Josh Chapman
Co-Director (jchapman@communityhigh.net)
Josh Chapman has been with Community High School since its inception. He attended Yale University, where he earned his B.A. in Anthropology in 1996; he also holds graduate degrees in social science and creative writing, both from Hollins University. He teaches courses across the humanities, including anthropology, history, film and literature. His fiction has appeared in a number of magazines in the United States and Canada, and has been anthologized in New Stories from the South.
John McBroom
Co-Director; Program Coordinator of Music (john@communityhigh.net)
John McBroom has been a touring and recording musician for the last 12 years, playing in jam bands, bluegrass and jazz ensembles. He has been involved in more than a dozen CD projects as a musician, producer and executive producer. He also teaches algebra and geometry.
Linda Thornton
Director Emerita (linda@communityhigh.net)
Linda Thornton is a founding member and the director of Community High School. She graduated from Hollins in 1972 with a B.A. in English and then attended Brown University, graduating with an MAT in 1973. In 1976 she returned to Roanoke as an English teacher and has been active in alternative education as a teacher, administrator or board member ever since.
Roni Sutton
Business Manager; Registrar (roni@communityhigh.net)
Roni Sutton earned a B.A. degree in mathematics from Columbia College, a women’s liberal arts college in Columbia, S.C., in 1989. She is active in area alternative education as a non-profit board member and officer as well as the president of the Bedford Historical Society Board of Trustees.
Brian Counihan
Dean of Art and Humanities (brian@communityhigh.net)
Brian Counihan is a full-time faculty member of Community High School. He grew up in the Republic of Ireland and received a degree in painting and printmaking from one of Ireland’s top four-year art institutions. He has a B.A. in art history from Northwestern University, where he also received his MALS, focusing on contemporary culture. He was summa cum laude undergraduate and received the academic award for best thesis for his master’s degree. Previous to joining Community High School, Brian was teaching studio art as an adjunct faculty member at Randolph Macon Women’s College and Lynchburg College.
Les Epstein
Les Epstein spent 20 years in theater and opera management, including seasons as education director and production coordinator for Opera Columbus (Ohio) and seven as the executive director for the Children’s Theatre of Winston-Salem (N.C.). He is also a seasoned stage director, librettist and playwright, and in those capacities has worked for such companies as The Piedmont Opera, Toledo Opera, Children’s Theatre of Winston-Salem, the Brock Center for the Arts, the Andy Griffith Playhouse, the Contemporary American Theatre, Columbus Light Opera, New York’s Washington Square Players (with which he made his Off-Off Broadway debut in 1986) and the Belfast Maskers Theatre. Les received undergraduate degrees in theater performance and English from Otterbein College, a master’s in English from Miami (Ohio) University and continued with studies in literature at New York University and in theatre education at The Ohio State University. He completed his teacher training at Mary Baldwin College.
Simon Nolen
Simon Nolen graduated from Temple University in 2002 with a degree in film and media arts. He is a winner of the Comcast Philadelphia Screenwriting Award and is a former touring musician, with additional academic interests in African American culture, philosophy and theology.
Safia Yonker
Safia Yonker teaches math, science and computer science at Community High School. Additionally, Community High’s web page has benefited from her interest in web development. Safia received a B.S. in physics from the University of Virginia and an M.S. in computational physics from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Beyond teaching and web design, Safia enjoys walking her dogs, gardening and playing music with her husband and son.
Jen Sosnowski
(jsosnowski@communityhigh.net)
Jen Sosnowski received bachelor’s degrees in both biology and music from Salem College, and teaches science and math courses and music lessons at Community High. She graduated from UVa with a master’s in biology and attended Virginia Tech for her education coursework, which leaves her feeling rather conflicted during football season. Jen’s background in molecular biology research and interest in interdisciplinary curriculum design gives her a wide range of experiences to draw upon when creating her
classes.
Claudia Flores de Franko
Claudia Flores de Franko is a language teacher and artist in the Roanoke Valley. A native of Mexico City, Claudia came to Roanoke 17 years ago to work for Hollins University as an assistant in the department of foreign languages. She then earned her B.A. from Hollins with a double major in studio art and sociology. Three years after graduation, she was appointed by Hollins to work as a lecturer in Spanish, where she remained for five years. For the last 12 years she has taught Spanish and art at several institutions. Three years ago she opened Gala, her studio-gallery in downtown Roanoke, and has exhibited her work there as well as in other institutions. In the 1980s she attended the School of Languages of the National Politechnic Institute in Mexico City to learn French. Subsequently, she lived in Paris and Bretagne for a year to acquire fluency. She returned to France in 1997, through Hollins Abroad-Paris, and she was fortunate to attend L’Universite de la Sorbonne as a student. She is currently finishing a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies at Hollins University.
Gail Lambert
Gail Tansill Lambert is an adjunct, teaching Latin at Community High School since 2006-2007. She attended Hollins College where she earned a B.A. in Latin, and Hollins University for graduate degrees in liberal arts studies and children’s literature. She studied at the American Academy in Rome and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and attended the Vergilian Institute in southern Italy. She is a freelance writer and an award-winning fiction writer.
Cara Ellen Modisett
Cara Modisett is in her first year as an adjunct with Community High School, teaching expository writing, piano, assisting with theater and music and working with CHS’s public relations and website. She is a graduate of James Madison University with degrees in piano performance and English education, and is currently pursuing an MFA in creative nonfiction at Goucher College. She is former editor and now editor-at-large of Blue Ridge Country magazine, a reporter for WVTF public radio and a performing classical pianist.
Jessica Joy
Jessica Joy grew up in North Carolina but moved to Los Angeles after high school where she received a bachelor’s of architecture from University of Southern California. While pursuing a master’s of building science and working full-time for an architecture firm in Los Angeles, she decided she wanted to work as a teacher. Jessica received her master’s of education with a secondary mathematics credential from University of California while working in inner-city schools in Los Angeles. She and her husband, Matt, moved to Roanoke after Matt was accepted to the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. Jessica has been teaching math at CHS part-time and will join the faculty full-time next year, and hopes to integrate her interests in architecture and social justice in education into CHS’s already dynamic curriculum.
Tom Ohmsen
(tom_ohmsen@yahoo.com)
Tom has been teaching Music Theory and Composition classes at Community High School since 2004. A graduate of James Madison University, Tom is the author of four critically-acclaimed guitar and mandolin instruction books, including “Music Theory For Modern Mandolin” and “Music Theory For Modern Guitar”. His original music has appeared in numerous film and TV projects including the 1991 BBC Television documentary “Trains That Passed In The Night” which explored the work of photographer O. Winston Link. Recently he collaborated with Les Epstein and William Penn in composing the music for “Miss Lucy”, an original folk opera scheduled for production in the Fall of 2011. With over 30 years of experience in the audio engineering field, Tom has engineered, produced and/or played on over 500 album, CD, and film and TV projects, most of them at Flat Five Press & Recording Co.’s studios, which he founded in 1982. Over the years he has worked on projects from such artists as Bill Monroe, Ralph Stanley, Buster B. Jones, Zakiyah, The Agents Of Good Roots and The Dave Matthews Band (including the latter’s Gold and Platinum-selling CD “Remember Two Things”), as well as audio tracks for the Warner Bros. motion picture “Gods And Generals” starring Robert Duvall. As a musician, he has recorded several albums as a member of various bands (Blue Mule and Butch Robins’Imagicnation, most recently), as well as under his own name.
Tom is currently the chief engineer at Flat Five and is also president of the company.
