Back by popular demand for a third consecutive year and open to students entering grades 7 -12, the Global Leadership Youth Program (GLYP) begins on Tuesday, June 21. We are so excited to announce the talented instructors that will be joining us to facilitate GLYP. In partnership with La Jolla Country Day School, SDDC has recruited these experts from our community to help create the best possible program for our students.
Lorrie Culver
Lorrie Culver is in her 14th year as a faculty member at LJCDS. She currently is the Coordinator of Library Services and Research and the yearbook adviser. Lorrie is passionate about encouraging a life-long love of reading for pleasure and keeping that curiosity spark alive.
She lives amid the avocado and fruit trees of Fallbrook and can’t live without her Meyer lemons. Lorrie has traveled extensively and chaperoned a group of upper school students in Zambia and Botswana as they learned about the culture and how to build mud huts. She is the proud mother of two grown sons.
Lorrie earned her BA in English from Chapman University (go Panthers), her MBA from Pepperdine and an MLIS from San Jose State University.
Marisol Irwig
“I inspire greatness for a better world by educating with a creative, lively and purposeful perspective to benefit student’s academic and personal goals. I believe that genuine care and respect for our community will help students to understand the importance of their daily contribution to our school and society.”
Maria Irwig, M.A.Ed., believes that giving full attention to everyday details in the classroom will help students to understand the processes of learning based on trust and meaningful teacher-student relationships. As the MS World Language Department Chair & 5-6 Spanish Teacher, Mrs. Irwig’s role is to provide the tools to understand the function of the Spanish language and its interconnections with our immediate and extended communities.
Mrs. Irwig’s career as an educator began in Mexico over 15 years ago. She has served as a performing arts and world language teacher in various schools. Before joining LJCDS in 2019, Mrs. Irwig created and established a Spanish language curriculum for a K–8 school, as well as a performing arts program that included Grades 4–8 concert band, Grades 5–8 jazz band and marching band, and K–8 musical theater.
Mrs. Irwig enjoys spending time with her two daughters and husband on road trips to federal and state parks. She also loves to bake and cook.
Colin Dalton
Mr. Colin Dalton joined LJCDS in the middle of the 2019–2020 school year as an Upper School humanities educator. He teaches World Cultures and Contemporary Problems and AP Psychology. He has also taught U.S. history, and an introductory government course.
Mr. Dalton earned a Master of Arts in Education from the University of San Diego and his bachelor’s degree in American History from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Before joining LJCDS, he taught AP U.S. History and AP Government at Summit Shasta Public High School in Daly City, CA. He helped in the development of a project-based curriculum and served as a mentor/advisor to a group of 25 students while there.
Mr. Dalton lives in La Mesa, loves rugby and is a huge Golden State Warriors fan. In his spare time, he loves to travel, and spend time with his wife and dog.
Robin Stewart
“I inspire greatness for a better world by honoring my students’ dignity and by nurturing their ideas and intellectual creativity. I enthusiastically cultivate the potential in each of my students, and I encourage them to embrace literature and philosophy as catalysts to reflect on the possibilities for our world.”
Robin Stewart has been teaching English at La Jolla Country Day School since 2004. Prior to LJCDS, Ms. Stewart taught at an independent school in Macon, Georgia, and as an adjunct for a San Diego Community College. She received her Bachelor of Arts in English literature with a concentration in peace and conflict studies from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and her Master of Arts in African languages and literature from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
As a student, Ms. Stewart wrote poetry, played basketball and rowed crew. As a teacher, she continues to promote a love of poetry and a social conscience. She has served as a policy debate coach, facilitated the Amnesty International Club, and led student activities to celebrate diversity and global citizenship and promote equity and justice. As part of those responsibilities, Ms. Stewart has chaperoned LJCDS student representatives to the National Association of Independent School’s Student Diversity Leadership Conference (SDLC) for many years. She also facilitates the annual LJCDS Hope Conference, which is a student-led day of education and inspiration to embrace diversity with dignity and is modeled after SDLC.
Ms. Stewart is passionate about teaching sophomore English and senior English, including the senior elective World Beat: Literature of Africa and the African Diaspora, for which she is thrilled to utilize her graduate studies.
William Doege
“How do machines and devices work? Automobiles, wind generators, smartphones? Why do objects move and behave as they do? An airborne soccer ball, a bicycle, an airplane, the solar system? What are the scientific ideas behind their operation? From my childhood to now, I have always wondered how and why things work, and through teaching physics I aspire to stimulate a similar curiosity and enthusiasm in my students. I inspire greatness by facilitating lab activities that allow students to directly gather evidence for physics ideas in a hands-on manner, such that they are able to better understand where the ideas and equations originate. Then my students apply these ideas to solve engineering-like problems, to explain how vehicles move and devices function, and to design and build their own devices.”
Bill Doerge hails from Pittsburgh, and he started his career as an electrical engineer for Motorola in Phoenix, Ariz. While working with middle school students as a volunteer, he became interested in teaching. He has taught high school and college physics in both Arizona and San Diego. He also worked as a science curriculum developer and physics instructor at the Center for Research in Math and Science Education (CRMSE) at San Diego State University.
Mr. Doerge particularly enjoys working with students on engineering projects, which have included an electric vehicle conversion, robotics competitions, Rube Goldberg machines, solar-powered vehicles and a rideable hovercraft.
Outside of school, his interests include hiking and cycling, both on and off road.
Our upcoming Global Leadership Youth Program gives students valuable skills including negotiation, global awareness, and an understanding of diplomatic processes. We are thrilled to have these instructors join team members Jessica Frank (Program Director), Lulu Bonning (Program Officer) Julia Masias (Youth Program Associate), and Jonathan Shulman (Academic Director for LJCDS) to bring our community’s young leaders GLYP Summer 2022.
Click here to register for the Global Leadership Youth Program
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