Two alumnae join Poly’s faculty and staff for the 2014-15 school year
Poly’s newest faculty and staff include two Poly alumnae, Julita Penido ’08 and Zanny Regas-Riewerts ’09. Julita has been working at Poly since April and became the Assistant Coordinator of the Summer and After School Programs in August. In this role, Julita is helping implement the new bus and after school enrichment programs, as well as assisting with the Poly Summer program, where she had the opportunity to teach a survival skills class to Kindergarten through fifth-grade students. Zanny joined the faculty in August as a Human Development teacher for the Upper School and will be teaching five sections of the class to ninth- and 10th-grade students. The curriculum covers a wide range of topics, from self-awareness and identity – and how that translates into learning styles – to health and sexuality. With the addition of Julita and Zanny, Poly’s faculty and staff now include 13 alumni – talk about Poly pride! Read more about Julita and Zanny’s experiences in their new roles and what led them back to Poly.
We had a chance to catch up with Julita Penido ’08 and Zanny Regas-Riewerts ’09, alumnae of Poly and two of the school's newest faculty and staff members. Julita is the Assistant Coordinator of the Summer and After School Programs, and Zanny is a Human Development teacher. (Pictured, left to right: Zanny Regas-Riewerts '09 and Julita Penido '08)
What is most exciting about being back at Poly?
J: Poly is a really nice community to work in. I have been receiving support from people who watched me grow up, and they are always helpful and encouraging.
Z: I went to my first morning meeting ever and realized that every student is amazing at 10 different things. I am so excited to work with them.
How does it feel to work with teachers who used to teach you?
J: I work with Jon Fay ’81, the Director of Summer and Extended Day Programs, who taught me math for two years and was my advisor, and it was a challenge to call him and other teachers and administrators that I had known as a student by their first names. The relaxed atmosphere of the summer program helped ease me into that transition, and it is definitely interesting becoming a colleague.
Z: I think it has been easier to come with a professional lens to Poly as a high school teacher since I only attended through eighth grade, so everything is a first impression. It is definitely nice to see familiar faces, though, and to have teachers remember me and reconnect with them. That has been exciting.
J: It really is nice how excited the teachers are to see us – we are their “products” in a way, so they take a real interest in who we are now. Also, the campus looks so different, so I didn’t exactly come back to the same place. I grew up in college, and I came back to a grown up Poly.
What were you doing before coming to work at Poly?
J: I attended Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts after spending 13 years at Poly. In college, I tried a little bit of everything, and after graduation I returned to L.A. to act. When I first moved back, I asked teachers at Poly if there were any summer work opportunities and ended up spending the summer of 2012 assisting with the Poly Summer program. The next summer, I taught pre-calculus at La Salle High School, but I returned to Poly in the spring of 2014 to help the school gear up for Poly Summer. Poly had just started trial runs for the new bussing and after school programs, and I began helping to coordinate those test runs. When the trials were a success and the school decided to launch full programs for the fall, I was hired on to the department as full-time support.
Z: After going to Poly for Pre-K through eighth grade, I transferred to Westridge for high school where I became interested in women’s rights. I initially wanted to go to law school, but I volunteered at Planned Parenthood while attending Colorado College and became interested in health and education. I didn’t know those two fields went together, but I became passionate about the inclusion of education in health services. After college, I moved to New York and worked at a women’s health clinic and at the Reproductive Health Access Project (RHAP), an organization that educates primary care physicians in reproductive health. In addition, while living in New York, I became trained as a birth doula. After one year there, I decided to return to Southern California, and teaching the Human Development curriculum at Poly seemed like a natural fit.
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