This story was originally published in the Spring 2012 issue of Harker Quarterly

Debra Nott, director of nursing, hosted a meeting of the Nurses Association of Santa Clara County in the Nichols Hall rotunda on Feb. 8. Nott is president of the group, which meets thrice yearly to discuss issues relevant to school nurses and to provide continuing education. Before the meeting, the visiting nurses were treated to a campus tour. “Since all the other nurses are from public schools, you can imagine how impressed they were with our campus,” said Nott. “They kept asking me if I planned to retire any time soon!”

After the tour everyone did some networking, then sat down to enjoy a delicious buffet dinner catered by the Harker kitchen staff. “The rotunda was a beautiful venue and the catering staff did a spectacular job of setting out food that was not only delicious, but beautifully presented as well,” said Nott. During dinner, the Nurses Association heard two speakers on Autism Spectrum Disorders, a growing issue for schools. The first speaker was a young man with autism who spoke of his experience attending school and the challenges he faced. The second speaker was Dr. Pilar Bernal, whose practice deals exclusively with children and adults with autism.

RewindRevise.com, a prominent national blog on poetry and writing, interviewed Alexandra Mattraw Rosenboom, upper school English teacher, on poetry, art and the joy of teaching at Harker.

In the interview, Rosenboom said, “Poetry is everything,” adding, “Writing is that innate and inherent in my perception and the way that I live …. It is so inherent in what I have to do to be happy.” Rosenboom, who holds a B.A. in creative writing from UCLA, an M.A. in humanities from the University of Chicago and an MFA in poetry from the University of San Francisco, advised aspiring writers: “Of course, write every day.”

Rosenboom also spoke of her experience teaching at Harker. She said she loved being a teacher and felt lucky to spend her time with “brilliant and inspiring students while swimming in readings and discussions of James Joyce, Toni Morrison, Camus, Shakespeare and Dostoevsky.” She added that without Harker’s support of her passion, completing her MFA would have been much more difficult.

Rosenboom published her first chapbook, “Projection,” through Achiote Press, and is working on a new book titled “Inside the Mind’s Hotel.”