Matushka Maria Kotar is the wife of Archpriest Serge Kotar, who served for many years in the Joy of All Who Sorrow Cathedral in San Francisco, at the relics of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco. Together, Matushka Maria and Fr. Serge, with the blessing of Archbishop Anthony (Medvedev), founded a well-known and reputable Orthodox school, St. John of San Francisco Orthodox Academy. The Academy itself is a parochial school (K-12) located on-site at the Joy of All Who Sorrow Cathedral in San Francisco, and continues to operate to this day. Being the Academy’s Administrator for 20 years, and Fr. Serge being its Dean, I seized upon the opportunity to interview Matushka Maria about St. John’s Academy. During the interview, it was edifying and enjoyable to hear not only about the Academy, but about Orthodox education in general. My hope is that the information in the following interview will be an inspiration for Orthodox faithful striving to educate their children on the path to salvation.
I conducted this interview in fulfillment of the requirements for successful completion of the graduate course on the History and Identity of the Russian Church Abroad, offered at Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary in 2024.
Olof Borg
Matushka, I want to talk to you about St. John’s Academy, the parochial school at the Joy of All Who Sorrow Cathedral in California. What exactly is St. John’s Academy?
St. John’s Academy, the full name is St. John of San Francisco Orthodox Academy, is a school that my husband and I set up in 1994. It is a full time, accredited, classical Orthodox school for grades K-12. This year they will be celebrating their 30th anniversary.
Basically, we were homeschooling our children. By the time my son reached the 6th grade, he was showing signs of being academically gifted, but living on a priest’s salary, we were not far above poverty level. We could not send our children to Catholic parochial schools, not that we even wished to. We had a homeschool co-op going on with other families. Once a week, we would get together at our house or other people’s houses and teach various subjects, where I would teach French, and somebody would teach art, and somebody else would teach music, sing with the kids. We put on plays with the children, had field trips.
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The Very Rev. Serge Kotar and Mrs Maria Kotar
In 1993, we had the uncovering of the relics of St. John and Father Serge was intimately involved with that. The canonization was set for 1994. We were involved in organizing the canonization. A group of clergy and laity was appointed by the Archbishop to plan the canonization, and this involved many meetings. We were discussing everything, every little detail about the canonization. In fact, the last couple of meetings were at our house, which is right across the street from the Cathedral. The last meeting right before, the day or two before the canonization lasted nine hours. I had forgotten to feed my children, because we were so intent on every little detail. Finally, I think it was Alix who came up to me and said, “Mama, can we eat something?” I looked at her and I thought, “Oh no, I have children. I forgot about them.”
Once the canonization happened, I thought, “Oh, what am I going to do now?” Because I was working on the canonization, and also, as I said, my children were already showing interest in academic subjects, I just had this crazy idea, which I believe that St. John sent, because he is always behind everything. We decided to open up a school in honor of St. John because he was glorified, to have our own Orthodox school.
Now, as I was growing up, I always wanted to be a teacher. I was in love with the novel Little Women, I wanted to be Jo. I wanted to have a boarding school. I always loved the idea of teaching. I started teaching at 18 years old; my first job was a teacher. Also, I had a great aunt who was a teacher in a classical Orthodox academy in St. Petersburg, Russia, right before the Revolution. I even have a book she wrote, a diary of her life in this Academy, how she led the school. It was always in my blood. I really wanted to have a school.
Honestly, I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t think twice about it. I just jumped into the water without knowing how to swim. Without my husband, of course, I never would’ve been able to do any of it. But we opened up within a couple of months after this idea came to us. Naively, I had imagined that the Orthodox people in our community who sent their kids to Catholic school, all the old Russians, would sign up for this because, wouldn’t they want to educate and raise their children in an Orthodox setting?
