March 2, 2004

Bell Multicultural’s “First Class” Teacher

By Jane Lingo

Elizabeth Baker McCarthy is a DC high school teacher devoting herself to her students and to her profession at Bell Multicultural High School. In 2003, she was recognized as the best first-year high school teacher in the DC Public School System with the District of Columbia First Class Teacher Award.

In nominating McCarthy for the award, her principal, Maria Tukeva, praised her highly. Tukeva said, in part, that McCarthy “is the quintessential, teacher, … intelligent, energetic and innovative.” She continued, “Elizabeth is a concerned, humane individual with a gracious personality and a willingness to help the students in any capacity.” She noted that her high expectations of her students contributes to their success and motivates them to improve the quality of their work in other academic subjects. (McCarthy teaches 9th and 10th grade English classes, including English as a Second Language (ESL).)

In an essay that accompanied the nomination, McCarthy wrote, “I have learned that context is the key for providing authentic connections, that students need to understand the purpose for what they are learning and how it fits into their world.” She made the statement, “My joy as a teacher is to see students excited, engaged and living up to their unique potential.”

Now in her second year at Bell, McCarthy continues to play an active role in the life of the school through her interaction with students, faculty, staff, parents and the community. She and her husband, Shawn, live in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood near the school. “I see my students walking around. I think it’s nice that the teacher lives in the same neighborhood,” she said. Both McCarthy and her husband attended Kent State University, but they did not meet until they came to Washington on an internship program with Common Cause. This led to a full-time job for Elizabeth there.

After about a year with Common Cause, Elizabeth got a job with the Advertising Council. “We worked on various campaigns,” she recalled, “including those for McGruff, the Crime Dog, and Smokey Bear.” Then, she said, “We started working on a campaign for a program called the Educational Excellence Partnership. It was this program that brought me to education. I saw those teachers and I realized I wanted to be in their shoes.”

She quit the advertising job and joined AmeriCorps, where she worked in an after-school tutoring program in Silver Spring, MD, working with English as a second-language students.

“I really loved working with the kids,” McCarthy said. The experience led her to pursue a dual-certifiicate in special education and ESL at GW’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development.

McCarthy began her teaching career at Bell Multicultural in August of 2002, and her enthusiasm for the school and her students is still fresh.

“l think our school is exceptional,” she said. “The leadership is great. Our principal is wonderful. She just came back from El Salvador and hopes to work through an exchange on the problems of gangs. We definitely have some behavior problems … but I think we have some great students at Bell. It’s not as bad as the picture is painted.”

Class size at Bell — averaging 20 to 25 students with some smaller needs-based classes of perhaps eight to 10 students who need special attention — is one aspect of the school that attracts McCarthy. She’s also fond of a system called “looping” in which teachers stay with their students for two years.

“It’s more of a family environment and saves getting acquainted at the beginning of each year,” McCarthy said.

“My next goal is to learn Spanish,” said McCarthy. The language instruction at Bell includes special native Spanish classes since not all the students speak English. Bell is 80 percent bilingual, McCarthy said, largely Latino with the next largest groups being Chinese and Vietnamese.

McCarthy spends more time at school now that she has completed the work for her master’s degree in secondary education (January 2004). “It’s fun. There’s always something new. It’s exhausting but rewarding,” she remarked.

Plans are underway to transform Bell into an Early College High School in 2005, complete with a new building for Lincoln Middle School and Bell Multicultural High School, according to McCarthy. “The college will have a wing. The idea is that students will take college level courses in high school.

“I think we’ve done a pretty good job with the relationships with the families,” McCarthy said. “It varies a lot. Some families are respectful of the school but do not come to the school much. We have a lot of parents who are active. Then there are some students who don’t have a lot of support from home. Bell is a community school for the most part. There is a parent-teacher conference dquarterly, which runs from noon to 7 pm.” During the year, McCarthy makes frequent phone calls to parents of students in her classes to discuss the student’s progress.

In view of her dedication and commitment, it seems reasonable to suppose that, in the future, Elizabeth McCarthy will be found in the forefront of education or else running down her own personal track to greater successes and achievements.

Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu