After six years at the school, Media Arts Program teacher Cathy Leather will leave this fall to teach at Archbishop Mitty High School.

Leather was first hired to work at SHS in 2009, spending her first year as a consultant in the MAP department. She then became one of the Media Arts Electives teacher in her second year.

At Mitty, she will teach Visual Arts and focus on digital photography, animation and graphic arts. Though these classes are slightly different from the MAP program at SHS, she believes that it will be a good fit for her since she has an art and visual design background and is interested in the subject.

Her oldest son also attends Mitty so she said it will be nice to be in the same school as him.

During her time as a teacher at SHS, Leather has gotten to know her students very well. MAP student junior Luke Salin recalls working with Leather on an extracurricular documentary about a homeless services organization called Downtown Streets Team in January.

“It was really cool to see her in action since she's one of the teachers with the most experience working in the media field,” Salin said.

Salin also liked how Leather taught her students the basics,  and then reinforced their learning by encouraging them to explore more complex concepts.

Though she will enjoy being with her son, Leather is leaving several aspects of SHS that she really enjoyed.

“I will miss the students for sure,” Leather said. “There are even students that have graduated from Saratoga High that I’m still in touch with.”

Leather also said she will miss the opportunity to teach the Intro to programming class next year, even though  she helped develop the curriculum for the class.

Leather’s presence at SHS since the inception of MAP has allowed her to connect with many of the program’s teachers and students. Her absence will be felt by many.

“Not only is she a veteran teacher, but she has so much skill and love for what she does,” Salin said. “There are definitely some big shoes to fill for next year.”