Author: Jana McCarthy

Student advocate. Belief in teaching as service. Teacher of AP Language and ELA 10-12 in Boston Public Schools. Former ESL 3-4 teacher in a city outside Boston. National Board Certified Teacher. Always teaching on YouTube. Worked as Director of curriculum and instruction and adult learning specialist in Boston Public Schools as well as Director of Opportunity Scholarships for first generation students at a large private university in Boston. Passionate about access to opportunities for students and families in and beyond high school. Believer in Restorative Justice and trauma informed teaching. Sometimes photographer and all the time obsessed with street art. Learned to write as a grant writer for the Seattle Rep, Gardner Museum, and American Repertory theatre. Cat and dog mom.

Belief System

An outstanding teacher is empathetic, reflective, and approaches instruction as a continuously evolving practice from an inquiry stance. Outstanding teaching is a journey based on taking risks out of one’s comfort zone, trying new approaches and strategies, and revising to learn from what didn’t work the first time to make it better the next time. An outstanding teacher believes in equity within each lesson for each student with the deep commitment to work from where each student is at in order to maintain a commitment to each student’s individual growth.

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An outstanding teacher understands how to cultivate student engagement and bridge content and skills gaps through high expectations and cognitive demanding tasks. Similarly, an outstanding teacher understands how to connect content to objectives and standards in order to develop clear learning targets to help students understand how to reach success every day. Data becomes an outstanding teacher’s friend, and rather than being feared, data is a tool for understanding student achievement against what is currently in practice and where practice can grow to serve students. Finally, an outstanding teacher simply does not give up on kids, and specifically, the expectation that each child can be successful in college and career, and making this commitment to each student becomes this teacher’s top priority.

 

“An outstanding teacher believes in equity within each lesson for each student…”