Her Story
Monica Washington says her first teacher was her mother, who had no interest in a classroom but taught her to love reading, to ask good questions, and to treat an error as another learning experience. Her fourth-grade teacher, Carolyn Elion, made every student feel like her favorite, and Washington built her own teaching on that sense of belonging. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from LeMoyne-Owen College in 1998, a master’s in English from the University of Memphis in 2003, and an education specialist degree from Walden University in 2019.
She began in 1998 teaching language arts to 7th and 8th graders at Chickasaw Middle School in Memphis, then taught 10th and 11th grade English at Hollis F. Price Middle College High School. In 2007 she moved to Texas High School in Texarkana, where she taught 11th-grade English for ten years and served as English department chair. Her ninth graders once promised to run her off as they had every teacher before her. She changed course, realizing that to change their relationship with learning she had to put her relationship with them first. She was named Texas Teacher of the Year in 2014.
Beyond the Classroom
Washington began at Texas High School as the AVID teacher and coordinator, taking students on college visits every semester. When the program lost its funding she and a colleague created REACH, which paired each student with a community mentor and required community service. Her students cleaned up neighborhoods, visited the animal shelter and a local shelter, and raised over $3,000 for Haiti earthquake relief in 2010. She also coached the school’s UIL spelling team and led students in making a documentary about a local Superfund site for the Lowell Milken Unsung Hero competition, which the local library screened. She founded the school’s Teachers Advisory Council and chaired the Teacher Advocacy Committee.
After leaving the classroom she spent almost six years as an instructional coach with BetterLesson, meeting by Zoom with teachers across the country, and spent a year leading the Culturally Responsive Teaching Master Teacher Project with 22 Kansas City-area teachers. She has keynoted and presented at national conferences including Learning Forward, ASCD and the National Teacher Leadership Conference. Her honors include an NEA Global Learning Fellowship and a Lowell Milken Unsung Hero Fellowship, both in 2015. She has served on the NEA Foundation board and the board of the National Network of State Teachers of the Year, and she was a Voices for Honest Education Fellow when nominated.
Philosophy Into Practice
Washington opened every school year by telling students they would be teachers as well as learners. She built her classroom around inquiry, discourse and choice: students submitted questions instead of answers, ran small-circle discussions while she sat in an empty seat “collecting awesome ideas,” and had their own bulletin board and a “graffiti space” for sharing work. After a unit on the 1920s she offered nine project ideas and a tenth, “student’s choice.” One student baked a cake carrying all of The Great Gatsby’s symbols, and another built a 1920s car from scrap and drove it into class.
She assessed in many ways, with choice boards, rubrics for writing, multimedia and performance, oral essays when writing was a barrier, and written or voice-recorded feedback. She wrote instructions, spoke them and recorded them, and taught a scaffold for analysis, looking first at the surface of the word and then at its impact on the reader. She surveyed students after each major unit about what she could have done differently.
“When teachers listen and give space and grace to students, students are willing to challenge themselves and will take academic risks.”Monica Washington
In Her Own Words
“You’ll teach each other, and you’ll teach me.”Monica Washington, to her students on the first day of school
“I realized that in order to change their relationship with learning, I had to prioritize my relationship with them.”Monica Washington
“Assessment needs to happen every day and through a variety of formats.”Monica Washington
What Others Said
“Monica Washington is one of the most standout educators I’ve ever known.”Dr. Anna East, nominator and fellow 2014 State Teacher of the Year
“As a teacher and mentor, she helped her students to learn how, not what, to think about literature, writing, and frankly, life.”Raven J. Morris, former student
“Mrs. Washington is extremely dedicated to her students and is one of the best, if not the best, teachers I have ever encountered.”Kimberly Bursey-Reece, parent of a former student
“In my past 36 years of teaching, I cannot think of a person who is more qualified to represent the teaching profession than Monica Washington.”Retired English department chair, Texas High School
“Monica is a stellar example of who we should aspire to be as educators, and she would be an amazing addition to the legacy of the National Teachers Hall of Fame.”Afrika Afeni Mills, author and former BetterLesson colleague