Everyday Encounters: A teacher turned instructional-tech educator and her street-artist son
![Tiburon resident Sonja Hartl (left) and her son, Robert Sakovich of San Francisco, were walking to the Railroad & Ferry Depot Museum as part of their Shoreline Park walk Jan. 23 when they spent some time chatting to The Ark. (Francisco Martinez / The Ark)](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/75283d_dc9ba9540fbb4bc9b3086ffbc5d6ca0c~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_699,h_524,al_c,q_90,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/75283d_dc9ba9540fbb4bc9b3086ffbc5d6ca0c~mv2.png)
It’s been nine years since Sonja Hartl, a 77-year-old retired teacher, moved to Tiburon near Reed Elementary School. An avid walker who sometimes brings along neighbor kids, she says she was just talking with her son about one famous peninsula landmark she hasn’t visited yet.
“I said, ‘If some of my kids knew that I hadn’t been to Hippie Hill’” — referencing the Hippie Tree and its attached swing up on Gilmartin, not the other famed “green” space in Golden Gate Park — “they’d be going like, ‘What?!’”
On a bright, clear Thursday morning, she’s sitting on a bench at Tiburon’s Shoreline Park with her son, 56-year-old Robert Sakovich of San Francisco, as they take a break during their walk to the Railroad & Ferry Depot Museum. The paved path to the museum — once the Northwestern Pacific Railroad terminal that connected cargo and passengers between the city and Northern California — winds through the grassy bayside park, offering sweeping views of Angel Island, the San Francisco skyline, the Golden Gate Bridge, Belvedere Island and the docks and boats of the Corinthian Yacht Club and downtown ferry landings.
Sakovich is spending the week in Tiburon, and they’ve done the morning walk — “our favorite,” mom adds — every day he’s been in town. It’s usually the other way around, and Hartl heads to the city for walks with her son.
Hartl and her husband moved to Tiburon from San Francisco, downsizing from their St. Francis Wood neighborhood home. She’d been in the city since age 26, born and raised on the 18-mile sliver of New Hampshire coast that separates Maine from Massachusetts.
Though she’ll sometimes watch over neighbor kids, Hartl’s officially retired, having spent 30 years in instructional technology developing programs that help facilitate learning among its users.
“It was always interesting, because it would change what I had to learn — because I had to learn,” Hartl says. “And different areas, different populations, who was going to use this technology, how it would benefit them — so it was just always changing, always variable, always learning something. Fed my curiosity.”
It wasn’t her first career, as Hartl was a schoolteacher for eight years across multiple grades before she entered the tech field. But when she moved out to San Francisco, teacher layoffs were happening.
“You either used it in academia or you used it in business,” Hartl says of her master’s degree in instructional technology from the University of New Hampshire, where she also got her bachelor’s in education.
The tech work led to her underscoring the value of teamwork, she says — from the subject-matter expert, such as an electrical engineer who needs to outline what needs to be taught and in what order, to the learner, who has unique perspectives as they figure out what needs to be known.
“In an interesting way, it showed me that working together, teamwork, that’s what it’s all about. You can’t get this job done unless we have everybody giving their input to make it work.”
While her job fed her curiosity, she says, she doesn’t miss it. She loves being retired, saying “it’s time.”
She was, however, temporarily lured back into teaching. When students were distance-learning during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, Hartl ran a learning pod with local kids, whom she still sees.
Hartl’s career drew praise from Sakovich.
“I was always so proud of her when we moved out here and she started doing the business stuff,” he says of his mother. “She worked her way up.”
Sakovich is a creative, an at-home artist who’s worked mostly in acrylic paint for the past 20 years, saying it’s easier to work, and rework, than oil. The best part’s the creativity, he says, something he’s had since his youth.
“He always had a sketchbook by — anywhere,” his mom adds. “In his backpack, on the table, beside the TV.”
Sakovich shared his Instagram handle, @robzartsf, which revealed he’s also Robz, a professional graffiti artist commissioned to do work for the San Francisco Giants’ “Resilient” mural project portraying local artist La Doña in the Mission district, as well as projects for the San Francisco Zoo and for BART in Oakland. He’s also worked with restaurants, taken on private commissions and painted murals throughout San Francisco.
His graffiti endeavors began in high school as hip-hop was making its way west from New York. Beyond musicians like Run DMC and LL Cool J, hip-hop is a cultural movement that includes other expressions, such as breaking, DJing and graffiti; Sakovich’s inspiration is Bay Area street artist and muralist Crayone.
Freedom of expression was what a young Sakovich enjoyed about graffiti, he says, trying to use as many colors in his work as possible without getting caught. But Sakovich says it’s the work done illegally that leads to approved, legal commissions because of the repertoire developed.
“They want people that they consider legit, so then people don’t come and just tag over you,” Sakovich says.
That’s the code. Don’t graffiti Mother Nature. Don’t graffiti a mural, “especially if the mural is done by an old graffiti guy.”
Did Hartl have any parting wisdom of her own? Indeed: Don’t give advice unless someone’s open to it, and “remember how blessed we are to be here.”
Reach Tiburon reporter Francisco Martinez at 415-944-4634.
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