Our Teachers

• Linda Powers     Director / Lead Teacher

Linda Powers is the owner, director and lead teacher of Community School #1. Linda has been working with children from a young age, assisting with Girl Scout troops, Sunday school classes, providing child care, and tutoring. She has a Bachelor’s of Science in Social Welfare from the University of Kansas where she served as a child advocate in a domestic abuse shelter. She additionally has a Bachelor’s of Science in Education from Pittsburg State University. While working toward her Master’s of Literacy at Rockhurst University, Linda tutored struggling readers in the University’s Community Center.
Linda has been a classroom teacher since 1992, where she began her teaching career in the Shawnee Mission School District. Her students were recognized for excellence multiple times at the district’s annual Research and Development Forum. It was during this time that she became acquainted with Private School #1 (PS#1)/ Community School #1 (CS#1) and its directors, Punky Thomas and Rebecca Liberty. Linda and Rebecca worked closely together on several projects, facilitating training and workshops for teachers interested in built-environment education and on the Save Union Station Project in 1995.
In 1998, Linda and her husband, Eric, moved to Austin, Texas. She began teaching in the Lake Travis School District. After the birth of their daughter, they returned home to Kansas City where Linda renewed her connection with CS#1. She began teaching at CS#1 in 2003 and became director in 2007.
Linda is a passionate, enthusiastic, and dedicated wife, mother, and educator. She infuses her classroom with great warmth, humor, high expectations and high standards for student behavior and academics while recognizing the talents, worth, needs, and individuality of each of her students.

• Joe Puglis     Team Teacher

Joe Puglis began teaching at CS#1 in 2009. He is the lead teacher in Science, team teaches Math and Literacy, and collaborates on all other project work.
Joe Puglis brings a unique perspective to CS#1. His diverse teaching experiences include: tutoring as an Americorps member in Overtown, Miami; Teaching at Central High school in Liberty City, Miami; and Spending 2 years in Thailand as a teaching fellow for Princeton in Asia. He has also devoted time to following his beliefs and passions. Amongst many other experiences, he has: been an apprentice at the Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture; climbed Devil’s Tower; sung in operas; been the assistant manager at a 6 acre, organic farm outside of Chicago, Illinois; been an adjudicator at the university debate team national championships in Thailand; trekked up to 5000 meters in the Indian Himalayas.
Joe Puglis strives to find the exceptional in the mundane and the fictional in the real. This often leads to exciting and innovative lessons and a sense of wonder within the classroom.

• Rachel Mahlik     Spanish

Rachel Mahlik is a Math and Spanish tutor to middle and high school students, and Spanish teacher at CS #1. She began at CS #1 in 2004 and has taught Spanish and Music over the years.
Rachel has taught for fifteen years total, in New Orleans, St. Louis, Managua, Nicaragua, and at Notre Dame de Sion in Kansas City. She has taught Spanish, 2nd Grade, Pre-Kinder, Music, 5th and 6th grades and adult literacy.
She holds a Master’s in Education in Curriculum and Instruction, a Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education, a Missouri teaching certificate and a diploma in Spanish language from Instituto Centro America. Rachel enjoys teaching language and culture as a way to open doors of communication and world-wide learning for her students.

• Tara Tonsor     Art

Tara Tonsor is the art instructor at CS #1 Elementary. She also works as an art educator at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Ford Education Learning Center. She has been with the Nelson for five years specializing in early art education. Tara Tonsor has worked with children and the arts for over ten years.
Tara is a freelance illustrator and designer, and avid jewelry artist. Tara’s design experience includes working with Fencepost Productions designing a variety of men’s leisure apparel, Jill McDonald Design working with children’s clothing and textile patterns, and product design work featured in Pottery Barn, Babies R’ Us, and Target.

• Laura Frank     Music

Laura Frank has many roots in Kansas City. She owns a small landscaping business, teaches yoga, works part-time as a barista, performs with her husband in their band, "Mary Fortune", participates in local performance projects, and finally, is very happy to be joining the CS #1 family as their music teacher. Laura will nurture music curiosity through the creative process and by developing critical listening skills.
Laura has a performance background in experimental theatre and vocal work. She has trained with masters in Denmark, Serbia, New York, and Kansas City. Her educational experience includes Montessori education and she has led several vocal workshops for children, young adults and adults.
Her specialty with vocal work and music is to help the student find their "natural singing voice" and guide the student in creating compositions either via voice or instrument. Her students will work together to write songs organically, creating personal connections with their music.