Understandably, this did not happen. Many had already committed to very well-established Catholic or other private schools. We were just beginning. Who knew what kind of school this would be? So not many of the old Russians were interested. We did start out with a wonderful group of friends and teachers who were very committed, but it surprised us that we had a lot of new Russians who signed up. We had a couple of convert families and wonderful Palestinian families, but it was mostly people who were, at that time, coming in from the former USSR. It was like a third wave of people that were escaping from Russia. So, again, it’s not something that I thought was going to happen. I had my own idea and God had his own ideas. But it was really all led by St. John.
Our beloved Archbishop Anthony, who we all believe to be a saint, who’s buried here (in Jordanville), gave us a large amount of money to help us. Even though he didn’t quite understand what we were trying to accomplish, since there already was a Russian school in the Cathedral, but the Russian school only met three times a week, Saturday, Tuesday, Thursday afternoon, and the instruction was all in Russian. He was so worried that we were going to somehow hurt the Russian school. I explained that St. John’s is an English language school, where children attend from kindergarten to 12th grade and then they go on to college… He wanted to help us so much, but I don’t think he really quite understood it. He’s a very holy man, he gave us the money to start it.
We started it with seven kids, I believe. Then it turned into 14 by the end of the year. Then it just started to grow. At one point, we reached 72 children. We started with grades Kindergarten through 7, because all of our children were different ages. The next year we would just open the next grade level. Sometimes we’d have one or two children in class. They were small classes.
Our mission statement was to educate and form pious Orthodox Christians, who would then be able to go into society and bring something good into the world with them. We wanted the children to know their religion, to know what it is like to live as an Orthodox Christian, and to attain a good classical education. For me, classical education was similar to the school that Pushkin finished, where the students spoke multiple languages, were able to learn about different sciences, and different cultures, and just be very well-educated, classically educated, based on Latin and Greek knowledge.
This was a great experiment, which we, not realizing how hard and complicated it would be, in our eagerness and naivete, just went ahead and started. Obviously, it was all St. John who led the whole thing. Many times we’d have no money and, Fr. Serge would gather all the students up, and say, “Let’s go pray.” We’d all go stand in front of the relics, praying for St. John to help us run the school. We prayed in front of the relics every day. That was at the end of every day, because in the morning, there was still liturgy going on upstairs. Every morning we’d have a prayer rule downstairs in the hall. At the end of the day, we would all go upstairs and pray in front of the relics. All the children would kiss the relics, pray to him, and be anointed with his oil. That was a daily thing for them.
That basically, is what St. John’s Academy was when we started. My husband and I were running it for 20 years. I was the Administrator. He was Dean of everything, right-hand man doing it all.
Of course, we had wonderful families with us who were behind us and who helped us. But it was hard because the parish didn’t quite understand what we were doing. I’m not exactly the most tactful person in the world. I just saw my goal to get children educated. I wanted my children to be educated. I wanted the people that surrounded them to have this understanding of Orthodoxy and how to live an Orthodox life, and how to be cultured, and how to be well-educated. And we fumbled through it.
That’s basically the idea and how we started it, and really not knowing what we were doing. But it was a miracle. There were the stories I tell all the time, about how we would have teachers lined up for the school year and then somebody would leave, at the last minute, because we could hardly pay anything, they would say, “I got another job.” And we’d run to St. John, and I would just say, “St. John, I need a math teacher. I’m starting school next week. I need a math teacher.” I would turn around, walk down the stairs, and someone would come up to me and say, “By the way, do you need a math teacher?” It was just astounding.
Very providential, it seems.
It happened at least three or four times.
We only hired Orthodox teachers. We only allowed Orthodox students. Although a lot of these Orthodox really had only a small idea what of what it was that we wanted to accomplish. But at least it was the beginning. They were all baptized Orthodox Christians.
Was this school geared for only people within ROCOR?
Oh no. We never would’ve survived. The Holy Virgin Cathedral is on the Old Calendar, so we did everything on the old calendar, especially as the services were going on upstairs in the Cathedral. We would take the children up to services. All of our holidays were not based on the Federal cycle of holidays. They were based on the 12 major feasts. Those 12 major feasts and major saints days are the days that we would take off. But first the students would go to church and then they would get the day off. We could also count that as a school day anyway, because that was part of their education, Church Slavonic, singing. We tried to involve the children in everything.
