Name: Carla Harkness

Age: 61

Occupation: Teacher at Saint Mary’s College High School and long-time Albany Adult School teacher in memoir work

Please tell me more about yourself. I’m a mom of two grown children who went through Albany schools. I was an active volunteer in the Albany school system. Then I worked as a teacher’s aide and a substitute teacher for four years at the elementary level. After my son was born, I took time off to raise the kids. I was also a free-lance writer, and I wrote about women’s health issues, and that led to my role here as a health educator.

This is my 17th year here at Saint Mary’s. I love the community here. Students come from all over the Bay Area – Oakland, Vallejo, Hayward. A third of the students have some form of financial aid. It’s a very diverse population in religion, race, and gender. It’s beyond a school – it’s a community.

What are you teaching now? I’m teaching a brand-new freshman class [part of a three-year course]. At the freshman level, it’s the theory of knowledge: “How do we know what we know?” I’m also teaching something I call “High School 101” – we cover time management, fitting in at school, note-taking.

How did you become a health educator? In the mid-90s, when the school went co-ed, they wanted someone to create a teen health program. When I was interviewing, they said, “We need a health teacher.” I said, “ I would love to do that!” The course takes a holistic approach. We look at nutrition, with a real emphasis on healthy, organic, “slow” food, and the importance of exercise for your heart. We talk about sleep a lot, and emotional and mental health; peer pressure; healthy relationships; the effects of divorce on a family; all manner of drugs. We also talk about addiction in class, and the warning signs.

Do you have a parent-education component in your health course? I invite parents in as guest speakers. I send information home electronically about what we’re doing in class; I send home readings, which I hope the students share. We have a few parent information nights.

What kind of response have you gotten from your students? It’s been well-received. Students have come back and told me how it’s helped them make good decisions.

Tell me about your memoir-writing class at the Albany Senior Center. I started the memoir-writing program through the Adult School in about 1994. In our first class, I lead them through an exercise where they visualize a place they loved as a child. Then they turn and tell someone else about it. Then I ask them to write it.

In 1994, in one room, we had a Polish woman, a Jew, who had run from the Gestapo, a Marine from Guadalcanal, a man from the French Resistance, a woman who survived the London Blitz, and a Japanese man who, in 1945, at age 14, was about to go out as a kamikaze when Japan surrendered. It was unbelievable; we were often just in tears.

You’re teaching students at both ends of the age spectrum. I have taught four sets of grandparents [at the Senior Center] and grandchildren [at Saint Mary’s].

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