• Harlan Brownlee     Movement

Harlan Brownlee, President and CEO of the Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City, possesses a passion for the arts guided by a disciplined approach to change. Understanding the transformational power the arts have to improve the quality of life for a community, he has lead the Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City in developing community partnerships dedicated to insuring access to the arts and cultural development for the region. Harlan has worked for twenty-seven years in the arts education field as a performing artist, educator, and arts administrator. From 2005 to 2009, he served as the Executive Director for Kansas City Young Audiences, a non-profit dedicated to engaging all youth in the arts, promoting creativity, and inspiring success in education.
Harlan is on the Kennedy Center’s National touring roster for the Partners in Education program and has conducted master classes, workshops and residencies extensively in the Midwest and throughout the United States. In addition, he has been an adjunct professor for Rockhurst University’s School of Education and the University of Missouri – Kansas City’s School of Education. Since 1996, Harlan has served as a consultant for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and as a member of the Fine Arts Task Force. He has been a movement instructor at CS #1 for twenty-seven years.
Harlan received his B.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where he was educated as a dancer and choreographer. His performance background includes work for thirteen years as one of the Artistic Co-Directors with City in Motion Dance Theater in Kansas City, Missouri. He received his M.A.in Educational Research and Psychology from the University of Missouri - Kansas City. He serves as the Regional Vice-President for Missouri Citizens for the Arts (MCA), and is on the Missouri Alliance for Arts Education (MAAE), Missouri Association of Community Arts Agencies (MACAA) and Kansas City Missouri’s Downtown Council’s boards. Harlan’s wife is Linda Putthoff, owner of Plaza Wellspring. Together they share a passion for dance having met first at City in Motion Dance Theater. They reside in Kansas City, Missouri and have three daughters, Samantha, Leah, and Amber.

• Linda Puthoff     Movement

Linda Putthoff is the director of Plaza Wellspring, a center for movement and healing arts founded in 2005, where she teaches yoga and therapeutic Pilates. Plaza Wellspring is comprised of a group of ten teachers and practitioners offering yoga, Pilates, gyrotonic, massage therapy, and energy healing. Linda began teaching the children at CS#1 in 1992 when her oldest daughter began kindergarten at CS #1, and has seen all three of her children benefit from the very special teaching practices and community environment at CS #1.
Linda has taught yoga in Kansas City since 1986. From 1988 through 1998, she worked with City in Motion Dance Theater as a company dancer and instructor. She was school director from 1992 – 1993, and led the company as executive director from 1993 – 1998. During her years with City in Motion, she also taught dance in the Kansas City, Missouri school district in their after school program, and worked with Kansas City Young Audiences (KCYA) teaching workshops about science, math, and language arts concepts using dance and movement. In addition, she taught yoga and creative movement to children at KCYA’s Community School for the Arts.
Linda brings joy to her teaching, and hopes to instill in her students a love for movement and an appreciation for how special and unique each person is.

• Jane Gotch     Movement

Originally from Omaha, Nebraska, Jane attended University of Missouri at Kansas City’s Conservatory of Dance from 1996-1998, and graduated from University of the Arts in Philadelphia in 2000 with a BFA with honors in modern dance. In 1998, she studied at the Alvin Ailey School in New York on a full scholarship from the Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey. She danced professionally with Scrap Performance Group (PA), Netta Yerushalmy’s Dancing People (NY), and as an apprentice with Tere O’Connor Dance (NY).
As a choreographer she has received numerous awards, most recently; an Inspiration Grant from The Metropolitan Arts Council of Kansas City (2008 & 2010), and a space grant at Urban Culture Project’s City Center Rehearsal Space (2009-2011). She is a 2010 recipient of a Rocket Grant from The Warhol Foundation in partnership with The Charlotte Street Foundation and Spencer Museum of Art, for a multi-disciplinary, collaborative performance project, WE!. She is the 2011 Innovation in the Arts Award winner from the Missouri Entrepreneur’s Celebration and the Small Business Technology Development Center at UMKC.
In addition to her artistic endeavors, she is a teaching artist through Kansas City Young Audiences and at Community School #1. In 2001 she became a certified trainer of GYROTONIC® and GYROKINESIS®, a movement training, rehabilitation, and body conditioning system. She has taught in New York, California, Israel, and India. Here in Kansas City, she has an established private practice at Plaza Wellspring wellness center.