Several new teachers have joined our staff for the 2011-2012 school year, and some other faculty will be filling different roles. With the exception of our new classroom aides, they are listed below:

Second K5 Class Lead Teacher:
Mrs. Frances Luna-Baird is excited to be joining us after three years of lead teaching kindergarten at a Classical Christian school in New Jersey. She has a BA and CA credential from Cal State Long Beach and also served as her previous school’s PE teacher, cross country coach and drama/theater director. An avid athlete, Frances has competed in cross-country, swimming, and soccer, and enjoys theater arts, reading, and painting. She is excited to have found another Classical Christian school at which to teach, and she is thrilled be returning to her native Southern California and her extended family here.

1st Grade Lead Teacher:
Mrs. Lydia Clevenger is excited and honored to be the lead first grade teacher at Cambridge this fall, after serving as an aide in first grade this past year. She is a CA credentialed teacher with a BA from Biola University, where she graduated from the Torrey Honors Institute (Classical Great Books program) and experienced first-hand the truth, goodness, and beauty of a Classical Christian education. She brings five years of prior experience teaching 1st grade and looks forward to leading our Firsties this Fall in their own experience in discovering the good, true, and beautiful.

3rd Grade Lead Teacher:
Mrs. Jessica Lin is excited to join us after nearly 9 years of teaching experience in various grades from preschool through 4th grade. Having been a 3rd grade lead teacher at a Christian school in West LA for the past three years, she is particularly excited about teaching 3rd grade at a Classical Christian school this upcoming year. She is a California credentialed teacher and has a BA in sociology from the University of San Francisco and a Masters in curriculum and instruction from Notre Dame de Namur. She and her husband are looking forward to relocating to San Diego.

6th Grade Lead/Latin (K5-6th)/5th-6th Grammar Teacher:
Ms. Alice Lyons recently graduated magna cum laude from Claremont McKenna College, where she majored in classics and religious studies. Teaching Latin to elementary students is her idea of a dream job, so she is delighted to be joining us and sharing her love of Latin and grammar with our young students. She has been studying Latin for 9 years and was chosen to write and present an original Latin oration for her college commencement. She is particularly drawn to our Classical Christian model of education after having spent a year studying classics under the tutorial system at Oxford. Ms. Lyons is excited to begin teaching Cambridge students, and she looks forward to being part of the Cambridge community.

5th and 6th Grade Bible Teacher:
Mr. Kris Mack: Mr. Mack graduated from Westminster Seminary California with an M.Div and is currently serving as a youth pastor at Harbor Presbyterian Church North County. He enjoys seeing students connect the truth of God to all aspects of their life and their learning. He was first introduced to the Trivium at Westminster Seminary and has since come to believe whole heartedly in teaching and learning via the Classical Christian model. He brings to Cambridge eight years of passion for and experience working with older elementary and middle school age children and looks forward to this upcoming year of teaching students to explore the depth and the riches of the Word of God.

5th/6th Grade Math Teacher:
Dr. Bindu Philip has a B.S. and M.S. in Chemistry from the University of Bombay in India. She continued her academic pursuits while working as a research scientist and received her PhD in the field of Organic Chemistry. While she has had experience teaching undergraduate courses abroad as well as high school chemistry here in San Diego, she loves teaching young children and is very excited about this opportunity to teach our 5th and 6th grade math program as well as coordinate special ACSI events and serve as coordinator of the overall Cambridge School’s Mathematics program. She and her husband have home-schooled their two young daughters classically in the past and is very familiar with much of our classical curriculum having completed her third year as 3rd grade teacher at Cambridge. She is multi-lingual, bi-cultural and enjoys new ventures.

5th/6th Grade Science Teacher:
Dr. Melissa Gingrich graduated from the University of Arizona with a BS in Molecular and Cellular Biology, and earned her Ph.D. in Neuroscience at Emory University. Her dissertation project involved recording electrical signals from live brain cells to define the interactions of two chemical messenger pathways. The highlight of her grad school career was earning a pre-doctoral fellowship which allowed her to travel to present her research at a meeting of the Physiological Society at King’s College London. She and her husband Brenden met as students at Emory and married in Atlanta. She became a stay-at-home mom when her first son Samuel was born, and now has two boys and a girl. All three are Cambridge students this year. Though at times she misses being active in the laboratory, she loves to continue reading about the sciences and she loves to think about how to best convey the wonder, intricacy and order of God’s creation to young students. A founding family of The Cambridge School, she has been actively involved in building a strong science program here at Cambridge since the school’s inception. She begins her fourth year at The Cambridge School.

Art Instructor:
Mrs. Robin Przybysz has 24 years of experience as a K-12 art instructor and as a professional artist exhibiting in local San Diego galleries. She is coming to us after nearly 15 years of teaching art at Santa Fe Christian.