Diane Wirtschafter

Diane Wirtschafter has been teaching since 1986 in both public and private elementary schools, including 11 years at Tehiyah Day School in El Cerrito. She studied psychology at Barnard College in New York City and earned her M.A. in education at Bank Street College of Education and at the University of Minnesota. Diane twice won the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics Education at the state level. Music is an integral part of her life, and she has sung with washboard bands, klezmer bands, and students. During shelter-in-place in the spring of 2020 and then again in spring 2021, her family’s musical parody videos went viral! Her oldest son is the executive producer for “Uncuffed,” a podcast created by incarcerated men, and her daughter is an actor, musician, and educator in Los Angeles. Her youngest son, an enthusiastic member of the BPC class of 2015, is studying history at American University in Washington D.C. Diane joined Black Pine Circle School in 2010 as the fourth grade head teacher. She is looking forward to returning to the classroom after a special year during which she served BPC as an instructional coach for lower school teachers, taught distance learners in fourth grade and led a specialty class focusing on social and emotional learning.