Three of Lick-Wilmerding’s long-serving teachers—Suzanne Shimek, Martha Stoddard and Goranka Poljak-Hoy—will head off on their sabbaticals next semester. Here’s a look at who they are, how they plan to spend their time off and what they are leaving behind at LWHS.
Teachers can apply for sabbatical after seven years of teaching at LWHS, and can request a fall semester, spring semester, or full year sabbatical. For their second sabbatical, teachers must have taught at LWHS for at least 15 years, and for seven years since their first sabbatical. Head of School Eric Temple makes the final decision as to who is granted a sabbatical and when.
Photo by Gabe Castro-Root
Suzanne Shimek
English teacher Suzanne Shimek, sees her sabbatical as a chance for her to explore the outdoors and pursue areas of interest that she does not have time for while teaching. Shimek teaches English 3 Honors and the senior seminars Gender and Sexuality in Literature and Utopian/Dystopian Literature. She has been teaching at LWHS for eleven years, and will go on sabbatical for the first time this spring.
“The thing I’m most looking forward to,” Shimek said of going on sabbatical, “is being able to regulate my own time so that I can get outside in the mornings to go hiking and biking.” She also hopes to improve her kayaking skills and learn more about web design.
“I love how she makes us think,” said Hannah Levenberg ‘21, a student in Shimek’s 11th grade English 3 Honors class. “She’s really energetic when she’s in front of the class.”
Shimek said that what she will miss the most about being at LWHS is interacting with her colleagues and her students on a daily basis. “There are so many wonderful people here. It’s like an overloaded buffet table; you don’t have the time to spend with everybody you want to,” she said.
While many of Shimek’s students are disappointed to have her for only one semester, Shimek says she is not worried about her students’ transition to a new teacher. Teachers from the English department will be taking over Shimek’s classes; Michecia Jones and Christopher Schenk will take her 11th grade classes, and Katie-Rose Breslin will teach her senior seminars. “I have total faith in the English department,” Shimek said.
Shimek will only be gone for one semester, and wondered “if anyone will notice” her absence in that short time.
“I’m definitely going to miss her,” Levenberg said. “She’s a great teacher.”
Photo by Gabe Castro-Root
Martha Stoddard
Martha Stoddard teaches instrumental music, coaches JV Boys Tennis, and serves as the chair of the Performing Arts department. This is her 30th year at Lick-Wilmerding.
Next semester, Stoddard will go on her second sabbatical. She plans to use her free time to pursue her personal passions, including musical composition and tennis. She is looking forward to the freedom of being able to play tennis more often, and she hopes to travel to Hawaii or Florida for a weeklong tennis intensive.
In June, Stoddard and other Bay Area musical composers will put on a concert with the Friction String Quartet at The Center for New Music in San Francisco. Stoddard said she is excited for the challenge of composing a piece of music for a string quartet, as she has never written that type of music before.
Though she is looking forward to spending time pursuing her own interests, Stoddard also expressed sadness at the prospect of leaving her classes. She wanted her students to know how much joy they have brought her this year. “I’m having a lot of fun with the kids,” she said. “There’s good music happening, so much creativity, and so much energy. It’s just really fun.”
Julian Mendiola ‘21, who has been taught by Stoddard in Big Band and Advanced Combo, agreed: “She really encourages creativity to be used in the classroom,” he said.
Throughout her time at LWHS, Stoddard says she is most proud of “sustaining an instrumental music program in the face of many challenges, getting kids involved and helping kids be the best musicians they can be in the context of their lives at school.”
Part of this program is encouraging students to own their artistic expression through music. Mendiola noted that Stoddard’s emphasis on creative individuality in music has been a clear focus in her classes. “She encourages you to express your sentiments through your music,” he said.
During her sabbatical, Stoddard’s department chair position will be filled by Kate Boyd, who currently teaches stagecraft. Her classes will be taught by two instrumental music coaches who have worked with her classes several times in the last few years.
Stoddard hopes that in her absence, she will leave a legacy of interest in instrumental music and open mindedness about being an artist.
Mendiola says he has already felt this legacy. “She’s definitely been one of those teachers that will forever have an impact on me,” he said.
Photo by Gabe Castro-Root
Goranka Poljak-Hoy
It’s a simple fact of life at Lick-Wilmerding that Goranka Poljak-Hoy commands the utmost respect of everyone on campus. “When she walks in and there’s another class going on, you can tell that the kids have respect for her,” said Luna Jiang-Qin ‘21, a student in Advanced Architectural Design.
Poljak-Hoy, the chair of the Visual Arts department, teaches all three levels of architecture, as well as Contemporary Media and Art for frosh. This is her 30th year at LWHS, and in the spring she will go on sabbatical for the second time in her career.
During her first sabbatical, in 2004, she and her husband travelled around the entire northern hemisphere, spending much of their time in Asia. This time, they plan to explore the southern hemisphere.
Poljak-Hoy and her husband will spend the first three months of her sabbatical in Australia and New Zealand, before returning home to welcome her nephew’s new baby. Poljak-Hoy also hopes to visit her father in Bosnia, and to travel more in Europe.
She said that this year feels like a good break point in her career, and that having time “to refresh and re-energize” on her sabbatical will allow her to “stay teaching for a bit longer.”
One of Poljak-Hoy’s favorite ways to refresh is by reading. The demands of teaching often do not allow allow her to read as much as she would like, so she plans to spend her sabbatical catching up. “I have a huge list of books, but one of the books that I’m really looking forward to reading is The Avignon Quintet by Lawrence Durrell,” she said.
Due to Poljak-Hoy’s sabbatical, architecture courses this year were only offered during the fall semester. “I will really miss her presence on campus, and especially in the architecture room,” Jiang-Qin said. The advanced architecture students “are all really excited for next year when she’ll be here.”
Poljak-Hoy, too, expressed disappointment over what her students will miss in her absence. “I feel like there is this little chunk of design and creativity, a challenging sort of exploration, that’s not going to happen,” she said.
On a personal level, she said she would be sad not to see the students she has had for nearly four years through to their graduation. “I love the energy I get from them, the uplifting, positive, loving relationship that I have with my students that is just going to be absent from my life. I don’t think that that can be substituted with anything,” she said.
Rafe Hessekiel ‘20, who has had Poljak-Hoy for his entire LWHS career, said he was extremely grateful to her for her teaching the past four years. “She’s critical, but in all the right ways,” he said. “She’s a perfect role model of everything that everybody should want to be.”
