Arthur (Art) Peterson

(1933)

Fondly remembered and mourned by many, the teacher and author Art Peterson was born in Berkeley at a time when, as he recalled with typical whimsey, the city’s only gourmet restaurant was featuring mint jelly. After graduating from Berkeley High School and San Jose State College, Art served a tour of duty with the US Marines. But his passion, he discovered when back in civilian life, was for education teenagers, who took readily to his modest, humorous, and empathetic manner of instruction. At first in Santa Cruz and then at Herbert Hoover and Everett Junior High Schools in San Francisco, he honed the skills and developed the pedagogical innovations that he then implemented brilliantly as a teacher of English and film at Lowell High School, where he remained until his retirement. Generations of Lowell students profited especially from his instruction in principles of sound and lively writing.

The first of Art’s five books, Teachers: A Survival Guide for the Grownup in the Classroom, appeared in 1985. Drawing on his own experience, the book was both candid and funny in advising his colleagues to persevere while never taking themselves too seriously—as Art himself never did. By then he was already associated with the University of California’s Bay Area Writing Project which would eventually become the National Writing Project. After retiring from Lowell, he served in Berkeley as the Project’s senior editor, a role that extended his constructive influence to pioneer teachers around the country. And it was in this phase, in 1996, that he published his most practical and most influential volume, The Writer’s Workout Book: 113 Stretches Toward Better Prose. Finally, in 2013, Art expressed his abiding love of his favorite city in the droll and historically informed Why is that Bridge Orange, San Francisco for the curious.

Art’s final years were enhanced by his marriage to Carol Peterson, an artist and jazz singer. The two of them traveled the world and enjoyed a wonderful life filled with love and fun. Earlier, he was predeceased by his first wife, Norma Peterson. He is survived by his two children, Brendan and Elizabeth as well as his sister Betty crews, and several grandchildren.

A Celebration of Life will be held September 30, 2018 from 2-6 pm at Potrero Hill Neighborhood House, 953 De Haro St., San Francisco.