For Humanities Teacher Beth Little, the classroom is just the first of many ways to connect with her students.
March 4, 2025
Computer Science Teacher Shreyas Rane helps students find simple approaches to complex ideas — even if he didn’t take the straightest path to his own teaching career.
BY JODY RECORD
Students in Shreyas Rane’s computer science classes likely wouldn’t be surprised to learn he runs at least two marathons a year and hikes at places like the Mount Everest base camp. What they might be surprised to know is that the first-year faculty member in the St. Paul’s School Science Department spent five years after finishing high school in Mumbai, India, playing the electric guitar with a heavy metal band. He’d grown up playing piano and classical guitar, and when the band, Midhaven, needed someone to play electric guitar, he learned. The group toured the world and released two albums and an EP.
“I could have followed a regular path and gone [straight] to college or explored something else for the next five years but I chose that,” Rane says. The experience, he says, is something he wouldn’t trade for anything.
Rane often visited the U.S. as a child, and when his touring days with Midhaven were over, he enrolled at Rutgers University in New Jersey. At Rutgers, he majored in computer science, worked on mathematical research and founded an undergraduate research journal — always with an eye toward becoming a teacher. He joined the SPS community from Connecticut’s Taft School, where he’d taught computer science for four years.
When Rane thinks about his philosophy for teaching, he turns to his philosophy for life. He wants students to think in terms of simplifying things rather than making them more complex. His approach in the classroom is to present concepts in a straightforward manner, and to offer opportunities for hands-on work rather than standing at the front of the class lecturing for an hour.
“If I were student, I’d think that was pretty boring,” says Rane. “Sometimes I lecture, but I make sure it makes sense and doesn’t take the entire class.”
Rane works to get students involved in every class and to apply their critical thinking skills in order to understand not just what the answers are on paper but also what points of view other than his they might consider. Sometimes he turns things around and has students prepare and present lessons. Many of his classes are project oriented.
“I get to interact with different age groups, get to build relationships with all different kinds of students. That really helps when I enter a class.”
Computer Science Teacher Shreyas Rane
He teaches all levels of computer science and, on his own time, works on research on approximation algorithms and complexity theory, which involves problems that are complex or impossible to solve. Problems that don’t have an optimal solution, Rane explains.
Rane says that one of the things that appeals to him about teaching in the boarding school environment is that it is so focused on community. At SPS, he finds that sense of community in his roles coaching the girls junior varsity field hockey and squash teams, living in Nash House and serving as an adviser to the computer science club.
“I get to interact with different age groups, get to build relationships with all different kinds of students,” he says. “That really helps when I enter a class. In the beginning it takes a couple of weeks for students to loosen up. The classes I teach are fairly advanced. The more comfortable students are, the faster and easier it is for them to get involved in class.”
And while his focus is on his teaching, Rane is still making music when he has time. He might not be going back on the road, but he has found a way to continue something he loves, sometimes playing with students in his dorm — yet another way to build connections.
