The Faculty Profile page is a chance to see a little more of the personality and individual teaching style of CS faculty. The page will be regularly updated with new teachers, with previous profiles continuing to be accessible. For brief bios of all Community's teachers, click here.
David Lang - Art
Award-winning filmmaker, former Peace Corps volunteer, artist, College Summit volunteer, world traveler. David Lang brings all his life experiences to teaching art at Community School. One of his favorite units is the Fifth Grade printmaking project. They visit Firecracker Press to see an old-fashioned letterpress, then students design and print their own money for the Revolutionary War. Along the way are great conversations about what makes money valuable, and what makes art valuable. He is currently working on developing some simple animation projects for different grade levels. David is known for getting students to answer their own questions about their artwork and to self-evaluate their work.
Outside of school, David exercises his own creative skills by creating video artwork and producing short films for competition. He also volunteers with College Summit, an organization that works with first-generation and low-income students to help them plan for life after high school. In 2008, David traveled to Japan as a winner of the Japan Fullbright Memorial Teaching Project, visiting public and private schools to observe Japanese education.
Jessica Klingbeil - 2nd Grade
Jessica Klingbeil exclaims, “Reading is my passion!” She recently completed her master’s specializing in reading at UMSL. She loves putting the skills she has learned to good use in the classroom by choosing appropriate literature books for the children and teaching various reading skills. The literature program in 2N now has five different groups to meet the needs of all the children in the class. Jessica says, “I love the freedom teachers have at Community to meet the needs of the students within the curriculum.” Jessica has been here for six years, and has taught both first and second grade. After completing her student teaching here, Jessica says she knew this was a great place because of the wonderful faculty, families and students.
