but I still intend to write the best music to fit my personal experience.

Music is my optimal language, I use it to seize moments of my life and preserve them, sometimes just out of curiosity, sometimes out of nostalgia, sometimes because I want them to last forever. Whether or not I’m able to make a career or writing music is inconsequential– it won’t stop.

How did attending Black Pine Circle School affect your musical development?
The sense of wonder in exploration, the Socratic environment of Black Pine Circle School, no doubt helped instill in me this passion to find and record the strange beauties that escape us through time, to keep exploring the world, because despite the field of cartography reaching an unsurpassable climax, most things are still undiscovered.

What chances or risks have you taken in your life that have paid off?
When it comes to the normal things that you think of when you think of “taking risks,” I’m honestly not much of a risk taker. I’m not really into dangerous but exhilarating activities, nor do I enjoy doing things just because they’re risky. The one aspect of my life where I have really taken risks is with other people. One of the great pleasures of my life has been to allow myself to have deep personal attachments to particular people– truly a risk, as people are often irrational– but the reward of having people who I feel I can trust, understand, or just be with to withstand the strange winds of the “Oncoming” is worth it all.

On a less serious note, I am also an excellent RISK player, the board game. Some tips for those of you out there: When taking a continent, look at how many countries border another country from a different continent. Australia has 1, South America has 2, North America has 3, etc. You must divide your armies evenly between these countries, so be careful of spreading yourself too thin!

Do you have any advice for Black Pine Circle School students in terms of their own explorations that involve risk or taking an unknown leap?
Everything you do in life will be a risk. You never know what the unintended consequences of any action will be, so go ahead and be bold, but choose your risks carefully. Quality over quantity.

SENIOR SENDOFF EVENT

Black Pine Circle School held its first annual Senior Sendoff this year, a reception to celebrate the Class of 2006’s graduation from high school and to congratulate them as they embark on their next adventure.

“I was profoundly moved by seeing the tall, handsome boys and confident girls amassed last evening. How they have grown! Not just in height, but socially – they were so poised. And the proud parents – it was good to see them too.

Where are the going? Swarthmore, Smith, Yale, Columbia, UC Santa Cruz, USC (film school), University of Colorado, University of Wisconsin, NYU, CAL, University San Diego, Davis, and more…

What are they studying: Veterinary Medicine, Neurobiology, Interactive
Media, Engineering, Ecology, Medicine and such innovative studies as the 3/2 program in which you study one discipline for three years at one university, then switch to another for two and graduate with both a BA and BS!

A very cute and touching ending to the evening was finding a group of them inside the tunnel (the concrete pipe) on the yard, comfortably chatting as if no time had passed.”

Almost alums: Where are they going?

by Lesley Jones, Communications Coordinator

As the academic year comes to a close, BPC’s Class of 2010 is looking ahead to high school with mixed feelings: sadness at leaving friends and teachers they may have been with for 9 years, and excitement about moving on to a new adventure. Which schools will they be attending? As in past years, our 8th graders will be fully prepared to move on to a variety of excellent high schools in the East Bay and beyond.

This fall, approximately 30% of BPC’s graduates will be attending Berkeley High School. This year, we’re pleased to report that BPC had a record number of students, 9 in all, accepted to College Preparatory School. It’s worth noting that 100% of our students who applied to The Bentley School, St Mary’s and Bishop O’Dowd were admitted. Four of our 8th graders will be going on to Head Royce, a larger number than in years past.

We also had students who applied and were accepted to Marin Academy in San Rafael, and we will also see students traveling across the bay to San Francisco for high school, notably at The Urban School.

We wish the graduating class of 2010 every success in high school and beyond!