Spring 2023 Teachers
Dr. Jacob Pride
English, Theology, and Humanities
Dr. Jacob Pride has taught for over ten years. He lives in Thornton, CO, where he is currently a copy-writer for Little J Marketing. His wife, Caitlin, and two boys, William and Charles, and first girl, Elsie Grace, moved from Manhattan, KS back to the Denver area in June 2020. Their fourth child, Emma Kate, was born in October! Jacob graduated from Ave Maria University with a concentration in English and philosophy in 2008 and received the St. Thomas Aquinas Award for Balance and Eutropalia. After studying theology for a year at Mount St. Mary’s seminary, he served as a FOCUS missionary for two years and met Caitlin, whom he dated while earning a master’s in English at Georgia Southern University. Caitlin and he were married in 2013, and he received his PhD in English at the University of Denver in 2017. His dissertation concerns Catholic literary theory and the Southern Gothic Literature of Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and Cormac McCarthy. He taught English literature and composition at Kansas State University and Manhattan Christian College and 7th-12th Grade theology at St. Francis Xavier School in Kansas. He is glad to be back to Colorado, where he has taught at Arapahoe Community College and Holy Family High School. He is excited to use his education and experience to teach homeschool students throughout the Denver area. He is available for teaching 1:1 or groups in writing, rhetoric, literature, philosophy, history, theology, and introductory Latin.
Darci Byrnes
CCE Coordinator
Darci is a proud wife and mother. She and her husband, Tom, recently celebrated 20 years of marriage and have seven children from 1 to 19 years old. She has homeschooled her children since 2007 and over the course of those fifteen years she has participated in many co-ops and enrichment programs. She has been a part of CCE, either as a parent, teacher or administrator since 2014. As the daughter of an engineer and a science teacher, it was all science and math growing up. However, God revealed different plans during college and Darci received a BA in Theology and Humanities from Franciscan University of Steubenville. These diverse educational experiences lend themselves well to Darci serving CCE in a number of different ways in the classroom.
Elise Epstein
Creative Drama
Elise Epstein has been doing theater since childhood and enjoys the unique opportunities it provides for all of us to explore and express different creative sides of ourselves we would only get away with on the stage! It is her joy to watch young actors and actors with unique abilities discover their abilities and gain confidence through theatrical experiences. She finds her greatest inspiration from well known stories found in books.
Claire Rojas
Art
Mrs. Claire (Woodbury) Rojas is a homeschool graduate herself. She teaches several classes out of her home in Westminster, including sewing, piano, art and creative writing. Mrs. Rojas has studied iconography for over five years in age-old methods. She has been commissioned for several icons, including one at Holy Trinity (St. Raphael in the Adoration chapel) and an icon of Our Lady of the Rosary for the Dominican Vietnamese chapter in Wheat Ridge.
Anthony Gallegos
Martial Arts
Mr. Gallegos has been a martial arts instructor/coach for many years now. He is a life-long student of the martial arts and has enjoyed using the arts as a bridge to understanding and teaching virtue. His joy as an instructor is seeing his students accomplish their goals after making a determined choice to persevere.
Monica Mayhak
AmeriTowne
Monica Mayhak received her B.S. in Applied Mathematics with minors in Economics and Computer Science from the University of Texas. She has taught math, economics, literature, history, and civics at homeschool co-ops for 15 years. She homeschooled all of her children and now has four college graduates and two still schooling at home. She is also blessed with four grandchildren and another on the way.