At one point, when we were running the school, and we had a lot of students, I counted that 80% of the people attending the Cathedral were tied to the school somehow. But we required church attendance, even if they were not ROCOR. We had Greeks, Georgians, we had Serbs, we had Serbian teachers, we had Antiochians, we had Arabs. They were allowed to attend their own churches, that was not a problem. But church attendance was absolutely necessary, because that was part of the backbone of our education. It was Orthodoxy and we didn’t want them just to pay lip service. We wanted them actually to understand what it was, how important it was to attend services. Father Serge would actually go to every house to do an interview before we accepted anybody. He would take a look at the house, take a look at the child’s room, what’s hanging on the walls… He would talk to the kids and to their families. “What do you believe in? Do you know what the Holy Trinity is? Why do you want to go to this school?”
We were blessed to have a very high academic level. Our curriculum was very rigorous. We had National Merit Scholars, we had students finishing their first two years of college at St. Johns, through AP classes. All of our graduates got into good universities, for example, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UCLA, Oxford University, Columbia University. So, parents did want to send their children once our success rate was known. Also it was very inexpensive. So, they wanted to get in.
Sometimes the parents would state that they wanted an Orthodox lifestyle, but really just wanted a good, inexpensive education. But then, they would get pulled into the services and their children would actually start telling them about fasting on Wednesdays, and Fridays, “We’re fasting today.” The kids would start churching the families. Whether they liked it or not, a lot of the families got pulled into church. So God had His own plan. With some people, it didn’t work and we had to let them go. We were always watching for that balance. We didn’t want to say no to everybody. But we also were worried about the kids that we were raising. Not that we wanted to keep them in a glass bowl, but to make sure that they were not unnecessarily exposed to bad influences that were out there; that’s why we created the school, to teach them something different, good and beautiful.
It sounds like the liturgical life did take priority with the school?
Absolutely.
You spoke a little bit about how that looked with Father Serge having a prayer rule involving St. John at the end of the day. Can you speak a little bit more about how that looked within a daily cycle of services, feast days, or any other unique occasions? For example, I’m familiar with how things are done at Holy Trinity Seminary in Jordanville. How would you say that looks?
Everybody would get to school at a certain time. They would go to their home rooms. The home room teachers would file them to the large hall, where Father Serge or other priests – we had other priests that were helping us out – would start the prayer rule. We had a rule that he put together, different prayers, prayers to St. John, prayers to God to study well. We’d read the Gospel and everybody would go up for a blessing. After that, they would all go to their first period classes.
In the very beginning, when we first started, the first couple of years, we read the Lives of the Saints at lunch. That did not last very long, because we realized that the kids really didn’t have off time just to have fun. We had recesses, but lunch was a time when they should socialize. But we did it for a couple of years. We read the Lives of the Saints throughout lunch.
At the end of the day, after the last period, the bell would ring, everybody would line up from their classrooms, the teachers would take them upstairs, and they had a prayer rule ending with ‘We Magnify Thee.’ The students would do a prostration in front of the relics, and kiss the relics of St. John, and be anointed with St. John’s oil. Then they were let go.
So starting with prayer, ending with prayer. Sometimes prayer, Lives of Saints in the middle of the day. If it was a feast day, then we would require everybody to attend church in school uniform. The students would stand as a school. The younger students in kindergarten would be with their teacher downstairs for a little bit. They weren’t there from the very beginning, but they would be getting ready for the service. They all stood together. The community saw the school; the school was always in uniform standing together, receiving Holy Communion together.
We taught them how to stand correctly in church. During Great Lent, they always would do three prostrations when they entered the Cathedral, three prostrations when they left. The First Week of Great Lent was very special, because we said no homework for anybody. Everybody was required to be in church for the four days of the Canon of St. Andrew of Crete. After the Canon, the little kids could go home, up to, I think, fifth grade; from sixth grade on, they had to stay for the Compline. Our Complines were based on the Jordanville services. Matushka Lena Perekrestov helped set that up.
