Faculty
Maria Palmer
Sixth Grade English Teacher
This is Maria Palmer’s 32nd year at BPC. Maria received both her B.A. in English literature and her kindergarten through eighth grade teaching credential, with a specialization in teaching English, from UC Berkeley. Maria has also taken graduate courses in English literature at UCLA and completed the coursework for an M.A. in design at UC Berkeley. She taught sixth grade at both Franklin School in Oakland and Altadena School in Altadena, California. Maria was also on the curatorial staff at the Berkeley Art Museum before joining the Black Pine Circle School faculty in 1993. A widower, Maria recently happily remarried. She is the proud mom to two grown children, adores being a grandmother to her four grandchildren, and travels frequently to visit her family in Berlin. Maria enjoys traveling, being in the mountains or at the beach, listening to jazz, making art, reading great novels and poetry, and she loves teaching sixth grade!
Why I Work with Children
I love thinking, exploring, and learning with the children – they teach me so much!
A Favorite Book
Impossible to answer – but Watership Down and To Kill a Mockingbird are among my all-time favorites.
Quick Fact
Loves to write or paint
Other Faculty for This Grade
Alyson Mitchell
Eighth Grade History & Geography Teacher
Keen on floating houses and mutant Basset Hounds
Gerry Branner
Upper School Physical Education Teacher, Upper School Dean, and Upper School Athletic Director
Jerry Kennedy
Seventh and Eighth Grade Music Teacher, Band Director
Performed music in South Africa during the end of legal apartheid.
Torin Coffino
Sixth Grade History Teacher
Played Gaelic Football as a youth, and won a Minors championship in Ireland
