Meet Ms. Tipton

Monica Tipton grew up in Capistrano Beach, Southern California.  She is Mexican, Native American, and has a bit of Greek in her as well. When she was younger, she wanted to be either a cowgirl or an actress, but when she realized that being a cowgirl wouldn’t exactly work, she settled on an acting career.  Mrs. Tipton describes her childhood with just a few words: challenging, with many ups and downs.  “I couldn’t have done it without my loving, wonderful, grandparents,” she says.  When she got out of high school, she went to work and started college.  Ms. Tipton went to UC Irvine where she earned her bachelor’s degree in drama and graduated with honors, receiving her master’s degree in education.

Her favorite things to do are cooking, traveling, and working on her 85-99 year-old house. She loves Hawaii and would like to travel to Europe some day.  She also likes to sing Broadway and folk music.

When asked if she likes her teaching job, she replied with a smile, saying, “If it ain’t fun, find something else!”  Mrs. Tipton had three amazing teachers that, she said, made school fun for her. In the 1980s’ she realized she liked the “hands on” learning approach.  Ms. Tipton says, “I am so happy that New Tech High and I found eachother: we’re the perfect match.”  She has a 14 year old step daughter named Kate, and a 28 year old daughter named Dana, who lives in Las Vegas.

Towards the end of my interview with Ms. Tipton, she told me that she feels deeply about treating each other kindly, and that we should all take care of each other. She likes PBL a lot.  In 1983, it was her 24^th year of teaching, and she still really enjoys it.  She has been involved in project based learning since the 1980’s, and she continues to this day. She likes it better than having to sit through lectures and doing book work. As you can see, our principal, is a very important and interesting part of our New Tech staff. If it wasn’t for her, our school wouldn’t be what it is today.

–Aresellia Martinez

Meet Mrs. Gauger

 

               Mrs. Kate Gauger was born in San Diego, California. The best thing she remembers about her childhood was when she would come home after school and her mom would be making butterscotch cookies, and she’d eat them with a big glass of milk. She spent two years at William and Mary College in Virginia and then she moved to Boston for a summer and came back to Santa Barbara for her last two years of college, then lived in Seattle for a year, and finally came back to California.  Mrs. Gauger really wanted to be a lawyer but that didn’t seem to work out, so she decided to be a teacher. She’s married and has three kids, her eldest is Matthew, they then had Ellie, and their youngest is Sarah. Mrs. Gauger enjoys playing with her kids and hiking with her family. She likes New Tech because it encourages students to think about their own learning. Mrs. Gauger would like her students to remember when they leave her class and go on to the tenth grade that attitude is everything.

Mrs. Gauger is a very nice teacher; she likes to make sure that her students know what their task is and that they know how to do it. She also loves to teach, you can always tell that she loves her job that is a very good thing for a student to tell because they know they’ll be helped when they need it. Mrs. Gauger works with her students as if they are very precious to her. So let’s give a shout out to Mrs. Gauger who is dedicated and cares about what she’s doing! (I’m not being sarcastic!)

–Kamilah Smith

Meet Ms. Hamler

  

Heidi Hamler is New Tech High’s internship coordinator, and has been for the last three years. She is also a graduate from U.C. Davis, as well as a mother of a middle school student. Her job field prior to New Tech was diverse, yet mostly in the field of hospitality. She worked for over six years as a manager for small inns, and then another five plus years at The Doctors Company (Which is a Medical Malpractice Insurance Company). She served as a volunteer at the Napa Community Counseling Center for several years and also worked as a volunteer educator for the Junior Achievement Program. As for her work at New Tech High, she worked as a manager in the New Technology Foundation office.

                Next, is her education, she actually went to a small all-girls high school, seemingly smaller then New Tech, judging by the fact her graduating class was only 73 seniors. She gained high grades in school, helping her go to college, which is where she got her experience for internship counseling in her first college job. This is what partly has lead to her job here at New Tech.

                Outside of her job life, she has multiple activities: hiking, reading, scrapbooking, dancing, spending time with her family and friends, as well as being a mom. Her proudest achievement is actually having a kid. As for her feelings on her job, she is quite happy with it, and said it is a pretty close equivalent to her dream job.

