Maura Crook came to education through chemistry, a chance encounter, and a scholarship offer from a stranger in an elevator. She was a chemistry pre-med in college, on track for something entirely different, when a professor from the education department stopped her one day and told her she had a scholarship if Maura would consider teaching.
She thought back on her own time in school — how she was always the student asking if she could teach the lesson, how her teachers would actually sit down and let her take the front of the room — and realized the path made more sense than she’d admitted. She graduated during COVID, teaching fell into place, and she’s loved it ever since.
Now in her second year at E.L. Haynes, Maura teaches special education geometry. She came from New Orleans, sent out a stack of resumes, and flew up to DC on her spring break to interview. What sealed it was the school’s motto: work hard, get smart, be kind. “I’ve always been the type of person to say, ‘ Be kind, always,” she says. “That resonated with me. It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.”
What keeps her here is the model. In every math and English classroom at Haynes, there are two teachers — a general educator and a special educator- working in tandem. For Maura, that structure is the whole ballgame. “Teaching is not a one-person job,” she says. “When it’s just you, you’re the disciplinarian, the teacher, the nurse. You do everything.” With a co-teacher, she can circulate the room, slow things down for students who need scaffolding, and meet kids at the level they’re actually at — not the level the curriculum assumes. Her current co-teacher is bilingual in Spanish; Maura is quick to acknowledge that she is from the South and has a slight accent. Between the two of them, every student has someone they can go to.
That commitment to reaching every child runs through how she talks about Haynes more broadly. The school is in the process of becoming DC’s first pre-K-through-12 STEAM charter school, and Maura — a self-described “science girly” — is genuinely excited about what that means in practice. Her department has already been discussing connecting geometry to Habitat for Humanity: teaching architectural principles in the classroom, then taking students out to actually use those tools to help build something. “As a math teacher,” she says, “that would be like the greatest thing ever.”
The professional development side has surprised her too. The special education department took turns attending a conference for exceptional children in Baltimore last year — and with Haynes sitting in the middle of DC, Maura sees the proximity to conferences and institutions as an underused asset. The philosophy at Haynes is to own your own learning: some PD is built in, but teachers can also opt into opportunities that will grow them in the specific directions they need.
Ask Maura what’s been most empowering about her work, and she goes straight to the students. Specifically, the moment when a kid who has always thought of themselves as an “English and history brain” starts making a genuine connection to math or science — not because they were told to, but because the work made it click. “Seeing them make those connections independently,” she says, “that’s really empowering.”
Her personal why is clear: she is dedicated to teaching Black and brown students and to making sure that every student, regardless of ability, reaches not just content mastery but what she calls “whole student mastery.” It’s only her second year at Haynes, but she’s already heard the stories — graduates coming back to visit, colleagues keeping tabs on where former students have landed. That sense of continuity, of family, is what she didn’t expect and what she doesn’t want to leave.