Each year The Washington Post hosts its Outstanding Teacher Award, which honors one teacher from each school division in the Washington Metropolitan Area. Starting this year, one finalist will also be selected as The Washington Post Teacher of the Year.
This is the second in a series of posts in the run up to the announcement of the winner, in which we will be carrying profiles of each school’s nominee. Each of these teachers deserves recognition, just for the fact that they were nominated by their principal, colleagues, students and parents for such a prestigious honor.
Parents, students and colleagues nominated teachers, and each ACPS school principal then chose one nominated teacher from their school to move on to the ACPS finalists round.
Last year, ACPS was delighted to recognize Maria Magallanes, Reading Specialist at Cora Kelly School for Math, Science and Technology, as our ACPS Outstanding Teacher Awardee.
The ACPS winner and the overall winner of The Washington Post Outstanding Teacher Award will be announced in April. Until then, please make sure you congratulate these special teachers when you see them!
Molly Boyle, Mount Vernon Community School
Molly Boyle, a fourth-grade English Language Arts teacher at Mount Vernon Community School, has been with ACPS since 2012. She began her career as a kindergarten teacher in Washington, DC in 2007 before joining ACPS as a second grade teacher at Jefferson-Houston Elementary School. While there, Boyle was fully trained in the International Baccalaureate (IB) program in science and social students and designed units of study, effective daily subject specific lessons plans and implemented the Positive Behavior Interventions and Support (PBIS) program. Boyle has served in several leadership roles including grade-level chair, member of the Instructional Leadership Team, and member of the School Improvement Science Goal Committee that creates and implements the ACPS School Education Plan. Boyle is known for her exceptional leadership skills, cultural competency, instructional practices and for her dedication, leadership, sacrifice and passion.
Molly Boyle exemplifies everything a teacher should be. She inspires her students to achieve in areas in which they were once insecure. She can easily differentiate and meet the needs of any kind of learner and finds a way to make every child feel loved, capable, and inspired to achieve at high levels,” said one of her nominees.
Anika Buster-Singleton, George Washington Middle School
Anika Buster-Singleton started her career at George Washington Middle School and is still there today, 17 years later. Over the course of her career, Buster-Singleton has served as a language arts and social studies teacher, a grade-level team leader, a member of the leadership council, and a contributor to the school-wide standards based education committee. She is credited with having developed and implemented lessons for students enrolled in the highly successful Team Six for Success program, which was a transitional team developed to meet the needs of 40 academically and/or behaviorally challenged, at-promise, sixth-grade students. She was later entrusted to implement differentiated lessons for general education, special education, and talented and gifted/honor students. Buster-Singleton is a graduate of ACPS and is known for her extraordinary ability to connect with students, families and colleagues using her deep roots in the community.
On a daily basis, she strives to make worlds come alive for her students as she engages them in active learning activities that evoke learning chatter from students as they explore skills and concepts through discussion structures such as Socratic seminars and make connections to real-world issues,” said one of her nominees.
Molly Freitag, T.C. Williams High School
Molly Freitag is an AP World Studies teacher at T.C. Williams High School and National Board Certified Teacher in Social Studies/History who has been with ACPS since 2009. In addition to her many teaching accolades, Freitag has also served on a number of committees and served in many leadership positions including as the Superintendent’s Student Leadership Committee Teacher Advisor, Social Studies Department Chair, an AP Exam Reader for AP World History, and an instructor of US/VA Government, AP US Government and Politics and World Civilizations. She is known for providing an exemplary learning community and student-centered classroom.
She consistently works to refine her practice so that activities are relevant and interesting to her scholars. Through her inherent kindness and genuine interest for all students, she demonstrates the ability to meeting students where they are academically and emotionally, and this is a capability found in only the mots exceptional and outstanding teachers,” said one of nominees.