Meet the Shu Ren Community

As part of an effort to introduce the unique, talented, and diverse individuals who make up the Shu Ren community, we have asked Sarah Hilgers, a Shu Ren parent and current PTO President, to answer a few questions about herself and her work with our school.

Could you introduce yourself and your family for us?
My name is Sarah Hilgers and I am this year’s PTO President. I have two children, Henry and En. Henry is a first grader at Shu Ren and En will be entering PreK-4 next year. My husband, Hunter Hubby, is the Welcome Chair this year. We live in Berkeley and love being part of such a muti-cultural community. Besides my roles as the PTO President, mother and wife, I work at Kaiser Permanente as an Occupational Therapist/Certified Hand Therapist. I have been with Kaiser for the past 10 years. When I can catch a moment, I really enjoy reading, and entertaining.

Why is it important to you that your children receive a bilingual education?
A bilingual education has always been extremely important to me as a mother. I think it is important to be exposed to different cultures at a very young age and to think beyond ourselves and see the bigger world. I was not raised bilingual and wish I had been. I have been studying Spanish for many years but have never been fully immersed in the language because of lack of time. When we had our first child the goal was to send him to a Spanish school but since having our second (who is Taiwanese by birth) it made much more sense to send our children to a Chinese school. My husband and I are passionate and committed to maintaining our second son’s cultural heritage. We are grateful to Shu Ren for all of their guidance in blending our bi-cultural family.

What are your goals for the PTO this year?
Our goal for the PTO this year is to continue to build our wonderful parent-teacher community at Shu Ren. I believe that when parents and teachers collaborate, we bring out the best in everyone and our children benefit tremendously. There are a multitude of ways we will achieve this collaboration. For starters, we will provide as much volunteer support as possible to the teachers. Our initial fundraising goal will be to provide $500 to each classroom to cover some of the transportation needs for the increasing field trips in all grades. We will have three main fundraising events this year – the Holiday Book Fair, the Lunar New Year Party and Shu Ren t-shirt sales . We will also have many FUNraising events such as the Autumn Festival, mothers’/fathers’ night out, parents’ night out, coffee break at Bread Workshop and after school group play dates. And finally, we are proud to start our first 6-unit parent inquiry, with Nathan Pope. He will lead the parents in a wine-making inquiry which will not only be fun but will help us all understand how are children are learning.

What do you feel the PTO’s biggest accomplishment has been so far? Biggest challenge?
During this summer, the current PTO Officers worked very hard to improve and streamline our communication systems. We have a new parent Intranet site which allows parents to access all of the vital PTO documents, the newsletter has been streamlined to provide up to date information to the families on a weekly basis, and we set up a Google Group, so parents can communicate with one another in a less formal setting. This is the third year of the PTO and our prior PTO presidents Jacky Carleton and Christine Wu-Dittmar have laid a great foundation for the school. They have done a wonderful job with fundraising, community building and many other things and I look forward to building on that foundation.

I was really pleased with the turnout of families at the Welcome Party and was delighted to see new and old friends at our First Day of School Breakfast. There is a lot of enthusiasm about the school and this is ultimately our greatest accomplishment. We have many more great ideas for the school this year and instead of looking at them as challenges, I see them only as endless opportunities. I encourage every family to join with me to realize these opportunities and create the best school possible for our children.

How would you characterize the parent community at Shu Ren?
I am so grateful to our parent community for their endless dedication to giving our children the emotional and academic support they deserve. We represent a variety of backgrounds and cultures and are united in our primary goal, the well-being of our children. Thank you to all the parents and let’s keep up the great work and have a great time doing it! Thank you for allowing me to work as the President. It is already a great year!