Daniel Zauderer

Rewind to the summer of 2015. I had just quit my job at Lifebooker, a Brooklyn tech startup where I spent my days cold calling salon owners in San Francisco convincing them to offer haircuts for 50% off. I had heard that people who didn’t know what they wanted to do with their lives sometimes found themselves by teaching English in an exotic destination. It certainly sounded better than harassing beauty practitioners. So five months later, with a CELTA certification in hand, I was on a plane to Costa Rica, where I’d spend the next year and a half teaching ESOL.

It turned out that teaching was more than just a road to self-discovery. It became a calling in itself. It led to an MA in TESOL from Teachers College and a job at the American Dream School (ADS), a South Bronx based Spanish/English bilingual charter middle school (okay, that was a mouthful…) serving the children of Mexican and Central American immigrants. I’ve been teaching Humanities at ADS for the past two years.

I never thought I’d be a teacher, but I think I’m in this career for good.

What I love about my current job:

• building relationships with teens
• making my students laugh
• having an excuse to be super-extra all the time
• talking in silly voices
• being called “Señor Z”
• the (rare) feeling I get when it seems like real, enduring, and important learning has taken place

Areas for growth:

• learning how to teach history & ELA without a history or ELA certification (and learning how to teach them in an integrated way)
• providing adequate support to students with major reading deficits and beginning English Language Learners
• unit planning
• dealing with MAJOR variance in skill level in a single classroom
• classroom management and navigating what that looks like with a co-teacher
• moving beyond formulaic test-prep writing

Some fun facts:

• I LOVE Broadway and I would have been a Broadway actor in another life (and I also sometimes wish that we could spontaneously burst out into song during real life as a way to resolve our problems…I mean I already do that, but I wish it would be more accepted.)
• I have a voiceover reel: https://picosong.com/yGJr/
• I sing in a community choir
• I’m really into hiking / camping / skiing