Sweet Home Calaveras

For many high school students in Calaveras County, graduation offers the opportunity to free oneself from what Mark Twain Elementary teacher Jeff Airola described as the “Calaveras bubble.”

Students are free to explore the broader world or, as many local teens phrase it, escape. What many students may not anticipate is that even after branching out into the greater environment Calaveras County may call them back.

In a 2008 video produced by Bret Harte High school students, faculty and staff who were also Bret Harte alumni were profiled and interviewed. Students sat down with a handful of these alumni and showed an even larger group in a final shot of the video, enough to fill a classroom.
The trend is not unique to the southern end of the county. Calaveras Unified superintendent Mark Campbell named no fewer than 30 faculty and staff who had all attended school at a Calaveras Unified campus.

“This is off the top of my head,” said Campbell, a CUSD alumnus himself. “I think I am missing some bus drivers, maybe a Valley Springs Elementary teacher … this is what comes to mind.”

For many of the alumni, identifying with current student desires to leave the county is not a foreign feeling. The majority of staff interviewed agreed that they too had been eager to experience life beyond Calaveras, but their hometown communities inevitably ended up calling them back.

Sara Tutthill, a P.E. instructor at Mark Twain Elementary who graduated from the school’s 1991 eighth grade class, found herself back in Calaveras after feeling disconnected from the Valley community she was commuting to each day.

“It felt nice to have that sense of community back,” said Tutthill who took over her position from her own prior P.E. teacher.

Both Airola, a history teacher at MTE, and math instructor Brian Barnett agreed that the county’s small town tight-knit feeling is alive and well.
“It takes me about ten minutes to reach the first aisle of the grocery store,” joked Barnett while Airola said that when family members visit him they liken the experience to “travelling with a rock star.”

“It can definitely be a little strange seeing your students out in the community. You feel like a celebrity, especially during fair,” said Tutthill.
That small town atmosphere is what appealed to Lisa McInturf, current principal at Toyon Middle School and a 1977 alumnus of Calaveras High school. A self-described “Bay Area transplant,” McInturf largely credited CHS staff for encouraging and supporting her after her family moved to the county during her freshman year.

“I was a city girl coming to the country. I didn’t know anyone, but the staff made me feel so welcome. I remember being invited to ride to a football game in Sonora sitting on hay bales in the back of a pickup truck.”

After living in Stockton and studying nursing at Delta College, McInturf was unable to shake her interest in teaching and so went back to school to earn her teaching credential. She and her husband moved back to Calaveras County to raise their family and for 12 years she taught at Calaveras Unified campuses across the county before becoming an administrator, looking to give back to the district that welcomed her from the city.

“I’ll never forget that feeling of being known as a person for the first time. I wasn’t just a number. I want to give that feeling back,” she said.

Mokelumne Hill and West Point Elementary principal Tierra Crothers, a 1991 CHS graduate, shared many of McInturf’s positive sentiments. After working in the interior design field in Marin County for four years Crothers realized that she felt as though she “wasn’t doing enough.”

“I wanted to help more,” she said. “I wanted to pass on my own love for learning so I went home and started my credential program.”

After 10 years of teaching in other counties Crothers noticed that an assistant principal position was open at her alma mater, Calaveras High where both her parents had retired from. After a year with the high school, Crothers took over the principal position for two of CUSD’s smaller elementary campuses.

“There are so many of the same traditions happening in our schools that went on when I was a student,” said Crothers, providing an example of Mokelumne Hill Elementary school’s combination open house and community potluck.

“It’s been so rewarding to work in the community I grew up in,” she continued.

For all faculty and staff interviewed, most mentioned that facility upgrades were the only really distinct changes from when they were students. Mark Twain Elementary alumni noted the addition of Copperopolis Elementary students was a major difference for those who had attended when the school had not yet combined seventh and eighth grades. Small town community and support experienced during their student years was an experience that influenced many alumni decisions to return to the towns they were raised in.

“The culture of staff working directly with students and going above and beyond to help kids not just academically but socially as well has not changed,” said Crothers.

“The staff here help kids figure out who they are and they teach them the importance of chasing your passions and we feel it when we come back. We feel the community.”

Contact Kristine Williams at kristine@calaverasenterprise.com.