TINTON FALLS – Ranney School recently announced several changes to its staff for the upcoming school year.
Amin Babar will be joining the middle school and upper school faculty as well as the technology team. He will also be teaching upper school robotics and some STEAM-oriented classes in the middle school. Babar earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science from Hamilton College. Babar founded an organization called Yes Education to help students from all over Pakistan access quality education in Islamabad.
Tom Brinkerhoff, who has been published in peer-reviewed articles and presented at six national conferences, will be joining the upper school history department. Brinkerhoff earned his bachelor’s degree from Lafayette College before earning a master’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a recipient of the Benjamin Franklin Fellowship, Geo L. Harrison Fellowship, Phyllis Rackin Fellowship, Dean’s Award for Research and New Media, Latin American Studies Research Grant, and History Department Research Grant.
Todd Christopher will join the performing arts department. A former opera singer, Christopher has been teaching performing arts at middle and upper schools for 18 years. He earned his bachelor’s degree from The Ohio State University with a focus on vocal/choral, and his master’s degree from Northern Arizona University in vocal performance. Most recently, he was the choral director and assistant theater director at Lake Ridge Academy in North Ridgeville, Ohio, where he was choral director, acting and vocal coach, director of the theatrical technical crew, as well as the musical and technical director for the upper school play and musical and middle school musical.
Joining the technology department, David Forman has 12 years of experience at private schools in New Jersey. He spent 10 years as systems and network manager at the Peck School in Morristown and was most recently a systems and technology specialist at Oratory Prep in Summit.
Jonathan Goodson joins Ranney’s middle school humanities faculty after teaching at Ciji Primary School in Zhejiang, China as part of a partnership with Ranney School. He has also mentored middle school students at the Young Quakers Community Center in Philadelphia and was part of Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program, where he authored research regarding communications challenges. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and is the recipient of the Army War College Foundation Scholarship Grand Prize and Honorary Credential for Textbook Interpretation and Teacher Design from Cixi Education Bureau. At Penn, Goodson was a varsity athlete as well as member of the glee club and an a cappella group.
Angelina Howard will be joining Ranney School as diversity, equity and inclusion coordinator, middle school dean, and part of the upper school psychology faculty. After earning a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from Providence College and a master’s degree in social work from Simmons College, she worked as the school counselor at Princeton’s Stuart Country Day School’s middle and upper schools, while working for the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families. Howard has attended, participated in and facilitated multiple workshops and conferences focused around diversity, equity and inclusion.
Not a new face around Ranney’s campus, Chelsea Kucharski will join Ranney as an upper school science teacher after serving as the Ranney middle school girls’ lacrosse coach for the past two years, as well as a long-term maternity leave substitute for upper school geometry. She studied marine biology at Coast Carolina University and Stockton University.
Rachel Lasda will teach upper school science, coming to Ranney from Oak Knoll School of the Holy Child in Summit, where she taught a variety of classes, including AP biology and honors biology. She graduated from Villanova University with a bachelor’s degree in biology and minored in Spanish. Lasda, who has been an EMT for the last three years, will also serve as the upper school girls’ lacrosse coach.
Amanda Penecale will be teaching in the visual arts department. After earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design, Penecale earned her Master of Education and teaching certificate from Arcadia University. She has a great deal of teaching experience in both middle school and upper school, and will be the middle school girls’ basketball coach.
Daniel Shaw will be teaching upper school computer science. Shaw graduated with a double major in computer science and Spanish from Wake Forest University. He most recently served as computer science teacher at Hackley School in New York and he will be entering his first season as the varsity girls’ soccer assistant coach at Ranney.
The article originally appeared in the July 9 – 15, 2020 print edition of The Two River Times.
