New Faculty
The Pennington School has welcomed sixteen new members to its faculty. Stephanie Allen, born and raised in Langhorne, PA, teaches Upper School mathematics and serves as an advisor to Odyssey of the Mind. A graduate of George School, she holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Rider University and taught previously in South Carolina public schools.
New faculty and staff at The Pennington School, (from left): Eli Durmer, Andrea Popel, Elizabeth Cummings, Danielle Bahr, David Hallgren, Ryan Stokes, William Burke, Rachel Burke, Peter Puleo, Stephanie Allen, Chrissie Knight, Stacey Inzer, Emma Wells, Nathaniel Van Yperen, Stephanie Cohen, and Alexandra Crivelli ’10. Not pictured: Matthew Mysliwiec.
Danielle Wright Bahr is teaching Middle School science as a leave replacement this semester. A native of Portland, OR, she earned her bachelor’s degree in biology at Duke University and her M.Ed. degree at Stanford University. After helping to open a charter school for low-income students and teaching biology in California, she eventually moved to Atlanta, GA, where she taught elementary science education at Georgia State University and supervised student teachers. New York City native Rachel Gleicher Burke has joined the Upper School English Department faculty and is advising the School newspaper. She holds a bachelor’s degree in international studies from Colby College and a master’s degree in English literature from Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English. She taught English as a Second Language at a Brooklyn charter school before joining the faculty of Wyoming Seminary in Pennsylvania. For the last four years, she has taught English at the Wooster School in Danbury, CT. William Burke has returned to Pennington’s Upper School English faculty; he taught at Pennington from 2008 through 2015, when he returned to his hometown of Houston to teach at St. Francis Episcopal School. A graduate of Wake Forest University, he went on to earn a Master of Arts degree from Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School, where he met his wife, Rachel; he later joined her on the faculty of the Wooster School in Danbury, CT.
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Pennington Magazine Fall/Winter 2019–20
Stephanie Hanzel Cohen, who hails from Upper Darby, PA, is teaching Upper School English. A graduate of George School, she earned a bachelor’s degree in American literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and secondary English teaching certification from California State University at Northridge. She has taught levels from kindergarten to adults in California and New Jersey, most recently as an upper school English teacher at Wardlaw-Hartridge School in Edison. Alexandra Crivelli, a 2010 graduate of The Pennington School, has returned to her alma mater to teach English as a Second Language and Mandarin Chinese. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Hamilton College, majoring in Chinese language and literature. After a year with AmeriCorps in San Francisco and a year teaching fifth-graders in Brooklyn, she did graduate work at Middlebury College and the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, earning a Master of Arts degree in Chinese, with a focus on teaching Chinese as a second language. She taught Mandarin Chinese in the Hopewell Valley School District last year. Elizabeth Python Cummings is assistant director of college guidance with the School’s Cervone Center for Learning, helping students with learning disabilities through the college admission process. A graduate of Moravian College with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, she earned a Master of Science in Education degree in mental health counseling from Fordham University shortly before beginning work in admissions at Iona College. Most recently she was director of placement at the Stephen Gaynor School, a school for students with language-based learning differences.