We would have a boys’ Kliros [choir lofts -ed.] and a girls’ Kliros. This is how the students started participating in the services. It was often the first time they would do a Sviatyi Bozhe or Holy God, and they could say it in any language that they were comfortable in, they would read the psalms. They would be singing, the girls in the left Kliros and boys in theright Kliros, just like they do in right and left Kliros in Jordanville. We would do the prostrations. Everything was very close to what we do in Jordanville, coming up to the icons at the end, singing the same prayers.
They learned when to do prostrations. They would attend the Pre-Sanctified Liturgies on Wednesday and Friday of the First Week. Again, they would learn how you stand, as a Pre-Sanctified liturgy is totally different. When to do the prostrations, during Let My Prayer Arise. We taught them all that.
So, what happened during the first week of Great Lent, the students would lose a couple of their classes every morning so they could attend some of the hours. I varied the hours, on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. They would get to see a little bit of the cycle of the services. But then Wednesday and Friday they went for the full Liturgies. That’s how the First Week of Great Lent went. School was second place. It was First Week that was the most important.
When you, Father Serge, and others, were arranging this, did you have in mind to model St. John’s after how things are done at Jordanville?
Well, Matushka Lena is the one who really brought Jordanville to the Cathedral, to Kliros. Our families would get together on Kliros, and we would learn the special melodies and help to sing the services, for example, the last few evenings leading up to Nativity.
So, our two children grew up from childhood doing a lot of what is done in Jordanville. They just grew up on Kliros and singing everything that they could. I wanted to introduce that, of course, to the school. I wanted them, all these people who were not as churched as our children were, to be at least exposed to this, to hear the special melodies, to see the types of services. But that’s the church part. The education part is basically classical education.
Classical education, like the trivium?
Trivium, quadrivium, yes. My inspiration for the school was David Hicks’ Norms and Nobility, the most important book on classical education in the US. He is a brilliant man and an Orthodox Christian.
Are there any other unique challenges that the Academy had to face over the years, besides financial and the cultural world-view breaks?
I think those were the major ones. The major ones were financial, because none of our parents were well-off, so we didn’t want to burden them with a really high tuition. The tuition that we charged never covered all of our expenses. We were always praying for money to drop from heaven. Of course, we did fundraisers and things like that. But it was actually only after Fr. Serge and I left, with the new people that took over, I think they started operating in the black. These people were better equipped to raise funds.
There was a conflict between people who didn’t see the necessity for an Orthodox school, especially since a lot of the people who were going to the Cathedral were old Russians, like me, my family. I was the first person to be born in the United States in my family. But I’m American, born and raised in San Francisco, and most of the people there, all our friends were like that. They were into the American system. They went to American schools. Some of them went to public schools, even, and a lot of them went to private schools, Catholic schools. I think there was a misunderstanding about what we were trying to do. Plus, when it ended up that a large group of our people were people from the Soviet Union, there was always the world view gap between the old Russians and the new Russians. Each group has its own history and way of looking at things.
The white emigration?
Yes. The new emigration grew up under a communist system, and they think differently, and their outlook is different. So, there was always that problem between the two groups.
But everybody has their own idea of education, and I would never, ever want to force my idea of education on anyone.We opened it up for the people who wanted what we offered. But if you want to homeschool your children, that is wonderful too. I just felt that I couldn’t offer as much while homeschooling. What about my children when they reach high school? I couldn’t teach physics, chemistry, and calculus. It’s beyond me. I’m not a science person. I’m a liberal-arts person.
Were there any non-Orthodox students that wanted to attend the Academy, and how was that dealt with if there was?
While we were there, our mission, we felt, was Orthodox students, Orthodox teachers only. When we left, the new administration started changing things. Things were changing already in society. People were not the same as they were when our kids were growing up. Smartphones appeared; computers were available to everyone. People stopped reading. Just the level of education came down in the United States generally. People started not knowing how to think on their own.
