John Rafalak
John has worked at Wildwood School for more then 18 years. He has a background in music education and computers (among other things, he spent 8 years as "Sysop Jon", the Music sysop on the early QuantumLink telecommunications network). He currently takes care of the library at Wildwood School and also is the primary Instructional Media & Technology Coordinator for the school.
During the summer of 2008 John and his youngest son Joe backed up our friend Chris Ruhe in a 15 day tour out to Kansas City and back, performing in a different Baha'i Community every night. Click here to see photos and a blog about the tour.
During the 2006-2007 school year John has been helping design and impliment the technology parts of the new expansion to the school including the stage, video studio and new, expanded Recording Studio.
One of the projects he is proud of is the development, along with Bill Sofko, of web based tools for Wildwood's staff. Some of these are used in developing Individualized Educational Programs for their students as well as tracking Related Services and Medicaid information for Wildwood's staff. During the 2001 school year John worked with the Language Department and obtained a grant from Verizon to update the Technology Learning Centers in the Language Department. As part of that grant he worked on the technological upgrading of the Centers as well as created a video about the project.
In July of 2000 John, along with fellow Wildwood Tech Team
member Bill Sofko, was awarded a CIO
Web Business Award, 50/50 Intranet award for the IEPManager program they co-developed as a tool for the teachers and staff of Wildwood School.
John has been a teacher in the capital district Baha'i school and enjoys making music (he performs with the Pathway World Music Ensemble at the Baha'i Reading Room every Thursday evening), creating video, eating (perhaps a bit too much), reading humor and science-fiction and being with his family. John and Sue have taught childrens classes at the GreenAcre Baha'i School in Maine and at the Solomon Hilton Baha'i Summer School.
On September 21st of 2002 John and Sue attended the Bishop
Kearney High School Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony to see some old friends and watch Ray Shahin, John's high school band director, be honored with induction into the Hall of Fame. out of that grew plans for the Ray Shahin Era Band and Musical Reunion which was held on the weekend of July 4th, 2003.
Beginning in January of 2002 John started performing at the
Baha'i Reading Room every Thursday evening. Jason, Joe and Ian have joined in the fun at various times over the years.
John enjoys taking pictures and you can find a lot of them at:
and
and
In June of 2001
the entire family travelled to visit family in Ann Arbor and
then went to a National Baha'i Convention in Milwaukee.
In the summer of 1999 he and his mother traveled back to Rochester
for a get-together with some members
of the family.
John's mother, Josephine passed away in 2002... Here is a page about her.
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