One of the most unique aspects of Lick-Wilmerding High School is its Body-Mind Education program. Daniel Tesfai, the school’s climbing teacher, had a huge hand in building the curriculum students are introduced to today. But before he became a part of the LWHS community, Tesfai spent his time branching out in multiple non-profit organizations all over the city.
Tesfai graduated from San Francisco State University in 2001, where he majored in liberal studies and elementary education. At SFSU, he began his non-profit work with the San Francisco Urban Service Project (SFUSP), an organization that works with local schools to unite in encouraging young student leaders to promote social change. While working with the SFUSP, Tesfai produced a gardening project that introduced kids to recycling.
photo courtesy of Daniel Tesfai
Eventually, Tesfai began to become more involved with environmental justice in the Bay Area. He worked with Literacy for Environmental Justice, a program that focuses on environmental advocacy. At the time the goal of the project was to shut down a power plant that was encroaching on the local community. The program educates its members on how to advocate for more federal support and provide communities with resources they do not have access to, such as local grocery stores or pharmacies.
“A lot of the people in the community we served worked in a shipyard. And as power plants developed, most of them didn’t understand the health issues that were spreading among community members,” Tesfai said. “So the core focus of my work was to spread that knowledge.”
Tesfai worked with his friend and program manager for Literacy for Environmental Justice at the time, Sherlina Nageer. “She was the first one that actually introduced me to public health education. And that opened up my eyes to other types of work, aside from traditional work as a teacher or work in business or law.”
For Tesfai, working with kids has always been a lifelong passion. As a teenager, he would spend his summers working as a camp counselor where he built a strong foundation in working with young people. Tesfai said, “It was really about the human experience and working with people, especially young people…I just really enjoyed teaching someone something new and working with them to see them grow as they go.”
Eventually, Tesfai was introduced to the LWHS community.
Thirteen years ago, Tesfai ran the children’s climbing program at a local climbing gym when his friend, Marisol Sullivan, the climbing teacher at the time, approached him, looking for help developing the LWHS climbing curriculum.
Tesfai agreed to help and began his LWHS career as a substitute teacher for Sullivan. Over time he helped Sullivan cultivate a curriculum that not only taught students the basics of climbing, but approached it in a way that made it less daunting and more encouraging for hesitant students.
photo courtesy of Daniel Tesfai
During that time, however, both Tesfai and Sullivan were applying to graduate school. “The running agreement between us at the time was that I’d hold the spot for two to four years until she had finished grad school, and then we’d meet up and pick back where we left off,” Tesfai explained. “Long story short, she didn’t come back, I’m still here.”
The course is centered around trust and vulnerability. The goal is not to get students to climb as high as possible, but to help them build the confidence and trust to go one step further than they had gone previously. “It’s important to take your personal perspective away from it,” Tesfai said. “Remember that this person is in a vulnerable state right now and ask yourself how I can best support them?”
This year, Tesfai has taken on an additional role as the Director of Coaching and Compliance for the athletics department. It is a job he describes as “nurturing the partnership between students and coaches to better understand what the community needs.”
Tesfai truly is a jack of all trades at LWHS. “I like to think of my role here as wearing many different hats,” he said. Outside of the climbing classroom, Tesfai coaches the Girls’ Varsity Basketball team, has led leadership workshops for students and has become a central figure in the school’s Senegal program.
During his time as a coach, Tesfai has led many teams to victory — most recently the current Girls’ Varsity Basketball team winning the BCL championships. Tesfai discussed the similarities between his teaching and coaching styles, mentioning that the importance of trust and confidence remain constant values in every aspect of his job. Tesfai said, “Basketball has always been a kind of safe haven for me…and I hope that, through my coaching, I can bring the same joy and passion that I had when playing.”
Tesfai’s passion for non-profit work and leadership building also shines through in the LWHS community. At LWHS, he is heavily involved in the youth leadership organization The Pact. The Pact is a group designed to present more leadership opportunities to students of color at both LWHS and the Urban School of San Francisco. Leaders are trained to serve as mentors for younger students across San Francisco independent schools and aim to build supportive communities between high school and elementary school students. “It’s an organization that’s very near and dear to my heart and presents such a great leadership opportunity for so many students,” Tesfai said.
While he has had the opportunity to share so many facets of his life with the LWHS community, perhaps one of the most unique projects has been Tesfai’s involvement with the school’s Senegal program.
photo courtesy of Daniel Tesfai
For the past eight years, Tesfai has worked alongside Kate Boyd and Youssou Fall to plan out the program and the experiences that students could get out of the trip. “We’re providing an opportunity for students that may have never traveled outside of the US before as well as providing an experience for students to travel with a different perspective from their own,” Tesfai said.
The Senegal trip revolves around providing educational resources to villages in more rural areas of Senegal. The architecture program helps the project design different models of school buildings for the village to choose from and the students on the trip help the village to build them.
“It’s not us just working and building these schools. We’re working hand in hand with villagers and the kids that are there. It’s a very cross cultural experience,” he said.
Tesfai’s hope is that the students recognize the beauty in the differences of people’s lives and he said, “We’re all humans here in this world and I think the most important thing is to keep an open mind and have a willingness to learn something new.”
photo courtesy of Daniel Tesfai
