About Ms. Deitch

About Ms. Deitch

NAME: Debbie Deitch (rhymes with "teach")


BIRTHDAY: April 22


COLLEGE: CSUN and St. Mary's


MAJOR: B.A. in Child Development

Multiple Subject Teaching Credential

Masters in Education Leadership


PASSIONS: My children and grandchildren, teaching, learning, math, reading, and games involving math, words and trivia.


BACKGROUND: I have been teaching at Springhill School since August 2001. This is my third year teaching fifth grade at Springhill. Before Springhill, I was a classroom aide and substitute teacher in the Lafayette School District, and before that, I was Assistant Director for the 4-year-old program at Lafayette Nursery School. I decided to be a teacher when I was in second grade and I have never wavered from that course. Both of my parents were elementary school principals as was my maternal grandmother. They raised me with a passion for learning and a commitment to passing on that passion to my students.

I have three children; Joshua, Julianne, and Jaci; all of whom attended Lafayette schools. Josh is married to Lauren and they have four children; a daughter, Aviva, who turned 10 years old in April; a son, Aryeh, who turned 8 this past December; a daughter, Zelda, who was 6 in May; and a daughter, Elka Shoshanna Mayim, who will be 4 on August 18. Josh writes computer code and does website design. He composes music on his computer, plays the guitar, and has a fair grasp of Hebrew and Yiddish. Lauren is a crafter and artist who also is my go-to tech person. She is very good with languages and is fluent in Japanese and has a workable knowledge of Spanish and Hebrew. Julianne, my middle child, graduated from UC Davis where she majored in Economics and Sociology with a minor in African Studies, and earned a masters from London School of Economics. She worked for the United Nations in their Economics Department for four years. She was based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for three years and was then posted to Beirut, Lebanon. She is passionate about health concerns in developing nations (particularly African countries) and spent a good deal of her spare time in Addis volunteering at Children's Heaven, a charity for orphaned girls. She left the UN to complete her second masters, this one in Public Health, at Columbia School of Public Health in New York, and has just completed her PhD there, also in Public Health. She currently works for Women's Refugee Commission. Jaci , my youngest, graduated in June 2013 from UC Davis where she majored in Sociology and Psychology with an emphasis on gender studies. She had an internship in India working with a women's health organization in Mumbai and then spent two years dividing her time volunteering at three different Women's Health non-profits in the city. She earned her masters in Public Health from Columbia last May. She completed her first year of law school at Fordham this spring and has spent the summer interning with the New York City Department of Health. I am extremely proud of all of them!