Bobak Razavi and Natalie McElligott: A lawyer and an engineer find their calling teaching Middle School When Middle School students in Natalie McElligott’s math class bump up against a big problem, they know better than to complain that they’ll never need to solve an equation so complicated in real life. “In math, you sometimes hear people say, ‘Why am I learning this when I’m never going to use it?,’” says McElligott. “But with my background, I can tell them that I used mathematics at a really high level all the way through college, and there are plenty of reasons they’re going to want to be fluent in math.” McElligott, who started at SPA in 2013, earned her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at the University of Arkansas, but took a detour from industry into education after a stint as a supplemental university instructor. “I just fell in love with teaching,” she says. A veteran of the Teach for America program in Baltimore, with a master’s degree in teaching from Johns Hopkins, McElligott believes that having prepared for a career outside of education has helped make her a more effective math teacher. “I’m not someone who learned calculus and then never used it again,” she says. “Coming from an engineering background shows me that if my students learn math and learn it really well, they’re going to be able to use it for the rest of their lives.” McElligott’s path to SPA is similar to her Middle School colleague Bobak Razavi, who also joined SPA in fall of 2013 and began his professional career in a very different field: a high-powered law firm. Razavi, who teaches Middle School language arts and social studies, graduated from Amherst College in Massachusetts and earned a law degree from the University of Wisconsin. He then worked for the U.S. Department of Justice, provided pro bono services on human rights cases, and logged 80-hour work weeks doing business litigation for a large firm before having a major change of heart. “I quit the law firm one week, enrolled in teacher’s college the next Monday, and every day has been amazing since then,” he says. “I feel like I’m
living another life.” While Razavi admits he felt burned out by the legal profession’s combative, high-stress culture, he brings many of the best skills he honed during his legal career into his classroom at SPA. “Social studies as a discipline is driven by inquiry and reasoning, and a lot of what I do in class relies on the Socratic method, which is all part of my background in law,” he says. “A big piece of what we do with kids in social studies is collaborative learning, and working together to solve problems. Coming from a confrontational profession, where you’re butting heads with people you need to work with, I’m always cognizant of the social ramifications in the classroom, and making sure that everyone has a role in being productive helpers.” A graduate of Cincinnati’s Country Day School, Razavi says he felt at home with SPA’s small class size and big family feel even during his stint as a substitute teacher before joining the school fulltime. “When you go into a school as a sub and the kids are actually respectful you know it’s because the teachers are doing something right and the parents have made this a value of the community,” he says. “It was clear to me pretty quickly that this is a joyous place with an undeniable sense of community. This is a school where all stakeholders are working together on the same goal—parents, students, staff, administration—everyone is rowing in the same direction.” Now into his second year at SPA, Razavi says he has no regrets about giving up a life of courtroom litigation for a career in the classroom. “In any given minute when I’m teaching, I can make eye contact with every single kid, and I can tell if they’re getting it, and what’s going on with them, because there’s no poker face in middle school,” he says. “It’s a gift to be able to look out for all of these kids in a way I can feel really good about.” u
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