Class Acts: Alumni Educators Bring Excellence with Humanity to Their Own Classrooms

Ask anyone who’s done it: Teaching is one of the hardest jobs around. It requires compassion and toughness, intellect and humor, energy and focus. Its practitioners must bring their A game to work every day. Expectations and stakes are sky-high, and the fast-paced days leave few moments to catch a breath or take a break. 

Ask that same group why they do it, and most will provide a similar answer: It is something they feel called to do, and the rewards greatly outweigh the challenges. Those rewards have drawn more than a few Rivers alums to the field of education, as classroom teachers and as school administrators, and they report that the work has led to lives of purpose and meaning.

“You come to school, and you are on the entire day. It’s mentally and emotionally exhausting but fulfilling every day,” says Ainsley Mallows ’06, who leads a mixed classroom of students ages 3 to 6 at Lexington Montessori School in Lexington, MA. “It’s an inspiring thing, to see that energy. If that’s something you can connect with, why wouldn’t you want that for your job? I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

Many alums say their experience at Rivers set them on the path to teaching. They report that the supportive, nurturing, student-focused relationships they built with adults at Rivers, and the examples those adults set, provided a template for a meaningful life in education. Chris Post ’88, headmaster of the Boys’ Latin School of Maryland in Baltimore, reels off a long list (“too many to name”) of important Rivers mentors, and even now, nearly 40 years post-graduation, he’s quite clear about the extent of their influence: “If it wasn’t for my experience with my teachers and advisors at Rivers, I’m not sure I’d be doing what I’m doing today,” he says.

There’s no question that Rivers was a pivotal experience for these alumni educators, but some say they were interested in teaching even earlier. Ben Meiseles ’09, who has taught middle school math at the Synapse School in Menlo Park, CA, for seven years, got his first taste of classroom mentoring at Rivers. But, he says, “I could trace it back even further, to taking karate when I was 9 or 10 and teaching the little kids lessons. It always gave me joy and satisfaction to help someone discover their abilities. And as the oldest of four children, it was kind of ingrained early on as a calling.”

“I always knew I wanted to be a teacher,” says Julia Holton ’18, a Latin teacher at Rumsey Hall School in Washington, CT. “I was always academically inclined, and my favorite part of school was connecting with teachers.” Babysitting for a young neighbor, she says, also opened her eyes to the appeal of teaching. “I loved explaining something to her and seeing her face light up,” Holton says.

A number of alums took a circuitous path back to the classroom. Meiseles, for example, initially headed in a very different direction after graduating from college with a degree in math. Bowing to pressure to pursue a more lucrative career, he got a job at a software firm. But, he says, “It was too far from what I loved.” After a “gap year” of travel, he landed at Synapse—the result of a decision to pursue a teaching role at the “weirdest, most wacky school in the area” (a fairly high bar in Silicon Valley, he says). “I wanted to learn the ropes at a progressive school,” says Meiseles.

Suzanne Burzillo Haley ’13 also took a somewhat roundabout route to what she jokingly calls the “family business”—her father is retired Rivers history teacher and archivist David Burzillo P’11, ’13, ’16, and her mother and both grandmothers also taught. With an undergraduate degree in business administration, she spent about six months in finance before realizing it didn’t feel fulfilling to her.

“I worked in public accounting. I thought, ‘I’m just moving numbers around for people, and why am I doing this?’” says Burzillo Haley. But it was possible, she knew, to pivot within her chosen discipline. “In the field I was in, accounting, there are a lot of careers that can be transformative for people. I thought it would be cool to teach people to find careers that are meaningful.” She went back to school to pursue a Ph.D. with the goal of teaching at the college level; today, she is an assistant professor in the business school at San José State University in California. 

Montessori teacher Mallows tried a few different avenues before teaching: She pondered landscape architecture, and she worked as an esthetician doing facials for a few years. At the point when she was “kind of over that,” a friend of her mother’s suggested teaching. “It was what I’d always intended to do, and I tell this to young people I meet who want to be teachers,” says Mallows. “Teaching is always going to be there. It’s more important to meet it at the moment you’re ready. If I’d gone into teaching right out of college, I wouldn’t have been ready. Now I’m ready and grounded.” 

