Just down the road from Redwood High School, tucked between Redwood’s Endriss baseball field and Tam Union High School District’s (TUHSD) maintenance yard, is what some call “West Marin’s best kept secret.” It’s a school, consisting of three small buildings and 132 students. Students come and go throughout the day on ebikes, cars, or by foot from cities as far away as Sausalito. 

Tamiscal High School is one of two alternative high schools in TUHSD. While San Andreas High School is focused on credit recovery and remediation, Tamiscal houses three alternative education programs: Independent Study (IS), the Counseling Enriched Classroom (CEC), and Pathways. All three programs offer flexible schedules and a much smaller student-to-teacher ratio than at the three mainstream TUHSD schools. The Pathways program accepts a maximum of 50 students from across the district, using a stratified lottery system to admit applicants to ensure that Pathways proportionately represents the senior classes at other high schools in the district. 

“I love it here,” Tamiscal teacher Tim Morgan said. “It’s a small, tight knit group of students and educators.”

Morgan is one of two teachers who lead Pathways, a program designed for seniors to take college classes and participate in an internship while still in high school. Morgan joined the Pathways team this past school year. Before coming to Tamiscal, Morgan taught English and social studies. He was also involved with the AVID program, where he picked up teaching skills that he later carried with him into the Pathways classroom. 

When talking about his experiences as a Tam teacher, his face lights up. “Go Hawks!”, he proudly claims. While he has a special place in his heart for the Tam community, he appreciates how he can build strong relationships with his students at a smaller school, as he does through his experiences coaching. “You get a chance to really work with them one-on-one and see what their interests are outside of school,” Morgan said about Pathways. 

Morgan and his co-teacher, Alyssa Callahan, are there to support Pathways seniors who enroll in a minimum of two College of Marin (COM) classes and secure internships that span the rest of the academic year. They also teach seniors’ remaining required classes: Government, Economics, and English. 

 A key pillar of the program is the internship program, which Callahan identifies as a large appeal to prospective students. Students are required to take on an internship and dedicate a minimum of six hours to it each week. The program prepares students to work in a professional environment, and helps them discover and explore their interests.

 “The biggest benefit is you are getting an opportunity to test out real life while you’re still in a supportive environment,” Callahan said. 

Callahan got her start as a student teacher at Tam in 2011. The next year, both she and Morgan were hired as teachers at San Andreas High School and Tam, respectively. During her time at San Andreas, Callahan met fellow teacher Candace Curtis, who saw that many seniors could benefit from support in deciding which ‘pathway’ to take after graduation. In an attempt to fill that need, Curtis started the Pathways program along with Callahan. 

“I developed a website, recruitment strategies, more fundraising efforts; and now it serves 50 students,” she said. 

Since it is not a credit recovery and remediation program, Pathways eventually moved over to Tamiscal’s quaint campus six years ago. Pathways class of 2025 consists of 37 students, 9 of whom are from Tam. 

This year, students participated in a wide variety of internships; from small-scale music production all the way to working on the sea planes out in Sausalito. In the past, students have worked in law offices, on farms, with art studios, at fire stations, and even helped run wellness and counseling programs at Mill Valley Middle School and White Hill Middle School. According to Callahan, some past students who have interned with hospitals and health clinics have gotten to witness child births and even live surgeries.

The second key pillar to the Pathways program is their partnership with COM. Students are given the opportunity to enroll in college classes for transferable college credit. Additionally, Pathways students are able to take these classes free of charge. Since students are required to take a minimum of 2 classes at COM, maintain an internship and their classwork, they are learning essential skills such as time management, balancing their schedules, and executive functioning. 

Lily Hayes, a former Tam student currently enrolled in Pathways, said that the program helped her mature and grow more than she ever has before.  “You really get to experience what higher education is like. You wouldn’t think [Pathways] is much different from a high school class, but it really is because the prerogative is on you as a student – you decide if you want to show up, you decide if you want to do the homework, all the responsibility falls on you,” she said. 

Last semester, Hayes interned at Maro Gallery in San Francisco, and at Mead Quin Design this semester. She is passionate about art, and sought out art-related jobs when pursuing her internships. Internship positions with artists are prestigious and hard to come by – even for college graduates- so she chose the next best thing. “What’s something that’s practical, that’s also related to art, that is easier to obtain? I don’t want to be a starving artist,” she joked. What came to mind was art galleries, museums, and universities. At the art gallery, she helped run gallery openings, as well as working on the social media page and marketing. At the interior design studio, she is the ‘studio director assistant”, which entails putting away fabric samples, sorting the fabric, and driving fabric samples back to the various vendors. “It’s taught me a lot about fabrics, furniture, woods, and tiles.” 

Something that initially intrigued her about Pathways was the partnership with COM. Having taken college classes in the past, she was excited to have the opportunity to take more at no cost. This past year, she’s taken statistics, Advanced English, business, anthropology, anthropology lab, and Advanced French. Taking COM classes helped her find what she’s interested in majoring in.

 “It’s part of opening your worldview – you experience things you otherwise wouldn’t at Tam,” Hayes said. In the fall, she plans to attend University of California Los Angeles where she will be majoring in Art History. 

While Pathways students are still able to participate in the graduation ceremony at their home sites, Hayes plans on solely attending Tamiscal’s. “Tamiscal’s my home now.”