Sonia is grateful to be returning to Khan Lab School for her fourth year as the Level 1 Lead. Prior to KLS, Sonia worked as a school-based occupational therapist in Bay Area public and charter schools (K-5) for 15 years, where she helped support diverse learners. Her experiences include tutoring ESL students, teaching reading in after-school programs, and homeschooling her two children. Combining her expertise in child development and a passion for education, Sonia helped launch the Khan Academy Early Explorers Summer Program in 2013. It is her joy to cultivate children’s love of learning through creativity and personal connection. She is excited to be part of growing Khan Lab School’s mission through the development of her students and a collaborative team.  In addition to being creative in the classroom, Sonia enjoys spending time with her husband and two children, laughing with friends, baking, gardening, traveling, and sitting down with a good book. Sonia has been a member of the KLS team since its founding in 2014.

Theresa joined KLS in 2018 as the Head of Communications with a 14-year track-record in deploying impactful marketing strategies and developing lasting brands for startups and schools. She earned her master’s degree in Global Communications from the American University of Paris and also brings over a 5 years of leadership in admissions and higher education marketing.

Theresa led global outreach strategy for Stanford University's undergraduate admissions office while also directing marketing strategy for a medical-device startup (Lift Labs, creators of Liftware). Most recently she served as Director of Open Enrollment for Singularity University where she launched a new education program for executives on the future of learning. Theresa is passionate about education, diversity, and community and in her spare time continues to design experiences and advise brand strategy for startups and nonprofits. Theresa and her husband both grew up in the Bay Area and on the weekends enjoy taking their son on local adventures such as the zoo, steam train, museums, and hiking in the redwoods. As the daughter of two teachers, Theresa is thrilled to be part of a community dedicated to student-focused learning.

Antje’s professional life began with three years of vocational training at a 4-star hotel in Southern Germany, where she became a Certified Specialist in Hotel Business. After her training, she lived and worked in Berlin. In desperate need of sunshine, and after winning a competition for hotel business graduates, Antje transferred to a 5-star golf and spa resort hotel on the Balearic Island of Majorca. She supported the Front Office team for two years and later supported the Sales and Marketing department. While there, she learned Spanish, some Catalan, some golf, and acquired a love for exotic and local foods specialties like Ensaimada, Frit Mallorquín, and tapas. After about four years, Antje said, “¡Adéu, Palma!” and followed her husband to Lausanne, Switzerland. She added goat cheese fondue and excellent chocolate to her list of favorite foods, French and some Japanese to her languages, and discovered her love of hiking. Since 2012, Antje has called the Bay Area her home, where she enjoys poké, ramen, sushi, and (occasionally) grass-fed beef. She went back to school to earn a B.S. in Business Management from Western Governors University; this self-paced online program is one of the reasons she became a passionate advocate for student-centered learning. On the weekends, Antje often goes “glamping” with her husband and two young girls in their tiny house Cricket Trailer. She loves baking pastries and sumi-e painting (although, the black ink has been dried up for many, many months now). Antje is excited to be part of the KLS team and help with sailing the seas of learner-centered education! 

Originally from a small town in Wisconsin, Jessica graduated from college in Minnesota and then her adventurous spirit brought her West.  First to Portland, Oregon, then to Santa Barbara, and finally to the Bay Area. While in Portland, Jessica volunteered for a year of service as part of the AmeriCorps program which then led to pursuing her Masters degree in Public Health at Portland State University. After working in program development and implementing community-based programs in the non-profit public health sector for several years Jessica eventually settled in the Bay Area. It was here that Jessica decided to shift her career and pursue a Masters degree in Counseling Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. While gaining the clinical experience required for obtaining licensure as a Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT) Jessica discovered her interest in working with children and families by working in several different schools from San Francisco to San Jose and in between. Jessica finds school-based mental health services to be a particularly effective way to connect with children, adolescents, and families in order to promote a holistic approach to supporting students.

Jessica has provided school-based counseling support for the past six years and in 2016 became a licensed MFT. In addition to her time at KLS Jessica works as a therapist in private practice where she sees children, adolescents, and adults. Jessica enjoys spending time with her husband and daughter, cooking, traveling, reading, hiking, cheering on the Green Bay Packers, and exploring all of the amazing food and experiences the Bay Area has to offer.

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Rachel believes that relationships are the foundation to growth and success in the classroom and is excited to be a part of a team that places students at the center of all choices. Rachel’s passion for teaching was developed early while teaching dance in her hometown in Southern California. While earning her B.A. in Psychology at UC San Diego, she continued developing her interest in education as a mentor in various San Diego public schools and as a tutor at a progressive school in La Jolla, California. Her studies as an undergraduate student motivated her to join Teach For America as a Las Vegas Valley Corps Member in 2012 and she has been committed to developing strong readers and joyful learners ever since! During her two years in Las Vegas, she taught 3rd grade and earned her Masters in Curriculum and Instruction from UNLV.  In 2014, Rachel moved to the Bay Area and has spent the past four years in various roles at Rocketship Public Schools: 3rd and 4th grade Humanities Teacher, Planning Specialist, and most recently, Manager on the Humanities Team supporting teachers through curriculum and professional development. In her free time, she enjoys taking tap and yoga classes, learning to play the piano, listening to podcasts, and spending time with her rabbit, dog, and cat!  

A graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Superior, Kelsey earned her bachelor’s in Elementary Education while playing for the varsity basketball team. Her athletic experience exposed her to the world of international teaching, and Kelsey embarked on a four-year teaching career overseas, certified to deliver England's National Curriculum. In Prague, the Czech Republic, and Qatar, she taught students of all ages and learned about the local cultures. She began her master’s program in 2015 in Mallorca, Spain, and she is currently pursuing a degree and certification in English as a Second Language. Since childhood, Kelsey has loved being a part of the education scene – she built makeshift classrooms in the basement of her home where all the neighborhood children would come together to learn. You could say she’s always been a believer in the mixed-aged, “one room schoolhouse” shared learning experience. She loves helping others find their passions within academics and personal pursuits. Kelsey is especially excited to join the team at KLS, a place that is providing meaningful, purposeful, relevant, and respectful teaching/learning experiences to students and families. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, camping, museums, music, and spending time with family and friends. She also enjoys cheering on the Golden State Warriors, which makes working in the Bay Area an even more exciting opportunity! 

Gabrielle is excited to start her first year as a Level 5 Advisor for KLS.  After studying advertising, math, and religion at Lee University she found herself wanting to wrap all of her interest into one and pursue a career in education.  TEACH Charlotte offered her a lateral entry path into the classroom in 2012. Since then Gabrielle has taught pre-algebra and algebra for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and was also a founding 6th grade math teacher and secondary math specialist for KIPP DC. During her time in college Gabrielle was one of the 10 million individuals that benefited from Khan Academy’s online video library and is convinced that it was her saving grace to deeply understand calculus. She is thrilled to be a part of the advising and math team at KLS and glad to continue to be a teacher and a student.

As the daughter of a naval meteorologist Gabrielle spent half of her childhood in Europe and the other half in the States.  She is still figuring out how to acquire her dual citizenship from her birth country of Italy so that she may one day play for them in the Olympics, contingent on her event being either ultimate frisbee or hide-and-go-seek. Gabrielle loves to learn about other cultures and is always looking to add eclectic dishes to her rolodex of recipes.

During her free time Gabrielle can be found painting her own version of the Rorschach test, drawing geometric compositions, or designing duct tape wallets.  Live music is her niche and rock shows are her achilles heel. She and her husband love to explore and are always open to suggestions for great camping or fishing spots.

Megan was born and raised in Novi, a city in southeastern Michigan. She attended Kalamazoo College in her home state, where she graduated magna cum laude in Biology with a concentration in Health Studies. After volunteering in a second grade classroom, Megan found she had a passionate interest in sharing her love of learning, particularly in STEM-related fields. With this in mind, she completed a specialized STEM teaching fellowship that granted her a Master of Arts in Teaching at Wayne State University, while simultaneously completing her first two years of teaching Biology and Chemistry. Outside of work, Megan's biggest priority and interest lies in fulfilling the needs of her three-year-old border collie, Albus. She has also played competitive soccer since the age of 5, including three years of Division III soccer at Kalamazoo. Megan enjoys almost all outdoor activities, including pick-up soccer, hiking, biking, photography, and swimming. 

Katherine holds a B.A. in Creative Writing from Brown University, with an emphasis on poetry and long-form journalism. She comes to KLS from Reading Partners, where she ran a literacy intervention program at an elementary school in Richmond, CA. Over the past six years, Katherine has spent time working as an elementary reading and math tutor and as an after-school writing program director. She loves helping students find their voice and grow as readers and writers. She is also passionate about food and sustainability, and she has worked for a startup grocery cooperative, interned on a farm, and helped plan an environmental design conference. When she’s not working with students, you can find her baking all sorts of sweet things, playing music, puttering around in the woods, and writing poetry. 

Born in Mumbai, India, Nikita moved with her family to California when she was two years old. Nikita grew up in the Bay Area and attended college at UC Berkeley where she received her B.A. in Public Health. Her first major foray into the field of education, from which she would never look back, happened when she joined Teach for America as a 5th grade teacher for Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nevada. After a few years of roaming the Red Rocks and enjoying the Vegas sunshine, Nikita returned to her beloved California. She spent two more years as an upper elementary Literacy teacher at a San Jose charter school before a short stint as a Curriculum Designer at an EdTech startup in San Francisco. Since her very first year in the classroom, Nikita has valued the importance of personalized and deeper learning and has strived to find the balance between inquiry and mastery in her teaching and learning experiences. Nikita is passionate about children's literature and loves to spend her free time hiking, trying (and often failing at) new recipes, and traveling.  