For Bruna Lee Ardila ’13, a career in teaching was about giving back. She landed at Rivers in ninth grade through her participation in the Steppingstone program, which aims to improve college access for low-income and first-generation Boston students by preparing them for independent and exam schools. Once Steppingstone scholars are in high school, they have the opportunity to serve as teaching assistants (TAs) for younger students over the summer; that role, she says, gave her her first taste of teaching. “I was interested in teaching starting at about age 16 or 17,” Lee Ardila says. “I was so grateful for what educators gave me, and I wanted to be able to do that for other people. I always knew I wanted to give back to the community as a Steppingstone TA. Steppingstone made learning itself so fun.” Today, Lee Ardila teaches ethnic studies and American literature to ninth and tenth graders at the Head-Royce School in Oakland, CA.

Post, of Boys’ Latin School, says he chose teaching over an option that seemed much less appealing: “I remember preparing for the LSAT with a bunch of my college friends, who are all highly successful attorneys now,” he says. “And I’m thinking, ‘This is a fate worse than death.’” Although Rivers was behind him at that point, it was a Rivers mentor, John Gillespie P’88, who suggested that teaching might be the better direction and demonstrated that education was a viable career path. 

Whether they came to teaching directly or indirectly, straight out of college or after a stint in a different field, Rivers alums who work in education express a deep commitment to the work and to their students. 

That commitment shows up in various ways. These teachers understand the primacy of relationships in teaching. They’ve explored the theory and practice of pedagogy, and they strive to create an environment that fosters both learning and a love of learning. 

“The culture of my class is to be a really close, tight-knit community,” says Lee Ardila. “I aim to create a community of learners, where it’s OK for all of us to make mistakes.” 

Indeed, encouraging students to feel comfortable making mistakes is a common theme. Stephanie Kay ’12, one of a few Rivers alums now teaching at the school, says she aims to be a “warm demander” for her students. “I want to help students reach their highest potential, and I want to create a space where they feel comfortable making mistakes and asking questions.” Not coincidentally, she says, “that describes what a lot of my Rivers teachers were like and what I want to be: a solid, steady presence for my students.”

Meiseles’ philosophy in the classroom could have come straight from the Rivers playbook: “I want every kid to come out both feeling capable and actually being capable. Everyone is a math person. I want them to know that mistakes are beautiful, that questions are as important as answers, that math is about communicating. Those things are way more important than factoring quadratics.” Meiseles doesn’t just allow mistakes, he actively celebrates them. In his classroom, a bulletin board serves as a “museum of mathematical mistakes,” where students see and learn from one another’s learning journeys.

Burzillo Haley says that, above all, in creating a classroom culture and approach, she hopes to show her students that she cares about them—much as her teachers at Rivers made her feel cared for, supported, and seen. Many of her students, she says, are going to school on top of working full time, so she builds in flexibility to demonstrate that she understands the challenges they may face.

Rivers alums who’ve transitioned from teaching to administrative roles say the shift has allowed them to view education and pedagogy through an ever-widening lens. Post, who pursued teaching knowing he would one day move into administration, puts it succinctly: “As much as classroom work was meaningful, being administrator meant shaping the mission.”

Veteran teacher Sara Masucci ’94 took on the role of director of ninth and tenth grades at Chapel Hill-Chauncy Hall in Waltham, MA, in 2022. “The skills of a teacher are necessary to be an administrator,” says Masucci, who still teaches one section of history. “But I’ve really enjoyed seeing more and more of how other parts of the school function than you see as a classroom teacher.” She says it’s easy for administrators to cloister themselves in their offices, so she makes an effort to ensure that she’s still part of the community: “I’m in almost every building every day.” She appreciates that, as an administrator, she has the opportunity to look more broadly at philosophy and mission. “We don’t get to think for students, and we don’t tell them what they should think,” she says. “We hopefully provide them with a space to figure out how to do that complicated thinking—to say things they’re not sure of, have hard conversations, to refine their thinking.”

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that these educators, in many cases, sound like the Rivers faculty members who provided early examples of a life in teaching. Meiseles says that for him, becoming a teacher literally started at Rivers, with a senior project that laid the foundation for the math teaching assistant program, which is still in place. 

Holton recalls that she hadn’t thought of herself as a math student until she took precalculus with late Rivers faculty member Dan McCartney P’08, ’15. “He changed the way I thought about math, and the way I thought about myself and my ability to do hard things. I went on to take AP Calculus, which I never dreamed I would do,” she says. A brief teaching stint at Rivers during the 2022–23 school year also influenced her: “I interned with and was inspired by [Middle School Latin teacher] Cathy Favreau P’22 for that year. She is the reason I chose teaching middle school rather than high school.”

Masucci remembered former faculty member Len Thomsen patiently meeting with her three times a week to get her through algebra—an effort she didn’t truly appreciate at the time (“I’m sure my eyes were rolling”) but does in retrospect. “At Rivers I felt incredibly known and seen,” she says, “and a piece of what I do today is built on trying to make kids feel the way I felt.”

