D.C. Public Schools officials have been short on details about their new hires — their average age, where they’re coming from, how many years they’ve spent in the classroom — except to say that the district has had no shortage of applicants.
About 800 people reportedly applied for the 31 “master educator” positions open last year, vying for the chance to coach and evaluate classroom instructors.
Hundreds of teaching positions that opened in the spring attracted thousands of applicants, many of whom are “excited about Chancellor Rhee’s reforms,” officials were quick to point out.
Only the human resources staff knows for sure what kind of teachers are coming, and they’re not talking.
But two new hires offered by DCPS to be interviewed for this article shed light on what likely will prove to be an incoming corps of experienced, but younger-than-average, teachers who hail from all over the country.
Teresa Danskey, 26, felt a “magnetic” pull to DCPS upon her return from the Peace Corps in South Africa last month.
“Over the past few years, my passion for teaching in underserved areas has grown,” she said.
Danskey majored in Spanish and secondary education, and taught high school Spanish in Indiana before training teachers in South Africa. Not coincidentally, her eagerness to collaborate with other language teachers at Phelps High School is one of the hallmarks of Rhee’s new evaluation tool.
Daniel Zielaski, 26, just finished up a 15-month teacher training program at George Washington University, through which he spent a year student teaching at one of DCPS’s top magnet institutions, School Without Walls.
Before that, the chemistry major designed and wrote test prep curricula for a Los Angeles-based company.
“When I came back to D.C., I was excited to get into DCPS because I felt I could be part of a movement based on student needs, and driven by a desire for change and the need for change.”
The rhetoric may as well be taken straight from Rhee’s talking points. But it remains to be seen whether her new hires can affect the oft-touted change, or if they’ll become frustrated and stymied by the reality they find in their classrooms.
