Kamellia Keo joined the GWTeach faculty this year as a new adjunct professor whose sunny demeanor is hardly foreign to GWTeach students who have taught in her middle school science classroom. Ms. Keo isn’t new to the GWTeach program, as she has been serving as a Mentor Teacher for GWTeach since the program’s inception in 2015.
Ms. Keo’s track to becoming an educator has been anything but linear. While earning her undergraduate degrees in biology and chemistry on the pre-med track at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, she worked numerous jobs from pharmacy technician to a volunteer position at a music academy specialized for young adults living with autism. It was during her experience working odd jobs and at the encouragement of her friend that Ms. Keo explored a career in teaching through the Teach For America program which placed her in Washington, DC. Through the program she simultaneously enrolled at American University where she earned her Master’s Degree in Education. Since then, Ms. Keo has spent 13 years teaching in DCPS.
Eight of those years teaching in DCPS have also included serving as a Mentor Teacher for GWTeach. After a newsletter highlighting the then burgeoning program’s need for Mentors was sent out by a curriculum specialist for DCPS in 2015, Ms. Keo took the initiative to seize the opportunity to invite GWTeach students into her classroom to create a mutually beneficial opportunity to strengthen pedagogies and practices. After spending eight years as a Mentor Teacher, the opportunity to become a professor within the program was “a no-brainer” as the adjunct position meant that she “can continue to do what [she] loves in the classroom as a middle school teacher while being involved in a program that [she] strongly believes in and enjoys being a part of. [She] gets the best of both worlds!”
The exciting opportunity was not without its challenges though, as the transition in audience from middle school to collegiate level can be jarring but has overall been positive, particularly with the support from her colleagues, Meghan Hollibaugh Baker and SuJin Choi. The community within the GWTeach program helped aid in the transition from Mentor Teacher to faculty from providing guidance to answering questions at all hours of the day, thus creating a positive opportunity that made the decision to take on the extra workload that came with teaching GTCH 2003: Inquiry Approaches to Teaching and Lesson Design even easier. While she enjoys her colleagues and the art of teaching, the biggest incentive to commit to the GWTeach program in this new capacity came from the impactful and meaningful relationships she built with her cohort from this past semester.
In this new role as an instructor of GTCH 2003, Ms. Keo now gets to teach the curriculum to GWTeach students, allow them to observe her teaching middle school science in her DCPS classroom, and the GWTeach students then get to teach in Ms. Keo’s classroom as well. When asked about what impact she hoped to have on the program in her new role, Keo stated that, “It has been an absolute pleasure getting to know the students enrolled in the GWTeach program beyond the 3 observations and 3 teaches. We have had meaningful conversations about career paths as well as the value of educators and time spent in a classroom. I never want to impose a career in education for anyone, but I strongly believe that experience in a classroom can strengthen many skills in whatever career path someone chooses. My hope is for all of the mentees to keep an open mind in considering education as a sustainable and valuable career or understand the work (and joy) that goes into education. I greatly value relationships and mentorships, so my goal is to create a positive learning experience in the classroom. I never considered a career in education while studying at my university and thanks to my early exposure and experience in education, I am finding so much joy in what I do and sharing that with others.”
The GWTeach community is excited to continue to strengthen the learning opportunities for students by having Ms. Keo’s expertise in our classroom on campus and in her DCPS classroom!