These educators are, of course, contending with challenges that didn’t exist during their Rivers years. Like all teachers, they’re grappling with the impacts of smartphones, social media, COVID, and AI, just to name a few. 

But by its very nature, the field is always evolving—while remaining fundamentally unchanged at its core. Mallows says that at her school’s closing meeting of the year in June, she looked around at her colleagues and was struck anew by the importance of the work: “I’m surrounded by all these people who every day are coming into our school endeavoring to make humans better. To have all these people come together every day with that goal as their purpose—that’s pretty remarkable.”

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Over the years, several Rivers alums have come back to teach. Having absorbed the philosophy of Excellence with Humanity, they’re happy to have the chance to pass it along to succeeding generations.

Dream jobs aren’t always easy to find, so Julia Auster-Hogan ’06, who has taught French and drama at the Middle School since 2016, feels fortunate to have landed hers. 

In high school, a summer job at a theater camp opened her eyes to the prospect of a teaching career. “Working with the kids kind of felt like my talent; it came naturally,” says Auster-Hogan.

In her first couple of classroom jobs, she says, “I was always trying to make other schools into Rivers. I would suggest activities like Red & White or programming that was like Rivers.” Soon, she was able to pursue a role at the actual Rivers: Upper School Assistant Dean of Students Susanna Donahue P’03, ’06, with whom she’d stayed in touch, alerted her about an opening for a French teacher. 

At Rivers, Auster-Hogan cherishes the times students are so caught up in the day’s lessons that they’re surprised when class is over. She emphasizes that good teaching isn’t simply about having students acquire skills: “As a French teacher, I want students to learn the skills of using resources, not just how to conjugate verbs. As a drama teacher, I want them to learn how to collaborate and be on a team, not just how to cry on cue.”

Returning to Rivers as a teacher, she says, has had its odd moments; learning to see former teachers as co-workers can be an adjustment. But it’s one she’s been happy to make: “I love my colleagues. Being here is like coming home.”

Teaching at Rivers might seem like destiny for Upper School History Department member Stephanie Kay ’12: She’s a fourth-generation alum whose great-grandfather Bob Strauss ’34 was in an early graduating class. She originally set her sights on a career in academia, but while earning her master’s degree in history, she had an epiphany of sorts: “I was working as a TA in grad school, leading a review session with 50 undergrads. At the end of the session, I thought, ‘I might be good at this.’”

After teaching at Meadowbrook and Beaver Country Day, Kay was delighted to return to Rivers in 2023. In addition to teaching U.S. and world history at the Upper School, she’s faculty advisor to The Rivers Edge, Rivers’ student newspaper—a full-circle experience, as she served as co-editor while she was a student. 

“Not to sound trite,” says Kay, “but Rivers is a unique and special place. The concept of Excellence with Humanity, in my experience, is unique even among other private institutions. We’re helping students unlock their highest potential—and they tend to be happy while working toward that.”

That approach, she says, extends to the experience of faculty as well; she says she appreciates the “exceptional mentorship” she has received, along with the blend of autonomy and collaboration the school encourages in its faculty. The Rivers she knew as a student resonates with her experience as a Rivers teacher. “What I appreciate about Rivers, after learning more about my own philosophy,” she says, “is that it’s the right balance of traditional and creative.” 

As an undergraduate, Matt Dias Costa ’13 wasn’t quite sure where his math major would take him after college. “I didn’t have a career or dream job in mind,” he says. “I just picked it because I loved math.” That love of the subject is something the Upper School math teacher very much hopes to instill in his students, and for Dias Costa, it’s also about paying it forward. “The math teachers I had at Rivers made it fun and interesting. I thought it would be a cool experience to be that point person for someone else,” he says.

He also knew he enjoyed working with kids. An accomplished soccer player who arrived at Rivers in eighth grade after making a connection with then-soccer coach and Rivers Director of Athletics Bob Pipe P’19, Dias Costa had enjoyed coaching and working at camps. Teaching seemed like a fit for his interests and background, so after college, he pursued a fellowship at a boarding school that allowed him to gain teaching experience and earn a master’s degree in education.

When an opening arose at Rivers in 2019, he jumped at the chance. “It was a great opportunity to come back to a special place that gave so much to me,” says Dias Costa. Like many teachers in his discipline, he sometimes encounters students who don’t see themselves as “math people.” With that in mind, he tries to provide the combination of strong support and high expectations he experienced at Rivers. “I believe everyone can be great at math,” he says.