Both students and staff alike make lasting memories between school years. As Northwood reopens its doors, we asked what vacations, programs and hobbies staff members took part in over summer break.
“We went to Italy. We flew out the Sunday right after school ended and landed in Venice and spent a few days there. We then took a train to Florence and then all the way down south to Apulia to some beaches down there… It’s really, really beautiful. I could’ve spent a week just there… Back home, when there’s waves, I like to go surf. Otherwise I’ll just bike down to the beach and hang out at the beach and go body surfing. It’s been kind of gray and gloomy in the mornings most of the summer and the water’s been kind of cold at times, so it hasn’t been the best summer for that, but that’s what I usually do in the summer.”
— Bryan Hoang (history teacher)
“My wife, my daughter who’s 7 and my son who’s 5—we went up to Oregon. We stayed outside of Bend on the Deschutes River, so we just did a lot of floating on the river, went to some caves, checked out some waterfalls and just got lost in Oregon, which was pretty cool. I also organized my vinyl collection by genre. My family says I have too many records, but I don’t think you can ever have too many records. And I did a lot of gardening. It was a summer well spent.”
— Peter Fatzaun (librarian)
“At the beginning of summer, I went to Finland. I went to Helsinki for an education research conference, where we presented work about climate justice education—because everyone’s trying to grapple, ‘What exactly does meaningful climate education look like?’ That was really cool to be able to show what we do in the climate course at Northwood, which is truly innovative, and all the researchers are like, ‘Wow, this could actually happen at a public school.’ Another professional learning I did was a climate equity institute by TERC, which is a research organization. It was a week-long institute where we stayed at the lodging at Arcadia National Park. We saw the Milky Way at night, northern lights—it was beautiful.”
— Nelly Tsai (science teacher)
“I spent a lot of the time in Crestline near Lake Arrowhead. That’s kind of where my little weekend getaway is, so I spent a lot of time with my girlfriend and my dog. We’re looking at opening up a book business pretty soon, and pretty much preparing for a big new year with the Marching Band… In terms of vacationing I did a little bit of short car trips, camping trips, and then realized that summer’s really not as long as it should be.”
— Aron Murillo (percussion coach)