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June 2009 > Faculty > Honors
Writing Project's Tateishi Feted at Retirement Celebration
BAWP Teacher-Consultant Gerald Reyes Alameda County Schools Superintendent Sheila Jordan honors Tateishi with a plaque. BAWP Teacher-Consultant Laury Fischer Tateishi receives an extended standing ovation
for her 19 years of service.
If there was any doubt what Carol Tateishi’s 19 years of exemplary service at the helm of the Bay Area Writing Project means to Bay Area schools, it was quickly dispelled as a crowd of well-wishers packed UC Berkeley’s Pauley Ballroom to honor the BAWP Director on her retirement on June 5.
The tributes came from all quarters and in all forms: speeches, video montages, spoken word and humorous anecdotes, but they sounded as one family in what BAWP Teacher-Consultant Patsy Lockhart described as “a true demonstration of love.”
Perhaps none of the 10 speakers — BAWP Teacher-Consultants Betty Pazmiño, Patsy Lockhart, Gerald Reyes, Rebecca Garcia-Gonzalez and Laury Fischer; children Sarah and Stephen Tateishi; GSE Dean David Pearson; National Writing Project Executive Director Sharon Washington, plus dozens more who paid tribute remotely via video — spoke more eloquently than Laury, who said:
“A leader is someone who inspires you to do your best work. It sounds pretty easy. It’s not easy. [Writing Project founder] Jim Gray and Carol did that. They made us all better teachers, educators and people.”
When Tateishi’s turn at the podium came, she spoke of her special affection for UC Berkeley for opening doors to students of merit in 1932, including her father and a whole generation of Asian Americans after that. She honored Gray as a man with a simple and profound idea: that successful teachers make the best teachers of other teachers. “He developed the teacher network model before there was even a word teacher network," she said. Tateishi also acknowledged the “great privilege” of getting to work with so many dedicated people in the audience and elsewhere.
She looked ahead, too: “We need to ask ourselves to take on things that we aren’t ready to do and find the means, the allies, the funding to succeed just as you do in your classes and other places of work every day.”
Co-Director Adela Arriaga, who has worked closely with Tateishi, will become the new Writing Project Director.
Additional photos from the event are available here.
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