Adrienne Mooney Karyadi is a National Board Certified Teacher with 19 years of teaching experience, beginning at Jordan High School in Long Beach, where she obtained her LDS certificate. For the last 16 years, she has taught at Santa Monica High School, serving as the ELD department chair for over 10 years.  She was a SDAIE methodology instructor with Teach Lynwood, and a social studies methodology instructor at UCLA’s Teacher Education Program.  Adrienne has attended conferences with the California Council of Social Studies, CABE, CATESOL, and Cal Poly Pomona’s History/Geography Project.  Professional development also included two NEH summer seminars.  Recently, she participated in U.C. Davis’s History Summit.  She has experience presenting material at the CCSS conference, as well as to teachers attending UCLA’s History/Geography Project seminars (evening and summer institutes).

Amy Bisson is a National Board Certified Teacher with 15 years of teaching experience.  She began at Culver City Middle School and moved to Santa Monica High School 10 years ago.  Amy has attended UCLA’s History/Geography Project as well as CCSS and CABE conferences.  As a former instructor of Intermediate ELD and current instructor of U.S. History SE, Amy is CLAD certified and has worked closely with colleagues in cross-curricular teams to improve the integration of history and language arts skills.  She has designed U.S. history assessments and benchmark assignments for both the school and district.  Amy worked with her house and department leadership on professional development, including drafting an action plan to guide in-services and organizing buy-back days; and she served as the A.S.B. advisor for several years.

Nathaniel Acker is a CLAD-credentialled teacher who has been teaching for 15 years, beginning with Markham Middle School in Watts (L.A.U.S.D.).  He has been at Santa Monica High School for over 9 years, and his duties have included teaching classes in the Immersion Program (a K-12 English/Spanish program) and advising the A.S.B. and Leadership classes.  Ned also taught at UCLA while working on his doctorate in Latin American studies.  He has traveled extensively in the Americas.  As a K-12 teacher, he attended UCLA’s History/Geography Project. 

Daniel Escalera is a CLAD-certified teacher with 29 years of teaching and coaching experience.  He taught at St. Monica High School and Loyola High School before teaching at Santa Monica High School.  His recent teaching assignments have included A.P. Economics, AVID, Immersion social studies, and college-prep social studies (both U.S. History and World History).  His professional development includes conferences at several local universities as well as CCSS, AVID, and A.P. conferences.  He provided professional development to colleagues in the social studies department over many years and is now mastering digital presentation technology.  Dan has also designed and edited district-wide common assessments in collaboration with colleagues.

William Gow is a CLAD-credentialled teacher and documentary film maker, who has been teaching for over 7 years.  His first teaching job was at Gompers Middle School in LAUSD; he moved to Samohi over 5 years ago.  Will has taught Freshman Seminar, World History, and A.P. U.S. History courses while at Samohi.  In the course of his teaching experiences, he piloted a technology grant for the SMMUSD and provided professional development for both his small learning community and the social studies department.  He's active with the Chinese-American Historical Society as a presenter in his free time.

Team Contact Information:  Adrienne Karyadi via email akaryadi@smmusd.org or by phone (310) 395-3204 ext. 281.