Lyra Bookbinder

Previously acting as a short-term substitute at various FUHSD schools, long-term substitute Lyra Bookbinder is no stranger to teaching at MVHS. This school year, however, is the first time she is a long-term substitute for freshman classes in place of English teacher Elly Brown, who is currently on maternity leave.

 

Bookbinder grew up in Silicon Valley and attended Gunn High School. She describes herself in high school as “weird” — her multitude of hobbies included art, playing the violin and writing for her school’s literary magazine. 

 

One of Bookbinder’s current passions is cooking, specifically Mexican, Chinese and Korean cuisine, and she recently started to experiment with Thai food. She and her husband barbecue huge meals during the holidays for her family, and she took up baking during the pandemic.

 

Beyond her exploration of international cuisine, Bookbinder also hopes to travel internationally, which she has never had the opportunity to do. She wants to visit Europe, Japan and especially Korea, since her mother was born there.

 

“It's kind of a big metropolitan area here, and I would want to go somewhere more rural and see what things are like — just kind of get outside of myself and my day-to-day experience,” Bookbinder said. “Maybe [we] do that overseas, maybe we do that domestically too.” 

 

She wants to spend an extended period of time at her destination and become fully immersed in the day-to-day lives of the people living there, and hopes to journal her experiences rather than “go for a week and see tourist stuff.” 

 

“[Traveling] was never a high priority so I didn't really set aside any time and space in my life for that,” Bookbinder said. “But then now, I'm thinking it would be nice to go for a while to some of these places and experience how people live every day and try something different.”