Faculty Excellence at MKA

MKA attracts outstanding, professional faculty for whom excellence, continuous learning, and professional growth are central to their journey as educators. Our faculty’s commitment to MKA’s Mission and their own learning enriches our students’ learning experiences and perspectives in myriad ways.

Faculty Excellence Fund

At MKA, we recognize that educational debt can be significant and challenging. Thanks to a generous lead gift from Brian and Linda Sterling P ’12 ’14 and to the ongoing fundraising efforts of MKA’s Development Office and PAMKA, MKA has created Faculty Excellence Fellowship awards. These Fellowships are intended to help us create an even more robust MKA community, diverse in ability, ethnicity, gender, race, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status. They are designed to make a faculty member’s commitment to both their own education and their MKA teaching career more affordable by covering costs associated with current or completed education, including undergraduate and graduate work.

Congratulations to the Fellowship recipients for the 2023-2024 school year:

New Faculty Award

Brittany O’Neill, Third Grade Teacher

Returning Faculty Award

Laura Demaria, Director of Academic Support

Marc Tuazon, Biology Teacher

Chemistry Teacher Publishes Article

We are proud to share that Upper School Chemistry Teacher Laurie Smith recently published an online journal article for the American Association of Chemistry Teachers (AACT) entitled "Chemical Phenomena in Everyday Life: An Adventure in Writing Across the Curriculum.” Laurie has worked at MKA for 37 years and has taught physical science, physics, science research, and all levels of chemistry. She is also a freelance education writer. Currently, Laurie is a member of the 2022-2023 AACT Governing Board, serving as AACT’s High School Ambassador.

In her article, Laurie illustrates a lesson she developed for her second-year honors chemistry students in which they observe everyday chemical reactions, document the observations and explain the science behind what they observe, and then share their findings in a creative and personal way. Colleagues in the English department already coordinated a Writing Marathon for their classes, and they encouraged other departments to participate with their students in this unique experience. In her teaching, Laurie is committed to illustrating the relevance of chemistry to everyday life. Her encouragement of creative approaches in a science class and her use of differentiation in allowing students to personalize their academic work received praise from students and resulted in the demonstrated mastery of science concepts necessary for her class.

Faculty Authors

Upper School history teacher Tim Cook released his first book this fall. In addition to personal experience, Youth Sports: How to Play the Game is built upon extensive high-level research of both primary and secondary sources, as well as interviews with professional players and coaches in baseball, softball, soccer, hockey, basketball, and lacrosse. Chapters are supplemented by activities that families can complete in order to circumvent some of the issues identified. The book is not only for parents but also coaches, families, trainers, and all those involved in helping young people develop in their chosen sports.

Anne-Sophie Roure, Primary School French teacher, World Language Chair, and Curriculum Coordinator, recently published Atir et Zarafa, a book she hopes will be enjoyed by any reader,including French students and teachers. “My students at MKA are the ones who gave me the motivation to write it.” This historical fiction is written with high frequency words and includes images and a glossary for each word on every page. This innovative format allows readers to establish meaning instantly. Inspired by a true story starting in 1824, a young giraffe named Zarafa was captured by Arab hunters to be gifted to the king of France as a diplomatic gift from the viceroy of Egypt. Readers can follow the challenging journey of Zarafa and her traveling companions, including Atir, a young Ethiopian boy who escaped slavery when he became Zarafa's handler. Together, Zarafa and Atir discover the will to survive and thrive when everything and everyone has been taken away from them.

WORLD-CLASS SCHOLAR JOHN JACOBS SHEDS LIGHT ON INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE AND CULTURE IN NEW JERSEY WITH MKA AS HIS PLATFORM

On October 10, 2022, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Dr. John Jacobs, Upper School World Languages Teacher and Department Chair, spoke about the holiday and how it relates to the experience of the Lenape peoples who originally inhabited this area. In a compelling and highly-engaging discussion, the audience learned about the history of the tri-state area, the people who first inhabited it, and the machinations of the Europeans who came to settle here. The story of how the Lenape came to be dispossessed of their own homeland demands to be told, as does the story of how the Lenape continue to work to reclaim it.

In the United States, government action to formally recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day in lieu of Columbus Day at the federal level has stalled, although some state and municipal governments around the country have made that designation. New Jersey’s own bill has been stalled since 2020. John’s research means to emphasize how important this proposed legislation was and is because it recounts in detail both the suffering and the resilience of the Lenape in what is now called New Jersey over the past 500 years.

The United Nations has declared the decade 2022–2032 the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, and John went on to connect that initiative with the ongoing efforts of the World Languages Department to do more to integrate indigenous peoples into the curriculum. As he continues that aspect of work in the classroom, he has taken on a complementary project aimed at giving indigenous languages and cultures a more visible presence in the Upper School as a whole.

GEORGE WASHINGTON’S MOUNT VERNON RECOGNIZES

ANTHONY LABIB

Congratulations to Anthony Labib ’26 who was named the Middle School Winner of the 2022 Mount Vernon Student of the Year Award in June. Anthony submitted a paper about George Washington's views of public health and how they translated to strategy for the Continental Army that he initially wrote for his eighth-grade history class at the Middle School.

In the words of Middle School History Department Chair CherylAnne Amendola, “It was SO impressive!” George Washington’s Mount Vernon created this award to celebrate students who used their understanding of Washington’s life to extend his legacy within their classrooms, schools, or communities. Sadie Troy, Manager for Student Learning, told Anthony when she informed him of his selection, “While we reviewed numerous outstanding nominations, our panel was very impressed with the level of scholarship and analysis that you displayed within the essay on George Washington and Inoculation."