Brett earned his B.A. in English Literature from DePauw University and his M.A.T from Gonzaga University with a concentration in Secondary Education. Before joining Khan Lab School, Brett spent five years at Tsinghua International School in Beijing, China, where he taught World Literature, AP English Literature, and served as the Head of the English Language Arts Department. During his time at Tsinghua, Brett established a summer reading program and helped develop best standards and practices for argumentative writing. Brett specializes in using literature to explore issues of social justice, most recently using One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to examine how the disenfranchised can use writing to challenge and change the society they live in. In recent years, Brett and his students have experimented with using new media to tell stories, from podcasts and websites to video games and augmented reality. Brett’s favorite part of being an educator is encouraging students to consider their place in the world, and how they can participate ethically and responsibly as citizens of a plural society.

Needless to say, Brett is an avid reader. He is particularly interested in post-modernist literature and his favorite authors are Kafka, Flannery O'Connor and Donald Barthelme. Outside of class, Brett enjoys exploring new places and parks with his wife Georgia, son Vincent and dog Dahuang.

 

Raised in Nova Scotia, Canada, Sue holds a bachelor's degree in English Language and Literature from Harvard College and a master's degree in Teaching and Curriculum from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. As a child, Sue attended a one-room school – the collaboration of a single teacher and 24 children – and has been devoted to multi-age, self-paced learning ever since. With varied experience in both public and private settings, Sue comes to KLS most recently from Whitby School in Greenwich, Connecticut, where she developed International Baccalaureate Units of Inquiry and where she helped to establish differentiated reading and writing instruction for children in grades 3-6. Sue is deeply committed to nurturing a love of reading in all children and to helping each child discover his or her own unique voice as a writer. When she’s not at school, Sue loves to spend time with her husband, Peter, and their three children. Sue is also an avid cook and gardener and an occasional artist, pianist, and singer. The Sterns moved to California in the summer of 2016 and have become outdoor enthusiasts as they continue to discover the beautiful hiking trails and beaches that make this part of the country so special. 

Derek grew up in Monroe and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the third of four children to a Texan father and French mother. In addition to a very strange accent that he’s since lost, his upbringing instilled in him a love of languages, cultures, and travel that he’s maintained to this day. Eager to leave the “Deep South” after high school, Derek went to the only slightly less southern University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He entered college a pre-med chemistry major and exited it fully embracing his passion for the humanities, earning a B.A. in history and a minor in creative writing.

After graduation Derek moved to France, where he taught English as a Second Language to elementary students from largely immigrant communities in the suburban regions outside Bordeaux. A year later he returned to the U.S. to begin his graduate education at Stanford University. In the years since, he’s earned his M.A. in history, married his lovely wife Ariel, moved back to France to conduct archival research in Paris, and then moved back to the Bay Area to work on his dissertation while Ariel earned her Master’s in Library and Information Sciences. Along the way, he’s also taught numerous history and interdisciplinary courses at Stanford: 20th century U.S. history, Modern Europe and the World, history of science, art history, and more. His research looks at memory, mythmaking, and the intersection of politics and culture in modern France.

Now that Derek has successfully taught 1st through 5th graders and freshman through senior undergraduates, he is delighted to join Khan Lab School and complete his pedagogy bingo card by teaching middle-and high-school students. In addition to the importance of STEM education in the 21 st century, he believes it is crucial for children to develop their historical, critical thinking, and writing skills in order to thrive as members of our global society. He is grateful that KLS has allowed him to join this all-important mission. When he’s not in the classroom, Derek loves movies, podcasts, cooking, playing the drums or guitar poorly, and reading just about anything he can get his eyes on.

Devin Harris, GrowFit Educator

We are happy to welcome Devin Harris as our Outer Wellness teacher. Devin has over 13 years of experience working with students. Prior to joining GrowFit, he was an outdoor education teacher and basketball coach for both elementary and middle school students. In his spare time, he enjoys being outdoors, dancing, and playing baseball. Devin is currently pursuing a degree in child development and looks forward to a long career in physical education.

Joe Callinan, GrowFit Co-Founder & CEO

Six years ago, Joe co-founded GrowFit to help provide physical education programs to schools in the Bay Area. He believes in empowering students to learn at their own pace through developmentally appropriate learning progressions. Joe's dedicated team encourages a love of fitness by creating a non-competitive environment grounded in self-improvement and mastery. As an organization, GrowFit utilizes outstanding instructors, deep research, and a focus on fundamental motor skill development to prepare students for healthy and active lives. The GrowFit curriculum incorporates significant amounts of aerobic exercise to provide students with immediate health benefits. Prior to GrowFit, Joe spent eight years working for a $4 billion dollar technology company. During that time, he was a Product Leader for QuickBooks Self-Employed and QuickBooks Financing. Joe earned his B.A. and M.A. from California Polytechnic State University and is a Certified Public Accountant.