Willow Creek Academy

Our Faculty and Staff

Instructional Specialists
 

Coach Dave David Singleton, Physical Education
 

David Singleton taught tennis in upstate New York/Western Massachusetts after attending U.C. Berkeley, and spent time as a touring tournament player.  With a group of close friends, he also started a non-profit corporation in the early nineties, which focused primarily on providing, art, music, vocational, and educational resources to poor and at-risk young people.   By tapping into the wealth of locally available talent, the group held many events and fund raisers, and used the proceeds to fund projects and activities within the communities of Oakland, San Francisco, and Berkeley.  During that time David also spent two days a week volunteer tutoring young students in the Hunters Point neighborhood of San Francisco.

After a brief stint living in Chicago, David returned and settled in Berkeley. He became a member of a collective that owned two bicycle shops and, within a year, he was a fully sponsored mountain bike racer.   A few years later, David began working for the YMCA of Marin.    As a campus counselor & after school program coordinator for high risk, and drug/alcohol addicted teens, David enjoyed providing much needed services to students of Marin City and the Canal area of San Rafael.   After two years, David was offered the opportunity to teach tennis at the Presidio in San Francisco, and to teach Physical Education part time to budget-strapped schools ... and that is how he landed here at Willow Creek Academy.   During the same year, he also coached the Marin Catholic Men's Varsity Tennis Team.

David emphasizes learning, hard work, big fun, inclusiveness, equality, and camaraderie amongst his students. David's primary concerns are educating people about nutrition, fitness, early-onset child diabetes, childhood obesity, and improved scholastic performance through physical activity. He also enjoys nurturing previously undiscovered ability, and the awakening of self-confidence in young people.

 
Kelly Browning  Kelly Browning, Director of the Garden and Nutrition Program 

Kelly is a graduate of Dominican University with a BA in Humanities and Cultural Studies and a Certificate in Sustainable Practices. She is currently getting her teaching credential at Dominican and is very excited to be completing her program as a student teacher at Willow Creek Academy. She came to Willow Creek in 2009 as a volunteer with Marin School Volunteers and soon after began an internship and senior thesis project focused on bringing garden and nutrition programs to schools. Kelly worked as a cooking and nutrition teacher with GrowingGreat Marin City for three years and is now the program director and instructor for the Sausalito Marin School District and Willow Creek Academy. She is looking forward to another great year of gardening, nutrition and cooking healthy snacks and meals with the students.

Born and raised in Indiana, Kelly lived in Steamboat Springs, CO and Ashland, OR before finally making it to Northern California and Mill Valley (like Disneyland for Midwesterners!) She thinks the best things about living in the Bay Area are the mild weather and year-round access to delicious, healthy foods. Kelly grew up gardening, harvesting and cooking with food from her grandparent’s farm. She believes in introducing students to healthy homemade snacks grown in the garden at school, so that they can begin to understand that food comes from the earth. Working as a personal chef for a family for 12 years, Kelly learned that kids will eat fruits and vegetables of all shapes, sizes and colors, if they have planted, harvest, washed and prepared the snack with their own hands.

Kelly enjoys cooking, gardening, cycling, hiking, swimming, yoga, snowboarding, movies, music and family vacations!

 
Emilie Rohrbach Emilie Rohrbach, Music 
 
 
Emilie Rohrbach is so excited to be the new music teacher at Willow Creek Academy! She graduated from Boston College with a degree in Theater and a minor in Faith, Peace, and Justice Studies. She is a certified Orff Schulwerk music and movement teacher and has had extensive training with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's director training program. Before coming to Willow Creek, Emilie spent four years teaching music and movement at Ring Mountain Day School, then nine years teaching at Children's Day School in San Francisco where she founded the lower school music program and the middle school theater department. Emilie teaches piano, voice, flute, and guitar and also works as a freelance writer. She enjoys teaching in developing countries over the summer, most recently at the exceptional school Shanti Bhavan in India.
 
 
 

 
 
Coach PaHoua  PaHoua Lee -- Playworks Program Coordinator
 

Coach PaHoua is originally from Green Bay, Wisconsin. PaHoua received her Bachelor of Science from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, where she double majored in English and Biology. She combined her education in communication and science by working in several nonprofit environmental education organizations in Wisconsin, eventually making her way to California. After three years of working as an outdoor educator in the Santa Cruz Mountains and in the Marin Headlands, PaHoua yearned for longer-term interaction with students, and joined Playworks in the summer of 2012. She is excited to be part of Willow Creek Academy this school year! Please do introduce yourself if you see her on campus!


Kids and adults alike are usually curious as to what PaHoua’s ethnicity is: she is Hmong! The Hmong are indigenous people from the mountainous regions of Laos, China, Vietnam and Thailand in Southeast Asia. The first part of her name “Pa” means flower, and the second part of her name “Houa” means cloud or wind. Together, PaHoua’s name means fog.