At our school, we are lucky to be surrounded by a number of great teachers, spanning across many different subjects. Teaching is a very difficult, yet, as many teachers feel, rewarding job that allows them to see progress in their students. A number of teachers at our school were bright students who had opportunities to work in other higher-paying jobs, but opted for the important role that we see on a daily basis.

A great example of this is English teacher Jeffrey Klein. Klein attended the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Michigan Law School before working in law firms in Chicago and DC. Although Klein liked his job as a lawyer, he still felt like it wasn’t as fulfilling as he had hoped.

“I started to worry that I was spending my time on material that I didn’t think had a lot of intrinsic value in the world,” Klein said.

During his busy law career, Klein still tried to find time to enjoy some of his other interests, like literature.

“Pretty much every week, in order to decompress on a Friday evening, I would walk down to Kramerbooks in Dupont Circle which was open very late. I would start alphabetically at A and just go through to Z and decide what I was going to be reading that weekend,” Klein said.

Along with his appreciation for literature, Klein coached volleyball at Wakefield High School on the side where he first familiarized himself with the idea of working in a school setting.

“As a coach, I came into contact with other teachers. Then, I got to know the students at Wakefield and it opened up the possibility to me for the first time,” Klein said.

Klein officially started teaching at Yorktown during the Covid year in 2020, which gave him more of a gradual transition into the role. According to Klein, the most rewarding part of teaching is just getting to experience the enthusiasm and curiosity that students share for knowledge in general.

“Probably the best part of my day is when I’m having a student share their thoughts about a piece …and I feel like I’m learning things about the world,” Klein said.

Klein highlighted how, every once in a while, a student will produce something truly above and beyond.

“I’ve had creative writing assignments where I’ve asked for two pages and I’ve received 30. I’ve asked for a four minute presentation and I’ve received a 40 minute presentation,” Klein said.

Plenty of our school’s teachers have interesting backgrounds, including physics teacher Scott Painter, known for his sense of humor and enthusiasm for physics.

Painter went to the University of Texas at Austin and was studying to become a chemical engineer. During his senior year, Painter first encountered the idea of teaching when he attended a seminar with a guest speaker from Teach for America.

“It kind of just sparked something in me and so my last semester in college I enrolled in the School of Education at Texas,” Painter said.

Painter’s first teaching job was at South Atlanta High School, the lowest income school in the city and a challenging environment for a young teacher like Painter.

“There was a lot of chaos in that school and there were a lot of teachers in that school that didn’t really expect much,” Painter said.

After five years working in Atlanta, Painter spent time working in administration and education non-profits, before moving to DC to work as an assistant principal in a DC public school. He realized he wanted to go back to the classroom so he taught at a charter school in DC before coming to Yorktown.

Throughout his long educational career, Painter has stayed at the high school level because he enjoys getting to teach teenagers, as he feels like he is setting them up for life on the whole.

“I still think there’s a tremendous amount of impact you can have on the path of someone’s future, even in their last year or two in K-12 schooling,” Painter said.

Some of Painter’s favorite memories from his teaching career came from a “Mission to Mars” project he had his classes do back when he was teaching in Atlanta.

“There were all different aspects of the semester-long project, but the culmination was they had to get up and present in front of their parents… the students would just excel. It was phenomenal,” Painter said.

Teaching is an extremely important job in our society. Teachers truly have the ability to change the life of a student and instill lessons and values in them they may never forget. This relationship is not just a one way street, however. Teachers also feel like they are greatly impacted by the moments and interactions they share with their students, and that is the main reason that some people are so drawn to the role.

“I could share the names of ten students who I know I’m going to remember for the rest of my life,” Klein said.