Leonda Archer
Math teacher
Washington-Liberty High School, Arlington
Years teaching: 19
Originally from North Carolina, Archer previously taught math and coached boys’ basketball at Gunston Middle School in Arlington, and held teaching and coaching positions at Mark Twain Middle School and Thomas Edison High School in Alexandria. Find her math raps on YouTube.
In third grade, I remember feeling unnoticed and inarticulate at times. I had a teacher who made me feel seen, intelligent and empowered. My hope is to facilitate this same encouraging experience with my math students by providing opportunities for them to express their abilities in creative ways.
For an end-of-the-year project while I was teaching Algebra 1 at Twain Middle School, I asked students to create mind maps, board games, posters, PowerPoint presentations and other creative demonstrations of understanding. One group of eighth-graders produced a rap song. As a surprise, I decided to remix one of the songs that was submitted. That was the birth of my math rap writing career!
[Check out her 2020 welcome back rap, “It Be Like That Sometimes.”]
A few years later, I arrived at Gunston, where I met a student who told me he made and produced beats. I explained that my husband, Brian, produces music and that we have a studio set up in our home. We started devoting our Friday lunches to freestyling and making beats. Simultaneously, I began writing a rap called “Power Rules: The Laws of Exponents.” The students would give me suggestions on how to breathe and structure songs. We ended up making a video starring my students. After hours of filming in the hot sun, editing, and lots of fried chicken and sweet tea, we completed it and posted it on YouTube.
The most satisfying part of teaching is creating experiences where students can be creative, challenged and feel empowered. I enjoy watching students’ confidence in their math abilities rise, and being a part of their continued growth as they develop their passions and talents. At the same time, I’m being pushed to be creative about how I deliver content. To rebrand math as fun and cool. –Tamar Abrams
María Carolina Currás Nieto
Spanish teacher (fifth and sixth grade)
Flint Hill School, Oakton
Years teaching: 6
A native of Uruguay, Currás Nieto holds a bachelor’s degree in global affairs and international development from George Mason University and a certificate in elementary education from Johns Hopkins. The former Teach for America corps member is a dual citizen of Uruguay and the U.S. She speaks English, Spanish and Portuguese.
Learning a second language is so much more than just being able to communicate. Languages exist in a culture, and it is equally important to learn about the culture of the language. My students are invested in Spanish because they enjoy learning about Hispanic and Latin American cultures.
My sixth-graders learned to dance merengue as part of their unit on well-being and health. My fifth-graders danced to a famous Dominican bachata song during their unit on food.
During a homeroom activity, I challenged students to compliment each other and was pleasantly surprised with the greetings they shared. One of my students greeted me with: “I love that you make everybody feel included and seen, Señora Currás.” That reinforced the importance of my teaching role and my impact in our classroom community.
Covid made us resort to different kinds of resources. We are becoming more digitally literate, and using the internet to do research. We’re using technology in language learning—adding accents for Spanish words or using autocorrect to help us with our syntax. For an end-of-year project, both grades were tasked with researching different aspects of Hispanic and Latin American culture. The sixth-graders [used online tools] to research an influential person. The fifth-graders researched a typical dish from one of the many Spanish-speaking countries. Then I encouraged them to use tools such as WordReference or Quizlet to create a presentation showcasing their language abilities.
During our last few weeks of class, my sixth-graders were anxious about moving on to middle school. We talked about the importance of feeling sad or anxious, even though as a society we have put a lot of weight on being happy. We cried, we hugged, and I let all my students know they can always reach me through email.
–Tamar Abrams
Tosin Adetoro
STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, math) teacher
Oak Street Elementary School (formerly Thomas Jefferson Elementary), Falls Church
Years teaching: 17
Born in Kaduna, Nigeria, Adetoro spent two years as the Loudoun County Public Schools Aerospace Educator in Residence at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly. In 2019, she was named K-5 Teacher of the Year by the Air & Space Forces Association Steel Valley Chapter, and a Blue Angels’ Highly Qualified and Influential Educator in the D.C., Maryland and Virginia Region.
I became a teacher because I have a love for learning. My dad is a retired industrial arts professor. I have a sister and a brother (I’m one of six) who are also teachers. We’re a family of educators.
A lot of people look at STEAM and STEM as the individual subjects. I don’t. I’m trying to develop critical thinkers and problem solvers, with skills they can apply to any subject and be successful. I challenge students to try things. There’s a lot of power in learning what you don’t like, as well as what you do like.
I was timid and quiet in high school. I majored in physics in college because I had an amazing high school physics teacher. He was also the coach of the chess team and I was the only girl on the chess team at the time. He made me feel like I was valued.
Most of my teaching career was at the secondary level until five years ago, when I began teaching elementary schoolers. I love their passion. They don’t hold anything back. They challenge me to find ways to break things down for them. When I close my classroom door and look at those faces, I get all of my energy from my students. That’s my happy place.
It’s definitely an emotional time for teachers. You run the gamut of feeling happy, sad, grateful, scared, angry. Above all, I am thankful that I could come back, see the faces in my classroom and celebrate with my students.
STEM needs to be accessible to all. In 2014, I started a small business in Maryland, Get Into Stem, that provides affordable learning opportunities. I don’t ever want students to feel like, “Oh, I gotta have the $100 robot in order to continue the learning.”
I went through the struggles of being an African American Black female in science. I didn’t always get looked at like I was intelligent, like I could do the work. I had to fight my way—and I still have to fight my way—because I don’t look like a STEM teacher. When I started teaching in Loudoun County, I was the only female tech-ed teacher in the whole district. Let’s not talk about Black female teacher. Representation is important. It helps when kids have role models who look like them.
In May 2019, I was named a Blue Angels’ Highly Qualified and Influential Educator in the D.C., Maryland and Virginia Region. I was invited to take a flight with the Blue Angels. This honor meant to me that I was getting something right. It meant that I was making the difference that I set out to make.
When I come into the classroom, I want students to understand that it is totally okay to be different. I want them to know that yes, you can do it, too. –Wendy Kantor
John Meehan
Former English teacher
Bishop O’Connell High School, Arlington
Years teaching: 12
Meehan taught English and trained fellow teachers at Bishop O’Connell through June of 2022. He is the author of EDrenaline Rush: Game-Changing Student Engagement Inspired by Amusement Parks, Mud Runs, and Escape Rooms, and co-founder of the education consulting company EMC2. In 2016, he was named to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Teacher Advisory Council, a cohort of 50 educators that met for two years to devise and help implement innovative education strategies.
I joke that we don’t really teach English or math or science or art or history. We teach people. We teach them how to find things they are interested in and things they find interesting. The sweet intersection between the things they love and the things that make them angry—that’s where their passion lies.
My own passion is English: writing, reading, speaking and presenting. The enthusiasm that we bring to our craft—it’s a word I used before the pandemic that is sort of gauche now—is infectious. We can spark a fire.
I think I live with the volume turned up to 11. I encourage others to do the same. When you lead with vulnerability, joy, excitement and curiosity, people can’t help but be in the room with you and say, “Okay, I don’t love what they love, but they clearly love it and I want to have anything in my life that I love quite that much.”
Someone told me that your favorite class is the one you like the most, and the best class is the one where you learn the most. If I do my job right, then my class would be both of those things for every student, every day. To do that, I need to give students the chance to be the star of the show, the center of attention. I need to create an environment where you show them how all the tools in the sandbox work and then say, “All right. Can you build me some really cool castles?”
I connect with students by figuring out what drives them. If Fortnite is popular, that means they like a little bit of competition. I’ll do a competitive game in class.
I do something my students characterize as the “Meehan Move.” One kid will bring up a point, another kid will bring up a counterpoint, and I’ll say, “Fight, fight, fight.” I don’t care what they say, I just care why they said it. Tell me why. If I’m talking, I’m selling something that they’re supposed to buy. But when they’re talking, they are all in.
The big secret of education—whether you’re teaching teenagers or teachers—is helping students see themselves in the content. –Stephanie Kanowitz
Tricia M. Poythress
Fashion marketing teacher and Career & Technical Education Department chair
Langley High School, McLean
Years teaching: 33
Poythress holds a bachelor’s degree in marketing and a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from Virginia Tech. Langley High School named her 2020-21 Teacher of the Year.
I teach an elective class, so I have students who have chosen to be here, to study fashion marketing. Some of them stay on this track through all four years of high school.
Business, marketing, fashion—it’s a creative field. It’s kind of hard to quantify creativity. I want my students to show me and their classmates that they understand things, not by telling me, but by showing me. Anyone can recite something back that I asked them to memorize, but that doesn’t show me that they understand it.
At the start of each class, I give them three terms or concepts, and they have to share their interpretation of the meaning. I ask a lot of opinion and experience questions, so there is no right or wrong answer. If we’re talking about customer service, I say, “Give me an example of a time when you felt you received good customer service or a time when you didn’t.” The other day we discussed employee turnover—what they would look for in employees and how they would retain them, because it’s not just about the paycheck.
It’s also not all about the grade book. They know that I expect them to do their very best, and that I want them to be proud of their work. I want them to have expectations and goals for themselves.
As a mother of two teenagers myself, I’m up on current trends, but also current pressures. A lot of students think they need to be perfect. I explain to them that there’s no such thing as perfect. Do your best and your best is your best—and her best is her best, and his best is his best. It doesn’t have to be the same best.
It’s easier said than done, but I try to model resilience by laughing at myself when I do something wrong. If someone trips, I’ll say, “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tripped over a backpack strap.”
Juniors and seniors have the pressure of picking colleges. With juniors, we do college exploration so they can see that fashion marketing isn’t just design, but business. I tell them, “You need to find what you’re interested in, what you’re passionate about, what you’re good at. Where your passion and your interests and your aptitude intersect, that should be where your career is.”
I’ve been teaching for more than three decades and could retire anytime, but I still teach because I love my job. Every day is touching. Kids write me notes. Parents call me. A teacher will tell me something nice they overheard a student saying about my class.
Recently, I went to lunch with four former students who now are seniors in college. I have been to former students’ weddings and baby showers. It’s a great career. –Stephanie Kanowitz