So our whole idea of classical education, it was very elitist in a way, because we wanted the students to be able to think independently on a very high-level. We really pushed them hard. And our kids consistently tested well; we had children who would take the CATs, (California Achievement Tests) in third grade and test at the 12th grade level. That’s just the way that the algorithm works. But it just shows you how incredibly high we set the standards. When we would test kids who applied coming out of public school, they would test two years, at least, behind our grade levels. That was already a problem, just with the level of students dropping, especially after Covid. So, because I think they really needed to have more children sign up, they probably started looking at having non-Orthodox children.
I know that there were a couple of non-Orthodox children that were accepted. I know they definitely have non-Orthodox teachers now, because they just can’t find the Orthodox teachers. Again, the world has changed. So it’s a little bit different now than when we were running it for the first 20 years. We ran it in a certain way. After we left, there was a new group of people with different ideas and different ways of doing things. When we were there, no, we had no non-Orthodox. It was all Orthodox.
What would you say would be the significance of St. John’s Academy for the future generation of ROCOR, maybe particularly the area that you’re from, California, and also the rest of the Orthodox faithful throughout the world?
Well, you always look at what happens with our graduates. I know that, again, when we were running it, all of our graduates went to college. We had 100% university acceptance. Some of our students became lawyers and doctors.You’ve got Y. He and his brother were students for a few years. It’s nice to see. Fr. Ephraim Willmarth was one of our teachers. Now he’s helping run the seminary! One of our homeschool moms was a former teacher also. One of our past principals is now a ROCOR bishop in Europe.
You had Y!?
Yes. There are cases I know of people, for example, our children, who graduated from St. John’s. Our son is working in the seminary and conducting the choir now, and our daughter helps run an Orthodox co-op in Maryland. They both work on translating Russian Orthodox literature into English. So I’m hoping that some of these kids learned something and are continuing our work. I’m not in touch with everybody, so I don’t know the statistics, but we do have former students sprinkled throughout parishes in the United States, from Hawaii to New York, and even some in Europe. They sing or conduct in church choirs and are active in their parishes.
Obviously, we can’t force everybody to be Orthodox their whole lives. I know that some students slipped and left, and we can’t save the world. Maybe it’s their path to do this. Then hopefully eventually, with God’s grace, they will come back to the Church. We don’t know. We’re hoping that the seeds we planted will give fruit at some point in the future. When in the future, we don’t know. That’s God’s plan and not ours. But I’m hoping that with some of our students, we were able to help ROCOR grow.
Is there anything you’d like to say to Orthodox parents that have a mentality similar to yours when you were first starting John’s Academy? Any hopeful words for parents wanting that for their kids or people they love?
Yes, in fact, I’ve had this conversation recently, because I have a lot of people calling me who want to start Orthodox schools. They call me and they ask, how do we start one, and are there Orthodox schools that are going on right now?There’s one in Michigan. Father Gregory Joyce is building a school. It’s beautiful. It’s wonderful what he’s doing. There’s one in Washington state, these are just a few examples that are ROCOR. There are some Orthodox schools throughout the United States, mostly Greek, but those have almost no Orthodox students in them. They’re maybe two, three percent Orthodox, the Greek schools. I would say this is not the right time to start from scratch in opening an Orthodox school. What Father G. is doing, he’s been working on it for years. So thank God that he’s getting there. But it’s such uphill work right now with the way that the world has changed.
I honestly think that homeschooling and homeschooling co-ops are the way to go now, just because of the way that the world is. COVID really ruined schools for children. Look how the public schools are crashing because kids stopped going to school. A lot of private schools are closing because of COVID, what COVID did. That made a real change in society, in American society. Americans are not the same as they were before. They don’t work the same. They don’t have the same values. They don’t have the same ability to hold onto anything.