 –Alexander Shuck

Meet Mr. Solberg

Tom Solberg, our vice principal at New Tech High, was born and raised in California and has lived in Napa for 12 years with his wife and two daughters. He went to Pacific Grove High School and attended the University of Hawaii but graduated from Humboldt State University. After graduating, He worked 15 years at various marketing and management jobs including PepsiCo and U.S. Wind power. He has been teaching since 2000 and continues to teach two classes of World Cultures at Vintage High School.      

His Inspiration to become a teacher was from his father. He said his dad was an excellent teacher and taught him everything he knows. His favorite part about teaching is working shoulder to shoulder with all the kids and helping them with projects, but his absolute favorite part about teaching is when they have their aha moments, when he looks at the students and sees the look on their  face where they finally get what he’s teaching them.  

If Mr. Solberg wasn’t a teacher he would love to be an ecotourism operator. An ecotourism operator is where you give tours to different people and show them how important our environment is and how much we need it to survive. Even though he’d love to be an ecotourism operator he loves his job as a teacher and vice principal more. His goal as a Vice principal at New Tech is to learn as much as he can about New Tech and his goal for being a teacher is to help as many kids as he can.

–Courtney Dierolf

Meet Jeanette Cherrington

All of us see Jeanette Cherrington in the office. She is a responsible secretary and the one person you can go to for help, but few of us actually know her.

 She went to a Catholic High School. She worked at Bank of America for 15 years. At first she was going to be a nurse, bur she decided that she didn’t like blood! Mrs. Cherrington said, “If I weren’t a secretary I would want to be a pianist.”

When she was a child, Mrs. Cherrington used to live in the country. Her hobbies were making forts and gardening.   Her interests outside of school are cooking and walking her dog. Mrs. Cherrington’s favorite movie is ‘The Wizard-of-Oz’. And when it comes to food she loves to eat almost anything! And of course, watching T.V.

– Ritu Pamer

Her inspiration is her dad. She loves him a lot. She graduated with a business award. She has been married for 26 years. Her most proudest achievement was becoming a mother! One thing that she learned about being a mom was that you have to care about someone else than yourself.

Mrs. Cherrington adores Tech. What she likes the most about it is that it’s a small, but loving community of close friends and companions.

Meet Ms. Zmed

Lilliana Zmed was born on September 14, 1981 in Scottsboro, Alabama where she acquired her love for grits. She enjoyed her childhood and remembers being shy and quiet. She also remembers that her mom always planned fun birthday parties and that she gardened with her dad. She moved to Los Angeles with her family shortly after her fourth birthday.

She had fun during her freshman year because she met her best friend. At the end of her 9th grade year she moved to Amherst, which is a small town is Western Massachusetts. In Amherst she started her sophomore year at Amherst Regional High School. It was a difficult transition for her, but learned to like it. She graduated in 1999 and then went to Rollins College. She stayed there for two years and then went to London in 2001 (she was there during the 9/11 attacks). She decided to take the next semester off and took classes at Berkeley to decide where she wanted to transfer to. She decided to go to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. She spent the next two years living in the South, but decided that the south wasn’t for her long term.

After she graduated she went to live in Boulder, Colorado. The most beautiful place she has ever lived. There she worked as a Para-educator in a multi-intensive Special Education classroom. After hiking in the Rocky Mountains she applied to Graduate schools. She decided to go to the University of Massachusetts, in Boston. She lived, worked, and went to school in Boston for two years, while she completed her Masters in Education with a licensure in School Counseling. Then she decided to go work in the west for warmer weather. Now she is our counselor at New Tech High. Out side of school she likes to hang out with friends and play games or go shopping, she also likes exercising and eating good food. Her proudest achievement is her Masters Degree.

– Cole Gevurtz 

Meet Denise Plowman

Denise Plowman has lived in Napa for almost all her life.  She graduated from Napa High School and has two sons named Dale (13) and Willie (8).  She also has a dog named Truck and a Siamese cat named Kar. A huge music fan, her favorite bands include the Red Hot Chili Peppers and AC/DC, and she has also been accused of being an Eminem Fanatic.  Her favorite pastime is swimming and floating on the lake. She is an Oakland Raiders and a Nascar Racing fan (her favorite car is #22, the Caterpillar Car).  She became a supervisor because she didn’t finish college and wanted to work with children. When she grew up she originally wanted to be a child psychologist.  Before she actually worked with kids, she took up a job in inventory control. She attended the JC college for 2 years.

– Kelsey Meagher