Eight Questions for 2012 Emerging Leader Daina Lieberman

We’re always looking for new ways to insert ASCD voices into our conversations on Inservice. With this in mind, we’ve developed a fun question and answer session for our ASCD Emerging Leaders. The Emerging Leaders program recognizes and prepares young, promising educators to influence education programs, policy, and practice on both the local and national levels. Learn more about Emerging Leaders on the ASCD website.

Eight Questions for 2012 Emerging Leader Daina Lieberman

Tell us about your role as an educator. What does your typical day look like?

I teach teamed English 11 and International Baccalaureate English (grades 11 and 12) at South Lakes High School in Reston, Va. We have block scheduling. Every other day we have a remediation and intervention period embedded into the school day, and I have a free period each day for planning with my collaborative teams. Our student population is extremely diverse; students represent over 90 countries and speak over 60 languages. The students are warm and friendly and have tons of school spirit.

What’s your education philosophy summed up in one sentence?
Kids first. I know that’s a fragment, and I’m an English teacher. Sorry!

Why did you become an educator?
I want to help students engage with great literature and become lifelong learners and readers. I tell them that it doesn’t matter in five years if they remember exactly what happened in Jane Eyre as long as they gained critical thinking skills and occasionally read a book for pleasure. I love literature, I love teaching, and I get a kick out of teenagers.

As an ASCD Emerging Leader, how do you hope to have a greater impact on education in your community and beyond?
What I loved about the ASCD Leader to Leader Conference was talking about education and goals for growth with leaders from around the country and the world. I plan to attend ASCD’s Leadership Institute for Legislative Advocacy in January to learn about issues in education and discuss them with legislators on the hill; I’m excited to be an educator advocate and engage with educational policy through ASCD. I plan to bring what I learned about policy and advocacy back to my school and my district. I’m also starting an Ed.D. program at GWU in January, and I look forward to having a greater impact on students by continuing my career in leadership positions.

What professional development (books, DVDs, webinars, courses) have made a difference in your career?
Carol Tomlinson’s Leading and Managing a Differentiated Classroom altered my understanding of differentiation and influenced my teaching methods. Jim Burke’s English Teacher’s Companion is full of great strategies for English teachers. The ArtsLiteracy Project and the just-published text, A Reason to Read: Linking Literacy and the Arts, by Eileen Landay and Kurt Wooten (who I was privileged to work with at Brown University) are amazing resources for using performance techniques in any content area, especially English. The Folger Shakespeare Library’s website is another phenomenal resource for lesson plans and primary sources. The National Endowment for the Humanities-funded summer institute I did some years ago changed how I teach and got me started providing professional development courses to colleagues. In addition, National Board Certification was one the best professional development options I have participated in; the process made me far more reflective and purposeful in my teaching.

Was there a pivotal moment when you realized your career choice in education was the correct one? Describe that time.
I’m not sure there’s any one moment when I realized that education was a correct career choice. Instead, I think I have those moments all the time. Every time I laugh at work, I’m reminded how much I love working in a high school. I feel like teachers need a sense of humor and the ability to not take everything personally; if you can manage that, teaching keeps you smiling and laughing throughout the work day. I also love seeing former students who come back from college to visit and tell me how prepared they feel in their classes because of the education our school provided.

If you could make one major change in education what would it be?
I would change public perception of teachers. We work long hours all year, and most of us work summer jobs, but there are still those people who think we have it easy because we have “all those vacations” and “summers off.” Teachers are the hardest-working, most dedicated professionals I know, and we would all love to be treated as such by others.

What’s the craziest thing a student has ever said to you?
While going through a list of literary terms with freshmen, I asked the class for the definition of assonance. One student called out, “Isn’t that sex before marriage?” Another student yelled, “No, that’s abstinence.” I said, “Actually, it’s not, but you can talk to your health teacher about that! Moving on…”

I had another who said he was going to have “tea and strumpets with Toni Morrison.” He had no idea what a strumpet was.