Why an 11-Year Veteran Chose Haynes — and Stayed

Mark Wilson has taught for 11 years. He’s spent the last three at E.L. Haynes, and when he explains why, he talks less about mission statements and more about how the school actually operates.

Start with how staff are treated. “Staff are treated more like professionals and not paraprofessionals,” he says. “When you trust faculty members to do the role that you hired them for, it helps with retention.” Hired to teach science? You teach science. Hired to direct a program? You direct it. Mark has watched other institutions churn through staff by micromanaging experts into resentment. At Haynes, he says, the expectation — and the trust — is there.

That respect extends to something teachers everywhere will recognize: time. Mark credits Haynes leadership with steadily cutting the meetings that could have been emails. When there is an all-day staff meeting, “most staff members are appreciative of it, because it means we adequately need to be there for a specific reason.” Grades, attendance, planning — the systems are built so teachers can do the job.

Leadership isn’t just efficient; it’s present. Mark sees administrators at basketball games and soccer matches, out in the community, building rapport he describes as “deeper than just surface level” — the kind you can’t fake, because students and staff alike would see through it.

The result is a collaborative culture with a shared goal. When Mark hits a wall — say, students struggling with graphing — he walks over to a math teacher and asks what they’re doing in their class and how he can support it. “When we all have the same mindset, it’s easy to work in a place where everybody is appreciated and respected for the role that they’re in.”

In the classroom, his approach is deliberately relationship-first: build trust before rigor, so that when challenging material comes up, students have faith in him and he has faith in them. It’s a practice he calls nontraditional. It’s also exactly the kind of practice Haynes was built to support — especially now, as the school becomes DC’s first pre-K through 12 STEAM+ school, opening the door to the crossover curriculum ideas Mark and his colleagues have been waiting to build.

Eleven years in, Mark measures success in the long term: alumni coming back from college to tell him the preparation was real.

If you’re a teacher looking for a school that treats you like the professional you are, E.L. Haynes is hiring.