There are more than 8,000 Yale alumni who are teachers or work in the education sector.
Yale Alumni Educators (YAEd), a recognized shared interest group, connects and supports this vibrant and dedicated community. The mission of YAEd includes advancing best practices in teaching globally and collaborating with campus partners, such as Yale’s Education Studies Program, to advise and mentor students who are exploring or pursuing teaching opportunities.
Several YAEd leaders stated that their commitment to teaching excellence, including addressing educational inequities, was significantly influenced by their personal experiences.
“Growing up as a first-generation, low-income student, I experienced the hidden costs of public education, such as paying for AP tests and the SAT—expenses that many students from under-resourced backgrounds face when pursuing higher education,” said Grace Kim ’22, a special education teacher who teaches STEM courses at a public secondary school in New York City.
“These challenges deepened my commitment to ensuring that all of my students, regardless of their background, have access to the post-secondary opportunities that I fought so hard to secure for myself.”
Kim noted how grateful she was that her teaching career provides her with the opportunity to tackle broader, systemic inequities that her peers and future generations continue to face.
“As an educator, I am committed to making learning relevant, accessible, and inclusive,” she said. “While my work as a teacher may create immediate change for my students, the largest positive impact I can have on the world is to empower and equip other teachers and other communities with the knowledge, tools, and resources to create long-term, sustainable change in the field of education.”
According to Mike Fishback ’01, a social studies teacher and curriculum coach at a private Pre-K to 8th grade school in San Jose, Calif., whose career in education spans over two decades, his journey in becoming a teacher began when he, as a Yale undergraduate, participated in two summer political internships in the U.S. Senate and on a presidential campaign, respectively.
“I realized that although I loved learning about politics as a political science major, I disliked working in politics,” he said. “I also did some teaching during those summers—as a guitar and theater counselor at a day camp—and teaching, unlike political work, made me feel energized, productive, and happy. So that’s what I chose for my career.”
For Fishback, his background and experiences in political science were an asset in navigating an ever-changing and nuanced teaching environment.
“As a teacher of U.S. history and politics, I receive meaningful words of appreciation from families when they notice my efforts to help their children broaden their existing thinking rather than to indoctrinate them into a particular belief system,” he said. “This leads to more enriching conversations with their children at home, as they encounter different and contradictory ways of thinking about issues—in the context of today’s polarized politics, the feedback from families makes me proud.”
For those contemplating a career in teaching, Fishback opined that identifying the right school and environment is crucial for professional and personal satisfaction.
“Teachers who find a school community that fits them well are the happiest people I know,” he said. “Some of the most fulfilled teachers are those who left an earlier profession that made them feel isolated, hamstrung, or overly tied to a computer and a desk.”
An example of someone who landed in education as a second career is Elissa Levy ’09, a physics teacher at a state-chartered magnet high school in Fairfax County, Va., and a YAEd co-founder, who, before teaching, spent eight years working in the financial sector.
“After graduating from Yale, I went into finance, mostly because I wanted to do something I knew nothing about,” she said. “I ultimately reached a point where the things I needed to do to grow in my finance career no longer matched the things I wanted to do to grow as a human, so I switched careers.”
Levy expressed no regrets about her career change.
“Teaching is a fantastic second career, and having worked in another field before teaching, it gave me a wider perspective to share with my students,” she said, enthusiastically encouraging other alumni to consider a career in teaching.
“We alumni often fall into believing that success after Yale means a high-profile, high-powered, high-paying job—it’s helpful to have a community of Yalies who can say, ‘It’s not that I’m a teacher despite going to Yale; I became a teacher because I went to Yale.’”
She emphasized that YAEd remains ever ready to support and assist alumni and students.
“Yale Alumni Educators is a place where they can connect with people who share their values and who can push them in ways that they want and need,” she said. “When the going gets tough—as it often does in the teaching profession, now more than ever—Educators are there to help.”
These sentiments were echoed by James Woodall ’16, who majored in Religious Studies at Yale and teaches theology, philosophy, Latin, and debate at a Jesuit high school in Aurora, Colo.
“YAEd can shine a bigger spotlight on the many extraordinary Yale educators out there, and in so doing, maybe make that path into a clearer option for current Yale students,” he said.
Albeit the son of a teacher and school administrator, Woodall indicated that becoming a teacher was not a foregone conclusion.
“When I was at Yale, there was a feeling that the next step had to be upward in some way, a job that would impress people as much as, well, going to Yale,” he said. “I’d always known I wanted to do something worthwhile, to spend my days in a way that would let me sleep at night—there’s a thousand things I could say about why teaching called to me, but in the end, it was just the life that felt most true.”
He added that the opportunity to contribute to the intellectual and personal development of young people is incredibly rewarding.
“You have to take the long view, praying that the questions and values you try to implant will bear fruit when they are needed, though you may never hear about that moment,” he said. “But when you do find out that a struggling student found life a little richer and their mind a little more open after your class, there’s a pride unlike any other.”
Mira Debs ’16 PhD, director of Yale’s Education Studies Program and a lecturer in sociology, as well as a former high school teacher, is particularly aware of the difficulties and challenges that students who are contemplating a career in teaching face.
“Often students meet with resistance or skepticism from their peers and family,” said Debs. “I share with them that while teaching high school history was the hardest I have ever worked, every day when I woke up, I knew I was having a positive impact—there’s not that many jobs where you have that certainty.”
Debs highlighted the key role that Yale Alumni Educators and alumni in teaching can play in inspiring and mentoring students.
“It’s impactful for students to know that there are Yale alumni who choose to become teachers,” she said. “Knowing that they are joining a growing and organized community of Yale alumni educators, and often receiving mentorship from alumni, makes them feel much less alone in making this career decision.”