Running a school, that is so much work. It’s such a spiritual battle, that honestly, to those who do it, may God give them mercy and grace. I can’t imagine doing it again. So honestly, I think the easier way is what we’re doing here right now, homeschooling. We have a homeschooling co-op. We get together and study sciences, music, French and Shakespeare. Our kids play together. We all have the same values and same ideas of how we want to raise our children.
I think that community is very important. You have to have that community. You have to be able to help each other, because it’s difficult on your own. Instead of retirement, I’m homeschooling my grandchildren, and I’m very grateful for our community here. We’ve got like-minded people who are doing it together. You can ask them, “What are you doing this year? What program are you using? How do you like this particular approach, etc.? And what do you know about this subject?” Everybody’s got experiences that they can all share. So that would be what I would say. People who want to start a school, it’s hard. It was hard before, and I can’t imagine 30 years later, how much harder it is.
Do you have any insight for those who want a more organized Orthodox education, an Orthodox school?
Absolutely. Yes. If you could find enough people in a metropolitan area to support a school, they would all have to be behind it, and be ready to sacrifice for the idea. They’d have to be on the same page. Because once you get into a school, then you start bickering: “Well, my child doesn’t like this teacher, etc.”, and it’s all about “my child”. Unless you have people who are truly dedicated to the idea of a school for the community, for society, it’s not going to work. It can’t be about you. It can’t be about just yourself. It’s much easier to do that if you homeschool, because you’re not hurting other people if you decide, “I’m not going to support this class because I don’t like this.” You’re in your own classroom at home. Because that idea of self-sacrifice for the community is already missing, because it’s so rare, we’re barely surviving ourselves in trying to preserve our Orthodox lifestyle. That’s why it’s so much harder to organize a school.
Were there any stories or thoughts you’d like to share about your time at the Academy and then now leaving the Academy and finding yourself in this different Orthodox academic setting?
I think that the best thing that stayed with me is the fact that St. John is such an incredible saint. He was always there for us. Anytime we needed him. Like I said, I would run up to him and I’d say, “I need a teacher tomorrow.” Literally, somebody would come up to me and say, “Do you need a teacher?” This happened at least four times. So he led the school. It was his school.
My husband’s always saying this, no matter what you do or you don’t do, how hard you try to keep it open or whatever, if he (St. John) does not want it, and it’s not God’s will, if they don’t want it… you can do whatever you want and it’s not going to work. On the other hand, you can make all kinds of mistakes, which we did. We didn’t know what we were doing. But if it’s God’s will, St. John is there to pull you through, it’ll happen. And it happened. We saw it so many times, we were walking in a miracle every single day.
Just to see those children, during the First Week of Great Lent, seeing a mass of little candles, little babies, the kindergartners, holding their candles, and singing, “Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.” It was so beautiful. It was so incredible with the kids there. That’s going to stay with me forever. I hope that it stays with them in their lives. It’s just a miracle that God allowed us to do something like this. For some reason, God allowed it; and I’m very grateful, because even just for my own children, I’m grateful that they got a fantastic education. And now God has blessed us to spend the rest of our lives in such a blessed place as the Holy Trinity Monastery community. We feel we are almost in heaven.
Any other closing thoughts?
I think I’ve talked too much.
Well, glory to God. I really appreciate your time, Matushka. Thank you for having this interview with me about St. John’s Academy.
Sure. Happy to do it.
(Post interview discussion point)
After the interview with Matushka Maria, she recalled that she was very close to Fr. Seraphim Rose (d. 1982; one of the founders of St. Herman of Alaska Monastery in Platina, CA, where he is now buried). During their many conversations, Fr. Seraphim would often stress how important it was for the youth to read the works of Charles Dickens. In doing so, he thought it would help the youth to soften their hearts to the suffering around them, to establish a better sense of normalcy, and good conduct, compared to how things are in our contemporary times. Charles Dickens became a major part of the literature curriculum at St. John’s Academy.
Relevant Link
Deacon Nicholas Kotar, “I Find Much Beauty in My History, in My Culture and in Folk History”
