Whether it’s teaching To Kill a Mockingbird  or discussing Shakespeare, WA English teacher Rose Dowd can do it all. For many years, she has been spreading the love of the English language to all of her students, and will continue to do so with her new position as an English teacher at Stony Brook Middle School.

Due to budget cuts at WA, Dowd was asked to move to the middle school, where she will be working as a full-time Language Arts teacher. Working at the middle school level will be an entirely new experience for Dowd, but she is excited to see what she can accomplish with the students there.

“It’s a bittersweet feeling. I’m excited about trying something new, but I will very much miss my colleagues in the English Department,” Dowd said.

Dowd has been working at WA for almost ten years, since April 2012. Her first WA position was filling a part-time maternity leave for English teacher Meghan McCarthy. However, after the maternity leave was over, she realized her love for the WA community and decided to stay.

In total, Dowd’s career, so far, has spanned a total of 22 years, teaching English at various different schools. The first two years of her teaching career were spent at a boarding school in New Hampshire, then ten years of teaching at Triton Regional High School, and another ten years at Westford Academy, with more years to come at Stony Brook Middle School.

One of the biggest challenges Dowd will tackle at the middle school is the curriculum. Since she has never taught at this level, she will need to come up with a new spin on the existing middle school curriculum to teach to her students, rather than using parts of past years’ WA curriculums like she was able to do with her students here.

Like the curriculum, there are many other differences with teaching at the middle school that Dowd will need to adjust and accommodate.

“The schedule is also different, so I will need to adjust to that as well. Of course, there [is] the difference between middle school and high school students to think about, too,” Dowd said. 

However, Dowd is looking forward to working with a new curriculum, and being more creative when coming up with lesson plans. The process of creating a new curriculum will force her to think outside the box and make lessons fun and engaging for the middle school students.

“I loved my time here. The English Department is an amazing group of people who I will miss greatly,” Dowd said.