Mrs. Rasner was delighted to join the SVA family in 2015 and to continue producing thinkers, doers, and helpers in a our community. She was born in Kansas City, MO and has lived in Visalia, Santa Cruz, India, and Los Angeles. She devoted her studies to the field of science, graduating from UC Riverside with a Bachelor’s Degree in biochemistry. After a year in the analytical chemistry industry, however, she realized that this was not her calling, and she immediately began what would be her 16 year-long teaching career in Los Angeles. Fate brought her back to the Central Valley, where she committed herself to Lindsay Unified Schools for 5 years before joining the SVA team. She taught 3rd and 4th grade at SVA for 6 years before moving to an administrative positon. 

Jonna is most proud of her family: her husband and her four children. Because she believed so strongly in SVA’s pedagogical, social, and moral mission she entrusted her children to the school. Now, she is not only blessed to see them thrive and grow as a result of this mission, but honored that she herself can contribute to that mission by teaching 3rd and 4th grades at SVA. Having spent her formative years in Visalia, she understands the community well and appreciates what a difference SVA can make in the area by promoting inquiry based learning, scholarly research, and social justice.

Her students, and their parents, should know that Mrs. Rasner works tirelessly to create a class environment where her students are moving, talking, creating, drawing, singing, and expressing themselves. She believes in academic rigor, but also moral and social rigor. She teaches her students tolerance, understanding, patience, environmental responsibility, social justice, and how to affect change. 

Jonna enjoys baking huge batches of cookies during the holidays, making popcorn for family movie nights, camping at  Mt. Cross every summer, supporting her girls at their swim meets, cheering on her son at his baseball games, and cooking tasty dinners for family and friends. She enjoys being a part of SVA because it is an environment where everyone is genuinely interested in critical thinking not high test scores, collegiality not bickering, supporting each other not surviving, and most importantly, having a great time in school!